FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

A New Translation by Michael R. Katz

CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION by Michael R. Katz

2. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

3. THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV

4. From the Author

5. PART ONE

1. Book One: The History of a “Nice” Little Family

1. I. Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov

2. II. He Gets Rid of His Eldest Son

3. III. Second Marriage and Second Children

4. IV. The Third Son, Alyosha

5. V. Elders

2. Book Two: An Unseemly Gathering

1. I. Arrival at the Monastery

2. II. The Old Buffoon

3. III. Peasant Women of Faith

4. IV. A Lady of Little Faith

5. V. So Be It! May It Come to Pass!

6. VI. Why Is Such a Man Alive?

7. VII. A Seminarian-Careerist

8. VIII. The Scandal

3. Book Three: Sensualists

1. I. In the Servants’ Quarters

2. II. Stinking Lizaveta

3. III. The Confession of an Ardent Heart. In Verse.

4. IV. The Confession of an Ardent Heart. In Anecdotes.

5. V. The Confession of an Ardent Heart. “Upside Down.”

6. VI. Smerdyakov

7. VII. Controversy

8. VIII. Over the Brandy

9. IX. The Sensualists

10. X. Both Together

11. XI. One More Reputation Ruined

6. PART TWO

1. Book Four: Lacerations

1. I. Father Ferapont

2. II. At His Father’s

3. III. He Gets Involved with Schoolboys

4. IV. At the Khokhlakovs’

5. V. Laceration in the Drawing Room

6. VI. Laceration in a Peasant Hut

7. VII. And in the Fresh Air

2. Book Five: Pro and Contra

1. I. A Betrothal

2. II. Smerdyakov with a Guitar

3. III. The Brothers Get Acquainted

4. IV. Rebellion

5. V. The Grand Inquisitor

6. VI. Very Obscure for Now

7. VII. “It’s Always Interesting to Chat with a Clever Man”

3. Book Six: The Russian Monk

1. I. Father Zosima and His Visitors

2. II. Notes from the Holy Life of the Late Priest and Monk the Elder Zosima, Compiled from His Own Words by Aleksey Fyodorovich Karamazov

3. III. From Father Zosima’s Conversations and Teachings

7. PART THREE

1. Book Seven: Alyosha

1. I. The Odor of Putrefaction

2. II. A Critical Moment

3. III. A Little Onion

4. IV. Cana of Galilee

2. Book Eight: Mitya

1. I. Kuzma Samsonov

2. II. Lyagavy

3. III. Gold Mines

4. IV. In the Darkness

5. V. A Sudden Decision

6. VI. Here I Come!

7. VII. The Former and Indisputable One

8. VIII. Delirium

3. Book Nine: The Preliminary Investigation

1. I. The Beginning of the Civil Servant Perkhotin’s Career

2. II. The Alarm

3. III. The Soul’s Journey Through Torments: The First Torment

4. IV. The Second Torment

5. V. The Third Torment

6. VI. The Prosecutor Caught Mitya

7. VII. Mitya’s Great Secret. Greeted with Hisses.

8. VIII. The Evidence of the Witnesses. The Babe in Arms.

9. IX. They Took Mitya Away

8. PART FOUR

1. Book Ten: The Boys

1. I. Kolya Krasotkin

2. II. The Kids

3. III. The Schoolboy

4. IV. Zhuchka

5. V. At Ilyusha’s Bedside

6. VI. Precocious Development

7. VII. Ilyusha

2. Book Eleven: Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov

1. I. At Grushenka’s

2. II. An Ailing Little Foot

3. III. A Little Demon

4. IV. A Hymn and a Secret

5. V. Not You, Not You!

6. VI. The First Meeting with Smerdyakov

7. VII. The Second Visit to Smerdyakov

8. VIII. The Third and Final Meeting with Smerdyakov

9. IX. The Devil. Ivan Fyodorovich’s Nightmare.

10. X. “It’s He Who Said That!”

3. Book Twelve: A Judicial Error

1. I. The Fateful Day

2. II. Dangerous Witnesses

3. III. Medical Expertise and a Pound of Nuts

4. IV. Fortune Smiles on Mitya

5. V. A Sudden Catastrophe

6. VI. The Prosecutor’s Speech. Character Sketches.

7. VII. A Historical Survey

8. VIII. A Treatise on Smerdyakov

9. IX. Psychology Full Steam Ahead. The Galloping Troika. The Prosecutor’s Finale.

10. X. The Defense Counsel’s Speech. An Argument That Cuts Both Ways.

11. XI. There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery.

12. XII. And There Was No Murder Either

13. XIII. An Adulterer of Thought

14. XIV. The Peasants Stood Up for Themselves

4. Epilogue

1. I. Plans to Save Mitya

2. II. For a Moment the Lie Becomes Truth

3. III. Ilyushechka’s Funeral. The Speech at the Stone.

9. AFTERWORD by Michael R. Katz

INTRODUCTION

While Crime and Punishment (1866) is frequently cited as the “quintessential Russian novel,” Dostoevsky’s final novel, The Brothers Karamazov (1880), is widely acknowledged as his greatest literary achievement. The work shows the author at the height of his powers. This new translation attempts to reveal the soul of his masterpiece, striking a balance between accuracy and accessibility, making the work available to the general reader in a way that strives to do justice to the unique qualities of the original.

The Brothers Karamazov has exerted a profound influence on many public figures, philosophers and writers alike. These include Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, as well as Virginia Woolf, Kurt Vonnegut, Cormac McCarthy, and Haruki Murakami. Sigmund Freud called it “the most magnificent novel ever written” and was fascinated with what he saw as its oedipal themes. In 1928 Freud published a paper entitled “Dostoevsky and Parricide,” in which he presumed to investigate Dostoevsky’s own neuroses. The British writer C. P. Snow described Albert Einstein’s admiration for The Brothers Karamazov: when Einstein first read the novel, he found it to be, Snow recalled, “the supreme summit of all literature. It remained so when I talked to him in 1937, and probably until the end of his life.”

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in 1821 at St. Mary’s Hospital for the Moscow poor, where his father served on the staff after a career in the Russian army medical service. The author’s grandfather had been a Uniate priest[1] and the family claimed to have descended from seventeenth-century nobility. Dostoevsky’s mother, in comparison, was the daughter of Moscow merchants.

From 1837 to 1843 the young man attended the Military Engineering School in Petersburg, followed by a brief period of government service. In 1839, while still at school, Dostoevsky learned that his father had been murdered by peasants on the small estate he had recently purchased just south of Moscow. The exact circumstances were unclear, but the event made an enormous impression on the young man and was reflected throughout his later writings.

During his youth, Dostoevsky read widely in Russian and Western literatures. Among Russian writers, he engaged with the works of Karamzin, Pushkin, and Lermontov. He especially admired Gogol, whose intensely imaginative writings emphasized the plight of the downtrodden “little people” of the capital. Among European authors, Dostoevsky absorbed Homer, Shakespeare, the French dramatists, Diderot, Voltaire, Hugo, Zola, Balzac, Goethe, Schiller, and Dickens. In 1844 Dostoevsky resigned his position in government service and decided to try his fortune in the literary world of Petersburg. His first endeavor was a translation of Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet, a novel focused on the entanglements of greed, money, love, obsession, and self-sacrifice.

Dostoevsky’s first original work was an epistolary novel entitled Poor Folk (1846), which depicts an impoverished copy clerk who is hopelessly in love with a young woman whose affection he can never win. The preeminent contemporary Russian critic Vissarion Belinsky was delighted with the work and proclaimed that a “new Gogol” had arrived on the literary scene. Regrettably, Dostoevsky’s second work, published the same year, was much less well received by the critics. The Double, a psychological tale of fantasy, obsession, and madness, was dismissed because the author appeared to have abandoned their preferred social and political themes, which had characterized Poor Folk.

During the 1840s, Dostoevsky had begun attending meetings of the Petrashevsky Circle, a discussion group in Petersburg organized by Mikhail Petrashevsky, a follower of the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier. The members of the circle included writers, teachers, students, minor government officials, and army officers. While differing in their political views, most of them were opponents of the tsarist autocracy and Russian serfdom. At one meeting in 1847, Dostoevsky read aloud Belinsky’s notorious and banned “Letter to Gogol,” in which Gogol was pilloried for giving up progressive social themes in favor of religious conservatism. The meeting was interrupted by the police and the participants arrested. Dostoevsky was interrogated, jailed, and condemned to death. At the appointed hour, he was in a group of convicts led out to a parade ground to be shot; but at the last minute a reprieve arrived and he was spared execution in a gesture epitomizing Tsar Nikolai I’s unexpected granting of clemency, as well as his cruel flair for melodrama.

Dostoevsky’s sentence was commuted to hard labor, and he spent the 1850s under dire conditions in a Siberian prison camp and afterward in exile as an army private. He was permitted to return to Petersburg only some ten years later, during the more enlightened reign of Alexander II.

Upon his return, Dostoevsky wrote and published a prison memoir entitled Notes from the House of the Dead (1860–62), in which he described his own experience as well as the lives of the variety of prisoners he had encountered in Siberia. One year after that, he published his extraordinary Notes from Underground (1863), the first part of which was a spirited polemic against Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s rational egoism and utilitarianism as expressed in the controversial novel What Is to Be Done? The second part of this deeply probing work, an effort to explain how and why the hero has taken refuge in the underground, reveals the full dimensions of the underground man’s character in three distinct novelistic episodes. This remarkable work has been described as a “prologue” to the author’s “five-act tragedy”—that is, as an introduction to Dostoevsky’s five major novels written between 1866 and 1880: Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868), Devils (a.k.a. Demons or The Possessed, 1872), The Raw Youth (or The Adolescent, 1875), and, his crowning achievement, The Brothers Karamazov (1880).

The 1860s proved to be one of the most troubled times in Russian history. Russia’s ignominious defeat in the Crimean War had exposed the deficiencies of the autocracy; the accession of Alexander II to the throne in 1855 promised significant changes in governance and social organization. His reign is known as “the era of great reforms.” Organs for local self-government (zemstvos) were established to deal with local economic needs; judicial reforms were instituted to promote the speedy and equitable administration of justice; and military reforms were enacted to modernize the Russian army. The most important and best known of Alexander’s “great reforms” was, of course, the long-awaited emancipation of the serfs in 1861 (two years before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freeing the enslaved people in the United States).

Crime and Punishment is a remarkable product of this unsettled decade; it is also the ultimate Petersburg novel, where the city itself is much more than just an urban background. It is seen as a cradle of Western ideas and influences—such as socialism, atheism, materialism, and other “-isms,” all of which originated in Europe and infected the minds of the protagonist, Raskolnikov, and other so-called liberals in the novel (Svidrigaylov, Luzhin, and Lebezyatnikov). In contrast, with respect to the 1870s, The Brothers Karamazov demonstrates that the pernicious intellectual “disease” had succeeded in penetrating the Russian countryside and was now afflicting the inhabitants of a remote Russian town called Skotoprigonevsk, literally “stockyard,” and, in particular, the members of one “little” family, the Karamazov clan, Fyodor Pavlovich and his three legitimate sons, Dmitry (Mitya), Ivan, and Aleksey (Alyosha).

NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION

This translation is based on the authoritative text included in volumes 14 and 15 of the Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Complete Collected Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky in Thirty Volumes), published in Leningrad (now Petersburg) by Nauka in 1976.

The novel has been translated numerous times, and I am indebted to my predecessors for their versions. Translators learn from one another and, in a real sense, literary translation becomes a collaborative enterprise.

Constance Garnett’s classic translation of The Brothers Karamazov (1913) has endured and been a frequent choice of readers for over one hundred years. It has been revised several times and has served as the text in two Norton Critical Editions, revised and edited by Ralph Matlaw (1976) and again by Susan McReynolds (2011). Garnett’s translations of Russian novels were a remarkable achievement for their time. Altogether, she translated more than seventy volumes of Russian literature, many of which are still in print today. Although her Victorian English was admirable, her knowledge of Russian was less than perfect. Moreover, she liberally adapted Dostoevsky’s novels to the aesthetic demands of her English readers. She wrote:

Dostoievsky [sic] is so obscure and so careless as a writer that one can scarcely help clarifying him—sometimes it needs some penetration to see what he is trying to say.[2]

One result of her “clarifications” was the elimination of the narrator’s various mutterings and prevarications, which combine to lend an air of rumor and unspecified intrigue to the narrative and thereby enhance the plot.

The other most popular version of the novel is by the American-Russian team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, published over twenty years ago, the first of their long series of translations of the Russian classics. Their translation is characterized by a too close adherence to the Russian text that results in a word-for-word and syntax-for-syntax style that sacrifices tone and frequently misconstrues a passage’s overall sense.

This new translation tries to do justice to Dostoevsky’s dark and subtle sense of humor. Some of his descriptions and dialogues are distinguished with wit, irony, and sarcasm. Fyodor Karamazov, for example, the scandalous patriarch of the Karamazov clan, is often referred to as a fool or a buffoon: his words and deeds create a wickedly comic subtext for the plot that must be rendered with appropriate language.

Critics have noted that previous translations are often lacking in the specificity of individual speech. They seem to use one common level of English diction and syntax. Dostoevsky’s characters must be seen as unmistakably distinct individuals—not only the main figures (Fyodor, Dmitry, Ivan, and Alyosha) but also the minor ones (Katerina, Grushenka, Lise, and Rakitin). Each character speaks in his or her own Russian idiolect. It is the translator’s job to try to capture their individual speech patterns.

This new version also attempts to render the rhetorical eloquence of the most poignant and significant passages, those in which Dostoevsky’s characters express their deepest religious convictions. Modern literary Russian consists of a splendid combination of the spoken dialect of the Eastern Slavs (so-called Old Russian) and the ancient written language of the Russian Orthodox Church (known as Old Church Slavic or Slavonic). This linguistic blend has, since the time of Pushkin, provided an exceptionally rich source of images and diction for Russian writers. Father Zosima’s life and teachings, described extensively in Book Six, require an appreciation for this aspect of Dostoevsky’s style.

1 Relating to any community of Christians in eastern Europe or the Middle East that acknowledges papal supremacy but retains its own liturgy.

2 Quoted in Rachel May, The Translator in the Text (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1994), 32.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I could not have accomplished the exacting task of translating this monumental work without the loyal support and active involvement of some Middlebury College colleagues. I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Alexandra (Alya) Baker, who read every word of the draft more than once, comparing it with the original for accuracy and making suggestions and corrections that significantly improved my version. My deep thanks go as well to Stephen Donadio for his sustained encouragement of my work as a translator over many years, and for his close editing of substantial portions of the manuscript. Robert Schine also made important contributions, as did Gilbert Rappaport, a former colleague from the University of Texas at Austin; I am grateful to Carolyn Kuebler for choosing to publish an excerpt of the work in the New England Review; and to Christopher Ross for his expert proofreading.

I am also indebted to Carol Bemis, my longtime editor and friend at W. W. Norton, and to her talented staff for guiding this work through to completion.

To my wife, Mary Dodge, I am indebted more than I can say, for the unfailing power of her love and for her enduring interest each morning, and over several years, as I recounted the challenges of that day’s installment of my work in progress.

THE BROTHERS

KARAMAZOV

Dedicated to

Anna Grigoryevna Dostoevskaya

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

—THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT JOHN, 12:24

FROM THE AUTHOR

In beginning the life story of my hero, Aleksey Fyodorovich Karamazov, I find myself in something of a quandary. That is to say, although I call Aleksey Fyodorovich my hero, I myself know that he is by no means a great man, and therefore I foresee inevitable questions of this sort: “What’s so remarkable about your Aleksey Fyodorovich, that you chose to cast him as your hero? What exactly has he accomplished? What is he known for and by whom? Why should I, the reader, waste my time paying any attention to the facts of his life?”

That last question is the most crucial, for I can answer it only in one way: “Perhaps you’ll see from the novel itself.” Suppose that you read the novel and fail to see, and don’t agree that my Aleksey Fyodorovich is at all noteworthy? I say this because, alas, I can’t help but anticipate it. He is remarkable to me, but I really doubt whether I’ll succeed in proving this to the reader. The fact is, I suppose, that he may very well be the book’s protagonist, but a vague and undefined protagonist. That said, would it not be strange to demand clarity from people at a time like ours. In any event, one thing is fairly certain: he’s a strange man, even an eccentric. But strangeness and eccentricity are a hindrance rather than a help, especially when everyone is trying to put together all the particular parts and arrive at some general sense in the current state of widespread confusion. In the majority of cases the eccentric is a special case, a singular case. Isn’t that so?

Now, if you don’t agree with that last statement, and you answer, “It’s not so” or “It’s not always so,” then, I suppose, I might become encouraged about the significance of my hero, Aleksey Fyodorovich. For not only is an eccentric “not always” a singular and special case, but, on the contrary, I’d suspect that he sometimes carries within himself the very heart of the whole situation, while all of his contemporaries have, for some reason, been torn out of it by a sudden gust of wind.

Still, for all that, I’d rather not go any further into these extremely vague and boring explanations; I’d simply prefer to begin without a preface: “If they like it, they’ll read it anyway.” But the problem is that although I have one life story, in fact, I have two novels. The main novel is the second one—that is, the actions of my hero at the present time, precisely in our current moment. As for the first novel, it took place exactly thirteen years ago, and is hardly a novel at all, just a single moment in my hero’s early youth. It was impossible for me to do without this first novel, because much in the second novel would otherwise be incomprehensible. But this makes my original difficulty even more complicated: if I, the biographer, find that even one novel might be superfluous for such a vague an inconsequential hero, how could I possibly present you with two novels, and how could I ever manage to justify such presumption?

Since I keep getting lost in my repeated attempts to address these questions, I’ve decided to avoid them without coming to any solution at all. Naturally, as a perceptive reader, you’ve long ago guessed that I was leading up to this from the very start, and I imagine that you’re now annoyed with me for wasting so many useless words and so much valuable time. I can respond to this precisely: I’ve wasted so many useless words and so much valuable time, in the first place, out of politeness; and in the second place, out of cunning. “Still,” you might say, “he’s made us aware of something ahead of time.” In fact, I’m even glad that my novel has divided itself into two distinct stories all on its own, “given the essential unity of the whole.” After becoming acquainted with the first story, you’re free to determine for yourself whether it might be worthwhile to try reading the second. Of course, you’re not obliged to do anything; you can abandon the book after the second page of the first novel, never to open it again. But then there are those polite readers among you who’ll definitely want to read it to the end, so as not to be mistaken in their carefully calculated judgment; such readers, for example, include all Russian critics. So it’s in thinking of readers like this that my heart becomes lighter: and not withstanding all their thoughtful consideration and unfailing conscientiousness, I hasten to provide them with a legitimate excuse to abandon the novel after reading the first episode. Well, that’s my whole preface. I’m in complete agreement that there’s absolutely no need for it, but since it’s already been written, let it stand.

And now, down to business.

PART ONE

BOOK ONE

THE HISTORY OF A “NICE” LITTLE FAMILY

I

FYODOR PAVLOVICH KARAMAZOV

Aleksey Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of a landowner in our district, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, so well known in his own time (and still remembered among us) for his dark and tragic demise, which occurred exactly thirteen years ago, and which I’ll tell you about at the proper time. For now all I’ll say about this “landowner” (as he was called by us, although for his whole life he hardly ever lived on his estate) is that he was a strange type, though one that’s encountered fairly often; not only was he utterly worthless and depraved, but he had no sense at all—and yet he was one of those people with no sense who knew how to take very good care of his worldly affairs, and, apparently, not much else. For example, Fyodor Pavlovich had begun with almost nothing; he was the owner of a small estate; he hastened to take a place at other men’s dinner tables, latching on as a freeloader; that said, at the time of his death he had accumulated a hundred thousand rubles in cold cash. Yet at the same time, all his life he continued to be one of the eccentrics in our entire district who was most lacking in sense. I repeat: it was not a matter of stupidity; the majority of these eccentrics are rather clever and shrewd, just lacking in basic common sense—and displaying a particularly Russian form of that lack.

He had been married twice, and had three sons: the eldest, Dmitry Fyodorovich, from his first wife, and the remaining two, Ivan and Aleksey, from his second. Fyodor Pavlovich’s first wife was from a rather wealthy and distinguished noble family, the Miusovs, who were also landowners in our district. Exactly how it happened that a young woman with a dowry, who was also a beauty, and, besides that, a lively, intelligent girl—a combination not at all uncommon among our younger generation now, but that could sometimes be found in the last one, too—could marry such a worthless “featherbrain,” as everyone referred to him at the time—that’s something I won’t even attempt to explain. Then again, I knew one girl of the late “romantic generation” who, after several years of inexplicable love for a certain gentleman—someone she could quite easily have married at any time—ended up creating insurmountable obstacles for herself; one stormy night she threw herself down from a high riverbank resembling a precipice, into a rather deep and swift river, and there she perished entirely as a result of her own capriciousness and a determination to imitate Shakespeare’s Ophelia; indeed, had this apparent precipice, which she’d taken note of and selected long ago, been less picturesque, and had it been traded for an altogether prosaic, flat bank, the suicide might never have taken place. This is a true story, and one must consider the possibility that in our Russian life, during the last two or three generations, many such incidents or ones like this must have occurred. Adelaida Ivanovna Miusova’s rash act was without doubt an act of this kind, an echo of foreign currents, and was also due to the impulsiveness and irritability of a mind held captive. Perhaps she wanted to assert her feminine independence, to refute social conventions, to reject the despotism of her family and the conditions of her birth; perhaps her obliging imagination persuaded her, let’s imagine, only for a moment, that Fyodor Pavlovich, in spite of his reputation as a parasite, was nevertheless one of the boldest, most ironic, and most amusing people of that transitional progressive epoch, though he really was nothing more than a nasty fool. An additional thrill was added by the fact that the marriage was preceded by an elopement; that fact flattered Adelaida Ivanovna tremendously. Fyodor Pavlovich’s social situation at that time made him eager for an unexpected opportunity like this, because he passionately desired to establish his career by whatever means possible; it was very tempting to him to worm his way into a good family and to claim a dowry. As for mutual love, it seems not to have existed at all—neither from his bride nor from him, even in spite of Adelaida Ivanovna’s great beauty. This was perhaps a singular case in the life of Fyodor Pavlovich, a thoroughly voluptuous man, otherwise ready at a moment’s notice to chase any skirt, at the slightest sign of encouragement. Indeed, she appears to have been the only woman who had no particular sensual appeal to him.

Right after their elopement, Adelaida Ivanovna recognized at once that she simply despised her husband and felt nothing more. Thus, the consequences of the marriage became evident with extraordinary speed. In spite of the fact that her family even made its peace with the event rather quickly and turned the dowry over to the runaway bride, the spouses began leading a most disorderly life, and there were endless scenes between them. It was said that the young wife displayed incomparably more nobility and high-mindedness than Fyodor Pavlovich, who, as is now known, at the time got his hands on all of her money at one go, as much as twenty-five thousand rubles, just as soon as she had received it, so that those funds were lost to her forever. For a long time he kept trying with all his might to transfer the ownership of the little village and the rather fine town house, which formed part of the dowry, into his own name by means of some deed of conveyance; he probably would have succeeded in managing this because of the contempt and disgust that he’d aroused in his spouse through his constant shameless extortions and pleas, and as a result of her emotional exhaustion, just so she might get rid of him. But fortunately, Adelaida Ivanovna’s family intervened and put a stop to his larceny. It’s very well known as a fact that frequent fights took place between the husband and wife, although according to local legend, it wasn’t Fyodor Pavlovich who did the beating, but Adelaida Ivanovna—a hot-tempered lady, dark, audacious, impatient, and endowed with considerable physical strength. At long last she fled from her house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovich with an impoverished seminarian-schoolteacher,[1] leaving the three-year-old Mitya on her husband’s hands. Fyodor Pavlovich immediately imported an entire harem into his house and abandoned himself to drunken orgies; between these episodes, he would drive around the whole province, complaining tearfully to everyone he met about Adelaida Ivanovna’s having left him, describing his married life in such intimate detail that was too embarrassing even to mention to one’s own spouse. The main thing to be noted here is that he found it pleasant and even flattering to assume the ludicrous role of an injured husband before everyone, and even to recount with some pleasure and numerous embellishments the details of his humiliation. “One might think, Fyodor Pavlovich, that you’d received some kind of promotion; you seem so pleased, in spite of all your sorrow,” the scoffers would say. Many would even add that he seemed positively delighted to appear once again in the role of a buffoon, that he was intentionally pretending—just to increase the laughter—that he was utterly unaware of his own absurd position. Who knows, however; maybe it was just his naïveté. At last he managed to discover traces of his runaway wife. The poor woman had wound up in Petersburg, where she’d gone with her seminarian, and where she’d thrown herself wholeheartedly into a life of complete emancipation. Fyodor Pavlovich started bustling about at once and made plans to go to Petersburg—but what for? He himself didn’t even know. He might actually have made the trip; but, having decided, he felt entitled to fortify himself before undertaking the journey by throwing himself once again into a wild bout of drinking. And just at that moment the family received news of his spouse’s death in Petersburg. She’d died suddenly, somehow—in an attic—from typhus, according to one account, and from hunger, according to another. Fyodor Pavlovich was drunk when he heard the news of her death; they say he ran through the streets and began shouting, raising his hands to the sky in joy: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.”[2] But according to other people, he wept like a little child, so much so, it was said, that it was pitiful even to look at him, in spite of all the disgust with him one might feel. It’s very possible that both versions are true—that is, he rejoiced at his liberation and wept for his liberator, at the same time. Indeed, in most cases, even criminals are more naïve and openhearted than we suppose. And we are, too.

1 Seminary students often served as teachers in village schools.

2 The first words of a prayer in the Orthodox liturgy, based on Luke 2:29.

II

HE GETS RID OF HIS ELDEST SON

Of course, one can well imagine what sort of father and educator such a man might turn out to be. His behavior as a father was just as one might expect, that is, he wholly and completely abandoned his child conceived by Adelaida Ivanovna, not from spite, nor as a result of any matrimonial feelings, but simply because he forgot about the boy entirely. While he pestered everyone with his tears and complaints, and turned his house into a den of debauchery, Grigory, the faithful servant in the house, took the three-year-old Mitya under his care; if he hadn’t looked after him, it’s possible, perhaps, that there might not have been anyone at all even to change the child’s shirt. In addition, it so happened that the child’s relatives on his mother’s side also seemed to have forgotten about him at first. His grandfather, that is, Adelaida Ivanovna’s father, Mr. Miusov, was no longer alive; his widow, Mitya’s grandmother, who had moved to Moscow, was too ill; her sisters had married; so Mitya remained for almost a year in Grigory’s care and lived with him in the servants’ cottage. Moreover, if his papa had remembered him at all (it was impossible that he really didn’t know about his existence), he himself would have sent him back to the cottage, since the child would certainly have interfered with his debauchery. But it so happened that a cousin of the late Adelaida Ivanovna’s returned from Paris, Pyotr Aleksandrovich Miusov, who later lived abroad for many years; at that time he was a very young man, but distinguished among the Miusovs as enlightened, urbane, and worldly-wise; besides, a European all his life, toward the end of it, he became a liberal of the 1840s and 1850s. During the course of his career he had been in contact with many liberals of his era, both in Russia and abroad; he knew Proudhon and Bakunin[1] personally, and he especially loved to recall and recount, after his wanderings had come to an end, three days of the Paris Revolution in February 1848, hinting that he himself had almost participated in the defense of the barricades. This was one of the most joyful recollections of his youth. He owned an independent estate of approximately one thousand souls, to estimate in the old way. His magnificent estate was located on the outskirts of our little town and bordered on the lands of our famous monastery, with which Pyotr Aleksandrovich, since he was very young, as soon as he’d received his inheritance, had begun an endless lawsuit concerning the rights to fish in the river or to cut wood in the forest, I don’t recall exactly which; but he even considered it his civic and enlightened responsibility to launch this suit against the “clerics.” Having heard all about Adelaida Ivanovna—whom, naturally, he remembered and had even taken an interest in at one time—and having learned that Mitya had been abandoned, in spite of his youthful indignation and contempt for Fyodor Pavlovich, he got involved in this affair. This is when he first became acquainted with Fyodor Pavlovich. He simply announced to him that he himself wished to take on the upbringing of the child. For a long time after, he used to point out, noting something characteristic of the man, that when he first began speaking about Mitya with Fyodor Pavlovich, for some time he had the look of someone who didn’t understand what child was being talked about, and even seemed to be surprised to learn that he had a young son living somewhere on his own grounds. Although there could be some exaggeration in Pyotr Aleksandrovich’s account, still it must have been something resembling the truth.

The fact is, all his life Fyodor Pavlovich really loved to act, suddenly to play some unexpected role for you, and the main thing is that he did this sometimes without any need to, even at some risk to himself, as, for example, in the current instance. This trait, however, is characteristic of a very great many people, even some extremely clever ones, not unlike Fyodor Pavlovich. Pyotr Aleksandrovich carried out his plan enthusiastically, and was even appointed (together with Fyodor Pavlovich) guardian of the child, because Mitya had been left a small estate after his mother’s death—a house and some land. As a matter of fact, Mitya moved in with this uncle; but since Miusov had no family of his own, after settling and securing the revenues of his estate, he hastened back to Paris again, for a long time, entrusting Mitya to the care of one of his aunts who lived in Moscow. It so happened that after he got settled in Paris, Miusov, too, forgot about the child, especially when that February Revolution occurred, which made such an impression on his imagination that he was unable to forget it his whole life. The Muscovite lady died, and Mitya was moved to one of her married daughters. It seems that afterward he changed his home yet again, for a fourth time. I won’t go into that now, all the more so because I will have a great deal to say later on about this firstborn child of Fyodor Pavlovich’s, so now I’ll merely limit myself to the most essential information about him, without which it would be impossible to begin this novel.

To begin with, this Dmitry Fyodorovich was the only one of the three sons of Fyodor Pavlovich who grew up convinced that he still had some property and that when he came of age, he would become independent. His childhood and youth passed in a disorderly fashion; he didn’t complete his education at the gymnasium; next he attended a military school, after which he turned up in the Caucasus, where he was promoted, fought some duels, was demoted, then promoted again; he went on numerous binges and spent a relatively large sum of money. He had begun to receive funds from Fyodor Pavlovich only when he came of age; however, before that time, he racked up substantial debts. He saw and came to know his father for the first time upon coming of age when he visited our province with the goal of resolving the matter of his property. It seems that he didn’t like his parent even then: he stayed with him for only a short time, and left quickly, having received from him a certain sum and having entered into an agreement concerning the receipt of future income from the estate, of which (a noteworthy fact) he was unable to learn the income or value from Fyodor Pavlovich at that time. Fyodor Pavlovich noted then for the first time (this should also be remembered) that Mitya had an exaggerated and inaccurate understanding of his property. Fyodor Pavlovich was quite satisfied about this, having in mind his own designs. He merely concluded that the young man was frivolous, ungovernable, passionate, impatient, dissipated, and that if he could be given only a small amount, he would calm down, though not for long, of course. Fyodor Pavlovich began to take advantage of this, that is, sending him small sums, temporary installments, and in the end it happened that four years later, when Mitya, having lost his patience, next appeared in our town, to settle affairs with his parent once and for all, it suddenly turned out, to his great astonishment, that he had nothing left, that any remaining balance was even difficult to calculate, that he had run through the entire value of the property he’d received from Fyodor Pavlovich, and that perhaps he even owed the old man some money as a result of certain transactions in which he’d engaged at various times, that he didn’t even have a right to demand anything more, and so on and so forth. The young man was astounded, began to suspect falsehood and deceit, was almost beside himself, and seemed to lose his mind. It was precisely this circumstance that led to the catastrophe, the account of which constitutes the subject of my first, introductory novel or, rather, the external side of it. But before I go ahead with that novel, it’s necessary to say something about Fyodor Pavlovich’s remaining two sons, Mitya’s brothers, and to explain where they came from.

1 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) was a French socialist and political theorist; Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) was a famous Russian anarchist.

III

SECOND MARRIAGE AND SECOND CHILDREN

After getting rid of the four-year-old Mitya, Fyodor Pavlovich married for a second time. His second marriage lasted for eight years. He took his second wife, also a very young girl, Sofya Ivanovna, from the neighboring province, where he’d traveled on a little bit of business, in the company of some little Yid.[1] Although Fyodor Pavlovich caroused, drank, and engaged in debauchery, he never ceased investing his capital, and always managed his business dealings very successfully, albeit, of course, almost always dishonestly. Sofya Ivanovna was a “little orphan,” without relatives since childhood, the daughter of some obscure deacon; she had grown up in the wealthy home of some benefactress, educator, and tormentor, an aristocratic old woman, the widow of General Vorokhov. I don’t know any details, but I’ve heard that at one point the orphan, a meek, forgiving, and uncomplaining girl, was cut down from a noose, which she’d hung on a nail in the attic—so hard was it for her to endure the caprices and endless reproaches of this old woman, who apparently was not evil, but who had become insufferably tyrannical from idleness. Fyodor Pavlovich made her an offer; they made inquiries about him and drove him away; then, just as in his first marriage, he proposed elopement to the orphan. It’s very, very possible that she wouldn’t even have married him if in time she’d become aware of more details about him. But she lived in a different province; and how much could a sixteen-year-old girl understand, except that she’d be better off at the bottom of a river than remaining with her benefactress. Thus the poor girl traded her benefactress for a benefactor. This time Fyodor Pavlovich didn’t receive even half a kopeck, because the general’s wife got angry, wouldn’t give them a thing, and, in addition, cursed them both; this time, although he hadn’t even counted on a dowry, he was attracted only by the remarkable beauty of the innocent girl, primarily her look of innocence, which made a deep impression on the sensualist and previously depraved admirer only of women’s beauty of the most unrefined sort. “At the time those innocent eyes cut into my soul like a razor,” he used to say afterward, with a vile snigger. However, in a man so depraved, even this could indicate only sensual attraction. Since he’d received no dowry with his second wife, Fyodor Pavlovich didn’t stand on ceremony with her; taking advantage of the fact that she was, so to speak, “guilty” before him, and that he had almost taken her down from the “noose,” and besides, taking further advantage of her extraordinary humility and meekness, he even trampled underfoot the most ordinary decencies of marriage. In his house, even in his wife’s presence, loose women would gather and would arrange orgies. As a revealing detail, I can emphasize that the servant Grigory, a gloomy, stupid, stubborn, argumentative moralizer who had hated Adelaida Ivanovna, his former mistress, this time took the side of his new mistress; he defended her and quarreled with Fyodor Pavlovich on her behalf, in a manner that might come close to being inappropriate for a servant; once he even broke up an orgy and drove away by force all the scandalous women. In the end, in this unfortunate young woman, frightened since childhood, there occurred something resembling a female nervous affliction, most frequently met among peasant women who are called “shriekers” as a result of this illness. Suffering from this disease, she would endure hysterical attacks and at times even lose her reason. However, Sofya Ivanovna bore Fyodor Pavlovich two sons, Ivan and Aleksey, the first during their first year of marriage, and the second, three years later. When she died, the little boy Aleksey was in his fourth year, and although it’s strange to say, I know that he remembered his mother afterward for his whole life—as if through a dream, naturally. After her death, almost the same thing happened with the two boys as with Fyodor Pavlovich’s firstborn son, Mitya: they were completely forgotten and abandoned by their father and ended up with that same Grigory and also in the same cottage. They were found there by the same tyrannical old woman, the general’s widow, their mother’s benefactress and educator. She was still alive and for the past eight years had been unable to forget the insult done to her. All those eight years she was secretly receiving accurate reports of her “Sophie’s” daily life; and hearing that she was ill, and that she was surrounded by disgraceful things, she declared aloud two or three times to her hangers-on: “It serves her right; God sent her this punishment for her ingratitude.”

Exactly three months after Sofya Ivanovna’s death, the general’s wife suddenly appeared in our town in person and went directly to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house; she spent only half an hour among us, but managed to do a great deal. It was evening. Fyodor Pavlovich, whom she hadn’t seen for the past eight years, was drunk when he came out to greet her. They say that no sooner had she seen him than, without any word of explanation, she gave him two solid, resonant slaps across his face and, seizing a tuft of his hair, shook him up and down three times; then, without adding a word, she went straight to the cottage where the two boys were staying. Noticing at first glance that the boys were unwashed and wearing dirty clothes, she immediately slapped Grigory’s face and declared to him that she was taking both boys to live with her; then she took them as they were, wrapped them in a blanket, sat them in her carriage, and carried them off to her town. Grigory accepted her slap like a devoted slave, didn’t say a word in protest, and, as he escorted the old lady to her carriage, bowed to her from the waist and declared impressively that “God would repay her for the orphans.” “You’re a nitwit all the same!” the general’s wife shouted to him as she left. Fyodor Pavlovich, thinking it all over, decided that it was a good thing, and in his formal agreement concerning the education of his children, didn’t refuse any of her demands. As for the slaps she’d given him, he drove around the town telling the story to everyone.

It happened that the general’s wife died soon after this, but in her will she’d left one thousand rubles to each boy, “for their education, specifying that all the money should be spent exclusively on them, but on the condition that it last until their coming of age, since such a sum was more than adequate for such children, and if other people wanted to, let them loosen their purse strings,” and so on and so forth. I haven’t read the will myself, but I’ve heard that there was something strange of this sort and expressed too curiously. The old woman’s principal heir, however, turned out to be an honest man, the marshal of the nobility of the province,[2] Efim Petrovich Polenov. Writing to Fyodor Pavlovich, and guessing at once that it would be impossible to wheedle any money out of him for the children’s education (although he never refused outright, but always dragged out these requests, sometimes even pouring out sentimentalities), he took a personal interest in the orphans and especially came to love the younger of the two, Aleksey, so that the latter even spent a long time growing up in his family. I would ask the reader to take note of this fact from the very beginning. And if the young boys were obliged to anyone for their whole lives for their upbringing and education, then it’s precisely to Efim Petrovich, a most generous and humane man, one of those rarely encountered. He kept intact the thousand rubles left to each boy by the general’s wife, so that upon their coming of age their allotment had doubled with the interest; he educated them both at his own expense and spent, of course, a lot more than a thousand rubles of his own money on each of them. I won’t delve into a detailed account of their childhood and youth right now, but will only mention a few of the most important events. Concerning the elder, Ivan, I’ll say only that he grew into a kind of morose, reserved lad, far from timid, but even at the age of ten he had realized that they were growing up in someone else’s family, and on someone’s charity, and that their father was someone it was even embarrassing to talk about, and so on and so forth. This young boy very soon, almost in his infancy (at least, so it was said), began to manifest some unusual and brilliant aptitude for learning. I don’t know the details, but it happened somehow that he left the family of Efim Petrovich when he was scarcely thirteen years old, transferring to one of the Moscow gymnasiums, and boarding at the home of some experienced and well-known pedagogue, a friend of Efim Petrovich’s since childhood. Ivan himself said afterward that all of this occurred as a result of Efim Petrovich’s “zeal for good deeds”; he was attracted by the idea that a lad with such brilliant abilities should be educated in the home of a brilliant teacher. But neither Efim Petrovich nor this brilliant pedagogue was still alive when the young man, after finishing the gymnasium, entered the university. Since Efim Petrovich hadn’t left clear instructions, and since the receipt of the boys’ own money left them by the tyrannical widow of the general, which had grown with interest from one thousand each to two thousand, had been delayed by our various altogether inevitable formalities and delays, during his first two years at university the young man had a hard time, since he was forced to feed and support himself, and at the same time to conduct his studies. We must note that at that time he didn’t even attempt to communicate with his father—perhaps out of pride or contempt for him, or perhaps as the result of cool good sense that told him he would never receive any real assistance from his papa. However that may have been, the young man didn’t lose his way at all, and managed to find work—at first giving lessons for twenty kopecks, then running from newspaper to newspaper and providing little articles (ten lines or so) about street incidents, under the name “Eyewitness.” These articles, they say, were always written in such a curious and poignant manner that they soon were circulated widely, and in this alone, the young man displayed all his practical and intellectual superiority over the masses of our endlessly needy and unfortunate young students of both sexes who, in the capital, regularly haunt the thresholds of various newspapers and journals, having nothing better to offer than endless repetitions of one and the same request for any work copying or translating articles from French. Having made the acquaintance of the editors, Ivan Fyodorovich constantly maintained his contact with them, and during his last years at the university began to publish extremely accomplished book reviews on special topics, such that he even became known in certain literary circles.

However, it was only most recently that he had suddenly managed to attract special attention to himself among a much wider circle of readers, so that a great many people at once noticed and remembered him. This was a rather curious occurrence. Just as he left the university and was preparing to go abroad on his two thousand rubles, Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly published a strange article in one of the major newspapers, calling attention to himself even from nonspecialists; the main point is that his article was on a subject that was apparently unfamiliar to him, because he had completed his studies in natural science. The article was written about a subject that was being discussed everywhere at that time, the question of ecclesiastical courts. After analyzing several stated opinions on the subject, he expressed his own personal view. The main thing was in the tone of the article and in the remarkable unexpectedness of its conclusion. As they read it, many of the members of the church party definitely considered the author as a supporter of their position. And all of a sudden, not only members of the secular party but even atheists joined in their applause. In the end some shrewd people decided that this article was an audacious farce and mockery. I mention this now especially because this article managed to penetrate even to our famous neighborhood monastery, where the monks were particularly interested in the question of ecclesiastical courts—and where it occasioned complete confusion. After learning the author’s name, they got interested in the fact that he was a native of our town and the son of “that Fyodor Pavlovich.” And it was just then that the author himself appeared among us.

Why Ivan Fyodorovich came to see us—I recall having asked myself this with some discomfort even at the time. This fateful arrival, which led to so many consequences, remained obscure for a long time afterward, almost forever. In general, it seemed strange that such a young man, so learned, so proud, and apparently cautious, appeared suddenly in such a disorderly household, to visit a father who’d ignored him all his life, didn’t recognize or remember him; and although this father wouldn’t give him any money for anything at all, under any circumstances, if his son asked for it, still, all his life he feared that his sons Ivan and Aleksey would also come at some point to ask him for money. And then the young man settled down in the house of such a father; he had been living with him for the last two months, and they were both getting along as well as could possibly be imagined. This last fact was a special cause of surprise not only for me, but also for many other people. Pyotr Aleksandrovich Miusov, about whom I spoke previously, Fyodor Pavlovich’s distant relative on his first wife’s side, happened to be in the neighborhood at his local estate, having graced us with a visit from Paris, where he had settled permanently. I recall that he was more surprised than anyone else when he made the acquaintance of this extremely young man, who had interested him greatly, though with whom, not without inner discomfort, he had sometimes traded caustic remarks. “He’s proud,” he used to say about him at the time, “he can always make some money; even now he has money to go abroad—what does he want here? It’s clear to everyone that he came to see his father not for money, because in any case, his father won’t give him any. He doesn’t like to drink and engage in any debauchery; yet his father can’t do without him; they get along so well!” This was true; the young man even had a noticeable influence on the old man; his father almost began to listen to him at times, although he was sometimes extremely, even spitefully, willful; he even began to behave himself more decently . . .

Only later did it become clear that Ivan Fyodorovich had arrived in part at the request of, and regarding matters pertaining to, his older brother, Dmitry, whom he saw and got to know then, almost for the very first time in his life, during that same visit, but with whom, however, he had corresponded before his departure from Moscow regarding one very important matter, more of interest to Dmitry. The reader will learn about this matter more fully and in detail at the appropriate time. Nevertheless, even at that time, when I had already learned about this particular circumstance, Ivan Fyodorovich seemed mysterious to me, and his arrival in our town still seemed inexplicable.

I would like to add further that Ivan appeared at the time as an intermediary and mediator between his father and his older brother, Dmitry, who was quarreling openly with his father and was even preparing to take formal legal action against him.

This “nice” little family, I repeat, had gathered together for the first time in its life, and several members were actually seeing each other for the very first time. Only the younger son, Aleksey Fyodorovich, who had come a year earlier and had been living among us since then, had arrived before his two brothers. It’s about this Aleksey that I find it most difficult to speak in this prefatory section, before bringing him onto the stage in the novel itself. But I must write a preface about him as well, at least to explain in advance one very strange point, namely: I’m obligated to present my future hero to the reader right from the first scene in the role of a novice. Yes, he had been living for the last year or so in our monastery, and it appeared that he was preparing to be cloistered there for his entire life.

1 Russian distinguishes between the neutral evrei (“Jew”) and the derogatory zhid (“Yid”)—a distinction that Fyodor Pavlovich himself draws on p. 28.

2 The highest elected office in a province in pre-reform Russia.

IV

THE THIRD SON, ALYOSHA

He was only twenty years old at the time (his brother Ivan was twenty-three, and their older brother, Dmitry, was twenty-seven). First of all, I would like to state that this young man, Alyosha, was by no means a fanatic, and, in my opinion, at least, not even a mystic at all. I’ll give you my full opinion at the outset: he was simply an early lover of humanity, and if he wound up on a monastic path, it was because it was the only one that struck him at the time, so to speak, and presented the ideal escape for his soul, struggling, as it was then, from the darkness of worldly wickedness into the light of love. And that path struck him merely because at that time he encountered someone who in his opinion was an extraordinary being—the celebrated elder of our monastery, Zosima, to whom he became attached with all the passionate first love of his insatiable heart. However, I won’t dispute that even then he was already very strange, and had been so right from his cradle. By the way, I’ve already mentioned that he lost his mother when he was three years old; yet he remembered her afterward for his whole life, her face, her caresses, “as if she were standing before me alive.” Such memories may be recalled (as everyone knows) from an even earlier age, even from two years old, emerging during one’s entire life only as bright spots in the darkness, as a corner torn off a huge picture that has faded and disappeared except for this one little corner. That’s exactly how it was with him: he remembered one summer evening, quiet, an open window, the slanting rays of the setting sun (he recalled those slanting rays most of all); an icon in the corner of the room, a lamp burning in front of it, and his mother kneeling before the icon, sobbing hysterically, with screeches and screams, lifting him up with both hands, squeezing him until it hurt, praying to the Mother of God for him, holding him out to the icon with both hands, as if asking her protection. . . . And all of a sudden, his nanny comes running in and snatches him from her in terror. That’s the picture! Alyosha even remembered his mother’s face at that moment: he said that it was frenzied but magnificent, judging from what he could recall. But he rarely liked sharing this memory with anyone.

In his childhood and youth he was not very outgoing, or even communicative, not from distrust, or shyness, or sullen unsociability, even quite the opposite, but from something else, from some sort of inner anxiety, entirely personal, unconcerned with other people, but so important to him that as a result he seemed to forget all about others. But he loved people; he seemed to live his whole life believing completely in people; and yet, no one ever considered him a simpleton or naïve. There was something in him that openly expressed and suggested (his entire life) that he didn’t want to judge other people, that he didn’t want to render judgment on himself and didn’t want to condemn anyone. He seemed to allow anything without the least condemnation, although he was often bitterly aggrieved. Moreover, he went so far in this regard that no one could ever surprise or frighten him, and this was true when he was still very young. Appearing when he was twenty years old in his father’s house, which was a den of filthy debauchery, he, chaste and pure, merely withdrew in silence when it became unbearable, but without the least bit of contempt or condemnation of anyone. His father, having been a sponger, and therefore sensitive and ready to take offense, at first met him with distrust and petulance (“He doesn’t say much,” he would say, “and he thinks a great deal”), but soon ended up, however, hugging and kissing him frequently, beginning no later than some two weeks after his arrival, true, through drunken tears, in intoxicated sentimentality, so that it was apparent that he’d fallen sincerely and profoundly in love, such as he’d never been able to feel before for anyone . . .

And everyone loved this young man, wherever he went; that was so even from his childhood. After he wound up in the house of his benefactor and educator, Efim Petrovich Polenov, he won the hearts of the entire family and they definitely regarded him as one of their own. Moreover, he’d entered this household when he was so young that it was impossible to imagine that he was acting from any calculated cunning or intrigue or the art of trying to ingratiate himself with them or to win their affection. Thus he possessed the gift of inspiring exceptional love toward himself, so to speak, by his very nature, artlessly and spontaneously. It was the same when he went to school; surprisingly, since he seemed to be one of those children who arouse mistrust from their schoolmates, sometimes mockery, and perhaps even hatred. For example, he was given to daydreaming and seemed to keep to himself. From childhood he used to go off into a corner and read books, and yet, his classmates liked him so much that one could definitely call him the general favorite all during the time he was at school. He was rarely playful, even rarely cheerful, but everyone, just looking at him, would see at once that this wasn’t the result of some sort of gloominess; on the contrary, he was easygoing and sunny. He never wanted to show off to his peers. Perhaps that was the very reason he was never afraid of anyone; and for their part, the boys recognized at once that he didn’t take pride in his lack of fear, but looked as if he didn’t understand how bold and fearless he really was. He never held on to insults. It would happen that an hour after an insult, he’d address the offender, reply to some question, or begin to speak with him with such a bright and trusting look, as if nothing at all had occurred between them. And it wasn’t that he seemed to have accidentally forgotten or intentionally forgiven the insult; it was simply that he didn’t consider it an insult, and that decidedly captivated and conquered the other children. He had only one characteristic that, in all classes of the gymnasium, beginning with the lowest and going up to the highest, aroused in his comrades a constant desire to make fun of him, although not from spiteful mockery but because they found it amusing. This characteristic was his strange, wildly intense bashfulness and chastity. He couldn’t bear hearing certain words and certain conversations about women. These “certain” words and conversations, unfortunately, are unavoidable in our schools. Boys who are pure of heart and soul, still almost children, very often like to whisper in class among themselves, and even talk aloud, about such things—pictures and images about which even soldiers would sometimes hesitate to speak; indeed, things that soldiers don’t even know or understand, such things are familiar to the young children of our intellectual and higher classes in society. This may be a question of moral depravity, though as yet there’s no real, depraved inner cynicism involved, but there is the appearance of it, and this is often considered among them as something refined, subtle, daring, and worthy of imitation. Seeing that “Alyosha Karamazov” would quickly stick his fingers in his ears when they started talking “about that,” they would sometimes form a crowd around him on purpose, and force him to remove his fingers, and shout obscenities into his ears; he would tear himself away, fall to the floor, and lie there, hiding his face, without uttering a single word—not abusing them, but bearing the insult in silence. Finally they’d leave him in peace and even refrain from teasing him by calling him a “little girl”; moreover, they’d regard this aspect of his character with compassion. By the way, he was always one of the better students in class, but never recognized as being at the top.

When Efim Petrovich died, Alyosha spent two more years in the provincial gymnasium. Efim Petrovich’s inconsolable widow, almost immediately after his death, went off to Italy for a long time with her family, which consisted entirely of young women, and Alyosha wound up in the house of two ladies he’d never seen before, some distant relatives of Efim Petrovich’s, but on the basis of what understanding he himself didn’t know. Another characteristic trait of his was that he never worried about who was paying to keep him housed and fed. In this respect he was absolutely the opposite of his older brother Ivan Fyodorovich, who struggled with poverty during his first two years at the university, feeding himself through his own work, and who from his childhood was bitterly conscious that he was living at his benefactor’s expense. But it wasn’t possible to denounce this strange trait in Alyosha’s character, because at the slightest acquaintance with him anyone would have recognized, had this question ever arisen, that Alyosha was certainly one of those young people, almost a type of “holy fool,”[1] who, if he happened to come into a large fortune, wouldn’t hesitate to give it all away at the very first request, either as a good deed or, perhaps, even to some sly swindler, if he were simply to ask for it. And speaking in general, he seemed not to have any idea of the value of money, at least in the literal sense. When he was given some pocket change, which he himself never asked for, he didn’t know what to do with it for weeks at a time, or else he was so careless that it would disappear immediately. Pyotr Aleksandrovich Miusov, a man who was extremely sensitive regarding money and bourgeois honesty, once, after observing Alyosha, pronounced the following aphorism about him: “Here, perhaps, is the only man in the whole world whom you could leave alone without any money in the middle of a square in a large city with a population of a million or so, and he’d never perish or die from cold and hunger, because he’d be fed and housed at once, and if he weren’t housed immediately he would find shelter for himself, and this wouldn’t cost him any effort or any humiliation whatsoever; nor would it impose any burden on the person housing him; perhaps this person might even consider it a pleasure to be doing so.”

He didn’t finish his course at the gymnasium; he had a whole year left when he suddenly announced to his ladies that he was going to see his father about a certain matter that had just occurred to him. They were very sorry and didn’t want to let him go. The trip was not expensive and they wouldn’t let him pawn his watch—a gift from his benefactor’s family before he’d gone abroad—and generously provided him with the means, including new clothes and linen. However, he returned half the money, declaring that he definitely wished to ride in a third-class train carriage. After arriving in our town, he made no reply to his father’s first question: “Why exactly did you come before completing your studies?” He seemed, so I’ve been told, unusually pensive. It soon became apparent that he was looking for his mother’s grave. He himself even almost admitted that this was his main reason for coming. But that couldn’t have been the whole story. Most likely even he didn’t know the reason at that time, and was unable to explain it at all, what it was that had suddenly arisen in his soul and had irresistibly drawn him to some new, unknown, but inevitable path. Fyodor Pavlovich couldn’t tell him where his second wife was buried, because he had never been to her grave site after they had sprinkled earth on her coffin; and since then, over the long course of years, he had forgotten where they had buried her . . .

Now a word about Fyodor Pavlovich. For some time before this he’d been living elsewhere. Three or four years after the death of his second wife, he set off for the south of Russia and finally wound up in Odessa, where he lived for several years. At first he made the acquaintance, in his own words, “of many Yids, little Yids, dirty little Yids, and Yidlets.” But he ended up later being received not only by Yids, but “even by some reputable Jews, too.”[2] One must suppose that it was exactly at this period of his life that he also developed the special ability to scrape together and hoard money. He finally came back again to our town about three years before Alyosha’s arrival. His previous acquaintances found him looking much older, even though he really wasn’t that old. He behaved himself not with more decency, but with more impudence. The former buffoon showed an insolent need to turn others into buffoons. He loved to carry on outrageously with women, not as he had previously, but now even more repulsively. In a very short time he established a large number of new taverns throughout the province. It was soon clear that he might have had at his disposal about a hundred thousand rubles, or perhaps just a little less. Many inhabitants of the town and the district immediately went into debt with him, and naturally they put up good collateral. Lately he seemed flaccid, having somehow managed to lose his balance and composure; he even sank into a kind of incoherence, beginning with one thing and ending with another, as if he were letting himself go; he’d get drunk more and more often, and if it weren’t for that same servant Grigory, who’d also aged and who watched over him almost like a tutor, perhaps Fyodor Pavlovich might have gotten into even more trouble. Alyosha’s arrival seemed to affect him even on the moral side, as if something awoke in this prematurely old man that had been long dormant in his soul. “Do you know,” he’d say frequently to Alyosha, staring at him, “that you look like her, the shrieker?” That was how he referred to his late wife, Alyosha’s mother. At last the servant Grigory showed Alyosha where the “shrieker’s” grave was. He led him to our town cemetery, and there, in a far corner, pointed out an inexpensive but well-cared-for cast-iron tombstone, on which there was even an inscription with the name, the age of the deceased, and the date of her death; beneath there was even something like a four-line verse, customary on middle-class tombstones. To Alyosha’s surprise, this tombstone was Grigory’s doing. He himself had erected it over the grave of the poor “shrieker,” at his own expense, after Fyodor Pavlovich, to whom he’d complained many times about the grave, had finally gone off to Odessa, having put out of his mind not only the grave, but all of his memories. Alyosha didn’t express any particular emotion at his mother’s grave site; he merely listened to Grigory’s somber and reasonable account of the placing of the tombstone, stood for a while with his head bowed, and left without saying a word. Since that time, perhaps even for a whole year, he hadn’t visited the cemetery. But this little episode also made an impact on Fyodor Pavlovich, and quite a remarkable impact it was. He suddenly took one thousand rubles and brought it to the monastery in memory of his wife—not his second wife, Alyosha’s mother, the “shrieker,” but his first, Adelaida Ivanovna, the one who used to beat him. Toward evening of that day he got very drunk and expressed his contempt for the monks to Alyosha. He himself was far from being religious; he was a man, perhaps, who’d never placed a five-kopeck candle in front of an icon. Strange bursts of sudden feelings and sudden thoughts occur to such people.

I’ve already said that he’d grown very flaccid. His physiognomy at this time clearly bore witness to the essential characteristics of the life he’d been leading. In addition to long, fleshy bags under his small eyes, always insolent, suspicious, and mocking, and the large number of deep wrinkles on his small but fat little face, his large Adam’s apple, fleshy and elongated, hung below like a pouch, giving him a sort of repulsively sensual appearance. Add to this his long, voluptuous mouth and puffy lips, between which one could see little stumps of black, almost rotten teeth. He slobbered saliva every time he began to speak. Moreover, he himself liked to make fun of his own face, although, it seems, he was content with it. He would point to his nose in particular; it was not very large, but very delicate, with a very conspicuous hook. “A real Roman nose,” he used to say. “Together with my Adam’s apple, it’s the genuine physiognomy of an ancient Roman patrician of the decadent period.” It seems that he was actually proud of it.

And it was rather soon after visiting his mother’s grave that Alyosha suddenly announced that he wanted to enter the monastery and the monks were prepared to accept him as a novice. He explained that this was his fervent desire and that he was requesting his father’s solemn permission. The old man already knew that the elder Zosima, who had been living as a monk in the monastery hermitage, had made a particular impression on his “gentle lad.”

“This elder, of course, is their most honest monk,” he muttered, after listening in thoughtful silence to Alyosha, seeming almost hardly surprised by his request. “Hmm, so that’s where you want to go, my gentle boy!” He was half drunk and suddenly smiled with his long, half-tipsy smile, which wasn’t lacking in slyness and drunken cunning. “Hmm, why, in fact, I had a premonition that you would end up something like that, can you imagine? You’ve been striving precisely for that. Well, if you like, you have your own two thousand; that’s a dowry for you; and, my angel, I won’t ever desert you, even now I’ll contribute for you as needed, if they ask. And if they don’t ask, why should we butt in, right? You spend money like a canary, only two little grains a week. . . . Hmm. You know, in one monastery, there’s a place outside of town, and everyone knows where only the so-called monastery wives live, I think there are about thirty of them there. . . . I’ve been there, and you know, it’s interesting in its own way, of course, for variety’s sake. The worst part of it is, it’s all Russian; there are no Frenchwomen there yet, but there could be; they have considerable means. If they learn about it, they’ll come soon enough. But there’s nothing here, no monastery wives at all, and some two hundred or so monks. They’re honest. They keep all the fasts. I admit. . . . Hmm. So, you want to become a monk? I feel sorry for you, Alyosha, I really do, I’ve come to love you. . . . However, it’s a good opportunity: you’ll pray for us sinners; living here, we’ve sinned too much. I’ve thought all about it: who’ll pray for me sometime? Is there such a person in the world? You’re a good boy, I’m terribly stupid about that; perhaps you don’t believe me? Terribly. You see, however stupid I am, I keep thinking, thinking—not all the time, but from time to time. It’s impossible, I think, for the devils to forget to drag me down to hell using hooks when I die. But then I think: Hooks? Where did they get them from? What are they made of? Iron? Where do they forge them? Do they have some sort of factory down there or what? The monks in the monastery probably believe that there’s a ceiling in hell, for example. I’d be prepared to believe in hell, but only without a ceiling; that would make it more refined, more enlightened, that is, more Lutheran.[3] After all, what difference does it make: with a ceiling or without? But as a matter of fact, isn’t it all the same: with or without a ceiling? But this raises another damned question! If there’s no ceiling, there are no hooks. And if there are no hooks, things have evidently gone awry, which is improbable again: then who would drag me down with hooks? Because if they don’t drag me down, there’s no justice in the world. Il faudrait les inventer,[4] these hooks, especially for me alone, because if only you knew, Alyosha, what a shameless person I am!”

“No, there aren’t any hooks there,” Alyosha muttered quietly and seriously, glancing at his father.

“Yes, yes, only the shadows of hooks. I know, I know. This is how one Frenchman described hell: ‘J’ai vu l’ombre d’un cocher, qui avec l’ombre d’une brosse frottait l’ombre d’une carrosse.’[5] How do you, my darling, know that there are no hooks? If you live with the monks, you’ll sing a different tune. However, go along, find out the truth there, and then come back and tell me: it’ll be easier to cross over to the other world if you know for sure what’s over there. And it will be more decent for you to live with the monks than here with me, a drunken old man, and all these sluts . . . although nothing touches you, just like an angel. Perhaps nothing will touch you there either, and that’s why I’m allowing you to go, because that’s what I’m hoping for. You still have your wits about you. You’ll catch fire and then burn out; you’ll be cured and then return. I’ll be waiting for you: after all, I feel that you’re the only person left on earth who hasn’t condemned me, my dear sweet boy, I feel it. I can’t help feeling it!

He even began blubbering. He was sentimental. He was wicked and sentimental.

1 A “holy fool” (yurodivyi) is someone of eccentric behavior believed to exhibit God’s favor and to possess the divine gift of prophecy.

2 A memorable demonstration of Dostoevsky’s imaginative anti-Semitic lexicon.

3 That is, more “rational.”

4 “They would have to be invented” (Fr.). An ironic paraphrase of Voltaire’s statement “If God did not exist, He would have to be invented.”

5 “I saw the shadow of a coachman who was scrubbing the shadow of a coach with the shadow of a brush” (Fr.); from Charles Perrault’s parody of Book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid.

V

ELDERS

Perhaps some of my readers will imagine that my young man was an unhealthy, enraptured, poorly developed creature, a pale dreamer, and a consumptive, hollow-cheeked little man. On the contrary, at that time Alyosha was an imposing, red-cheeked, clear-eyed nineteen-year-old lad, and the picture of health. He was even very handsome, well built, of average height, with dark brown hair and a regular, though rather long, oval-shaped face, wide-set, shining, dark gray eyes, extremely thoughtful and apparently extremely serene. People may say that red cheeks are not incompatible with fanaticism and mysticism; but it seems to me that Alyosha was a realist, even more than others. Oh, of course, in the monastery he absolutely believed in miracles, but in my opinion, miracles never trouble a realist. It’s not miracles that may succeed in persuading a realist to believe. A genuine realist, if he’s a nonbeliever, always finds in himself the strength and ability not to believe in a miracle, and if the miracle stands before him as an indisputable fact, then he would sooner disbelieve his feelings than admit the fact. And if he does admit the fact, then he does so as a fact of nature, one that was unknown to him before. In a realist, faith does not spring from the miracle; rather the miracle springs from faith. Once the realist believes, he must, by virtue of his very realism, absolutely admit the possibility of miracle, too. The apostle Thomas declared that he wouldn’t believe until he saw, and when he saw, he said, “My Lord and my God!” Was it the miracle that compelled him to believe? Most likely not. But he believed solely because he wished to believe, and perhaps he already believed completely, in the inner recesses of his being, even when he said, “I won’t believe until I see.”[1]

They’ll say that perhaps Alyosha was obtuse, undeveloped, didn’t complete his studies, and so on. It was true that he didn’t finish his studies, but to say that he was obtuse or stupid would be a great injustice. I shall simply repeat what I said above: he set out on this path only because at that time it alone impressed him deeply and offered at once an ideal means of escape to his soul, out of darkness toward the light. I shall add that he was in part a youth of our recent historical moment, that is, honest by nature, demanding truth, searching for and believing in it, and, once finding it, serving it with all the strength of his soul, demanding immediate action, with the desire to sacrifice everything for it, even his life. That said, unfortunately, these young people don’t understand that the sacrifice of one’s life is perhaps the easiest of all the sacrifices in the majority of such instances, and that to sacrifice, for example, five or six years of their bustling life for difficult and tiresome study, for learning, in order to increase tenfold one’s strength in serving the truth or carrying out the heroic feat, which he’s come to love and which he’s proposing to accomplish—such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them. Alyosha merely chose a path that ran counter to others, but with the same intense desire to accomplish a feat quickly. As soon as he had, after serious thought, been struck by the conviction that immortality and God exist, then immediately, of course, he said to himself: “I want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise.” In just the same way, had he decided that immortality and God didn’t exist, then he would’ve become an atheist and a socialist (for socialism is not only a question of labor, or of the so-called fourth estate,[2] but primarily a question of atheism, a question of the contemporary embodiment of atheism, a question of the Tower of Babel being built precisely without God, not to reach heaven from earth but, rather, to establish heaven on earth). To Alyosha it seemed utterly strange and impossible to go on living as before. It’s been said: “Give away all thou hast and follow me, if you wish to be perfect.”[3] Alyosha said to himself: “I can’t give away two rubles instead of ‘all,’ and instead of ‘follow me’ merely go to vesper prayers.” From his memories of childhood, perhaps, there remained some traces of our local monastery, where his mother might have taken him to attend church. Perhaps it was the slanting rays of the setting sun in front of the icon before which his shrieker-mother had lifted him up. Following his thoughts, he came to us at that time, perhaps merely to see if it was “all” here, or if here, too, were only those inconsequential “two rubles”—and in the monastery he met that elder.

This elder, as I’ve already explained above, was Father Zosima; but it’s necessary to say something here in general about what “elders” are in our monasteries, and it’s a pity that I don’t feel very competent or trustworthy to undertake this task. I shall try, however, to provide at least a superficial account in a few words. In the first place, qualified and competent people assert that elders and this particular institution appeared in Russia, in our monasteries, very recently, less than one hundred years ago, while throughout the entire Orthodox East, especially in Sinai and Athos,[4] it has existed for more than one thousand years. It’s been maintained that eldership existed in Rus in ancient times, too, or that it must have existed, but as a result of calamities in Russia, the Tatar invasion, the Time of Troubles, the interruptions in previous relations with the East after the fall of Constantinople, the institution fell into oblivion, and the elders died out. Eldership, however, was revived again among us at the end of the last century by a great ascetic (as he was called), Paisy Velichkovsky,[5] and his disciples, but even to this day, almost a hundred years later, it exists in only a few monasteries, and has even been subject at times almost to persecution, as an unprecedented innovation in Russia. It flourished in particular in one famous Russian hermitage, the Optina Monastery.[6] I can’t say when and by whom it was spread to our local monastery. There had already been a succession of three elders, and Father Zosima was the last of them, but even he was on the verge of dying from weakness and illness, and there was evidently no one to take his place. The question was important for our monastery, since until then it had not been known for anything special: there were no relics of saints, no wonder-working icons, not even any splendid legends connected with our history; nor were there any historical accomplishments or services rendered to the fatherland. Our monastery flourished and was known throughout Russia precisely on account of the elders, to see and hear whom pilgrims flocked in great crowds from thousands of miles away.

And so, what exactly is an elder? An elder is someone who takes your whole soul and your will into his soul and his will. Having chosen an elder, you renounce your individual will and surrender it to him in complete obedience and full self-abnegation. A novitiate, who destines himself to this terrible school of abnegation voluntarily in the hope of conquering himself after a long period of probation, hopes to master himself to such an extent that at last he can achieve, through lifelong obedience, complete freedom—that is, freedom from his own self—and so avoid the fate of those who have lived their whole lives and not found their true selves. This invention—that is, eldership—is not theoretical, but was established in actual practice in the East over the last thousand years. The obligations owed to an elder do not amount to the usual “obedience” that has also always existed in our Russian monasteries. Here the obligation involves continual confession of all those who have submitted to the elder and an unbreakable bond between the one who binds and the one who is bound.

The story is told, for example, that once, during the ancient days of Christianity, one such novice, having failed to fulfill the particular obedience imposed on him by his elder, left him and the monastery and arrived in another country, going from Syria to Egypt. There, after performing many great feats, he was honored to undergo torture and a martyr’s death for his faith. When the church was interring his body, already regarding him as a saint, suddenly, at the deacon’s exhortation, “Depart, all catechumens!,”[7] the coffin with the body of the martyr lying in it rose up from its place and was cast out of the church; this happened three times. Finally they found out that this holy martyr had violated his vow of obedience and abandoned his elder; therefore, he could not be forgiven without permission of his elder, despite his great feats. Only after the elder was summoned and had absolved him from his obedience, only then could his interment take place. Of course, all this is only an ancient legend, but here is a more recent instance:

One of our current monks was seeking salvation on Athos when all of a sudden his elder ordered him to leave Athos, which he loved to the depths of his soul as a holy place, a peaceful refuge, and to go first to Jerusalem to venerate the holy places, and then back to Russia, to the north, to Siberia: “Your place is there, and not here.” Struck and mortified by grief, the monk turned to the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople and entreated him to be absolved from his vow of obedience; the patriarch replied that not only was he, the ecumenical patriarch, unable to absolve him, but that nowhere on earth was there or could there be such an authority to absolve him from his obedience, once his elder had imposed it on him; only the elder himself who had imposed it could do so. In just this way is the institution of elders endowed in such cases with immeasurable and awe-inspiring authority. That’s why in many of our monasteries the institution was initially met almost with persecution. At the same time, the elders soon came to enjoy great respect among the common people. For example, both common people and the most distinguished persons flocked to the elders in our monastery to confess their doubts, their sins, their sufferings, and to seek their advice and admonitions. Seeing this, the opponents of the elders declared, along with other accusations, that in this instance the sacrament of confession was being degraded in an arbitrary and frivolous manner, although the incessant confessions of their soul to the elder by the monk or the layman had nothing whatever in common with the sacrament. In any event, it ended up that the institution of elders was retained and is gradually being established in other Russian monasteries. It’s true, perhaps, that this instrument, which had survived the test of a thousand years for the moral regeneration of man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfectibility, could turn into a double-edged sword, and that rather than leading someone to humility and ultimate self-mastery, it might lead, on the contrary, to the most satanic pride—that is, to servitude, not to freedom.

The elder Zosima was about sixty-five years old, descended from landowners; he had been a soldier in his early youth and had served as an officer in the Caucasus. Without any doubt he had made a deep impression on Alyosha by a certain quality of his soul. Alyosha lived in the same cell as his elder, who loved him very much and allowed him to serve. It’s necessary to observe that while he was living at the monastery, Alyosha wasn’t bound by any obligation; he could go wherever he wanted for days at a time; and if he wore a cassock, it was voluntarily, so as not to be different from everyone else at the monastery. But, of course, he himself liked to do so. Perhaps it was the strength and fame that constantly surrounded his own elder that made a strong impression on his youthful imagination. Many people used to say that he had for so many years received all those who came to see him to confess their sins and seek words of advice and healing, year after year accepting so many revelations, afflictions, and admissions into his own soul, that toward the end he had acquired such acute perspicacity that simply from his first glance at the face of an unfamiliar pilgrim, he could guess exactly what that person wanted, even the nature of the suffering tormenting his conscience, so that he would sometimes startle, confuse, and almost alarm the penitent with such intimate knowledge of his secret, even before he’d managed to utter a single word. But Alyosha almost always noticed that many people, almost all, who came to see the elder for a private conversation would arrive with fear and anxiety, but almost always leave bright and joyful: the darkest face would become happy.

Alyosha was particularly struck by the fact that the elder wasn’t at all stern and solemn; on the contrary, his manner was almost always cheerful. The monks used to say that his soul would be drawn to those who were more sinful, and he would come to love the one who was the most sinful of all. Among them were those who hated or envied him, even toward the end of the elder’s life, but they were very few, and remained silent, even though there were among their number several very well-known and important persons in the monastery—for example, one of the oldest monks, a great observer of the vow of silence and an exceptional keeper of fasts. Nevertheless, the vast majority supported the elder Zosima, and of these, very many loved him with all their heart, warmly and sincerely; a few of them were almost fanatically devoted to him. They declared, though not really out loud, that he was a saint, and that there was no doubt about that; foreseeing his imminent death, they even expected immediate miracles and great renown for the monastery in the very near future, derived from the deceased. Alyosha also believed unquestioningly in the miraculous power of the elder, just as he unquestioningly believed in the story of the coffin that flew out of the church. He saw how many of those arriving with sick children or relatives, entreating the elder to lay his hands on them, and to recite a prayer over them, would return shortly afterward, some of them even the very next day, and, falling before the elder in tears, they would thank him for his healing the sick.

Whether the healing was really effected or merely a natural improvement in the course of the disease—this question didn’t exist for Alyosha, because he believed completely in the spiritual power of his teacher, and even seemed to regard it as his own personal triumph. His heart trembled and he glowed, as it were, when the elder went out to a crowd of pilgrims from the common people flocking to him from all over Russia, waiting for him at the gates of the monastery, just to see the elder and receive his blessing. They prostrated themselves before him, wept, kissed his feet, and kissed the ground on which he stood; they wailed, women held up their children, and they led afflicted “shriekers” to him. The elder would speak to them, read a short prayer over them, bless them, and release them. Lately, as a result of attacks of illness, he’d sometimes become so weak that he hardly had the strength to emerge from his cell, and sometimes the pilgrims had waited several days at the monastery for him to appear. For Alyosha, there was no question why they loved him so much, why they prostrated themselves before him, why they wept from tender emotion merely upon seeing his face. Oh, he understood perfectly well that for the humble soul of the Russian common people, tormented by toil and grief and, most importantly, by perpetual injustice and perpetual sin, their own as well as the world’s, there was no stronger need or comfort than to find someone or something sacred to fall down before and worship: “If you have sin, injustice, and temptation among you, know that there is still something or someone holy and sublime on earth; he possesses the truth, he knows the truth; that means that truth doesn’t die on earth; and therefore, it will come even unto us at some time and rule over the whole earth, as it was promised.”

Alyosha knew that this was exactly how the people felt and even how they reasoned; he understood this; but that this elder was himself in fact that saint and that keeper of God’s truth in the eyes of the people—of that he had no doubt whatsoever, any more than did those weeping peasants and their sickly old women, holding their children up to the elder. The conviction that the elder, upon his decease, would bestow extraordinary glory on the monastery, that conviction ruled in Alyosha’s soul perhaps even more powerfully than in the soul of anyone else in the monastery. And in general, of late some sort of profound, internal rapture burned more and more intensely in his heart. It didn’t disturb him in the least that this elder stood before him as a solitary example: “All the same, he’s holy; there is in his heart the secret of renewal for everyone, that power which will establish justice on earth once and for all, and everyone will be holy and they will love one another, and there will be no more rich or poor, exalted and humbled; they will all be like children of God and the true kingdom of God will come.” This was the dream in Alyosha’s heart.

It seems that the arrival of both his brothers produced a very strong impression on Alyosha, neither of whom he knew at all well. He got to know his brother Dmitry Fyodorovich more quickly and became closer to him, although he had arrived later than his other half brother, Ivan Fyodorovich. Alyosha was terribly interested in getting to know his brother Ivan; but, although he had already been living here for two months, and they had seen each other rather frequently, they still hadn’t become close: Alyosha himself spoke very little, and seemed to be expecting something; he seemed to be ashamed of something, and his brother Ivan, although Alyosha had noticed that at first he looked at him long and hard, seemed to have even stopped thinking about him at all. Alyosha noticed this with some embarrassment. He ascribed his brother’s indifference to the disparity in their ages and, in particular, to their education. But there was also something else that Alyosha thought: Ivan’s lack of curiosity and concern for him might even have come from something entirely unknown to Alyosha. For some reason, it constantly seemed to him that Ivan was preoccupied by something within himself and important, that he was aspiring toward some goal, perhaps even a very difficult one, so that he had no time for him, and that was the only reason he regarded Alyosha in such an absentminded way. Alyosha kept considering this: might there be some contempt on the part of the learned atheist toward the foolish novice? He knew for a fact that his brother was an atheist. He couldn’t be personally offended by this contempt, if it existed; nevertheless, he waited with some sort of embarrassment, an anxiousness incomprehensible even to him, for his brother to want to draw closer to him. His brother Dmitry Fyodorovich used to mention Ivan with the greatest respect, and spoke of him with particular feeling. Alyosha learned all the details from him about the important matter that had of late linked his two older brothers into a remarkable and intimate union. Dmitry’s enthusiastic assertions regarding brother Ivan were the more impressive in Alyosha’s eyes because in comparison with Ivan, brother Dmitry was an almost uneducated man, and the two of them, placed next to each other, seemed to constitute such a striking contrast, in personality and character, that it would have been impossible to conceive of two people more dissimilar.

It was at this time that a meeting took place, or, better to say, a family gathering, of all the members of this inharmonious family, in the elder’s cell, a gathering that ended up having an extraordinary influence on Alyosha. The pretext for this gathering was, as a matter of fact, false. At this time the discord between Dmitry Fyodorovich and his father, Fyodor Pavlovich, regarding the son’s inheritance and property had apparently reached an impossible point. Relations had become strained and intolerable. Fyodor Pavlovich, it seems, was the first to suggest, apparently as a joke, that they all meet in Father Zosima’s cell, intimating that while not resorting to his direct intervention, they might somehow come to an understanding more decently, inasmuch as the elder’s office and his person might add something inspiring and conciliatory. Dmitry Fyodorovich, who had never been to or even seen the elder before, thought, of course, that they wanted to intimidate him by his presence; but since he reproached himself for his especially harsh attacks on his father during their recent arguments, he accepted the challenge. I should mention, by the way, that he was not living in his father’s house, the way Ivan Fyodorovich was, but instead separately, at the other end of town.

It happened that Pyotr Aleksandrovich Miusov, who was living in town at this time, seized upon Fyodor Pavlovich’s idea eagerly. A liberal of the forties and fifties, a freethinker and an atheist, he, perhaps from boredom, but perhaps for the expectation of some lighthearted entertainment, took an extremely active role in this affair. All of a sudden, he decided that he wanted to have a look at the monastery and the “holy man.” Since his previous dispute with the monastery continued and his lawsuit concerning the boundaries of their land holdings, some woodcutting rights in the forest and fishing rights in the river, etc., etc., was still dragging out, he hastened to use this as a pretext to see the abbot and negotiate with him in person: couldn’t they resolve their disagreement amicably? A visitor to the monastery with such laudable intentions could, of course, be received with more attention and greater consideration than a person who was simply curious. As a result of all these strong considerations, the monastery might exert a little internal pressure on the sickly elder, who lately had hardly left his cell, even refusing, on account of his illness, to receive the usual visitors. It ended up that the elder gave his consent and the day was fixed. “Who made me a judge . . . over them?” was all he said to Alyosha with a smile.[8]

When he learned about the meeting, Alyosha was very upset. Of all these quarrelsome and argumentative people, only brother Dmitry would undoubtedly take this gathering seriously; all the rest would arrive with frivolous aims, perhaps even insulting to the elder—that’s what Alyosha recognized. Brother Ivan and Miusov would come just out of curiosity, perhaps even of the most vulgar kind; and his father might come to stage some sort of playacting or buffoonery. Oh, even though Alyosha said nothing, he knew his own father rather profoundly. I repeat, this lad was not as simple as people thought. He waited for the appointed day with a heavy heart. Without doubt, he hoped very much in his heart that somehow all these family feuds would come to an end. Nevertheless, his greatest concern was for the elder: he trembled for him, for his reputation; he feared there would be insults to him, especially any subtle, polite mockery from Miusov and all the subtle implications from the learned Ivan, as he imagined the whole scene. He even wanted to risk warning the elder, to say something about these people, but he thought better of it and kept silent. He merely sent word the day before through a friend to his brother Dmitry that he loved him very much and expected him to keep his promise. Dmitry fell to thinking, because he couldn’t remember having promised anything, and replied by letter only that he would do his very best to restrain himself “in the face of vileness,” and that although he deeply respected the elder and his brother Ivan, he was convinced that there was some kind of trap that had been set for him or some unworthy farce. “Nevertheless, I would sooner bite my tongue than be found lacking in respect for the holy man whom you so revere,” Dmitry concluded his short letter. This didn’t cheer up Alyosha very much.

1 John 20:24–28.

2 Here used to mean the mob, the masses.

3 A paraphrase of Matthew 19:21.

4 Mount Athos, both a mountain and a peninsula in northeastern Greece, is an important center of Eastern Orthodox monasticism.

5 Pyotr Velichkovsky (1722–1794) became an Orthodox monk and initiated a religious revival that greatly influenced Dostoevsky.

6 An Orthodox monastery near Kozelsk. In the nineteenth century, it became the most important spiritual center of the Russian Church.

7 A person preparing for baptism, hence not yet “in” the church.

8 Luke 12:14.

BOOK TWO

AN UNSEEMLY GATHERING

I

ARRIVAL AT THE MONASTERY

The day was fine, warm and clear. It was the end of August. The meeting with the elder was to take place immediately after late Mass, at approximately half past eleven. Our visitors to the monastery did not attend the service, however; they arrived just as it was ending. They came in two conveyances: in the first, an elegant open carriage drawn by a pair of valuable horses, came Pyotr Aleksandrovich Miusov with his distant relative, a very young man of about twenty, Pyotr Fomich Kalganov. This young man was preparing to enter the university; Miusov, at whose house he was staying for some reason, was trying to tempt him to go abroad, to Zurich or Jena, to complete his studies and enroll in a university there. The young man had yet to decide. He seemed preoccupied and a bit absentminded. He had a pleasant face, his build was sturdy, and he was rather tall. At times there was a strange fixedness in his gaze: like all very absentminded people, he would sometimes stare directly at you for a long time, yet without seeing you at all. Though he was taciturn and a bit awkward, sometimes—only, however, when he was speaking alone with someone—he would suddenly become very talkative, impetuous, and amusing, at times breaking into laughter at God knows what. But his liveliness would vanish as swiftly as it had arisen. He was always dressed well, even elegantly: he was already in possession of an independent income and was expecting a great deal more. He was a good friend of Alyosha’s.

Trailing Miusov’s carriage by a long way, in an ancient, creaking, but spacious hired carriage, with a pair of old, pinkish-gray horses, came Fyodor Pavlovich and his offspring Ivan Fyodorovich. As for Dmitry Fyodorovich, he’d been informed the day before of both the time and the place of the visit, but he was still late. The visitors left their carriages outside the guesthouse and entered the monastery gates on foot. Except for Fyodor Pavlovich, the other three, it seems, had never seen a monastery, while Miusov hadn’t even been in a church for at least thirty years. He looked around with a certain curiosity, affecting an air of casualness. But for his observant intellect, with the possible exception of the ecclesiastical and domestic buildings—which were, however, extremely ordinary—there was nothing of interest in the interior of the monastery. The last of the worshippers were coming out of the church, removing their caps and crossing themselves. Among the common people there were also a few of higher social status, two or three ladies and one very old general; they were all staying in the monastery guesthouse. Beggars immediately surrounded our visitors, but no one gave them anything. Only Petrusha Kalganov took a ten-kopeck coin from his purse; embarrassed and in a hurry, God knows why, he quickly thrust it at one old woman, saying hastily, “Divide it equally among you.” Not one of his companions said a word about it, so there was no reason for him to be so embarrassed; but when he noticed that, he became even more embarrassed.

All this was strange, however; perhaps they should have been greeted by someone, even with a certain honor: one of them had recently contributed a thousand rubles to the monastery, and another was the richest landowner and the most educated man, so to speak, whose decision they all awaited regarding the fishing rights in the river, which was the subject of ongoing litigation. Yet none of the monastery officials came to meet them. Miusov absentmindedly looked at the gravestones near the church, and was about to observe that those buried here must have paid a handsome price for the right to lie in such a “holy place,” but he kept silent: his characteristic liberal irony was on the verge of turning into anger.

“Damn it, is there anybody here to direct us in this godforsaken place? We must find out where we’re going, since time is passing,” he said suddenly, as if talking to himself.

All of a sudden they were approached by an elderly bald gentleman with kind little eyes, wearing a wide summer coat. Removing his hat, he introduced himself with a honeyed lisp to everyone as Maksimov, a landowner from Tula. He instantly seemed to grasp the difficulty the visitors were having.

“Father Zosima lives in the hermitage, a remote hermitage, some four hundred paces from the monastery, on the other side of the grove, the grove . . .”

“I know very well that it’s on the other side of the grove, sir,” Fyodor Pavlovich replied, “but we don’t recall the road; we haven’t been here in a long time.”

“This way, through the gate, and straight across the grove . . . the grove. Come along. Would you care to follow? I’ll show you . . . I will. This way, this way . . .”

They came through the gate and turned toward the grove. The landowner Maksimov, who was about sixty years old, didn’t exactly walk; it’s more accurate to say that he was almost running, turning sideways to look at them all with a feverish, almost impossible curiosity. His eyes were nearly popping out of his head.

“You see, we’re going to see the elder on some private business,” Miusov said sternly. “We’ve been granted an audience, so to speak, ‘with this personage,’ and therefore, although we’re grateful to you for showing us the way, we can’t ask you to accompany us.”

“I’ve been there, I have, I’ve already been there. . . . Un chevalier parfait!”[1] said the landowner, snapping his fingers in the air.

“Who’s the chevalier?” asked Miusov.

“The elder, the splendid elder, the elder. . . . All honor and glory to the monastery. Zosima. What an elder he is!”

At this moment a rather short monk in a cowl, pale and gaunt, caught up with the visitors and interrupted the unruly chatter. Fyodor Pavlovich and Miusov stopped. The monk said with a very polite bow, a deep bow, almost from the waist:

“The father superior humbly invites all of you, gentlemen, to dine with him after your visit to the elder’s cell. At one o’clock, not later. And you, too,” he said, turning to Maksimov.

“I certainly will, without fail,” cried Fyodor Pavlovich, terribly pleased by the invitation. “Without fail. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. And, you know, we’ve all given our word of honor to behave ourselves in a decent manner while we’re here. . . . And you, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, will you join us?”

“Yes, of course,” said Miusov, “I will. That’s why I’ve come, to see all your local customs. The only problem is that I’m here with you, Fyodor Pavlovich . . .”

“But Dmitry Fyodorovich hasn’t arrived yet . . .”

“Yes, and it would be a very good thing if he missed the occasion. Do you think I enjoy all this fooling around, and having to deal with you, too? We’ll come to dinner; thank the father superior,” he said, turning to the monk.

“No, I’m obliged to conduct you right now to the elder,” replied the monk.

“Well, if that’s so, I’ll go straight to the father superior myself, the father superior,” blathered the landowner Maksimov.

“The father superior is currently occupied, but as you like . . .” the monk said hesitantly.

“A very tiresome little old man,” Miusov remarked out loud, after the landowner Maksimov had run back toward the monastery.

“He’s just like von Sohn,”[2] Fyodor Pavlovich said suddenly.

“That’s all you know. . . . How is he like von Sohn? Have you yourself ever set eyes on von Sohn?”

“I’ve seen his picture. Although the resemblance isn’t in his features, but in something inexplicable. He’s an example of the purest von Sohn, a duplicate. I can always tell simply by looking at a man’s physiognomy.”

“Perhaps you’re an expert. But remember this, Fyodor Pavlovich: you yourself just mentioned that we’ve given our word to behave decently, do you recall? I’m telling you now, restrain yourself. If you start playing the fool, I have no intention of stooping to your level. . . . You see what sort of man he is,” he said turning to the monk. “I’m afraid to call on decent people in his company.”

A subtle wordless little smile appeared on the monk’s pale, bloodless lips, not lacking in a kind of guile, but he made no reply; it was all too clear that he kept silent out of a concern for his own dignity. Miusov’s frown grew more pronounced.

“Oh, devil take them all; this reticence is just a big show, but in essence nothing but charlatanism and nonsense!” he said to himself.

“Here’s the hermitage. We’ve finally arrived!” shouted Fyodor Pavlovich. “But the fence and gate are locked.”

And he made a large sign of the cross numerous times before the saints depicted above and at the side of the entry gate.

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do,”[3] he announced. “In this hermitage there are a total of twenty-five holy men saving their souls, looking at one another and eating cabbage. And not a single woman is allowed through these gates: that’s particularly noteworthy. And that’s the honest truth. But haven’t I heard that the elder does in fact receive ladies?” he asked, turning suddenly to the monk.

“Women of the common people are here even now,” answered the monk. “They’re over there, lying near the gallery, waiting. And as for ladies of higher rank, two little rooms have been constructed here near the gallery, but outside the gates—those two windows—and the elder goes out to see them through an inner passage, when he’s healthy, that is, on the other side of the fence. Just now one lady, a landowner from Kharkov, Madame Khokhlakova, is waiting for him with her sickly daughter. Most likely he’s promised to come out to see them, though lately he’s been so weak that he hardly ever appears to the common people.”

“In other words then, there are little ways to leave the hermitage and get to the ladies. Don’t suppose, Holy Father, I mean to imply anything—I’m merely remarking. You know, on Mount Athos, have you heard that not only are women forbidden to visit, but no females at all are permitted, no hens, turkey hens, or cows . . .”

“Fyodor Pavlovich, I’m warning you, if you keep this up, I’ll leave you here alone; and once I’ve gone, I predict they’ll toss you out of here.”

“What am I doing to annoy you, Pyotr Aleksandrovich? Just look here,” he shouted suddenly, stepping through the gate of the hermitage, “just look at what a rose garden they live in!”

And, in fact, although there weren’t any roses now, there were a great many rare and beautiful autumn flowers everywhere, wherever they could be planted. A skilled hand obviously cultivated them. There were flower beds all around the church and among the graves in the churchyard. The little wooden one-story house in which the elder’s cell was located, with a porch in front of the entrance, was also surrounded on all sides by flowers.

“Was it like this during the time of the previous elder here, Varsonofy? They say he didn’t care for luxury and that he was sometimes inclined to jump up and suddenly even hit women with a stick,” remarked Fyodor Pavlovich, as he climbed up the stairs.

“The elder Varsonofy did at times sometimes seem like a sort of holy fool; a lot of silly tales are told about him. In any case, he never beat anyone with a stick,” the little monk replied. “Now, gentlemen, please wait here and I’ll announce you.”

“Fyodor Pavlovich, for the last time, you promised, do you hear? Behave yourself, or else I’ll make you pay for it,” Miusov muttered in a fierce whisper.

“It’s not clear to me why you should be so upset,” Fyodor Pavlovich remarked sarcastically, “unless it’s because you’re suddenly afraid of your own sins? They say he can tell just by looking at someone exactly why he’s come. Besides, why should the opinion of these people matter so much to you, you who are such a Parisian and a progressive gentleman. Really, you frankly amaze me!”

But Miusov didn’t have time to reply to this sarcasm; they were invited to enter. He did so feeling quite irritated.

“Well, I know myself very well. If I’m annoyed, I’ll argue . . . I’ll lose my temper—and I’ll discredit both myself and my ideas.” These thoughts flashed through his head.

1 “A perfect knight” (Fr.).

2 The victim in a notorious Petersburg murder case of 1870. See below, p. 104.

3 The Russian proverb is, literally translated, “Don’t bring your own rules when going to another monastery.”

II

THE OLD BUFFOON

They entered the room at almost the same time as the elder, who, as soon as they had appeared, immediately came out of his bedroom. Two monks from the hermitage were already in the cell waiting for him—one was the father librarian, the other Father Paisy, a sickly man, though not very old, but very learned, it was said. In addition, standing in the corner (and to remain standing during everything that followed) was a young lad, about twenty-two years old, wearing ordinary clothes; he was a seminary student and future theologian who for some reason was under the protection of the monastery and the brotherhood. He was rather tall, with a fresh face and broad cheekbones, and with clever, alert, narrow brown eyes. His face reflected an absolute but very appropriate deference, without a trace of any attempt to ingratiate himself. He didn’t even greet the visitors with a bow, since he was not of equal rank; on the contrary, he remained subordinate and dependent.

Father Zosima came out accompanied by a novice and by Alyosha. The monks all stood up and greeted him with deep bows, their fingers touching the floor; then, after receiving his blessing, they each kissed his hand. After blessing them, the elder returned their deep bows, his fingers also touching the floor, and asked each of them to bless him. The whole ceremony was performed with great seriousness, not at all like some daily routine, but evidently with some real feeling. It seemed to Miusov, however, that all of this was done to make an impression. He stood in front of the whole group of visitors, who’d arrived with him. He was considering whether he should—he’d even thought about this the night before—in spite of his ideas, out of simple politeness (since such were the customs here), approach and be blessed by the elder, at least to receive his blessing, even if he didn’t kiss his hand. But seeing all the monks’ bows and kisses, he quickly changed his mind: he made a dignified and reasonably deep bow in the secular fashion, and then moved toward a chair. Fyodor Pavlovich went through the same motions, but this time looking like a monkey, absolutely imitating Miusov. For his part, Ivan Fyodorovich bowed in a polite and dignified way, but also kept his hands at his sides, while Kalganov was so confused that he didn’t bow at all. The elder dropped the hand he’d raised to bless them, bowed to them again, and asked them all to be seated. Blood rushed to Alyosha’s cheeks; he was ashamed. His worst fears were being realized.

The elder sat down on a small old-fashioned leather-covered mahogany sofa, while the guests, except for the two monks, found places against the opposite wall, all four in a row, on mahogany chairs covered in badly worn black leather. The monks sat along the wall at either side of the room, one by the door, and the other by the window. The seminary student, the novice, and Alyosha remained standing. The whole cell was not very spacious and had a drab appearance. All the objects and furnishings in it were very crude and of poor quality, and only such things as were absolutely necessary. There were two pots with flowers on the windowsill, and many icons in the corner—one of them of the Mother of God, enormous in size and most likely painted long before the Schism.[1] A votive lamp was burning in front of this icon. Near it were two more icons in splendid settings; next to them were little carved cherubs, porcelain eggs, a Catholic crucifix made of ivory with a Mater Dolorosa embracing it,[2] and several foreign engravings by great Italian artists of the last few centuries. Next to these elegant and expensive engravings were several very common and unprepossessing lithographs of saints, martyrs, prelates, and so forth, the kind sold for mere kopecks at any country fair. There were a few lithographic portraits of present and past Russian bishops, but they were on adjoining walls. Miusov hurriedly glanced at all this “official stuff,” and then fixed his gaze on the elder. He had the greatest respect for his own view of things; this was a weakness in him, though perhaps forgivable if one takes into account that he was already fifty years old—an age at which a clever, worldly, well-to-do man always acquires more in the way of self-esteem, sometimes without consciously willing to do so.

From the first moment, he took a dislike to the elder. As a matter of fact, there was something in the elder’s face that many people, not only Miusov, would have disliked. He was a short, hunched-over little man with very frail legs—only sixty-five years old, but he seemed much older as a result of his illness, older by at least ten years. His whole face, very gaunt, was covered with little wrinkles, many around his eyes especially. His eyes were small, bright, alert, and shining, as though they were two bright points. Sparse gray hair grew only on his temples; his pointed beard was very small and sparse, and his lips—often smiling—were very thin, like two pieces of string. His nose wasn’t long but was sharp, like the beak of a bird.

“To all appearances, he’s a malicious and petty, arrogant little fellow” was the thought that occurred to Miusov. In general he was feeling very dissatisfied with himself.

A cheap little wall clock struck the hour, serving to initiate the conversation. It chimed twelve noon.

“We’re precisely on time,” cried Fyodor Pavlovich, “but my son Dmitry Pavlovich still isn’t here. I apologize for him, Sacred Elder!” (Alyosha shuddered to hear him say “Sacred Elder.”) “I myself am always on time, right to the minute, remembering that punctuality is the courtesy of kings . . .”

“At least you’re not a king anyway,” muttered Miusov, unable to restrain himself.

“Yes, that’s true, I’m not a king. And just imagine, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, I myself knew that, so help me God! I always say the wrong thing! Your Reverence!” he cried with sudden pathos. “You see before you a buffoon, verily, a buffoon. I introduce myself as such. It’s an old habit, alas! And I sometimes talk nonsense, say things that are out of place, it’s with some intention, the intention of amusing people and making myself agreeable. It’s necessary to be agreeable, isn’t it? Seven years ago I arrived in a little town where I had some business dealings, and there I made friends with some merchants. We went to see the police captain because we had to ask him about something and we invited him to have a meal with us. The captain came out—a tall, fat, fair-haired, gloomy man—the most dangerous in such situations: it was his liver, his liver. I went straight up to him and, you know, with the casualness of a man of the world, I said, ‘Mr. Ispravnik,’ I said, ‘be our napravnik, so to speak!’[3] ‘What do you mean by napravnik?’ I saw from the first moment that my joke had fallen flat; he stood there solemnly, staring at me. ‘I wanted to make a joke, for the general amusement, since Mr. Napravnik is a well-known Russian conductor; for harmony in our own enterprise, we also need someone like a conductor . . . ’ I’ve explained the comparison I was making very reasonably, don’t you think? ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘I’m a police captain and I don’t permit any puns to be made about my rank!’ He turned and left the room. I went after him, shouting, ‘Yes, yes, you are a police captain (ispravnik) and not a napravnik!’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘since you called me a napravnik, then I am one.’ And just imagine: our business was completely ruined! I’m just like that, always just like that! I always hurt myself with my courteousness! Once, many years ago, I was speaking to a very influential person: ‘Your wife, sir, is a ticklish lady’—in the honorable sense, so to speak, of moral qualities; and suddenly he responded, ‘Have you tickled her?’ I couldn’t restrain myself and chose to be courteous: ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I have, sir.’ He gave me quite a tickle right there, I can tell you! But that happened a long time ago, so I’m not ashamed to tell it; I’m always getting myself hurt that way!”

“You’re doing the same thing now,” Miusov muttered in disgust.

The elder looked at the two of them in silence.

“Really? Just imagine, I knew that myself, Pyotr Aleksandrovich; and you know, I even had a premonition that I would do it, and, you know, I even had a premonition that you’d be the first one to point it out. The minute I see that my joke is falling flat, Your Reverence, both my cheeks begin to stick to my lower gums, as if I’m having a fit; that’s been going on since I was a youth, Your Reverence, since I was a sponger fooling around in the homes of noblemen to get my daily bread. I’m a confirmed buffoon, ever since birth, just like a holy fool; I won’t dispute it, perhaps there’s an evil spirit in me, a petty small one; a more imposing one would have chosen larger quarters, but not in your soul, Pyotr Aleksandrovich: yours isn’t big enough. On the other hand, I do believe, I do believe in God. Only lately have I begun to have doubts, but for now I sit and await great tidings. I’m like the philosopher Diderot,[4] Your Reverence. Do you know, Most Holy Father, that the philosopher Diderot went to visit the metropolitan Platon during Empress Catherine’s reign?[5] He comes in and the first thing he says is: ‘There is no God.’ To which the great bishop raised his finger: ‘The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God!’[6] At which point Diderot fell down at his feet: ‘I believe,’ he cries, ‘I will be christened.’ And they christened him then and there. Princess Dashkova was his godmother and Potemkin, his godfather . . .”[7]

“Fyodor Pavlovich, this is unbearable! Why, you yourself know you’re lying and that your stupid anecdote isn’t true; why are you carrying on like this?” said Miusov in a trembling voice, completely unable to hold himself back.

“All my life I’ve had a feeling that it wasn’t true!” cried Fyodor Pavlovich with passion. “So now, gentlemen, I’ll tell you the whole truth: Great Elder! Forgive me, I made up the story of Diderot’s christening just this minute; I’d never thought of it before. I made it up just for effect. That’s why I carry on, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, so I’ll be more liked. And besides, sometimes I myself don’t know why I do it. And as far as Diderot’s concerned, I must’ve heard the phrase ‘The fool hath said’ at least twenty times from local landowners when I was a young man, when I was living here among them in their houses; and also, by the way, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, from your aunt, Mavra Fominishna. They’re all convinced to this day that the atheist Diderot came to argue with the metropolitan Platon about the existence of God . . .”

Miusov stood up, having not only lost his patience, but now forgetting himself entirely. He was just furious and also aware that he looked simply ridiculous as a result. In fact, what was taking place in the elder’s cell was really astonishing. In this very cell, perhaps for the last forty or fifty years, in the presence of former elders, visitors would gather, but always with nothing but the deepest reverence. Almost everyone who was admitted understood upon entering the cell that they were being shown a great honor. Many people kneeled and remained on their knees during the entire visit. Many of “higher rank,” and even among the most learned, moreover—several freethinkers among them, who had come out of curiosity, or for some other reason—upon entering the cell with all the others, or upon receiving a private audience, had, without exception, shown the deepest reverence and tact all during the meeting, all the more so since money was not a question here; there was only love and charity on one side, and on the other repentance and a desire to resolve some difficult question of the soul or come to terms with a challenging moment in the life of one’s own heart. Under such circumstances suddenly the buffoonery on display by Fyodor Pavlovich, irreverent and disrespectful to the place they were in, produced in those who witnessed it—at least in some of them—perplexity and astonishment. The monks, on whose faces the expression didn’t change one bit, waited with earnest attention to see what the elder would say, but they seemed just about to stand up, like Miusov. Alyosha was ready to burst into tears and stood there with lowered head. What seemed strangest to him was that his brother Ivan Fyodorovich, on whom alone he had placed his hopes, and who was the only one who had any influence over his father, and could have stopped him, now sat motionless in his chair, his eyes lowered, waiting with evident curiosity to see how it would all end, just as if he were an innocent bystander. Alyosha couldn’t even bring himself to glance at Rakitin (the seminary student), whom he knew well and held very close; he knew what he was thinking (although Alyosha was the only one in the monastery who did).

“Forgive me,” began Miusov, turning to the elder, “for perhaps seeming to be a participant in this unworthy farce. My mistake was in thinking that even a person like Fyodor Pavlovich would want to understand his obligations on a visit to such a distinguished person. . . . I never thought I’d have to apologize for having come here with him . . .”

Pyotr Aleksandrovich didn’t finish what he was going to say and, already feeling embarrassed, was about to leave the room.

“Don’t be upset, I beg you.” The elder suddenly stood up from his place on his feeble legs; taking Pyotr Aleksandrovich by both hands, he sat him down in his armchair once again. “Calm yourself, I beg you. I ask you in particular to be my guest.” And with a bow he went back and sat down on his little sofa.

“Great Elder, speak. Does my energy annoy you?” Fyodor Pavlovich cried suddenly, seizing both arms of his chair as though ready to jump up, depending on the answer.

“I beg you earnestly not to be agitated or ashamed,” the elder said to him with a steady gaze. “Don’t be ashamed; make yourself completely at home. The main thing is not to be so ashamed of yourself, for that is the cause of everything.”

“Completely at home? That is, in my natural state? Oh, that’s saying a lot, much too much, but I accept it with tender devotion! You know, blessed Father, you’d better not invite me to be in my natural state; don’t risk that. . . . Even I wouldn’t let myself go that far. I’m warning you just to protect you. Well, sir, as for the rest, it’s all hidden in the darkness of obscurity, although some people have all kinds of things to say about me. I’m addressing that to you, Pyotr Aleksandrovich; but as for you, Most Sacred Being, here’s what I can say: I’m overflowing with holy joy!” He stood up; raising his arms, he pronounced: “ ‘Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the paps which thou has sucked’[8]—the paps especially! What you just said to me, ‘Don’t be so ashamed of yourself, for that is the cause of everything’—that remark just cut me to the quick and you read me to the core. Indeed, it always seems that whenever I meet people I’m lower than all of them and everyone takes me for a buffoon, so then ‘let me play the buffoon, and I’m not afraid of your opinions, because every one of you is lower than me!’ That’s why I’m a buffoon, from shame—a buffoon, Great Elder, from shame. It’s just because of my sensitivity that I create an uproar. If I were only sure when I come into a room that everyone would think me the nicest and smartest man—good Lord! What a good person I would be then! Oh, teacher!” he said, suddenly dropping to his knees, “what shall I do to gain eternal life?”[9] It was difficult to decide even now whether he was joking or experiencing genuine emotion.

The elder looked up and said with a smile:

“You’ve known for a long time what you must do; you have enough intelligence: don’t give way to drunkenness and intemperate speech; don’t yield to lust, and especially to the love of money; close down your taverns, if not all of them, at least two or three. And the main thing, the most important—don’t keep telling lies.”

“About Diderot, you mean?”

“No, not about Diderot. The main thing is, stop telling lies to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lies reaches a point where he cannot recognize any truth in himself or in anyone surrounding him, and so he loses all respect for himself and for others. Once he respects no one, he stops loving; to occupy and distract himself, he yields to passions and coarse inclinations and ultimately sinks to bestiality in all his vices, and all this comes from incessant lying to himself and to others. A man who lies to himself can be more readily offended than anyone else. It’s sometimes very pleasant to be offended, isn’t it? Someone may know that no one’s offended him, and that he himself has invented the insult, lied for effect, exaggerated to create an impression, has seized upon a single word and made a mountain out of a molehill; he knows this himself, yet he’s the first to feel offended, he feels offended to the point of pleasure, where he experiences immense satisfaction, and from there he succeeds at arriving at genuine vindictiveness. . . . But get up off your knees, sit down, I sincerely beg you: these are all dishonest poses . . .”

“Most blessed man! Give me your hand to kiss,” said Fyodor Pavlovich, jumping up and quickly kissing the elder’s thin hand. “You’re absolutely right, exactly so, it is pleasant to be offended. You put it so well: I’ve never heard anyone express it that way. Exactly, exactly so, I’ve been feeling offended my entire life to the point of pleasure, for the aesthetic effect, because it’s not only pleasurable, but at times even beautiful to be offended: that’s what you’ve left out, Great Elder: it is beautiful! I’ll make a note of that! But it’s true I’ve told lies, and more lies, all my life, every hour of every day. In truth I myself am a lie and the father of lies![10] Well, I may not be exactly the father of lies—I’m mixing up my texts—but at least the son of lies, and that’s enough. Only . . . my own angel . . . I can say things about Diderot sometimes! Diderot can’t do any harm, but sometimes a little word will. Great Elder, by the way, I’d forgotten, the year before last I intended to come here to ask a question and to learn something—only tell Pyotr Aleksandrovich not to interrupt me. Here’s what I want to ask: is it true, Great Father, that somewhere in The Lives of the Saints it tells the story of a holy miracle worker who became a martyr for his faith, and when his head was finally cut off, he stood up, picked up his head, and, ‘kissing it tenderly,’ walked a long way carrying it in his hands. Is this true or not, I ask you, Honest Fathers?”

“No, it’s not true,” said the elder.

“There’s nothing like that in The Lives of the Saints. What saint are you saying that story is told about?” asked one monk, the father librarian.

“I myself don’t know which. I don’t have any idea and can’t say. I was deceived. I heard it; someone told me the story. Do you know who told me? It was Pyotr Aleksandrovich Miusov, who got so furious just now about Diderot; he’s the one who told me.”

“I never told you any such story; in fact, I don’t talk to you at all.”

“It’s true, you didn’t tell it to me, but you told it in my presence, about three years ago. I mention it now because you unsettled my faith with that ludicrous story, Pyotr Aleksandrovich. You weren’t aware of it, but I returned home with my faith shaken, and since that time I’ve been more and more uncertain. Yes, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, it’s you who are the cause of a great fall! It’s not that Diderot, sir!”

Fyodor Pavlovich had become highly agitated and full of pathos, although it was perfectly clear to everyone that he was acting a role once again. But Miusov was still deeply wounded by his words.

“What nonsense, it’s all nonsense,” he muttered. “Perhaps I really did say that at one time . . . but not to you. The story had been told to me. I heard it in Paris, from a Frenchman; he told me it was in The Lives of the Saints and that in Russia it’s read during church services. . . . He was a very learned man who had undertaken a statistical study of Russia. . . . He’d lived here a long time. . . . I haven’t read The Lives of the Saints myself . . . and I’m not planning to. . . . All sorts of things get said at dinner. . . . We were having dinner at the time . . .”

“Yes, you were having dinner and I lost my faith!” Fyodor Pavlovich said tauntingly.

“What do I care about your faith?” Miusov was on the verge of shouting, but he suddenly restrained himself and remarked with contempt: “You defile everything you touch.”

The elder suddenly stood up from his place.

“Forgive me, gentlemen, but I must leave you here for a few minutes,” he said, turning to all those assembled. “There are some visitors who’ve been waiting for me since before your arrival. But,” he added, turning to Fyodor Pavlovich with a smile on his face, “you shouldn’t be telling any lies.”

As he left the cell, Alyosha and the novice rushed to help him down the stairs. Alyosha was gasping for breath; he was glad to leave, but he was also glad that the elder was not offended and was smiling. The elder was heading toward the gallery to bless those people who were waiting for him there. But Fyodor Pavlovich still managed to stop him at the doorway of the cell.

“Most blessed man!” he cried with feeling. “Allow me to kiss your hand once more! No, with you I could still speak, I could get along with you! You think that I lie all the time and play the buffoon? You should know that I’m doing this deliberately; I’ve been playing this role on purpose, to test you. I’ve been testing you all this time to see if we could get along. Is there any place for my humility up against your pride? I’m ready to provide you with a testimonial certifying that it’s possible to get along with you! And now I’ll be quiet, I’ll keep maintaining my silence all the while. I’ll sit here in the armchair and not say a word. Now it’s up to you, Pyotr Aleksandrovich—you should speak, since you’re now the main person left here . . . for ten minutes.”

1 The Schism in the Russian Orthodox Church occurred in opposition to various reforms in liturgy and forms of worship instituted by the patriarch Nikon in 1653. The large group of traditionalists who resisted these changes, denouncing them as the work of the Antichrist, came to be known as raskolniki (literally, “schismatics”) or Old Believers.

2 The Mater Dolorosa, or Mother of Sorrows (Lat.), is a Catholic image of Mary witnessing the Crucifixion.

3 A pun that is difficult to render in English. Ispravnik means police captain; napravnik is a conductor or director. E. F. Napravnik (1839–1916) was a Russian composer and conductor. Fyodor attempts to explain his pun.

4 Denis Diderot (1713–1784) was a French Enlightenment philosopher; invited by Catherine the Great, he visited Russia in 1773.

5 Born Pyotr Levshin (1737–1812), Platon served as metropolitan of Moscow from 1775 to 1812.

6 Psalms 14:1.

7 Ekaterina Dashkova (1743–1810) was Catherine’s friend and supporter and was named president of the Russian Academy. Grigory Potemkin (1739–1791) was a general and a statesman and one of Catherine’s lovers.

8 Luke 11:27.

9 Luke 10:25.

10 A distorted quotation of John 8:44.

III

PEASANT WOMEN OF FAITH

Down below, near the wooden gallery attached to the outer wall of the hermitage courtyard, stood a crowd of about twenty peasant women. They had been informed that the elder would soon emerge and had gathered in anticipation. The landowner Madame Khokhlakova and her daughter had also come out onto the gallery and were waiting for the elder, in a separate area reserved for visitors of higher rank. Madame Khokhlakova was a wealthy lady, always tastefully dressed, still rather young and very attractive: she was a little pale, with very lively eyes, almost totally black. She was no more than thirty-three and had been a widow for the past five years. Her fourteen-year-old daughter suffered from paralysis of the legs. The poor girl hadn’t been able to walk for the past six months, and she was moved around in a long reclining wheelchair. She had a lovely little face, a bit thin from her illness, but cheerful. Something mischievous shone in her large dark eyes with their long lashes. Her mother had been planning to take her abroad since last spring, but the journey had been delayed until summer because of some work being done at their estate. They had been living in our town for a week, more on business than on any religious pilgrimage, but had already visited the elder once, three days before. Now, all of sudden, they had come back again, although they knew that the elder hardly received any visitors; but they had been insistent in their pleading and had asked to have “the happiness of seeing the great healer once again.”

In anticipation of the elder’s appearance, the mother was sitting on a chair next to her daughter’s wheelchair; two steps away from her stood an old monk—not from the local monastery, but a visitor from a little-known monastery in the far north. He also wished to receive the elder’s blessing. But the elder, upon entering the gallery, went straight over to the common people. They crowded at the bottom of the three steps that led up to the gallery. The elder stood on the top step, put his ecclesiastical stole over his shoulders, and began blessing the women who were crowding around him. One who was a shrieker[1] was held by both hands and brought up to him. As soon as she saw the elder, she suddenly began shrieking wildly and writhing as if going through childbirth. Laying his stole over her head, the elder recited a short prayer; she immediately fell silent and became calm.

I don’t know how it is now, but in my childhood I often chanced to see and hear these shriekers in the villages and monasteries. They would be brought to Mass, where they would screech or bark like dogs and could be heard throughout the church, but when the sacraments were carried in and they were led up to the altar, their state of “possession” ceased instantly and the sick women would always settle down for a while. As a child, I was deeply impressed and astonished whenever this would occur. When I asked about it, however, I heard from some landowners and especially from my teachers in town that this was all make-believe, simulated to avoid work, and that such feigned illness should be treated with appropriate severity; various anecdotes were related to confirm this. But I subsequently learned from medical specialists, to my astonishment, that there was no make-believe involved, that this is a terrible illness to which women are particularly susceptible—and that it occurs mostly here in Russia and bears witness to the hard fate of our peasant women. It’s an ailment resulting from exhausting work performed too soon after exceptionally hard unassisted labor in childbirth; it can also be produced by endless misery, repeated beatings, etc., which some women are unable to endure, while others can. This strange and immediate healing of possessed and struggling women as soon as they were led up to receive the sacraments, which had been explained to me as make-believe, or even a bit of trickery orchestrated by the “clericals,” also took place in what was likely the most natural manner; both the peasant women who led the one “possessed” up to the sacraments and the sick woman herself believed completely, as an unquestionable truth, that having taken possession of the sick woman, the evil spirit would never be able to maintain his hold if she were led up to take the sacraments and made to bow down before them. And so it always happened (and had to happen) that a nervous and psychically afflicted woman would experience some sort of convulsion of her entire organism at the moment she bowed down, a convulsion brought about by the expectation of a miracle of healing, and the fervent belief that it would come to pass. And it would come to pass, if only momentarily. That was exactly what happened now when the elder had covered the woman’s head with his stole.

Many of the women who were crowding around him wept tears of tender emotion and ecstasy, inspired by the effect of the moment; others attempted to kiss even the hem of his garment, while still others began to wail. He blessed all of them, and spoke with some. He already knew the shrieker; they’d brought her to him before; she lived in a village only about four miles from the monastery.

“Now here is someone from far away!” he said, pointing to a woman who wasn’t very old but who was extremely thin and wasted, and whose face was not merely sunburned but seemed blackened. She was kneeling, her eyes fixed on the elder. There was something approaching frenzy in her fixed gaze.

“I am from far away, Father, very far, about two hundred miles from here. From far away, Father, very far,” the woman said in a singsong voice, resting her cheek on the palm of her hand, her head swaying from side to side. She sounded as if she were chanting a dirge. Among the common people there is a silent, long-suffering grief; it withdraws into itself and remains quiet. But there’s also grief that can’t be contained: it breaks through in tears and finds its voice in fits of wailing. This is especially common among women. But this grief is no easier to bear than silent grief. These lamentations offer consolation only by further lacerating the heart. But consolation isn’t really what such grief is striving for; it feeds on its own futility. Such lamentations represent merely a wish to keep the open wound inflamed.

“Do you come from among tradespeople?” the elder continued, regarding her with curiosity.

“We’re townsfolk, Father, townsfolk—from the peasantry, though we’re townsfolk and live in town now. I’ve come to see you, Father. I’ve heard so much about you; Father, I buried my little boy and then I set out on a pilgrimage. I’ve been to three monasteries; they told me, ‘Go there, Nastasyushka,’ that is, to see you, my dear Father, to you. So I’ve come. Yesterday I was standing in church, and today I’ve come to see you.”

“Why are you weeping?”

“I’m grieving for my little boy; he was almost three years old; he would have been three in three months. I’m grieving for my little boy, Father, for my son. He was my last little boy; Nikitushka and I had four sons, but none of them stayed with us, they didn’t stay. When I buried the first three, I didn’t grieve too much about them, but since I buried this last one, I can’t get him out of my mind. It’s as if he’s here standing before me, and he won’t go away. He’s shriveled up my heart. I look at his little clothes, his little shirt, his little boots, and I just start wailing. I lay them all out, each little thing, I look at them and wail. I say to Nikitushka, my husband: let me go on a pilgrimage, please, master. He’s a cabman, we’re not poor, Father, not poor; he drives his own carriage; we own it all, horses and carriage. What good is any of that now? My Nikitushka’s probably taken to drink without me; he used to take to the bottle before. Whenever I turn around he’s back at it. But I’m not thinking about him now. I’ve been away from home for almost three months. I’ve forgotten, forgotten about everything, and I don’t want to remember. What am I going to do with him now? I’m finished with him, finished, finished with everything. I don’t want to see my own house and my things ever again. I don’t want to see anything.”

“Mother, hear me,” said the elder. “Once upon a time, a great saint in ancient times saw a mother like you who was weeping in the temple. She was like you because her only child had been called to the Lord. ‘Do you not know,’ said the saint to her, ‘how daring these little ones are before the throne of God? In all the heavenly kingdom there are none bolder: “You, O Lord, have given us life,” they say to God, “and as soon as we grasped it, you took it back from us again.” They ask so boldly, and repeat it so emphatically, that God grants them the rank of angels at once. And therefore,’ said the saint, ‘you should rejoice, woman; do not grieve, for your little one is now with the Lord in the company of the angels.’ That’s what the saint said to the woman who was grieving. He was a great saint and he couldn’t have uttered an untruth. Therefore, mother, you must know that your little one is now standing before the throne of God and rejoicing and making merry, and praying to God on your behalf. Therefore you should not weep, but rejoice.”

The woman listened to him, her eyes lowered, resting her cheek on her hand. She sighed deeply.

“Nikitushka tried to comfort me in the same way, using the same words as you. He said, ‘You’re a fool’; he said, ‘Why are you crying? Our little son must be with the Lord God Himself now, singing together with the angels.’ This is what he says to me, but he himself is weeping, just like me. ‘I know,’ I say. ‘Nikitushka, where else could he be if not with the Lord God? But with us here and now, Nikitushka, no, he’s not sitting here with us the way he used to! And if only I could glance at him just once more, if I could see him here again one more time, I wouldn’t approach him, wouldn’t speak to him, I would hide myself in the corner—but only to see him for one little minute, to hear him, to see how he plays in the yard, how he used to come, shouting with his little voice, ‘Mama, where are you?’ Only to hear his little feet once more running around the room, only one more time, making that pitter-patter with his little feet, for so very often I remember how he used to come running to me, shouting and laughing, if only I could hear his little feet again, hear them, I would know him right away! But he’s gone, Father, gone, and I’ll never hear him again! Here’s his little sash; but he’s gone now and I’ll never get to see him or hear him again!”

She drew from her bosom her little boy’s small braided sash, and as soon as she laid eyes upon it, she burst into sobs, covered her eyes with her fingers, through which a steady stream of tears flowed suddenly.

“And this,” repeated the elder, “is the story of Rachel in the Bible ‘weeping for her children and who would not be comforted because they were no more.’[2] Such is the fate of you mothers on this earth. No need to be comforted; do not be consoled, no need to be consoled: weep then, but every time you do so, remember constantly—your little son is one of God’s angels and is looking down at you and sees you, and is rejoicing in your tears, pointing them out to the Lord God. And for a long time to come you will continue to feel that great maternal grief, but at last it will turn into quiet joy and your bitter tears will become tears of tender emotion and heartfelt tenderness, cleansing you of all your sins.[3] I shall pray for the repose of your little one’s soul. What was his name?

“Aleksey, Father.”

“A sweet name. After Aleksey, the man of God?”[4]

“The man of God, Father, of God. Aleksey, the man of God.”

“And a very great saint he was! I will remember Aleksey, mother, and will remember your sorrow in my prayers, and I will ask God to give your husband good health. It’s a sin for you to leave him now. Go back to your husband and care for him. From where he is now, your little boy will see that you left his father, and he will weep over you; why should you be destroying his heavenly bliss? He is alive—alive, for the soul lives forever; and though he is not at home, he is still near you, unseen. How can he ever come home to you if you say that you have started to hate your own house? Who will there be for him to visit if he doesn’t find his father and mother together? You see him in your dreams now and you are in agony, but when you return he will send you tender dreams. Go back to your husband, mother, go this very day.”

“I will go, dear Father, as you say, I will go. You’ve reached my heart. Nikitushka, my dear Nikitushka, wait for me, my dearest, wait for me!” the woman began to chant, but the elder had already turned to a very old woman, one who was dressed not like a pilgrim but a townsperson. By her eyes one could tell that she was there on some business and had come to convey something. She said she was the widow of a noncommissioned officer, and had not come from far away, but from our own town. Her son Vasenka, a civil servant, and had been sent to Siberia, to Irkutsk. He had written to her twice, but she hadn’t heard from him for a whole year now. She had made some inquires, but she had no idea of where to ask further.

“Just the other day, Stepanida Ilinishna Bedryagina, a rich merchant’s wife, says to me: ‘Go to church, Prokhorovna,’ she says, ‘and put down your son’s name for the prayers read aloud for the dead, and pray for the peace of his soul. That will trouble his soul,’ she says, ‘and he’ll write you a letter. This is a sure thing,’ says Stepanida Ilinishna, ‘and has worked many times.’ But I have my doubts. . . . Oh, could you enlighten me, Father? Is it true or not? Would it be a good thing to do?”

“Don’t even give it a thought. It’s shameful even to ask the question. How is it possible that his own mother would say prayers for the dead for someone who is still alive? It’s a grave sin, akin to sorcery, and you’re forgiven only because you’re asking out of ignorance. Better for you to pray to the Queen of Heaven, our swift protector and helper, for your son’s health, and to ask forgiveness for your misguided thoughts. And this is what I have to say to you, Prokhorovna: either he’ll come back to you soon, your son, or a letter will certainly arrive. Know this: go now and be in peace. I tell you, your son is still alive.”

“Dear Father, may God reward you; you’re our benefactor, you pray for us that our sins may be forgiven . . .”

But at this point the elder had already noticed in the crowd the burning eyes of an exhausted, apparently consumptive, yet still quite young peasant woman. She was staring at him in silence, her eyes imploring him, but she seemed afraid to draw near.

“What is it, my dear?”

“Grant absolution to my soul, Father,” she said softly, without hurrying; she sank to her knees and bowed down at his feet.

“I have sinned, dear Father, and my sin fills me with fear.”

The elder sat down on the lowest step; the woman moved closer to him, still on her knees.

“I’ve been a widow for three years,” she began in a half whisper, appearing to shudder. “It was hard being married; my husband was an old man, and he beat me terribly. He was lying there sick and I thought, if he gets well, he’ll get up again, and what then? Then I had this idea . . .”

“Wait!” said the elder and brought his ear close to her lips. The woman continued in a soft whisper, so quiet that it was all but impossible to hear what she said. Soon she had finished.

“Three years ago?” the elder asked.

“Almost three years. At first I didn’t think about it, but now I’ve become ill, and the pain has become intense.”

“Have you come here from far away?”

“Three hundred miles away.”

“Have you already confessed this?”

“I have—twice.”

“Did they let you take Communion?”

“They did. But I’m afraid, Father; I’m afraid to die.”

“Don’t be afraid of anything; never be afraid, and do not agonize. If your repentance is real, God will forgive everything. There is no sin on earth—and there never can be—that the Lord will not forgive someone who is truly repentant. Man cannot commit a sin that is so enormous that it would exhaust God’s infinite love. Could there ever be a sin that would exceed God’s love? Think only and always about repentance, and drive away your fear. Have faith that God loves you so much that you cannot imagine it, even with your sin and by virtue of your sin. Long ago it was said that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ten men who are righteous.[5] Go forth now and do not fear. Do not feel any bitterness toward people; do not be angry if you’re wronged. Forgive in your heart the one who has departed for all the wrongs he did you. Be genuinely reconciled with him. If you repent, you will love. And if you love, then you are one with God. . . . With love everything can be redeemed, everyone can be saved. If I, a sinner like yourself, feel compassion and have mercy on you, how much more will God treat you with tenderness. Love is so valuable a treasure that the whole world can be redeemed by it; not only your own sin, but all sins can be expiated. Go forth then, and have no fear.”

He made the sign of the cross over her three times, and took a little icon from around his own neck and placed it around hers. She bowed down to the ground without saying a word. He rose from the step and looked cheerfully at a healthy peasant woman with a tiny baby in her arms.

“I’m from Vyshegorye, dear Father.”

“You’ve dragged yourself and the baby here four miles. What is it that you want?”

“I’ve just come to have a look at you. I’ve been to see you before, or did you forget? You don’t have much of a memory if you’ve forgotten. They said that you were ill; so I thought I’d come to see for myself. I’m seeing you and you’re not ill. You’ll live another twenty years, God bless you! There are plenty who pray for you; how could you be ill?”

“Thank you for everything, my dear.”

“By the way, I have a small request: here are sixty kopecks; give them to someone who’s poorer than I am. I came here and thought: it’s better to give them through him; he’ll know who best needs them.”

“Thank you, my dear, thank you. You’re a good woman. I love you. I’ll most certainly do as you ask. Is that your little girl that you’re holding?”

“Yes, Father, my little girl. Lizaveta.”

“May the Lord bless you both, you and the infant Lizaveta. You have gladdened my heart, mother. Farewell, my dear ones, farewell, my dears.”

He blessed them all and bowed low to all of them.

1 See above, p. 19.

2 Matthew 2:18.

3 Echoes of John 16:20.

4 Saint Alexius (or Alexis of Rome or Alexis of Edessa) was a fourth-century monastic who lived in anonymity and was known for his dedication to Christ.

5 See Luke 15:7, the parable of the prodigal son.

IV

A LADY OF LITTLE FAITH

Witnessing the whole scene of the elder’s talking with and blessing these common people, the visiting lady landowner shed quiet tears and wiped them away with her little handkerchief. She was a sensitive society lady with some genuinely good inclinations. When at last the elder approached her, she greeted him ecstatically:

“I have experienced so much, so very much, witnessing this whole very moving scene . . .” Her emotions prevented her from finishing. “Oh, I understand why it is that the people love you; I myself love the people, I want to love them; how can one not love the Russian people, our splendid, simple-hearted people in all their glory?”

“How is your daughter’s health? Do you wish to speak with me again?”

“Oh, I asked to speak with you insistently, I implored, I was ready to go down on my knees below your windows and stay there for three days until you admitted me. We have come to you, great healer, to express our very deepest gratitude. You have cured my Liza, completely cured her—but how? By praying over her on Thursday, and by laying your hands on her. We have hastened here to kiss those hands, to pour out our feelings and our reverence for you.”

“What do you mean, healed? Isn’t she still in her wheelchair?”

“But her nighttime fevers have completely disappeared; it’s been two days and nights with no fever, since that Thursday,” the lady nervously rushed to reply. “And that’s not all—her legs are stronger. This morning she woke up feeling very well, having slept the whole night: just look at her color, at her bright little eyes. She used to cry all the time, but now she’s laughing; she’s cheerful and full of joy. Today she absolutely demanded that she get up to stand, and she stood on her own for a full minute, without any help at all. She’s betting me that within two weeks she’ll be dancing a quadrille. I summoned the local doctor, Herzenshtube, to come to see her; he shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘I’m astonished, and I just can’t explain it.’ And you want us not to trouble you—not to rush over here to thank you? Lise,[1] say ‘Thank you, thank you.’ ”

Lise’s sweet little laughing face suddenly grew serious; she rose up in her wheelchair, as far as she could, and, looking at the elder, clasped her hands in front of her as if in prayer, but was unable to restrain herself and burst out laughing.

“I’m laughing at him, at him!” she said, pointing to Alyosha, with childish annoyance at herself because she just couldn’t stop laughing. Had anyone looked at Alyosha, who was standing right behind the elder, he would have noticed the sudden blush in his face; his cheeks instantly turned red. His eyes flashed and he lowered them.

“She has a message for you, Aleksey Fyodorovich. . . . How are you?” continued her mother, suddenly addressing Alyosha and extending her elegantly gloved hand to him. The elder turned around and looked attentively at Alyosha, who went up to Lisa. Smiling a little strangely and awkwardly, he held out his hand to her. Lisa assumed a dignified face.

“Katerina Ivanovna asked me to give you this note,” she said, handing him a small letter. “She asks especially that you come to see her soon, very soon, that you not disappoint her and definitely come.”

“She asks me to come? To see her? Why?” muttered Alyosha with great surprise. His face suddenly took on a worried aspect.

“Oh, it’s all about Dmitry Fyodorovich and . . . all this recent business,” her mother hastened to explain. “Katerina Ivanovna has now arrived at a particular decision . . . but for this, she definitely needs to see you. Why? Of course I don’t know, but she asks that you to come as soon as possible. You will do this, won’t you? It’s your duty as a Christian to go.”

“But I’ve only seen her once,” said Alyosha, still at a loss to understand.

“Oh, she’s such a sublime, unapproachable creature! If only because she’s suffered so much. . . . Imagine what she’s been through, what she’s now going through, imagine what still awaits her. . . . It’s all dreadful, so dreadful!”

“All right. I’ll go,” resolved Alyosha, having quickly read through the brief, mysterious note, in which, beyond the urgent request to visit her, there was no further explanation.

“Ah, that would be so fine and noble on your part!” Lise cried suddenly, with great animation. “I told mama, he won’t go on any count, he’s too busy saving his soul. What a wonderful person you are! I always thought you were wonderful; how happy it makes me to tell you that now.”

“Lise!” her mother said severely, though she smiled after saying it.

“You’ve forgotten all about us, Aleksey Fyodorovich. You don’t come to visit us at all, though Lise has told me twice that she feels well only when you’re there.” Alyosha raised his downcast eyes, blushed again suddenly, and once more smiled, without having any idea why. At this moment the elder was no longer watching him. He had begun a conversation with a monk standing next to Lise’s wheelchair, a visiting monk who’d been waiting for the elder to enter, as we’ve already mentioned. He was apparently one who came from a humble background—a peasant, that is—with a narrow, unquestioning disposition, stubborn in his own way, and a true believer. Introducing himself, he said he’d come from somewhere in the far north, from Obdorsk, from St. Sylvester, a poor monastery with only nine monks. The elder blessed him and invited him to visit his cell whenever he wished.

“How can you presume to perform such deeds?” the monk asked suddenly, accusingly, solemnly pointing at Lise. He was alluding to her “healing.”

“It’s still too early, of course, to talk about that. Some improvement is not the same as a complete cure, and it might result from different causes. But if it takes place, no power other than God’s will can account for it. Everything comes from God. Do visit me, Father,” he added to the monk, “though it’s not often that I can receive visitors: I am ill and I know that my days are numbered.”

“Oh, no, no, no, God will not take you away from us; you’ll live a long time, a long time,” the mother cried out. “How can you be ill? You look so healthy, cheerful, and happy.”

“I feel much better today, but I know that this will only last for a few moments. I now understand my illness thoroughly. If I seem so happy, you should know that nothing you could ever say would please me more. People are made for happiness, and anyone who is truly happy has earned the right to say to himself, ‘I have brought about God’s will on this earth.’ All righteous men, all saints, all holy martyrs—they were all happy.”

“Oh, how you speak; what striking, noble words!” cried the mother. “When you speak it’s as if your words pierce through to something. And as for happiness, happiness—where is it? Who can say about himself that he is truly happy? Oh, since you’ve been so good as to allow us to come and see you again, I beg you to listen to all that I didn’t say the last time, that I dared not say all that I’ve been suffering, and for so long, so very long! I’m suffering, forgive me, I am suffering . . .” And she clasped her hands before him in a burst of fervent feeling.

“What exactly are you suffering from?”

“I’m suffering . . . from lack of faith.”

“Lack of belief in God?”

“Oh, no, no, I dare not even think about that. But the future life—it’s such a mystery! And no one, no one can solve it! Please listen, you’re a healer, you know the human soul so well; and, of course, I dare not expect you to believe everything I say, but I give you my word of honor that I’m not saying this lightly now. This idea of future life beyond the grave troubles me to the point of suffering, to fear and terror. And I don’t know where to turn, and I haven’t dared to all my life. . . . Now I dare turn to you. . . . Oh, God, what will you think of me now?” she said, clasping her hands.

“Don’t worry about my opinion,” replied the elder. “I believe completely in the sincerity of your anguish.”

“Oh, I’m so grateful to you! You see, I close my eyes and think: if everyone believes, where does this belief come from? I’ve heard it said that it all began with a sense of fear before the most threatening phenomena of nature, and that in the end there’s no more to it than that. Well, I think to myself, what if all my life I’ve believed—and it turns out that I die and there’s nothing—and only ‘burdock will grow on my grave,’[2] as I read in one of our authors. It’s terrible! How can I regain my faith? It was only when I was a little child that I believed unquestioningly, almost mechanically, and didn’t think about anything. . . . But how, how can one find proof? I’ve come now to place myself at your feet and ask you for an answer. If I allow this chance to slip away, for the rest of my life no one will give me an answer. How can I prove it? How can I be convinced? Oh, how unhappy I am! I stand here and see all around me that no one cares, almost no one, no one gives the slightest thought to this now, and I can’t bear it alone. It’s fatal, fatal!”

“Fatal, without a doubt. But there’s no way to prove it, though you can be convinced.”

“How? What would do that?”

“The experience of active love. Strive intently to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. The more you succeed in loving, the more you will become convinced of the existence of God and of the immortality of your own soul. If you achieve total self-sacrifice in love for your neighbor, you will believe without any doubt, and no doubt whatsoever can ever enter your soul. This has been tested. This is certain.”

“Active love? But there’s another question, and it’s such a question, such an immense question! You see, I love humanity in general so much that, if you can believe this—I sometimes dream about giving up everything, everything I have, leaving Lise, and becoming a sister of mercy. I close my eyes, I think and I dream, and at those moments I sense an invincible strength in myself. No wounds, no festering sores could frighten me. I would wash them and bandage them with my own hands; I would be a nursemaid for the afflicted, prepared to kiss their sores . . .”

“It is already something and it is good that you have such dreams and are not dreaming about something else. In acting this way, once in a while by chance you may actually do some good deed.”

“Yes, but could I bear such a life for long?” the lady went on, passionately, almost feverishly. “That’s the main question! That’s the most tormenting question of all. I close my eyes and ask myself: would I be able to continue on such a path for long? What if the person whose wounds you’re washing doesn’t reward you at once with his gratitude; on the contrary, he begins to irritate you with his whims, failing to notice and appreciate your philanthropic services, begins to yell at you, to make rude demands and even to complain to your superiors about you (which often happens with people who are in great pain)—what then? Would your love continue? And just imagine, I realized with a shudder, that if there were something that would be likely to put an end to my ‘active’ love for humanity, it would be ingratitude. In a word, I work for a reward; I demand a reward immediately; that is, I expect praise and repayment of love with love. Otherwise I’m not capable of loving anyone.”

She was in a paroxysm of sincere self-flagellation; after she was finished, she faced the elder with a look of defiance.

“That’s exactly what a doctor told me a long time ago,” observed the elder. “He was a man getting on in years and undoubtedly intelligent. He spoke just as frankly as you have, although in jest, but it was a kind of bitter humor. ‘I love all humanity,’ he declared, ‘but I’m surprised at myself: the more I love humanity in general, the less I love people in particular—that is, separately, as single individuals. In my dreams,’ he said, ‘I frequently imagine the most passionate and far-reaching plans for serving humanity, and I think I might even be willing to be crucified for the sake of humanity, should that suddenly be demanded of me; at the same time, it’s impossible for me to live in the same room with another person for even two days; I know this from experience. If anyone gets close to me, his personality undermines my self-esteem and restricts my freedom. In the space of a single day, I begin to hate even the best of men—one because he takes so long to eat his dinner, another because he has a cold and blows his nose constantly. I become an enemy of people,’ he tells me, ‘as soon as they draw close to me. On the other hand, it invariably happens that the more I detest individual people, the more fervent is my love for humanity in general.’ ”

“But what is to be done? What’s to be done in such a case? Should I despair?”

“No, because it is enough for you to be distressed by your awareness. Do what you can, and it will be counted unto you.[3] You have already done a great deal, because you’ve come to know yourself so deeply and sincerely! But if just now you spoke with me so openly in order to receive praise from me for your sincerity, then, of course, you won’t achieve anything that amounts to real love; it will remain only in your dreams and your whole life will pass like an apparition. If that is the case, you will eventually forget about any future life and in the end you will manage to find a way to stop worrying.”

“You’ve crushed me! It’s only just now, at this very moment, as you were speaking, that I’ve come to understand that I was really seeking praise from you for my sincerity when I told you that I couldn’t bring myself to tolerate ingratitude. You’ve revealed me for what I am, grasped my essence, shown me to myself!”

“Are you telling the truth? Well, now, after such an admission, I believe that you really are sincere and that you are good at heart. If you don’t attain happiness, always remember that you are on the right path, and make every effort not to stray from it. The main thing is to avoid telling lies, all kinds of lies, keep from telling lies to yourself in particular. Watch out for your own deceitfulness, and do so every hour and every minute. Avoid indulging in disdain, too, for others and for yourself; whatever seems bad within you will be purged simply by virtue of the fact that you have noticed it yourself. Also avoid fear, though fear is no more than the consequence of any lie. Never be afraid of your own faintheartedness in attaining love; don’t even be too afraid of your own bad actions. I am sorry that I don’t have anything more comforting to say to you, because active love compared with imaginary love is a cruel and fearsome thing. Imaginary love craves immediate action; it is quickly satisfied by this and wants everyone to be sure to witness it. To achieve this, people are really even willing to give up their own lives, so long as it’s done quickly and doesn’t take too long—as if onstage, where everyone would see them and applaud them. Active love, in comparison, demands work and endurance; for some people, it is nothing less than a way of life, a discipline. My prediction is that even at the very moment when in despair you recognize that in spite of all your efforts not only haven’t you moved any closer to your goal, but you have even moved further away from it—at that very moment, I prophesy that you will suddenly attain your goal and will clearly behold above the miraculous power of the Lord, who has loved you all the while and has been guiding you mysteriously. Now please forgive me—I can stay with you no longer; there are other people waiting for me. Farewell.”

The lady was in tears.

“Lise, Lise, bless her, give her your blessing,” she cried out all of a sudden.

“She is not worthy of love—I saw how she was being so mischievous,” the elder said jokingly. “Why were you laughing at Alyosha all the while?”

In fact, this was true. Lise had been making fun of him. She’d noticed long ago, during their last visit, that Alyosha was bashful and was trying not to look at her, and that had begun to strike her as very funny. So she waited, staring at him, hoping to catch his eye: unable to withstand her intense gaze, every once in a while Alyosha suddenly, involuntarily, as if overcome by some force, glanced back at her; as soon as their eyes met, she smiled triumphantly, right in his face. Alyosha was embarrassed and even more annoyed with himself. Finally he turned away from her completely and hid behind the elder’s back. After a few minutes, overcome by that same irresistible force, Alyosha turned to see if she was still staring at him, and he saw that Lise, almost hanging out of her chair, was giving him a sidelong glance, eagerly waiting for him to look back; after catching his eye again, she burst into such laughter that even the elder couldn’t refrain from making a comment:

“Why are you trying to embarrass him like that, you naughty child?”

Lise suddenly, completely unexpectedly, blushed and turned her eyes away; her face became terribly serious, and with a note of complaint and passionate indignation in her voice, she said quickly and nervously:

“Why has he forgotten everything? When I was a little baby, he used to carry me in his arms; the two of us played together. He came to teach me how to read—did you know that? Two years ago when he said good-bye, he said he would never forget me, that we were friends forever, forever and ever! And now, all of a sudden, he’s afraid of me; am I going to eat him alive, or what? Why doesn’t he want to come any closer? Why isn’t he talking to me? Why won’t he visit us? Won’t you let him come? We know he goes anywhere he likes. It’s improper for me to invite him myself; he should have thought of it on his own, if he hadn’t really forgotten. But no, now he’s too busy saving his soul! And why have you dressed him in that long cassock? If he tries to run, he’ll trip over it . . .”

Suddenly, unable to restrain herself, she covered her eyes with her hands and burst into unstoppable, prolonged, nervous, inaudible laughter. The elder listened to her with a smile and blessed her tenderly; when she began to kiss his hand, she abruptly pressed it against her eyes and burst into tears.

“Please don’t be angry with me; I’m a fool, completely unworthy. . . . Perhaps Alyosha’s right, undoubtedly right, in not wanting to visit such a ridiculous girl.”

“I’ll make certain he comes to see you,” declared the elder.

1 The French spelling of her daughter’s name.

2 Bazarov’s words in Chapter 21 of Turgenev’s Fathers and Children (1862).

3 See Romans 4:3.

V

SO BE IT! MAY IT COME TO PASS!

The elder was gone from the cell for about twenty-five minutes. It was already after half past twelve, and Dmitry Fyodorovich, who was the main reason everyone had gathered, had yet to arrive. But everyone seemed to have forgotten about him; when the elder returned to his cell, he found the most animated general conversation going on among his guests. Ivan Fyodorovich and the two monks took the leading role in the discussion. From time to time Miusov tried to insert himself, apparently very heatedly, but each time without success; he was clearly relegated to the sidelines; hardly anyone even replied to his comments, and this served to intensify his growing irritability. The fact is that he had previously exchanged somewhat caustic remarks on certain intellectual subjects with Ivan Fyodorovich, and he simply couldn’t tolerate the careless condescension that Ivan Fyodorovich regularly expressed toward him: “Until now, at least, I’ve stood in the front ranks of all that is progressive in Europe, but this new generation positively ignores us,” he thought to himself. Fyodor Pavlovich, who’d given his word to remain seated in his chair and keep quiet, really did keep silent for some time, but he had his eyes on his neighbor Pyotr Aleksandrovich; there was a sarcastic little smile on his face and he was apparently enjoying his neighbor’s evident irritation. For some time he’d been planning to get even with him for a previous slight, and he didn’t want to lose this opportunity. Finally he couldn’t stand it any longer; he bent over to his neighbor’s ear and taunted him again in a whisper:

“Why didn’t you leave after the ‘courteous kissing’ and instead agreed to remain in such unseemly company? It was because you felt humiliated and insulted that you decided to stay, to take revenge by demonstrating to everyone how smart you are. Now you won’t leave until you’ve had a chance to show everyone.”

“Are you at it again? I’ve had enough—I’m leaving now.”

“You’ll leave later: you’ll be the last to go!” Fyodor Pavlovich taunted him again. This was almost exactly at the same moment that the elder returned.

The conversation quieted down for a minute, but the elder, who occupied his previous place, glanced around at everyone, as if cordially inviting them all to continue. Alyosha, who’d learned to read almost every expression of the elder’s face, saw clearly that he was really exhausted and was overtaxing himself. Lately in his illness he’d been prone to fainting as a result of extreme exhaustion. Almost the same pallor that he took on before he fainted was now spreading across his face, and his lips had turned pale. But he evidently didn’t wish to disrupt the gathering; it seemed that he had some special purpose of his own—what was it? Alyosha watched him intently.

“We’re discussing this gentleman’s most interesting article,” said the monk Iosif, the librarian, turning to the elder and directing his attention to Ivan Fyodorovich. “It introduces much that is original, but it seems that his idea cuts in two directions. It concerns the issue of ecclesiastical courts and the scope of their jurisdiction; it was written in response to an entire book on the subject by a certain clerical authority.”

“Unfortunately, I haven’t read your article, but I’ve heard about it,” said the elder, focusing intently and fixedly on Ivan Fyodorovich.

“He takes up quite a curious position on the subject,” continued the father librarian. “Apparently he completely rejects the separation of church and state when it comes to the question of ecclesiastical courts.”

“That is curious, but in what sense is that meant?” the elder asked Ivan Fyodorovich.

When at last he responded to the elder, it was not condescendingly, as Alyosha had feared the day before, but modestly and with restraint, with visible courtesy, and complete openness.

“I proceed from the premise that the attempt to unite these elements—that is, the essential principles of church and state, considered separately—will, of course, continue forever, despite the fact that merging them is impossible and can never be achieved, not only under normal circumstances but in any conceivable working combination, because the very attempt is based on a false assumption. Compromise between church and state with respect to the courts, for instance, in my opinion, is absolutely impossible in any real sense. The cleric whose position I was challenging maintains that the church occupies a precise and defined place within the state. I objected and argued that, on the contrary, the church itself should come to include the entire state, not simply occupy some little corner in it; and if for some reason that’s not possible now, then in essence that objective ought to be established as the direct and principal goal of the whole future development of Christian society.”

“Absolutely true!” Father Paisy, a reserved and learned monk, interjected tensely and resolutely.

“That’s the purest Ultramontanism,”[1] cried Miusov, impatiently crossing and recrossing his legs.

“Oh, well, we have no mountains here!” cried Father Iosif and, turning to the elder, continued: “Note, please, just how he responds to the ‘fundamental and essential’ propositions of his clerical opponent. First: ‘No single social organization can or should appropriate power to itself—to dispose of its members’ civil political rights.’ Second: ‘Criminal and civil jurisdiction should not belong to the church and is inconsistent with its nature as a divine institution and as an organization of people united for religious goals.’ And finally, third: ‘The church is a kingdom not of this world . . . ’ ”[2]

“A most unworthy play on words for a cleric!” Father Paisy couldn’t restrain himself and interrupted again. “I’ve read this book that you’re refuting,” he said, turning to Ivan Fyodorovich. “I was taken aback by the implications of the cleric’s words when he wrote, ‘The church is a kingdom not of this world.’ If it’s ‘not of this world,’ then it can’t exist on earth at all. In the Holy Gospels, the words ‘not of this world’ are not used in that sense. Playing with such words is something that can’t be tolerated. Our Lord Jesus Christ came precisely to establish the church on earth. The heavenly kingdom is of course not of this world, but in heaven; however, the only way of entering it is through the church, which has been founded and established here on earth. So frivolous secular puns on these words are improper and unworthy of a cleric. The church is truly a kingdom and is ordained to rule; in the end, there is no doubt that it will ultimately become a kingdom ruling over the entire earth—for this, we have a divine promise . . .”

He suddenly fell silent, as if restraining himself. Ivan Fyodorovich, who had been listening to him respectfully and attentively with perfect composure, and in a spirit of goodwill, turned to the elder:

“The whole point of my article lies in pointing out the fact that in ancient times, during the first three centuries of its time on earth, Christianity existed only in the church and was exclusively the church. When the pagan Roman state decided to convert to Christianity, what happened unavoidably was that through this conversion, it simply came to incorporate the church, but in many of its functions it still remained a pagan state as before. This was essentially how things had to be. But in the Roman state, too much of pagan civilization and culture remained—indeed, even the very goals and foundations of the state. The church of Christ, entering into the state, undoubtedly could not give up any of its principles, the rock on which it had been built, and it could pursue no aims other than those which had been clearly revealed and established by the Lord Himself—among these: to transform the whole world, and of course the entire ancient pagan state, into the church. Accordingly (that is, in looking toward the future), it’s not the church that should be searching for a particular place for itself in the state, like that of ‘any other social organization,’ or of ‘a people organized for religious purposes’ (as the author with whom I disagree refers to the church); on the contrary, every earthly state must in the end be transformed entirely into the church, and become nothing more than the church, rejecting all goals incompatible with those of the church. All this will not demean the state in any way, nor dishonor it, nor deprive it of its glory as a great state, nor the exalted status of its rulers, but will merely move it away from a false, still pagan, misguided path onto the correct, genuine path, the only one leading to an eternal goal. That’s why the author of the book, The Foundations of Church Jurisdiction, would have gotten things right if in searching for and identifying those foundations he’d viewed them as merely temporary, a necessary compromise in our sinful and imperfect times, but nothing more than that. But as soon as the author dared to declare that the principles he is proclaiming at this moment—some of which were just enumerated by Father Iosif—are unshakable, essential, and eternal, he is going directly against the church and its sacred, destined, and uncompromising mission. That’s the essence of my whole article, a complete summation.”

“That is to say, in a few words,” began Father Paisy again, emphasizing every word, “according to certain theories, emerging all too clearly in our nineteenth century, the church should be reborn into the state, as if advancing from a lower to a higher form, in order to dissolve itself into it, yielding to science, the spirit of the age, and civilization. If, however, the church doesn’t wish to do so and resists, some corner will be reserved for it in the state, where it might continue to exist, under state supervision—and this is the case everywhere now, in all European countries. But according to Russian conceptions and hopes, it is not the church that needs to be reborn into the state, as if from a lower to a higher form; on the contrary, it is the state that must end by having the honor of becoming the church and nothing more. And may this come to pass, may it come to pass!”

“Well, sir, I confess you’ve reassured me somewhat,” Miusov said with a smile, crossing his legs again. “As far as I understand it, the realization of this ideal is infinitely remote, not until the Second Coming. Whatever you wish. A splendid utopian dream of the disappearance of wars, diplomats, banks, and so forth. Something even akin to socialism. I was thinking that all of this was meant seriously and that the church right now, for example, would begin to try criminals and sentence them to beatings, prison, and even execution.”

“If right now there were only the ecclesiastical court, the church would not sentence a criminal to prison or to death. Crime and the way of viewing it would undoubtedly have to change, little by little, of course, not all at once, but still relatively soon . . .” Ivan Fyodorovich said calmly, without batting an eye.

“Are you being serious?” Miusov asked, fixing his eyes on him.

“If everything were to become the church, then it would excommunicate the criminals and the disobedient, but it would not chop their heads off,” continued Ivan Fyodorovich. “I ask you, what would happen to anyone who was excommunicated? He would have to be cut off not only from other people, as he is now, but even from Christ, for his crime would be not only against other people, but against Christ’s church. This is true even now, of course, in the strictest sense, but it isn’t clearly stated; the criminal today very, very often makes a compromise with his conscience: ‘I stole,’ he says, ‘but not from the church; I’m not an enemy of Christ.’ That’s what today’s criminal nearly always says to himself; but if the church were to stand in place of the state, it would be difficult for him to say that without denying the whole church all over the world: ‘All men,’ he would have to say, ‘are mistaken, all of them are in error, all part of the false church, while I alone, a thief and a murderer—I am the true Christian church.’ This would be very difficult for anyone to say to himself; it demands an enormous number of special conditions and circumstances, which do not often occur. Now, on the other hand, consider the view of the church itself on crime: doesn’t it have to change from what it is now, the almost pagan way of automatically excluding its infected member, as is done today to protect society, and to be transformed, completely and honestly embracing, into the idea of the rebirth of this man, his resurrection and salvation?”

“What do you mean? Once again I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Miusov interrupted. “This is some sort of dream again. Something lacking any form and impossible to grasp. What sort of exclusion? What are you talking about? I suspect that you’re just amusing yourself, Ivan Fyodorovich.”

The elder suddenly spoke up: “Yes, but this is how it is even now.” Everyone immediately turned toward him. “If Christ’s church didn’t exist, there would be nothing to restrain criminals from committing crimes, nor would there be any punishment to follow from it—that is, any real punishment, not just mechanical punishment, as was just talked about, which in most cases merely makes the heart bitter. But that is not genuine punishment, the only genuine kind that inspires fear and brings peace, and which involves a recognition of one’s sin by one’s own conscience.”

“How can that be, if I may ask?” Miusov inquired with lively curiosity.

“This is how,” began the elder. “All these sentences of exile with hard labor, in the past with flogging, don’t reform anyone; more importantly, they don’t deter a single criminal. Not only is the number of crimes not reduced, but over time, it actually increases. After all, you must admit that. It turns out that society, in operating this way, is not protected, for although the harmful member is automatically excluded and sent far away into exile, out of sight, another criminal arrives to take his place, and maybe even two. If there’s anything to protect society even at this moment, anything that succeeds in reforming the criminal and turning him into a new man, it’s Christ’s law expressing itself through the man’s conscience. It is only after admitting one’s own guilt as a son of Christian society, that is, of the church, that he becomes aware of his guilt before society itself, that is, before the church. Thus, it is only before the church that the contemporary criminal can come to acknowledge his guilt, not before the state. If society, as the church, had jurisdiction, then it would know whom to bring back from its exclusion and whom to readmit to the sacraments. At the present time, however, the church, which lacks any real legal jurisdiction and merely has the possibility of moral condemnation, retreats on its own from any genuine punishment of the criminal. It doesn’t excommunicate him, but simply offers him fatherly advice. And more than that, it even tries to maintain Christian communion with the criminal: it admits him to church services, to the sacraments, gives him charity, and treats him more like a captive than a convict. But what would become of the criminal, oh Lord, if even Christian society, that is, the church, were also to reject him, the way that civil law rejects and excludes him? What if the church punished him with excommunication each and every time he received the punishment demanded by civil law? There couldn’t be any greater despair for a criminal—at least not for a Russian criminal, because Russian criminals are still believers. And yet, who knows: perhaps a terrible thing would happen—it might bring about a loss of faith in the desperate heart of the criminal—and then what? But the church, like a loving and tender mother, refrains from real punishment itself, since even without its castigation the criminal has been too severely punished by civil law, and someone needs to feel pity for him. The church refrains mainly because church justice is the only true justice, and so cannot align itself with any other form of justice, practical or moral, and can’t enter into any sort of temporary compromise. No bargain can be struck. The foreign criminal, it is said, rarely repents, because contemporary teachings confirm his belief that his crime is not actually a crime, merely a rebellion against unjust oppressive forces. Society excludes him from itself automatically, and triumphs over him completely by its force, accompanying its exclusion with hatred (so, at least, those in Europe say about themselves) and with a total indifference and lack of interest in his future fate as its brother. All of this takes place without the least bit of sympathy from the church, because in many cases there is no church left there, only clerics and splendid church buildings, while the churches themselves have been striving to move from the lower form, as the church, to a higher form, as the state, in order to dissolve into it completely. There, so it appears, at least in the Lutheran countries. In Rome, the church was proclaimed to be a state a thousand years ago. As a result, the criminal himself is no longer aware of being a member of a church, and being so excluded, he experiences despair. If he returns to society, it is often with such hatred that society itself seems to exclude him. You can judge for yourself how this will end. In many cases, it seems the same thing happens with us here; but the difference is that in addition to the legal courts, we have preserved, at least in theory, church jurisdiction, which never loses touch with the criminal, as with one’s beloved and still precious son; although not currently operating in practice, it still exists as a dream for the future, and continues to be acknowledged by the criminal, at least by instinct, in his soul. What has just been said here is also true, that if church jurisdiction were to be introduced in all its force, that is, if all society were to turn into the church, not only would the judgment of church jurisdiction have a bearing on reforming the criminal, in a way that it never does now, but perhaps even the number of crimes would diminish to a degree that cannot be imagined. And the church undoubtedly would understand the future criminal and the future crime in many cases altogether differently than the way these things are understood today, and would be able to bring back the excluded person, and restrain those plotting evil, and to restore the fallen. It is true, though,” said the elder with a smile, “that Christian society itself is not yet prepared for this and stands only on ‘seven men of honest report’;[3] but since such men are never entirely lacking, it will maintain itself unshaken, in expectation of its complete transformation from a society close to heathen in its character into a single, universal, and all-powerful church. So be it, may it come to pass, even at the end of the ages,[4] for it is predestined to come to pass! And there is no need to be troubled by ‘the times or the seasons,’[5] because the mystery of the times and the seasons is the wisdom of God, in His knowledge of the future, and in His love. And what may still seem very far off in human reckoning may by God’s predestination already be close at hand, on the very eve of its appearance. And so be it, so be it!”

“So be it! So be it!” Father Paisy avowed reverently and with great solemnity.

“All this is strange, very, very strange!” said Miusov, not so much passionately as with suppressed indignation.

“What seems so strange to you?” Father Iosif asked cautiously.

“But really, what is this exactly?” cried Miusov, as if suddenly no longer able to restrain himself. “The state is abolished on earth, and the church is proclaimed in its place as the state! This goes beyond Ultramontanism, it’s arch-Ultramontanism. Pope Gregory VII himself never dreamed of this!”[6]

“I’m afraid you’ve understood it in a completely opposite way!” Father Paisy said firmly. “It’s not the church that is transformed into the state. You have to understand this. That’s Rome and its dream. That’s the third temptation of the devil![7] On the contrary, it’s the state that is transformed into the church; it will ascend to the level of the church and become universal, the church for the entire world, which is the complete opposite of Ultramontanism, of the example of Rome and of your interpretation, and is no more than the great destiny ordained for Orthodoxy on earth. This is the star that will rise in the East.”[8]

Miusov was notably silent. His whole bearing was intended to express his sense of extraordinary personal dignity. A condescending smile appeared on his lips. Alyosha followed all this with a pounding heart. The entire conversation had shaken him to the core. He happened to glance at Rakitin for a moment; he was motionless in his previous place near the door, watching and listening attentively, with downcast eyes. But judging from the color in his cheeks, Alyosha guessed that Rakitin was no less unsettled than he was, and Alyosha knew why.

“Allow me to relate a small anecdote, gentlemen,” Miusov said suddenly, with an impressive air of self-importance. “In Paris, some years ago, soon after the December coup d’état,[9] while I was paying a visit to an acquaintance—a very, very important person in the government—I happened to meet an extremely interesting gentleman. This individual was not just a detective, but was the superintendent of an entire unit of political detectives—a rather powerful position in its own way. I was intrigued by this and seized the opportunity to have a conversation with him; but since he had come not as a visitor but as a subordinate civil servant to deliver a special report, and seeing, from his side, how I was being received by his supervisor, he favored me with a certain candor—well, of course, only to a certain extent; that is, he was more polite than candid, as only the French know how to be, all the more so since he recognized that I was a foreigner. But I understood him very well. The conversation concerned socialist revolutionaries, who, by the way, were being persecuted at that time. Leaving aside the main substance of our conversation, I will mention only one very curious remark made by this gentleman in passing: ‘We,’ he said, ‘are not particularly afraid of all these socialists—anarchists, atheists, and revolutionaries; we are keeping track of them and their movements are known to us. But among them are some, albeit very few, particularly unusual people: they believe in God and are Christians, but at the same time they are socialists. We’re more afraid of them than we are of the others; they’re awful people! The Christian socialist is more terrible a threat than an atheistic socialist.’ Those words struck me at the time, gentlemen, but they’ve suddenly come back to me now.”

“You mean you’re applying them to us and see us as socialists?” Father Paisy asked directly, hardly beating around the bush. But before Pyotr Aleksandrovich could manage to reply, the door opened and the long-awaited Dmitry Fyodorovich entered. By this time, they’d stopped expecting him, and so his sudden appearance occasioned some astonishment at first.

1 A fifteenth-century movement in the Catholic Church to give the pope supreme authority in the state.

2 See Christ’s answer to Pontius Pilate, John 18:36.

3 Acts 6:3.

4 See 1 Corinthians 10:11.

5 Acts 1:7.

6 Gregory VII (ca. 1020–1085) was famous for his feud with Holy Roman emperor Henry IV (1050–1106), whom he forced to do penance at Canossa (1077).

7 Matthew 4:8–9.

8 See Matthew 2:2.

9 The French coup d’état of December 2, 1851, was a self-coup staged by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. It ended in the successful dissolution of the National Assembly and the subsequent reestablishment of the empire.

VI

WHY IS SUCH A MAN ALIVE?

Dmitry Fyodorovich, a young man of twenty-eight and of average height, had a pleasant face, though he seemed much older than his years. He was muscular, and one could guess that he had considerable strength; even so, there was something sickly about his face. It was rather thin, and his hollow cheeks had an unhealthy yellowish pallor. His large, dark, bulging eyes watched intently, and yet his glance seemed vague. Even when he was upset and spoke with irritation, his face did not seem to reflect his inner mood but expressed something different, sometimes not at all corresponding to the present moment. “It’s hard to know what he’s thinking,” those who talked with him sometimes said. Others, seeing his eyes so brooding and sullen, might be startled by his sudden laugh, which betrayed the merry and playful thoughts that evidently occurred to him even when he appeared so sullen. Still, a certain unhealthiness in his face at the present moment was understandable: everyone knew about or had heard about the extremely agitated and “debauched” life he had been leading among us of late, just as everyone knew about the extreme anger that erupted during disputes with his father about money. Several stories about this were circulating around town. It’s true that he was irritable by nature—“an impulsive and unstable mind,” as our justice of the peace, Semyon Ivanovich Kachalnikov, described it at one meeting.

He came in stylishly and impeccably dressed, in a buttoned frock coat, wearing black gloves and carrying a top hat. As a recently retired military man, he still wore a mustache but had shaved his beard. His dark brown hair was cut short and combed forward over his temples. He walked decisively, with long strides, like a military man. Pausing for a moment on the threshold, he glanced all around and strode directly up to the elder, guessing that he was the host. He made a low bow to him and asked for his blessing. The elder rose from his chair and blessed him. Dmitry Fyodorovich respectfully kissed his hand, and with intense emotion that seemed to border on anger, said:

“Please be so kind as to forgive me for making you wait so long. The servant Smerdyakov, sent by my father, in reply to my insistent inquiries, told me twice in the most confident tone that the meeting was set for one o’clock. Now I suddenly find out that . . .”

“Don’t worry,” the elder interrupted, “it doesn’t matter; you’re a little late, but no harm done . . .”

“I’m extremely grateful to you and would have expected no less of your kindness.” Having responded in this way, Dmitry Fyodorovich bowed again, then abruptly turned in the direction of his own father and made a similarly deep and respectful bow. It was evident that he had been thinking about this gesture and made it sincerely, almost as a sign of his obligation to express respect and good intentions. Fyodor Pavlovich, although taken unawares, was not at a loss for long: in answer to Dmitry Pavlovich’s bow, he jumped up from his chair and responded with just as deep a bow to his son. His face took on a grave and serious expression, which somehow made him look malicious. Still in silence, after bowing in general to everyone around the room, Dmitry Fyodorovich walked over to the window in long and decisive strides, sat down in the only chair left, not far from Father Paisy, and, leaning forward, prepared to listen to the continuation of the conversation his arrival had interrupted.

Dmitry Fyodorovich’s entrance had taken no more than a couple of minutes, and the conversation was resumed again. But this time Pyotr Aleksandrovich didn’t consider it necessary to reply to Father Paisy’s insistent and almost irritating question.

“Allow me not to discuss this subject any further,” he said with a certain knowing casualness. “It’s a complicated topic. Ivan Fyodorovich is smiling ironically at us: that must mean he has something interesting to add to the discussion. Ask him.”

“Nothing in particular, except for one small observation,” Ivan Fyodorovich replied at once. “European liberalism in general, and even our dilettantish Russian liberalism, has often and for a long time confused the results of socialism with those of Christianity. This absurd conclusion is, of course, characteristic of such liberals. However, it turns out that it’s not only liberals and dilettantes who confuse socialism and Christianity, but together with them, in many cases, it’s the police as well—the foreign police, naturally. Your Parisian anecdote is altogether typical, Pyotr Aleksandrovich.”

“I ask your permission once again to drop this subject,” repeated Pyotr Aleksandrovich. “Instead, gentlemen, allow me to tell you another anecdote about Ivan Fyodorovich himself, a very interesting and most characteristic one. Just about five days ago, in a local circle, primarily made up of women, he solemnly declared in an argument that there was nothing in the whole wide world that could force men to love their neighbors: that no law exists in nature that would require men to love humanity; and if, up to now, there has ever been love on earth, it’s not as a result of natural law, but merely because people believed in their own immortality. Ivan Fyodorovich added, as if in parentheses, that if there is any such natural law, it exists entirely in this belief; thus, if you were to destroy humanity’s belief in immortality, not only love but every vital force for making possible the continuation of earthly life would dry up. Moreover, then nothing would be judged immoral; everything would be permitted, even cannibalism. And that’s not all. He went on to say that for every person—anyone like us, for instance—who does not believe in God or in his own immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the complete opposite of the previous religious law, and egoism, even if it comes to crime, must not only be permitted to men, but even recognized as necessary, as the most rational and, in effect, the noblest outcome demanded by this situation. By just such a paradox as this you may judge, gentlemen, all that follows from what our kind, eccentric paradoxalist Ivan Fyodorovich wishes and intends to convey.”

“Excuse me,” cried Dmitry Fyodorovich suddenly and unexpectedly, “did I hear correctly: ‘Crime not only must be permitted, but must even be acknowledged as the most necessary and most logical outcome of every atheist’s position.’ Is that correct or not?”

“Precisely,” said Father Paisy.

“I shall remember that.”

Having said this, Dmitry Fyodorovich fell silent just as suddenly as he had burst into the conversation. Everyone looked at him with curiosity.

“Is it really your conviction that this would be the result of the drying up of people’s faith in the immortality of their souls?” the elder asked Ivan Fyodorovich.

“Yes, that’s what I asserted. If there is no immortality, there is no virtue.”

“You are blessed if you believe that, or else you are very unhappy.”

“Why unhappy?” Ivan Fyodorovich asked with a smile.

“Because, in all likelihood, you yourself do not believe either in the immortality of your soul or in what you have written about the church and ecclesiastical jurisdiction.”

“Perhaps you’re right! Still, I wasn’t joking altogether,” Ivan Fyodorovich confessed enigmatically, with a blush.

“Not entirely joking, that’s true. In your heart this question is still not resolved and is a source of torment. But even the martyr sometimes likes to amuse himself with his own despair, and he does that out of despair as well. Meanwhile, in your own despair, you amuse yourself—with articles in journals and debates in society, while you yourself don’t believe in your own dialectics and make fun of them inwardly with a heavy heart. . . . This question is not resolved in you, and that is the source of your great anguish, for it cries out for resolution . . .”

“But can it be resolved in me? Resolved affirmatively?” Ivan Fyodorovich continued, regarding the elder with an inexplicable smile.

“If it can’t be resolved in the affirmative, then it will also never be resolved in the negative; you yourself know the nature of your own heart, and that’s where all your torment lies. But thanks to the Creator for giving you a noble heart that is capable of experiencing such suffering, ‘of thinking and seeking higher things, for our dwelling is in the heavens.’[1] May God grant that your heart arrive at the resolution it seeks while you are still on this earth, and may God bless your path!”

The elder raised his hand and was about to make the sign of the cross over Ivan Fyodorovich from where he was seated. But Ivan Fyodorovich abruptly got up from his chair, approached the elder, received his blessing, and, after kissing his hand, returned to his place in silence. His look was determined and serious. This action, and the entire unexpected conversation with the elder that preceded it, seemed to strike everyone as strange in its unexpectedness and solemnity, so that they all fell silent for a moment, and a look verging on fear appeared on Alyosha’s face. But Miusov shrugged his shoulders, and Fyodor Pavlovich jumped up from his chair at that same moment.

“Most Divine and Most Sacred Elder!” he cried, pointing to Ivan Fyodorovich. “That is my son, flesh of my flesh, my most beloved flesh! That’s my most deferential Karl von Moor; and this son who just now came in, Dmitry Fyodorovich, against whom I am seeking judgment from you—that is my least deferential Franz von Moor—both from Schiller’s Robbers, and I, in that case, I am the regierender[2] Graf von Moor![3] Judge us and save us! We need not only your prayers, but also your prophecies!”

“Speak without foolishness and don’t start by insulting your family,” replied the elder in a weak, exhausted voice. He was obviously getting more and more tired, and was losing his strength.

“This is an embarrassing farce, just as I expected as I was coming here!” cried Dmitry Pavlovich in indignation, also jumping up from his place. “Forgive us, Reverend Father,” he said, turning to the elder. “I’m an uneducated man and I don’t even know what to call you properly; but they have deceived you, and you’ve been too kind in allowing us to gather here. All my father wants is a scandal; for what purpose—only he knows. He always has his reasons. But I think I now know for what purpose . . .”

“Everyone blames me, all of them!” shouted Fyodor Pavlovich in his turn. “Even Pyotr Aleksandrovich blames me. You did, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, you blamed me!” he said, turning suddenly to Miusov, although he hadn’t had any intention of contradicting him. “They accuse me of hiding my children’s money in my boots and cheating them all; but, excuse me, can’t there be any justice? There they will count it up for you, Dmitry Fyodorovich, on the basis of your own receipts, letters, and contracts. How much you had, how much you squandered, and how much you have left! Why does Pyotr Aleksandrovich refuse to express his opinion on this? Dmitry Fyodorovich is not a stranger to him. Because they are all against me, and now Dmitry Fyodorovich actually owes me money—not just a little, but several thousand, sir, and I have all the documents to prove it! The whole town recoils from his wild sprees! And where he served before in the army, he paid a thousand or two for seducing some honorable girls; we all know about that, Dmitry Fyodorovich, in its most intimate details, and I can prove it, sir. . . . Most Holy Father, would you believe it, sir, he won the love of the noblest of young women, from a good home and endowed with a fortune, the daughter of his former superior officer, a brave colonel, decorated, who wears the Order of Saint Anna around his neck;[4] he compromised this girl with a proposal of marriage, and now she’s here; she’s an orphan, his fiancée, and he, before her very eyes, starts keeping company with a certain local seductress. And although this seductress has been living in what is referred to as a common-law marriage with a certain respectable person, she is a highly independent character, an unassailable fortress to everyone, just like a legal wife, because she’s virtuous—yes, sir, Holy Fathers, she is virtuous! And Dmitry Fyodorovich wants to unlock this fortress with a golden key, which is why he is bullying me now; he wants to extract money from me; meanwhile he’s wasted thousands on this seductress already; he’s constantly borrowing money for that purpose and, by the way, from whom, do you think? Shall I tell him, Mitya?”

“Shut up!” cried Dmitry Fyodorovich. “Wait until I leave; don’t you dare sully the name of that exalted young woman in my presence. . . . Just the fact that you mention her name is a disgrace. . . . I won’t stand for it!”

He gasped for breath.

“Mitya! Mitya!” cried Fyodor Pavlovich nervously, forcing out a few tears. “Doesn’t a father’s blessing mean anything to you? What if I curse you, then what?”

“You shameless hypocrite!” roared Dmitry Fyodorovich in fury.

“He says that to his father! His father! What’s he like with others? Gentlemen, just imagine: there’s a poor but honorable person, a retired army captain, burdened with a large family; he got into some trouble, was discharged from the army. But not publicly, not with a court-martial, and he managed to retain his honor. Three weeks ago our Dmitry Fyodorovich grabbed hold of his beard in a tavern, pulled him out into the street by his beard, and gave him a vicious beating for all to see, and all this because he happens to be working for me in a little business dealing of mine.”

“That’s a lie! It’s true on the outside, but it’s a lie on the inside!” Dmitry Fyodorovich cried, trembling with rage. “Father! I don’t justify my actions; yes, I confess before everyone: I behaved like a beast with this captain, and now I regret it and I despise myself for my beastly rage; but this captain of yours, your counsel, went up to the young woman you just referred to as a seductress, and in your name tried to persuade her to take my promissory notes, which you had in your possession, and to bring an action against me and have me arrested for nonpayment of those notes if I kept insisting that you account for my property. Now you reproach me for having a weakness for that lady, when you yourself were coaching her on how to entrap me! She told me that right to my face, and she was laughing at you! You want to lock me up simply because you’re jealous of me, because you yourself had begun making advances toward her; I know all about that, too. And once again she was laughing about that when she told me—do you hear—laughing at you. So here you have this man, Holy Fathers, who presumes to reproach his dissolute son! Gentlemen witnesses, forgive me for losing my temper, but just as I anticipated, this devious old man has summoned all of you here only to create a scandal. I came to forgive him if he extended his hand to me, to forgive him and to ask his forgiveness! But since he has now insulted not only me but that most honorable young lady, whose name I dare not even utter in vain out of my reverence for her, I’ve decided to expose his entire game publicly, even though he is my father!”

He couldn’t go on any longer. His eyes flashed and he was gasping for breath. Everyone in the monk’s cell was affected. They all, except for the elder, rose up from their seats uneasily. The monks looked stern; they waited to see what the elder wished to have happen next. He sat there, completely pale, not from the tension, but from the weakness associated with his illness. An imploring smile formed on his lips, and from time to time he raised his hand, as if in attempt to stop the raving. Of course, one gesture from him would have been sufficient to end the scene, but he himself seemed to be waiting for something, and he stared fixedly, as if trying to understand something, something that was still not quite clear to him. At last Pyotr Aleksandrovich Miusov, who was feeling completely humiliated and disgraced, began to speak:

“We are all to blame for this scandal!” he said with emotion. “But I didn’t foresee it in coming here, although I knew with whom I was dealing. . . . This must come to an end immediately! Your Reverence, believe me that I had no knowledge of all the details revealed here; I didn’t want to believe any of this and only now have I found it out for the first time. . . . The father’s jealous of the son over the scandalous behavior of a woman, and he schemes with this creature about how to land the son in prison. . . . And I’ve been forced to be present here in such company. . . . I’ve been deceived, I declare to everyone, deceived as much as anyone . . .”

“Dmitry Fyodorovich!” Fyodor Pavlovich roared suddenly in a strange voice. “If you weren’t my own son, I’d challenge you to a duel this very second. . . . With pistols, at a distance of three paces . . . across a handkerchief! Across a handkerchief!”[5] he concluded, stamping his feet.

There are moments with old liars, who have been acting all their lives, when they enter into their parts so completely that they actually tremble and weep from strong emotion, in spite of the fact that even at that very instant (or a split second later), they could whisper to themselves: “But you’re lying, you shameless old man, you’re only acting now, in spite of all your ‘holy’ rage and ‘holy’ moment of rage.”

Dmitry Fyodorovich frowned painfully, regarding his father with inexpressible contempt.

“I thought . . . I thought . . .” he said quietly and with restraint, “that I was coming home with the angel of my soul, my fiancée, to comfort him in his old age, but I found only a depraved voluptuary and a contemptible clown!”

“A duel!” bellowed the little old man again, gasping for breath and spraying spit with every syllable. “And you, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, let me tell you, sir, that in your whole family there’s never been and isn’t now a woman more honest—do you hear, no woman more honest than this ‘creature,’ as you just dared to call her! And you, Dmitry Fyodorovich, you exchanged your fiancée for this ‘creature,’ so you yourself must have realized that your own fiancée isn’t worth the sole of her boot—that’s the kind of creature she is!”

“Shame!” Father Iosif suddenly interrupted.

“Shameful and disgraceful!” cried Kalganov in his adolescent voice, blushing deeply, and trembling with agitation; up to this point he had been silent.

“Why is such a man alive?” Dmitry Fyodorovich snarled with ferocity, almost beside himself with rage, scrunching up his shoulders and looking practically like a hunchback. “You tell me, can he be permitted to continue defiling the earth with his existence?” He glanced around at everyone, pointing to the old man. He spoke slowly and in measured tones.

“Do you hear, monks, do you hear the patricide?” cried Fyodor Pavlovich, turning suddenly to Father Iosif. “That’s the answer to your ‘Shame.’ What’s shameful? This ‘creature,’ this ‘scandalous woman,’ may be holier than all of you, you monks who are busy saving your souls! She may have fallen in her youth, a victim of her environment, but she ‘loved much,’ and Christ Himself forgave the woman who ‘loved much’ . . .”[6]

“It wasn’t for that sort of love that Christ forgave her,” the gentle Father Iosif said with some impatience.

“No, it was just for that kind, for that very kind, monks, for that kind! You’re here eating cabbage and saving your souls and you think that you are righteous men! You eat a gudgeon every day and think that you’re bribing God with gudgeons!”

“This is outrageous, outrageous!” The cry came from every side of the monk’s cell.

But this entire shameful scene ended in a most unexpected fashion. The elder rose from his place quite suddenly. Almost at his wit’s end from fear for the elder and for everyone else, Alyosha managed to support him by the arm. The elder took a few steps in the direction of Dmitry Fyodorovich and, when he had reached him, sank down on his knees before him. Alyosha thought at first that he’d collapsed from weakness, but that was not the case. Kneeling there, the elder bowed at Dmitry Fyodorovich’s feet with a full, deliberate, and conscious bow, going so far as to touch his forehead to the floor. Alyosha was so astonished that he didn’t even have the presence of mind to support the elder when he stood up again. A faint smile lingered on the elder’s lips.

“Forgive me! Forgive me, all of you!” he said, bowing all around to his guests in turn.

Dmitry Fyodorovich stood for several moments in amazement: bowing down to the ground before him—what did that mean? At last he cried, “Oh, God!” and, after covering his face with his hands, bolted from the room. The crowd of guests hurried out after him; in their confusion they didn’t even say good-bye or bow to their host. Only the monks went up to the elder again for his blessing.

“Why did he bow down at his feet? Was that some sort of symbol or what?” said Fyodor Pavlovich, who had quieted down; he was trying to engage the others in a conversation, though he dared not address his question to anyone in particular as they made their way out of the hermitage.

“I can’t speak for what goes on in a madhouse or for insane people,” was Miusov’s immediate and bitter reply. “But I can do without your company, Fyodor Pavlovich, and believe me, it will be forever. Where’s that monk who was here before?”

But “that monk”—that is, the one who’d invited them to dine with the father superior—didn’t keep them waiting long. He met the guests right there, just as they were coming down the steps from the elder’s cell, as if he’d been waiting for them all along.

“Please do me a great favor, Reverend Father, and pay my deepest respects to the father superior and ask His Reverence to excuse me, Miusov, personally, and tell him that due to sudden unforeseen circumstances, I cannot possibly have the honor of dining with him in the refectory, in spite of my sincere desire to do so,” Pyotr Aleksandrovich said to the monk with some irritation.

“And that unforeseen circumstance is, of course, me!” Fyodor Pavlovich instantly chimed in. “Listen, Father, Pyotr Aleksandrovich doesn’t want to remain here in my company one moment longer, or else he’d go along with you immediately. Go along, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, go on to the father superior, and a hearty appetite to you! I’m the one who will leave, not you. Home, home, I’ll eat at home; I don’t feel comfortable here, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, my cherished family relation.”

“I’m not your family relation and never was, you despicable man!”

“I said it on purpose to make you angry, because you always deny the relationship, even though you are a relative, whatever you claim; I can prove it with a church calendar. As for you, Ivan Fyodorovich, I’ll send horses for you later; stay here, if you want to. And the most basic courtesy demands that you, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, make your appearance before the father superior now to apologize for the uproar we’ve caused . . .”

“Is it true that you’re leaving? You’re not lying?”

“Pyotr Aleksandrovich, how could I dare to attend after what’s just happened? I got carried away, gentlemen, forgive me, I simply got carried away! Besides, I was very upset! And ashamed. Gentlemen, one man has the heart of Alexander the Great and another has the heart of Fido, the little dog. I have the heart of the little dog Fido. My courage has failed me! After such a fiasco, how could I possibly go to dinner, tucking into the monastery sauces? I’m ashamed, I can’t go, and you must excuse me!”

“The devil only knows what he’s up to; what if he’s deceiving us?” Miusov said, pausing to reflect, his eyes following the departing buffoon with distrust. Fyodor Pavlovich turned around and, having noticed that Pyotr Aleksandrovich was continuing to follow him with his eyes, blew him a kiss.

“Well, are you going to the father superior?” Miusov asked Ivan Fyodorovich abruptly.

“Why not? Besides, I got a personal invitation from the father superior yesterday.”

“Unfortunately, I feel almost obligated to attend this cursed dinner,” Miusov continued in the same vein of bitter irritation, without paying the slightest attention to the fact that the monk was listening. “We should at least apologize for what went on here today and explain that it wasn’t because of us. . . . What do you think?”

“Yes, we should explain that it wasn’t our fault. Besides, my father won’t be there,” Ivan Fyodorovich observed.

“I should hope not! Damn this dinner!”

Still, they all walked on. The monk listened to their talk in silence. On the path through the grove he made only one remark: that the father superior had been waiting a long time and that they were now more than half an hour late. No one answered him. Miusov looked at Ivan Fyodorovich with hatred.

“He’s going to this meal as if nothing at all had happened!” he thought. “A brazen expression on his face and the conscience of a Karamazov!”

1 See Colossians 3:1–2.

2 “Reigning” (Ger.).

3 Characters from Franz Schiller’s verse play Die Räuber (1781). The Robbers follows the story of two aristocratic brothers, Karl and Franz von Moor, as the younger Franz plots to take his older sibling’s inheritance.

4 Not a very high military order.

5 That is, at very close range.

6 Luke 7:47.

VII

A SEMINARIAN-CAREERIST

Alyosha led the elder into his bedroom and sat him down on the bed. It was a very small room with only the necessary furniture; the narrow, iron bedstead had a strip of felt instead of a mattress. In the corner near the icons stood a lectern with a cross and a Gospel on it. The elder lowered himself feebly onto the bed; his eyes were glittering and he was breathing heavily. After getting seated, he stared at Alyosha fixedly, as if thinking about something.

“Go ahead, my dear, go on; Porfiry is enough for me; you should hurry. You’re needed there, go to the father superior and assist at the table.”

“Give me your blessing to stay here,” Alyosha implored in a pleading voice.

“You’re more needed there. There’s no peace to be had there. You’ll assist and be of use. If demons arise, read a prayer. And remember this, my son”—the elder loved to call him that—“in the future your place is not here. Remember this, young man. As soon as God decides to allow me to depart—you must leave the monastery. You must leave here for good.”

Alyosha shuddered.

“What’s the matter? This is not your place for now. I bless you for great service in the world. You must sojourn there for a long time. You will have to get married: you will have to. You must experience all things before you come back here. There will be much to do. I don’t doubt you and therefore I send you forth. Christ is with you. Treasure Him, and He will treasure you. You will behold great grief, and you will be happy in that grief. Here is my behest to you: seek happiness in grief. Work, you must constantly work. Remember my words henceforth, because although I will still be able to speak with you again, not only my days, but my hours are numbered.”

Alyosha’s face once again expressed strong emotion. The corners of his mouth were trembling.

“What is the matter this time?” the elder asked with a slight smile. “Let the secular bid farewell to their dead with tears; here we rejoice over a father who is departing. We rejoice and pray for him. Leave me now. I must pray. Go and hurry. Be near your brothers. Not just one, but both of them.”

The elder lifted his hand to bless him. It was impossible to object, although Alyosha wanted very much to remain. He wished to ask, and the question was on the tip of his tongue: “What did that bow to my brother Dmitry signify?” But he dared not ask. He knew that the elder would explain it to him without question if that were possible. But clearly that was not his will. That bow struck Alyosha deeply; he believed blindly that there was some mysterious meaning in it. Mysterious and perhaps even dreadful. When he left the hermitage to hurry to the monastery for the beginning of the dinner at the father superior’s (of course, merely to serve at the table), his heart suddenly contracted painfully, and he stood still; he seemed to hear the elder’s words again, predicting his imminent demise. That which the elder had predicted, with such precision, would undoubtedly come to pass; Alyosha believed that devoutly. But how could he be left without him? How could he go on without seeing or hearing him? And where would he go? He had told him not to weep and to leave the monastery, oh, Lord! Alyosha hadn’t experienced such anguish in some time. He proceeded through the grove that divided the hermitage from the monastery; he was unable to endure his own thoughts, finding them so oppressive; he began looking at the age-old pine trees along both sides of the path. The way was not long, some five hundred steps, no more; at this hour he didn’t expect to meet anyone, but suddenly he noticed Rakitin at the first bend in the path. He was there waiting for someone.

“Are you perhaps waiting for me?” asked Alyosha, when he caught up with him.

“Yes, indeed,” Rakitin replied with a grin. “You’re hurrying to the father superior’s. I know: to dine with him. There hasn’t been such an occasion since the father superior received the bishop and General Pakhatov, do you remember? I won’t be there, but you go on ahead; serve the sauces. Tell me one thing, Alyosha: what does that dream mean? That’s what I wanted to ask.”

“What dream?”

“The deep bow to your dear brother Dmitry Fyodorovich. He even touched his forehead to the floor!”

“Are you talking about Father Zosima?”

“Yes, about Father Zosima.”

“His forehead?”

“Ah, I expressed myself disrespectfully! Well, so be it. So, what does that dream mean?”

“I don’t know, Misha.”

“I knew that he wouldn’t explain it to you. There’s nothing complicated about it; it’s just the usual holy nonsense. But that trick was done on purpose. Now all the pious people in town and in the province will talk about it: ‘What,’ they’ll ask, ‘does that dream mean?’ In my opinion, the elder’s really perceptive: he’s sniffed out a crime. Your house reeks of it.”

“What sort of crime?”

Rakitin evidently wished to say more.

“It’ll take place in your little family, this crime. It will be between your dear brothers and your wealthy father. So Father Zosima touched his forehead to the floor, just in case. Then, if something happens, they’ll say, ‘Ah, so this holy elder predicted it, prophesied it,’ although what sort of prophecy is it if he touched the floor with his forehead? ‘No,’ they’ll say, ‘this was a symbol, an allegory,’ the devil only knows! They’ll praise him, remember him: ‘A crime,’ they’ll say, ‘he guessed in advance and pointed to the criminal.’ It’s always like that with holy fools: they cross themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the church. Just like your elder: he drives the righteous man away with a stick, but makes a deep bow to the murderer.”

“What crime? What murderer? What are you talking about?”

Alyosha stood as if rooted to the ground; Rakitin also stopped walking.

“What murderer? As if you didn’t know. I bet you’ve even thought about it yourself. By the way, it’s curious. Listen, Alyosha, you always tell the truth, even though you’re always between two stools: have you thought about this or not, tell me.”

“I have,” Alyosha replied softly. Even Rakitin was troubled.

“What? You really have thought about it?” he cried.

“I . . . it’s not that I’ve thought about it,” mumbled Alyosha, “but when you just now began talking about it so strangely, it seemed to me that I myself had thought about it, too.”

“You see (and you expressed it so clearly), you see? Today, looking at your papa and your dear brother Mitenka, you thought about a crime? Therefore, I’m not mistaken.”

“But wait, wait,” Alyosha interrupted anxiously. “What led you to this idea? Why are you so interested? That’s the first question.”

“Two different questions, but natural ones. I’ll answer each one separately. Why did I see it? I wouldn’t have seen anything, if I hadn’t suddenly understood your brother Dmitry Fyodorovich, instantly and suddenly, for exactly what he is. I grasped the whole man at once from one trait. These most honest but very passionate people all have a line that must not be crossed. Otherwise, otherwise, he would stick a knife into his own father. But your papa’s a drunk and an impossible debauchee; he’s never understood moderation in anything—if they both can’t restrain themselves, they’ll fall off the deep end.”

“No, Misha, no. If that’s all there is, you’ve reassured me. It won’t come to that.”

“Then why are you still trembling? You know what? Let’s say he’s an honest fellow, your Mityenka (he’s stupid, but honest); but he’s a sensualist. That’s his definition and his entire essence. His father passed on his vile sensuality to him. But I’m only surprised at you, Alyosha: how have you managed to maintain your chastity? After all, you’re also a Karamazov! In your family sensuality has become a disease. Now these three sensualists are keeping watch over each other . . . keeping their knives tucked into their boots. The three of them have knocked their heads together, and you may be the fourth.”

“You’re wrong about that woman. Dmitry . . . despises her,” Alyosha said with a shudder.

“You mean Grushenka? No, brother, he doesn’t despise her. If he’s really traded his fiancée for her, he doesn’t despise her. Here . . . here, brother, there’s something you can’t understand yet. A man falls in love with some beauty, a female body, or even just a part of a woman’s body (a sensualist can understand this); he’ll give away his own children for her, he’ll sell his own mother and father, Russia and his fatherland; even if he’s an honest man, he’ll steal; even if he’s meek, he’ll murder; even if he’s loyal, he’ll betray. That poet of women’s feet, Pushkin, wrote about them in his verse;[1] others don’t write about them, but they can’t look at women’s feet without a shudder. And it’s not only the feet. . . . Here, brother, contempt doesn’t help, even though he did despise Grushenka. He both despises her and can’t tear himself away from her.”

“I understand this,” Alyosha suddenly blurted out.

“Really? You must really understand it, if you blurted it out from the first word,” said Rakitin with malice. “You blurted it out unintentionally, it just came out. Your confession is that much more valuable: therefore, it’s a familiar theme to you, you’ve thought about it before, about sensuality, that is. Ah, you virgin! You, Alyoshka,[2] you prude; you’re holy, I agree, but you’re a prude, the devil only knows what you’ve thought about and the devil only knows what you know! A virgin, but you’ve been down to the depths—I’ve been observing you for a long time. You yourself are a Karamazov—a real Karamazov—no doubt your race and selection must mean something.[3] You’re a sensualist from your father, and a holy fool from your mother. Why are you trembling? Or am I speaking the truth? Do you know what? Grushenka’s asked me: ‘Bring him (that is, you) to me and I’ll strip off his cassock.’ That’s what she said: bring him, bring him! I only wondered why she’s so curious about you. You know, she’s also an extraordinary woman!”

“Give her my greetings and tell her I won’t come,” Alyosha said, smiling wryly. “Finish what you were saying, Mikhail, and then I’ll tell you what I was thinking.”

“What’s there to finish? It’s all clear. It’s all the same old song, brother. If even you’re a sensualist, then what about Ivan, your full brother? After all, he’s also a Karamazov. There’s the crux of the whole Karamazov question: sensualists, money-grabbers, and holy fools! Now your brother Ivan publishes theological articles as a joke for some ridiculous mysterious reason; he himself is an atheist, and he admits that vileness himself—that’s your brother Ivan. Besides that, he’s trying to steal your brother Mitya’s fiancée for himself, and it seems that he’ll succeed. What’s more: he’s doing it with Mityenka’s consent, because Mityenka himself is letting him have her, just to get rid of her and run off with Grushenka as soon as possible. And he’s doing all this in spite of his nobility and disinterestedness, keep that in mind. Those are the most fatal people! The devil only knows what to make of you people after this: he recognizes his own and still proceeds! Now listen to this: the old man, your father, is now standing in Mityenka’s way. He’s suddenly lost his head over Grushenka; his mouth waters at the very sight of her. It’s because of her that he created such a big scandal in the monk’s cell just now, because Miusov dared call her a depraved creature. He’s in love with her like a smitten tomcat. Previously she worked for him on some obscure business dealing with his taverns, but now he’s suddenly woken up, taken a good look at her, and gone into a frenzy; he comes to her with proposals, not respectable, of course. They’ll collide, the father and son, on that path. But Grushenka will have neither of them; she’s still hedging and teasing both, seeing which one she can get the most out of, because although she could squeeze a lot of money from the father, he still won’t marry her, and in the end he might become as stingy as a Yid and shut his purse. In that case, Mitenka has his value; he lacks money, but he’s capable of marrying her. Yes, sir, he is! To abandon his fiancée, an incomparable beauty, Katerina Ivanovna, wealthy, and the daughter of a colonel, and to marry Grushenka, the former mistress of Samsonov, that old shopkeeper, a lecherous lout, and mayor of our town. As a result of all this, a crime may indeed come to pass. Your brother Ivan’s waiting for this; then he has it made: he gets Katerina Ivanovna, for whom he’s pining, and grabs her dowry of sixty thousand. For an insignificant pauper like him, that’s a very enticing prospect. And note this: he won’t be offending Mitya; he’ll even be doing him a favor. I know for sure that last week Mitenka got drunk in a tavern with gypsies and was shouting that he was unworthy of his fiancée, Katenka, but that his brother Ivan was a worthy choice. And, of course, in the end Katerina Ivanovna herself will not refuse such a fascinating man as Ivan Fyodorovich; why, even now she’s hesitating between the two of them. And how did that Ivan charm you so that you all venerate him? He’s laughing at you: he’s in clover, as if to say, I’m sitting here and feasting at your expense.”

“How do you know all this? How can you speak so confidently?” Alyosha asked suddenly and sharply, frowning.

“And just why are you asking that now and why are you afraid of my answer in advance? That means you yourself agree that I’m speaking the truth.”

“You don’t like Ivan. Ivan isn’t tempted by money.”

“Really? And Katerina Ivanovna’s beauty? It’s not just about the money, though sixty thousand is a very tempting thing.”

“Ivan’s above that. He’s not tempted by those thousands. Ivan’s not seeking money, nor is he seeking serenity. Perhaps he’s seeking suffering.”

“What sort of a dream is that? Oh, you noblemen!”

“Oh, Misha, his soul is impulsive. His mind is held captive. He has a great, unresolved idea. He’s one of those people who don’t need millions, but need an answer to their doubts.”

“That’s plagiarism, Alyoshka. You’ve paraphrased your elder. Ah, Ivan has posed a riddle for you!” Rakitin cried with evident malice. Even his face changed, and his lips became twisted. “And it’s a stupid riddle; there’s nothing to guess. Just rack your brains—you’ll solve it. His article is both amusing and absurd. You’ve heard his stupid theory before: ‘There’s no immortality of the soul, so there’s no virtue, and that means everything is permitted.’ (And remember, by the way, that your dear brother Mitenka cried, ‘I’ll remember that!’) It’s a seductive theory for scoundrels. . . . I swear, it’s stupid . . . not for scoundrels, but for schoolboy braggarts with ‘profound, unresolved ideas.’ He’s a show-off, and that’s all there is to it: ‘On the one hand, we cannot but admit, while on the other hand, we cannot but acknowledge!’ His entire theory is nothing but an abomination! Mankind itself will find the strength to live for virtue, even if it doesn’t believe in the immortality of the soul. It will find it in a love of freedom, equality, and fraternity . . .”

Rakitin had become heated, almost unable to restrain himself. But suddenly, as if remembering something, he paused.

“Well, enough,” he said, smiling in a more distorted way than before. “Why are you laughing? Do you think I’m a vulgar idiot?”

“No, I could never think you’re a vulgar idiot. You’re clever, but . . . never mind, I smiled without thinking about what I was doing. I understand that you can become excited, Misha. I guessed from your animation that you yourself aren’t indifferent to Katerina Ivanovna; I’ve suspected it for some time, and that’s why you don’t like my brother Ivan. Are you jealous of him?”

“And am I also jealous of her money? Won’t you add that?”

“No, I won’t add anything about her money; I don’t want to insult you.”

“I believe it, since you just said so; but the devil take you and your brother Ivan! Do none of you understand that even apart from Katerina Ivanovna, one might dislike your brother intensely? And why should I like him? The devil take him! He favors me with abuse. So why don’t I have the right to abuse him?”

“I’ve never heard him say anything about you, good or bad; he doesn’t talk about you at all.”

“But I heard that the day before yesterday at Katerina Ivanovna’s, he was abusing me for all he’s worth—that’s how interested he is in your humble servant. And, brother, after this, who’s jealous of whom—I don’t know! He deigned to express the idea that if I didn’t decide on a career as an abbot in the very near future and become a monk, then I’d certainly leave for Petersburg and attach myself to some thick journal, as a critic for sure; I’d write for a dozen or so years and, in the end, become the owner of the journal. Then I’d publish it once again with a liberal, atheist tendency, with a socialist tinge, even with a slight sheen of socialism, but being on guard, that is, in essence, working both sides, pulling the wool over fools’ eyes. The end of my career, according to your brother, will consist of the following: the slight sheen of socialism won’t prevent me from putting aside the subscription proceeds for a current account and investing them with the guidance of some little Yid, until I can erect a splendid house in Petersburg, move the publishing office, and rent the upper floors to lodgers. He’s even selected the place for it: near the new Stone Bridge across the Neva, which is planned, they say, in the capital, reaching from Liteyny Prospect to the Vyborg Side . . .”

“Ah, Misha, that might be exactly what will happen, every word of it!” cried Alyosha suddenly; unable to restrain himself, he grinned gaily.

“And you’re being sarcastic, Aleksey Fyodorovich.”

“No, no, I’m joking; forgive me. I have something else in mind. But allow me to ask: who could have revealed all these details to you, and who could you have heard them from? You couldn’t have been at Katerina Ivanovna’s personally, when he was talking about you.”

“I wasn’t there; on the other hand, Dmitry Fyodorovich was, and I heard all this with my own ears from him—that is, if you like, he said it, and I was listening, naturally inadvertently, because I was sitting in Grushenka’s bedroom and couldn’t leave the whole time Dmitry Fyodorovich was in the next room.”

“Ah, yes, I forgot she’s your relative.”

“My relative? Grushenka, my relative?” Rakitin cried suddenly, blushing deeply. “Have you lost your mind? You’re mad!”

“What? Isn’t she your relative? That’s what I heard . . .”

“Where did you hear that? No, you Karamazovs pose at being descended from some great and ancient noble family, while your father goes running around like a buffoon to other people’s tables, even though he’s admitted to the kitchen only out of charity. Let’s agree, I’m just the son of a priest and I’m nothing compared to you noblemen, but don’t insult me so gleefully and recklessly. I have my honor, too, Aleksey Fyodorovich. I can’t be related to Grushenka, a common whore. I ask you to understand, sir!”

Rakitin was intensely annoyed.

“Excuse me, for goodness’ sake, I had no idea; besides, is she really a whore? Is she really . . . that kind of woman?” Alyosha said, suddenly blushing. “I repeat, I heard she was your relative. You visit her frequently and you yourself have said that there are no intimate relations between you. . . . I never knew you had such contempt for her. . . . Does she really deserve that?”

“If I do visit her, I may have my own reasons, and that’s enough for you. And as far as the relationship is concerned, your brother or even your father is more likely to make her your relative, than for her to be mine. Well, here we are. Go on in through the kitchen. Hey! What is it now? Are we late? They can’t have had their dinner already. Ah, have the Karamazovs been making mischief yet again? No doubt about it. Here’s your father and Ivan Fyodorovich following him. They’ve left the father superior. There’s Father Isidor shouting something after them from the steps. And your father’s shouting back, waving his arms, and probably cursing. Bah, and there goes Miusov, driving away in his carriage, see over there. And even Maksimov the landowner is fleeing—there must have been a scandal. In other words, there was no dinner! Did they give the father superior a beating? Or, perhaps, they got a beating? That would have served them right!”

Rakitin’s exclamations were not in error. There really was a scandal, unprecedented and unexpected. It had all happened spontaneously.

1 Pushkin wrote a number of poems on the subject of women’s feet, including a section of his novel in verse, Eugene Onegin.

2 An affectionate diminutive form of his name.

3 Evidence of Rakitin’s Darwinism.

VIII

THE SCANDAL

As Miusov and Ivan Fyodorovich were entering the father superior’s rooms, a kind of subtle change rapidly occurred in Pyotr Aleksandrovich, a sincerely decent and refined man: he became ashamed of his anger. He felt that he should have had so little respect for the worthless Fyodor Pavlovich that he shouldn’t have lost his composure in the elder’s cell and shouldn’t have dropped his restraint. “But at least the monks were not to blame for any of it,” he suddenly decided on the steps, “and if they’re decent people (and the father superior, Nikolai, is also of the gentry, it seems), then why not be nice, courteous, and polite with them? I won’t argue; I’ll even agree with them; I’ll win them over with kindness and . . . and . . . finally I’ll demonstrate to them that I’m no friend to that Aesop, that buffoon, that Pierrot,[1] and that I made a fool of myself just as they all did . . .”

He resolved to concede once and for all, that very day, to the monks over the controversial woodcutting and fishing rights (he himself had no idea where these activities took place), all the more so since there was very little money involved, and to terminate all his legal action against the monastery.

All these generous intentions were strengthened when they entered the father superior’s dining room. It really wasn’t a dining room, since he had only two rooms in all, though they were much larger and more comfortable than the elder’s cell. But the furnishings in the room were not marked by any special luxury: the furniture was made of mahogany covered in leather, in the outdated style of the 1820s; even the floor was unpainted; on the other hand, everything glowed with cleanliness; there were many lavish flowers on the windowsills; but the principle luxury at that moment was the splendidly set table, although even here one must speak comparatively: the tablecloth was clean, the dishes sparkling; there were three kinds of freshly baked bread, two bottles of wine, three jars of excellent monastery honey, and a large glass pitcher of monastery kvass, famous in the neighborhood. There was no vodka at all. Rakitin said later that this dinner had consisted of five courses: fish soup with sterlets and fish pastries; boiled fish, prepared according to a special recipe; salmon cutlets; ice cream and fruit compote; and finally blancmange. Rakitin couldn’t restrain himself: he peeked into the father superior’s kitchen, where he also had his contacts, and got wind of all these dishes. He had contacts everywhere and extracted profit everywhere. He possessed a very restless, covetous mind. He was fully aware of his own considerable abilities, but anxiously exaggerated them to serve his own self-importance. He knew for certain that he was going to play an important role, but Alyosha, who was very attached to him, was tormented by the fact that Rakitin was dishonest, and completely unaware of that himself; on the contrary, he considered that since he would not steal money from the table, he viewed himself as an extremely honest man. Not only Alyosha, but no one else could do anything about that.

Rakitin, as a minor personage, could not be invited to the dinner; on the other hand, Father Iosif, Father Paisy, and one other monk were. They were already waiting in the father superior’s dining room when Pyotr Aleksandrovich, Kalganov, and Ivan Fyodorovich came in. The landowner Maksimov was also waiting, standing to one side. The father superior, in order to receive his guests, moved into the center of the room. He was a tall, thin old man, but still strong, with black hair touched with gray, and he had a long, pious, imposing face. He bowed in silence to the guests, but this time they approached to receive his blessing. Miusov was about to kiss his hand, but the father superior somehow pulled his hand away in time, and the kiss never took place. On the other hand, Ivan Fyodorovich and Kalganov received the full blessing, that is with the most simple-hearted and unsophisticated smacking sound on his hand.

“We must sincerely apologize, Your Reverence,” began Pyotr Aleksandrovich, grinning courteously, but using an imposing and respectful tone of voice. “We apologize that we have come alone, without one of the invited guests, Fyodor Pavlovich; he was forced to decline the invitation to dine with you, and not without reason. In the Reverend Father Zosima’s cell, carried away by his unfortunate disagreement with his own son, he uttered some totally inappropriate words . . . about which, as it seems”—he glanced at the monks—“Your Reverence has already been made aware. And therefore, aware of his own guilt, and sincerely repenting, he felt ashamed and was unable to overcome it; he asked us, his son Ivan Fyodorovich and me, to express his sincere regret, repentance, and contrition. . . . In a word, he hopes and wishes to make amends later; and for now, asking for your blessing, he begs you to forget what has just happened . . .”

Miusov fell silent. After uttering the last words of this tirade, he remained completely satisfied, to such an extent that there were no traces of his recent irritation left in him. Once again he loved humanity completely and sincerely. The father superior, listening to him with dignity, nodded his head slightly and replied:

“I genuinely regret his absence. Perhaps at our table he might have come to like us, and we might have learned to like him. I invite you, gentlemen, to take your seats.”

He stood before the icon and began to pray aloud. Everyone bowed their heads respectfully, but the landowner Maksimov stepped forward and clasped his hands in front of himself with particular fervor.

And it was then that Fyodor Pavlovich played his last trick. It should be noted that he really had been about to go home and really did feel the impossibility of going to the father superior’s rooms for dinner as if nothing had happened, after his disgraceful behavior in the elder’s cell. It wasn’t that he was very ashamed of himself or held himself accountable; perhaps it was even the opposite; nevertheless, he felt that it would be inappropriate for him to attend the dinner. But as soon as they brought his creaking carriage around to the steps of the hermitage, just as he was about to get into it, he suddenly stopped. He recalled his own words spoken in the elder’s cell: “It always seems to me that whenever I go anywhere, I’m always the lowest of all, and that people always take me for a buffoon. Well then, I really will play the buffoon because all of you are stupider and lower than me.” He wanted to take his revenge on them for all of his own inappropriate actions. He also suddenly remembered how once, some time ago, he had been asked, “Why do you hate such and such a person so much?” and he had replied at the time, in a burst of his buffoonish impudence, “Here’s why: he really didn’t do anything to me, but I did something indecent to him, and since then I’ve hated him.” Recalling this incident now, he smiled quietly and maliciously in a moment of reflection. His eyes sparkled, and even his lips began trembling. “If I started it, I will finish it,” he suddenly resolved. His most treasured feelings at that time could perhaps be expressed in the following words: “Well, since it’s not possible to rehabilitate me now, I’ll spit in their faces as if to say, ‘I don’t give a damn what you think of me now!’ ” He ordered his coachman to wait, and quickly returned to the monastery and went straight to the father superior’s rooms. He still didn’t know what he would do, but he knew that he had lost control of himself and that—with the slightest push—he might reach the limits of some obscenity—but only some obscenity, nothing criminal or an abomination for which he could be punished. As a last resort, he could always restrain himself, and he himself was even surprised on that account. He appeared in the father superior’s dining room at the exact moment when the prayer had finished and everyone was moving to the table. After pausing on the threshold, he surveyed the assembled company and burst into prolonged, impudent, malicious laughter, looking all of them brazenly in the face.

“And they thought I’d gone; but here I am!” he cried to the whole room.

For one moment they all stared at him and remained silent; suddenly everyone felt that something horrendous, ridiculous, absolutely scandalous was about to happen. Pyotr Aleksandrovich went from being in a most benevolent mood to a most savage one. Everything that had abated and calmed down in his heart immediately revived and flared up again.

“No, I can’t stand this!” he cried, “I can’t . . . I really can’t!”

Blood rushed to his head. He even became confused, couldn’t speak, and grabbed his hat.

“What can’t he stand?” shouted Fyodor Pavlovich. “What can’t he do? What can’t he really do? Your Reverence, may I come in or not? Will you receive me as your guest?”

“You are welcome with all my heart,” replied the father superior. “Gentlemen!” he added at once, “I ask you with all my heart to lay aside your previous disagreements, and to come together in love and family harmony, with a prayer to the Lord for our humble meal . . .”

“No, no, impossible,” Pyotr Aleksandrovich cried, beside himself.

“If Pyotr Aleksandrovich says it’s impossible, then I think it’s impossible, too, and won’t stay. That’s why I came. I’ll go everywhere with Pyotr Aleksandrovich now: if he leaves, I will, too; if he stays, I will, too. You hurt him just now by what you said about family harmony, Father Superior: he doesn’t recognize me as his relative! Isn’t that so, von Sohn? That’s von Sohn standing there. Hello, von Sohn.”

“You . . . do you mean me, sir?” the startled landowner Maksimov muttered.

“Of course I do,” cried Fyodor Pavlovich. “If not you, then who? The father superior couldn’t be von Sohn!”

“But I’m not von Sohn; I’m Maksimov.”

“No, you’re von Sohn. Your Reverence, do you know who von Sohn was? There was a famous criminal trial: he was murdered in a house of ill repute—I believe that’s what you call such places—murdered and robbed, and in spite of his advanced years, he was loaded into a trunk and sent from Petersburg to Moscow in a railway baggage car, with a tag. As they were sealing him up, the dancing whores were singing songs and playing the psaltery, that is, playing the piano. That’s who this von Sohn is. He’s risen from the dead—haven’t you, von Sohn?”

“What are you talking about? How can this be?” could be heard coming from the monks.

“Let’s go!” cried Pyotr Aleksandrovich, turning to Kalganov.

“No, sir. Excuse me!” Fyodor Pavlovich interrupted sharply and took another step into the room. “Allow me to finish. There in the elder’s cell they accused me of behaving disrespectfully, because I was shouting about eating gudgeon. My relative Pyotr Aleksandrovich Miusov likes it when there is plus de noblesse que de sincérité in one’s words;[2] but I prefer plus de sincérité que de noblesse,[3] and damn the noblesse. Isn’t that so, von Sohn? Allow me, Father Superior, even though I’m a buffoon and play the part of one, I’m a knight of honor and want to have my say. Yes, sir, I’m a knight of honor, while in Pyotr Aleksandrovich there’s only wounded vanity and nothing more. Perhaps I came here today to take a look and have my say. My son Aleksey is here saving his soul; as his father, I’m concerned for his well-being and it’s my duty to care. While I was playing the fool, I kept listening and pretending secretly, and now I wish to present to you the final act of the performance. How is it with us? We let things lie where they fall. If something’s fallen once, it must lie there forever. Not at all, sir! I want to get up. Holy Fathers, I’m annoyed at you. Confession is a great sacrament, one I’m prepared to revere and to venerate; but there in the elder’s cell suddenly everyone was down on their knees and confessing aloud. Is it really permitted to confess aloud? Wasn’t it established by the holy fathers that one should confess in secret, so that one’s confession will remain a mystery, as it was in the old days? Otherwise, how can I explain to him in the presence of everyone, for example, that I did this or that deed . . . that or this, you understand? Sometimes it’s offensive to say it out loud. It would be a scandal! No, Fathers, here with you one might even join the Flagellants . . .[4] I intend to write to the Holy Synod[5] at the first opportunity and will take my son Alyosha home . . .”

Nota bene:[6] Fyodor Pavlovich had heard the gossips. There were at one time malicious rumors, which even reached the archbishop (not only about our monastery, but also about others where the institution of the elders had been established), that the elders were garnering too much respect, even to the detriment of the father superior, and that in the meantime, the elders were abusing the sacrament of the confession, and so on and so forth. The accusations were absurd and had faded away on their own, both at our monastery and elsewhere. But the stupid devil who had seized Fyodor Pavlovich and was carrying him off on his own nerves into lower and lower depths of shame had prompted him with this old slander, of which Fyodor Pavlovich himself had understood not one word. He was even unable to express it correctly, especially since on this occasion no one in the elder’s cell had been kneeling or confessing aloud, so Fyodor Pavlovich couldn’t have seen anything of the sort himself; he was speaking only about old rumors and slanders, which he himself had recalled. But after he had uttered this nonsense, he felt that he had put his foot in his mouth, and he suddenly wanted to show his listeners, and above all himself, that he had not been talking nonsense. And though he knew very well that with each additional word he stated, he would be adding more and more nonsense to what he’d said, he was unable to restrain himself and rushed ahead anyway.

“What a disgrace!” cried Pyotr Aleksandrovich.

“Forgive me,” said the father superior suddenly. “It was said in days of old, ‘Many people have begun to speak against me and have uttered evil things about me. After hearing it all, I said to myself: it is the healing of Jesus and He has sent it to cure my vain soul.’ Therefore we thank you humbly, honored guest.”

And he made a low bow to Fyodor Pavlovich.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Hypocrisy and worn-out phrases! Worn-out phrases and gestures! Old lies and conventional bows! We know what these bows are all about. ‘A kiss on the lips and a dagger in the heart,’ as it says in Schiller’s Robbers.[7] I don’t like lies, Fathers. I want the truth! But the truth doesn’t lie in gudgeons, and that I have proclaimed! Father monks, why do you fast? Why do you expect rewards in heaven for that? For that sort of reward I will start to fast, too! No, holy monks, you try leading a virtuous life, bringing good to society, without locking yourself up in a monastery at someone else’s expense, expecting a reward in heaven—that would be more difficult. I can also speak smoothly, Father Superior. What have they prepared here?” he asked, going up to the table. “Vintage port, Médoc from the Yeliseyevs’ shop. Well, well, Fathers! That’s not exactly gudgeon, is it? Just look at the bottles the fathers have provided, hee, hee, hee! And just who’s furnished all of this? It’s the Russian peasant, the worker, who brings the kopecks he’s earned with his own greasy hands, taking them away from his family, and away from the state coffers! Why, you’re bleeding the people dry, Holy Fathers!”

“This is completely contemptible on your part,” said Father Iosif. Father Paisy remained stubbornly silent. Miusov rushed out of the room, and Kalganov followed him.

“Well, Fathers, I’ll follow Pyotr Aleksandrovich out! I won’t come here again. You may beg me on your knees, but I won’t come back. I’ve sent you a thousand rubles, so you’re on the lookout again, hee, hee, hee! No, I won’t send you any more. I’ll take revenge for my past youth, for all my humiliations!” He banged his fist on the table in a fit of simulated emotion. “This monastery has meant a great deal to me in my life! I’ve shed many bitter tears on its behalf! You turned my wife, the shrieker, against me. You cursed me at all seven church councils, you spread rumors about me throughout the neighborhood! Enough, Fathers. This is the age of liberalism, the age of steamships and railroads. You won’t get a thousand rubles, a hundred rubles, a hundred kopecks, or anything from me!”

Another nota bene: our monastery had never played any significant role in Fyodor Pavlovich’s life, and never had he shed any bitter tears on its behalf. He had become so carried away by his own simulated tears that for one moment he himself almost believed what he was saying; he was so moved that he almost even began to weep with tender emotion; but at that moment he suddenly felt that he should turn back. The father superior bowed his head at the malicious lies and spoke imposingly once again:

“It has also been said: ‘Suffer unawares the dishonor that befalls you with joy, and be not disturbed; despise not him who so dishonors you.’ That is what we shall do.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, and all that nonsense! Fathers, I will leave. By my paternal authority I shall take my son Aleksey away from here forever. Ivan Fyodorovich, my most respectful son, allow me to order you to follow me! Von Sohn, why should you stay here? Come to see me in town. It’s merry there. It’s only a mile away; and instead of Lenten oil, I’ll serve you suckling pig with kasha; we’ll have dinner; I’ll serve cognac, and then liqueur; there’s cloudberry wine. . . . Hey, von Sohn. Don’t miss your chance!”

He left, shouting and gesticulating. And just at that moment Rakitin saw him exiting and pointed him out to Alyosha.

“Aleksey!” his father cried from a distance after noticing him. “Come home today for good; bring your pillow and your mattress; don’t show your face here again.”

Alyosha stood rooted to the spot, observing the scene attentively in silence. Meanwhile, Fyodor Pavlovich climbed into his carriage, and right after him, without even turning to Alyosha to say good-bye, Ivan Fyodorovich was about to follow in gloomy silence. But at that moment one more ridiculous and improbable scene occurred, putting the finishing touches to the whole episode. All of a sudden the landowner Maksimov appeared behind the carriage. He came up, gasping for breath, trying not to be late. Rakitin and Alyosha saw him running. He was hurrying so fast that in his impatience, he placed his foot on the same step on which Ivan Fyodorovich’s left foot was still resting; grabbing hold of the body of the carriage, he tried to jump in.

“Me, me, take me with you!” he cried, leaping up, and laughing merrily, with a blissful face, ready for anything. “Take me, too!”

“Didn’t I tell you,” cried Fyodor Pavlovich ecstatically, “that he was von Sohn! That he really is von Sohn, raised from the dead! How did you tear yourself away from there? What sort of von Sohn tricks did you pull off in there and how did you manage to get away from the dinner? You must be bold as brass! I am, but I’m surprised at you, brother! Jump in, quickly! Let him in, Vanya,[8] it’ll be fun. He can lie down at your feet. Will you, von Sohn? Or else he can sit up on the box with the coachman? Jump up on the box, von Sohn!”

But Ivan Fyodorovich, already sitting in the carriage, silently shoved Maksimov’s chest with his foot and he went flying off. If he didn’t fall, it was only his luck.

“Let’s go!” Ivan Fyodorovich cried angrily to the coachman.

“Why did you do that? Why? Why did you shove him?” objected Fyodor Pavlovich. But the carriage had already moved off. Ivan Fyodorovich made no reply.

“You’re quite something!” Fyodor Pavlovich said again, looking askance at his son, after two minutes of silence. “It was you who organized this business at the monastery, you who instigated it and encouraged it. Why are you angry now?”

“You’ve talked enough nonsense; now take a little rest,” Ivan Fyodorovich replied harshly.

Fyodor Pavlovich was silent again for a minute or two.

“Some cognac would be nice right now,” he remarked sententiously. But Ivan Fyodorovich made no reply.

“You’ll have some when we get home.”

Ivan Fyodorovich was silent.

Fyodor Pavlovich waited another two minutes.

“But I’ll still take Alyosha away from the monastery, in spite of the fact that it’ll be unpleasant for you, most respected Karl von Moor.”

Ivan Fyodorovich shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and turning away, he began staring at the road. They didn’t speak again all the rest of the way home.

1 Pierrot is a stock character of pantomime and commedia dell’arte whose origins are in the late-seventeenth-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne.

2 More nobility than sincerity (Fr.).

3 More sincerity than nobility (Fr.).

4 A mystical sect of Russian Orthodox believers who practiced self-flagellation.

5 The highest administrative organ of the Russian Orthodox Church.

6 Note well (Lat.).

7 From The Robbers, act 1, scene 2.

8 Another affectionate diminutive form of Ivan’s name.

BOOK THREE

SENSUALISTS

I

IN THE SERVANTS’ QUARTERS

The house of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov was not located in the center of town, but it was not on the outskirts either. It was rather old, but its appearance was pleasant: it consisted of one story, with an attic, painted gray, with a red iron roof. However, it was spacious and comfortable and could still stand for countless more years. It had many different storerooms, various cupboards, and hidden staircases. The house had rats, but Fyodor Pavlovich was not altogether annoyed with them: “It’s not so boring in the evenings when one is home alone.” And he really did have the habit of allowing the servants to retire to the lodge in the evening, and he would lock himself up alone in the house for the whole night. The lodge stood in the courtyard and was roomy and solid; Fyodor Pavlovich had located the kitchen there, although there was a kitchen in the house, too: he didn’t like cooking smells, and they would carry his food across the courtyard in the winter and in the summer. In general the house had been designed for a large family: there was space for five times as many masters and servants. But at the time of our story only Fyodor Pavlovich and Ivan Fyodorovich were living there; in the servants’ quarters, there were only three people: the old man Grigory; his elderly wife, Marfa; and the servant Smerdyakov, who was still a young man. However, we must say a few more words about these three servants. We’ve already said enough about the old man, Grigory Vasilievich Kutuzov. He was a solid and steady man, stubbornly and inflexibly pursuing his aim, if only it had been set out before him as the incontrovertible truth for whatever reasons (often surprisingly illogical). In general, he was honest and incorruptible. His wife, Marfa Ignatyevna, in spite of the fact that she had yielded to her husband’s will all her life, had pestered him terribly, for example, immediately after the emancipation of the serfs,[1] urging him to leave Fyodor Pavlovich and to move to Moscow to establish some sort of little shop (they had some money set aside); but Grigory had decided then, once and for all, that his old woman was talking nonsense, “because every woman is dishonest,” and that it was improper to leave their former master, whatever he was like, because “that was now their duty.”

“Do you understand what duty is?” he asked, addressing Marfa Ignatyevna.

“I do understand what duty is, Grigory Vasilievich, but what sort of duty do we have to remain here? That I don’t understand at all,” replied Marfa Ignatyevna firmly.

“Well then, don’t understand. That’s how it will be. And don’t say another word about it.”

And that’s what happened: they didn’t leave, and Fyodor Pavlovich awarded them a small salary, and actually paid it. Besides, Grigory knew that he had an indisputable influence over his master. He felt it, and that was accurate: but the shrewd and stubborn buffoon Fyodor Pavlovich, although he possessed a strong character “in certain aspects of life,” as he expressed it, was, to his own surprise, even rather weak in character in certain “other aspects of life.” He himself knew what aspects they were, and he was afraid of many things. In certain aspects it was necessary to keep a sharp lookout; and to do so was impossible without a loyal servant, and Grigory was a most loyal man. It even happened that Fyodor Pavlovich might have received a sound beating during his long career, a very painful beating, and Grigory always rescued him, although each and every time he gave him a good lecture afterward. But beatings alone wouldn’t have scared Fyodor Pavlovich: there were more serious occasions, even some very intricate and complicated ones, when Fyodor Pavlovich himself might not have been able to specify his extraordinary need for a faithful and devoted servant, which he suddenly and incomprehensibly would begin to sense in himself. These were almost morbid instances: most depraved and often cruel in his sensuality, like a lethal insect, Fyodor Pavlovich would suddenly sense in himself, during his drunken bouts, a spiritual terror and moral shudder, almost, so to speak, taking on a physical form in his soul. “It’s as if my soul were quivering in my throat at these times,” he sometimes used to say. And it was at those moments that he liked to have nearby, although not in the very same room, but in the lodge, a strong, devoted man, not at all like him, not depraved, who had witnessed all this depravity and knew all his secrets, but who nevertheless, out of devotion, would permit all of this, would not oppose it, and the main thing: didn’t reproach him or threaten him with anything, neither at the present time nor in the future; and one who would, in his hour of need, defend him—from whom? From someone unknown, but dreadful and dangerous. The point was that it needed to be another person, older and affable, so that he could summon him at a painful moment, merely look into his face, exchange a word, about something altogether unrelated, and if that person didn’t get angry, then he felt better, and if that person did become angry, then he felt worse. It sometimes happened (though very infrequently), that Fyodor Pavlovich even went over to the lodge at night to wake Grigory, and to summon him for a moment. He would come, and Fyodor Pavlovich would chat about complete nonsense and soon let him go, sometimes even with a little jest or joke, and he himself would give up and go back to bed and sleep the sleep of the righteous. Something of this sort occurred to Fyodor Pavlovich when Alyosha arrived. Alyosha “pierced his heart” by the fact that “he lived, saw everything, and didn’t condemn anything.” Besides, he brought with him something that his father had never seen before: a complete absence of contempt for him, his old man. On the contrary—constant affection and perfectly natural attachment to him, who deserved it so little. All of this came as a complete surprise to the old lecher and a man with no family ties, who had up to this time loved only “depravity.” Upon Alyosha’s departure, he admitted to himself that he had understood something that he had not wanted to understand before.

I’ve already mentioned at the beginning of my tale how Grigory hated Adelaida Ivanovna, Fyodor Pavlovich’s first wife and the mother of his first son, Dmitry Fyodorovich, and how, on the other hand, he would defend his second wife, the shrieker, Sofya Ivanovna, against the master himself, and against everyone else who dared utter a bad or frivolous word about her. His sympathy for this unfortunate woman became something sacred, such that even twenty years later he wouldn’t tolerate even a nasty allusion to her from anyone, and he would immediately reply heatedly to the offender. Grigory’s appearance was cold and dignified, not garrulous; the words he spoke were weighty, never frivolous. Similarly, it was impossible to tell at first sight whether he loved his docile, obedient wife or not; meanwhile, he really did love her, and she, of course, understood this.

This Marfa Ignatyevna was by no means stupid and, perhaps, was smarter than her husband, but at least she was wiser than he was in practical affairs; meanwhile, she submitted to him without complaint or objection from the very beginning of their marriage, and she unquestionably respected him for his spiritual dominance. It is noteworthy that they both spoke very little to each other during the course of their lives, except perhaps about the most necessary and everyday matters. The dignified and majestic Grigory always thought over all his affairs and his cares on his own, so that Marfa Ignatyevna understood once and for all that he had no use whatever for her advice. She felt that her husband valued her silence, and that he took it as an indication of her intelligence. He never beat her, except for one time, and then only lightly. During the first year of Fyodor Pavlovich’s marriage to Adelaida Ivanovna, once in the village, all the girls and women, still serfs at the time, were gathered at the master’s house to sing and dance. They began with “In the Meadow,” and all of a sudden Marfa Ignatyevna, still a young woman at the time, stepped out in front of the chorus and began to dance in the “special Russian style,” that is, not in the village style like the women but, rather, as she used to dance when she was a servant in the house of the wealthy Miusovs, in their private theater, where the actors were taught by a teacher from Moscow. Grigory watched how his wife danced, and at home, in their cottage, an hour later, he taught her a lesson, pulling her hair a bit. But that was the end of their marital discord once and for all and it was never repeated again during their life together, and from then on Marfa Ignatyevna gave up dancing.

God didn’t give them any children; there was one baby born to them, but it died. Grigory, apparently, liked children, and didn’t even hide that fact, that is, he wasn’t ashamed to show it. After Adelaida Ivanovna ran away, he took over the care of Dmitry Fyodorovich, a three-year-old child, and provided for him for almost a year, combed his hair, and even gave him baths in a tub. Afterward he looked after both Ivan Fyodorovich and Alyosha, for which he received a slap in the face; but I’ve already related those events. A child of his own made him happy only with the hope, when Marfa Ignatyevna became pregnant. However, when the baby was born, it engulfed his heart with grief and horror. The fact was that the child was born with six fingers. When he saw this, Grigory was so overwhelmed that he kept silent not only until the very day of his christening, but he went out into the garden and maintained his silence there. It was spring and he spent three days digging beds in the kitchen garden. The baby was to be christened on the third day; meanwhile, Grigory had come to a conclusion. Upon entering the cottage where the clergy and guests had gathered, and, finally, Fyodor Pavlovich himself, who came in person and was to act as godfather, Grigory suddenly declared that “the baby should not even be christened”—he announced this quietly, without going on at length, forcing out each word, merely staring obtusely at the priest as he spoke.

“Why on earth?” the priest asked with good-natured surprise.

“Because . . . he’s a dragon,” muttered Grigory.

“A dragon? What kind of dragon?”

Grigory remained silent for some time.

“It’s a mistake of nature,” he muttered, though not very clearly, but very firmly, obviously refusing to elaborate.

Everyone laughed, and naturally, they christened the poor little child. Grigory prayed fervently near the baptismal font, but he didn’t alter his opinion about the newborn baby. Neither did he interfere in any way; however, all during the two weeks the sickly child lived, he hardly looked at him, he didn’t even want to acknowledge him, and for the most part stayed outside the cottage. But when, two weeks later, the baby died from thrush, he himself placed him in a coffin, and regarded him with deep sadness; and as they were filling in his shallow little grave, Grigory fell on his knees and bowed down to the earth. Since then, for many years now, he’s never mentioned his child, and Marfa Ignatyevna has never once mentioned her child in his presence, and whenever she happened to discuss the “little one” with someone, she did so in hushed tones, even though Grigory Vasilievich wasn’t present. Marfa remarked that from the day of the burial, he began to devote himself more to “divine” matters; he read The Lives of the Saints, mostly to himself and when he was alone, putting on his round silver eyeglasses each time. He rarely read aloud, except during Lent. He loved the Book of Job, and he had somehow managed to get hold of a copy of the sayings and sermons of “our God-fearing father Isaac the Syrian,”[2] which he read consistently and for many years, although he understood hardly anything in it, but that might well be why he valued the work so highly and liked it so much. As of late, he’d begun to pay attention to the teachings of the Flagellants,[3] which he had the chance to do in our own neighborhood; apparently by then, he didn’t consider it proper to accept the new faith. His reading in these “divine” matters, of course, conveyed to his appearance an even more imposing aspect.

Perhaps he was predisposed to mysticism. And the arrival of this six-fingered child and his death happened to coincide with another very strange, unexpected, unusual event, which left a “stamp” on his soul, as he himself phrased it afterward. It so happened that on the same day on which they buried the six-fingered infant, Marfa Ignatyevna, awakening at night, seemed to hear the cry of a newborn child. She was frightened and woke her husband. He listened carefully and concluded that it was more likely that someone was groaning, “probably a woman.” He got up and got dressed; it was a rather warm May night. As he went down the steps, he distinctly heard that the groans were coming from the garden. But the garden gate from the courtyard was locked at night, and it was impossible to get into it because there was no other way in, and all around the garden stood a sturdy tall fence. Returning to his cottage, Grigory lit a lantern, took the garden key, and, paying no attention to the hysterical fears of his wife, who was still assuring him that she heard a child’s crying, and that it was probably her own child crying and calling to her, he proceeded into the garden in silence. There he clearly realized that the groans were coming from their bathhouse, which stood in the garden, not far from the gate, and that it really was a woman in distress. Opening the bathhouse door, he beheld a sight that dumbfounded him: the local holy fool, who wandered the streets and was known throughout the whole town, called Stinking Lizaveta, had climbed into the bathhouse and had just given birth to a child. The infant was next to her, and she lay dying with the baby beside her. She didn’t say a word, but then again, she had never been able to speak. But all of this needs to be explained separately.

1 The emancipation occurred in February 1861.

2 Isaac the Syrian was a seventh-century Orthodox Christian bishop and theologian best remembered for his written works on Christian asceticism.

3 See above, p. 105.

II

STINKING LIZAVETA

There was one special circumstance involved here; it struck Grigory deeply and confirmed a previous unpleasant and loathsome suspicion once and for all. This Stinking Lizaveta was a very small girl, “less than five feet tall,” as many of the pious women in our town would say tenderly after her death. Her twenty-year-old face was healthy, broad, and ruddy, and completely that of an idiot; her glance was immobile and unpleasant, although it was meek. All her life she wandered around barefoot, both summer and winter, dressed only in a hempen shirt. Her extremely thick hair was almost black and was as curly as a lamb’s wool; she wore it on top of her head, where it looked a bit like a large cap. In addition, her hair was almost always covered in dirt or mud; leaves, sticks, and splinters stuck to it because she always slept on the ground or in the mud. Her father was a homeless, derelict, and ailing hired hand named Ilya, an inveterate drunkard who had spent many years sponging off the well-to-do families of local tradesmen. Lizaveta’s mother had died long ago. The father, Ilya, was sickly and spiteful and used to beat Lizaveta cruelly whenever she’d come home. But she rarely went home, because she was treated as a sort of holy fool throughout the town. Ilya’s employers, and Ilya himself, and many sympathetic townspeople, the merchants and their wives in particular, would try to dress Lizaveta more appropriately than in a shirt; in the winter they always covered her in a sheepskin coat and provided boots for her feet; she would usually allow them to dress her without resisting, but then she would leave to go off somewhere, often to the porch of the cathedral, and would remove everything she’d been given—kerchief, skirt, sheepskin coat, and boots—and she would leave it all there and set off barefoot, wearing only a shirt, as before. Once it happened that the new governor, touring our province on horseback, was most offended in his tender sensibilities when he saw Lizaveta; when he found out who this “holy fool” was, he nevertheless felt it was a violation of public order to have a twenty-year-old woman wandering the town wearing only a shirt, and he thought that it shouldn’t happen again. But the governor went on his way and Lizaveta was left as she was. At last her father died and with that she became even more welcomed, like an orphan, among the pious people of our town. As a matter of fact, it was as if everyone loved her, and even little boys didn’t tease or insult her; our boys, especially the schoolboys, are a troublesome lot. She would enter strangers’ houses, and no one would drive her away; on the contrary, they’d be nice to her and give her some money. If they gave her a coin, she would take it and drop it in the church box or at the prison. If they gave her a roll or a bun at the market, she would always go up to the first child she met and give it to him, or else she’d stop one of the richest ladies in town and give it to her; and these ladies would accept it gratefully. She herself would eat nothing but black bread and water. She’d enter an expensive shop, take a seat, and there would be all sorts of rich provisions and cash lying around; but the owners were never worried, knowing that even if you placed thousands of rubles in front of her and forgot about it, she’d never take even a kopeck. She rarely went inside the church; however, she slept either on the church porch or else would climb over a wattle fence (even today there are many such fences in our town instead of ordinary fences) into someone’s kitchen garden. She’d return home, that is, to the house where her late father’s employers lived, about once a week; but in winter she returned every day, but only for the night, which she’d spend either in the entrance hall or the cowshed. People were surprised that she could live like that, but she was used to it; although she was small in stature, her constitution was unusually sturdy. Some townspeople maintained that she lived like this out of pride, but somehow that didn’t seem to make any sense: she was unable to utter even one word, and only occasionally would she move her tongue and mutter something—what sort of pride is that? And so it happened that once (it was a long time ago), on one warm, bright September evening, during a full moon, a rowdy group of our drunken revelers, five or six young men, were returning home very late from the club, “by the back way.” There were wattle fences along both sides of the lane, enclosing the kitchen gardens of the houses; the lane leads to a small bridge over our long, stinking pool, which we sometimes refer to as the river. Along the wattle fence, between the nettle and burdock, our band of men spied the sleeping Lizaveta. They stopped to look at her and, with a hoot of laughter, they began making remarks with uncensored rudeness. It suddenly occurred to one of these young gentlemen to pose an absolutely extraordinary question on an impossible theme: “Is it possible for anyone at all to consider such a creature to be a woman, even at this time, and so on and so forth?” Everyone decided with proud loathing that it was impossible. But Fyodor Pavlovich happened to be in this group, and he sprang forward and declared that yes, it was possible to consider her as a woman, very much so, and that there was even something exciting about it, and so on and so forth. It’s true that at the time he was even overplaying his role as a buffoon; he loved to jump up and entertain others, on an equal footing, of course, though in fact he was a complete lout. This was just about the time when he’d received the news from Petersburg of the death of his first wife, Adelaida Ivanovna, and when, with mourning crepe on his hat, he was drinking and misbehaving to such an extent that the sight of him grated on even the most depraved people. The gang, of course, roared with laughter at this unexpected opinion; one of them even began urging on Fyodor Pavlovich, but the rest couldn’t care less, although they maintained their mood of extreme hilarity; finally they continued on their merry way. Subsequently Fyodor Pavlovich swore up and down that he’d also left with all of them; perhaps that’s what happened—no one knows for sure and no one ever knew with certainty; but five or six months later everyone in town began saying with sincere and profound indignation that Lizaveta was pregnant; they were asking and trying to ascertain whose fault it was: who was the offender? It was then that the strange rumor began circulating through town that it was none other than Fyodor Pavlovich. Where did this rumor come from? Only one member of that gang of drunken gentlemen revelers was still in town; he was an older, respectable civil servant who had a family and grown daughters, and who would scarcely have spread the tale, even if there had been any basis for it; the remaining participants, some five of them, had departed by that time. But the rumor pointed directly to Fyodor Pavlovich, and it persisted to do so. Of course, he didn’t lay claim to it: but he didn’t bother to disabuse some merchants or tradesmen of their opinions. At that time he was proud and would speak only with his own circle of civil servants and landowners, whom he continued to amuse. It was exactly at that time that Grigory energetically and vigorously stood up for his master and not only defended him against this slander, but even engaged in quarrels and arguments on his behalf and managed to persuade many people. “She herself, that lowlife, is to blame,” he kept saying firmly, and he maintained that the offender was none other than “Karp the Rifle” (that’s how we referred to a dangerous convict who’d escaped from prison and who was living covertly in our town). This guess seemed plausible; people remembered that Karp had been seen in town at just about that time in autumn, and that he’d carried out three robberies. But this entire episode and all these rumors not only failed to distract the general sympathy from the poor holy fool, but people began to take better care of her and to protect her. The merchant’s wife Kondratieva, now a wealthy widow, arranged to bring Lizaveta into her home at the end of April, intending to look after her until after the birth. They kept their eye on her constantly, but in spite of all their vigilance, on the very last day Lizaveta secretly escaped in the evening from Kondratieva’s care and turned up in Fyodor Pavlovich’s garden. How she managed to climb over the tall, sturdy garden fence in her condition remained something of a mystery. Some people maintained that she’d been lifted over the fence; others said that some force had transported her over. It was most likely that it all occurred in an extremely natural way and that Lizaveta, capable of climbing over wattle fences into people’s gardens to spend the night, had somehow managed to climb Fyodor Pavlovich’s fence, and had jumped down into the garden, in spite of her condition, and had injured herself. Grigory ran to fetch Marfa Ignatyevna and sent her to help Lizaveta, while he himself ran to fetch an old midwife who happened to live nearby. They managed to save the child, but Lizaveta died toward dawn. Grigory took the child, brought him home, sat his wife down, and placed the baby on her lap, right up to her breast: “An orphaned child of God is kin to all, all the more so for us. Our little departed one sent us this child; he comes from the devil’s son and a holy fool. Nurse him and weep no more.” So Marfa Ignatyevna raised the child. They christened him and named him Pavel; everyone soon began to use the patronymic Fyodorovich. Fyodor Pavlovich didn’t object one bit and even found it amusing, although he continued to deny it with all his might. In town people were pleased that he’d adopted the foundling. Subsequently Fyodor Pavlovich devised a surname for the child: he called him Smerdyakov, after his mother, Stinking (Smerdyashchaya) Lizaveta. It was this Smerdyakov who became Fyodor Pavlovich’s second servant and who, at the beginning of our tale, was living in the cottage along with Grigory and his wife, Marfa. He served as a cook. I really should say something more about this man, but I feel guilty for having kept the reader’s attention for so long on such common folk; therefore I will get back to my story, hoping to return to say more about Smerdyakov during the course of my tale.

III

THE CONFESSION OF AN ARDENT HEART. IN VERSE.

After hearing his father’s command, which he’d shouted from the carriage as he departed from the monastery, Alyosha remained standing for some time in utter bewilderment. It wasn’t that he stood there dumbstruck; that usually never happened to him. On the contrary, in spite of his alarm, he proceeded at once to make a quick trip to the father superior’s kitchen to find out what kind of trouble his father had managed to cause there. Then, as he set off, he hoped that along the way to town he would somehow manage to solve the riddle tormenting him. I’ll say in advance that he was not in the least afraid of his father’s shouts and orders for him to return home, “with his pillow and mattress.” He understood all too well that the command to return, shouted with such brashness, had been done “for effect,” so to speak, even for the beauty of it. It was something like a tradesman in our town who’d had too much to drink at his own name-day celebration; in the presence of his guests, he got angry that they wouldn’t serve him any more vodka, and suddenly began to smash his own crockery, tear his own and his wife’s clothes, destroy their furniture, and finally break all the windows in his house, again for the beauty of it. The same thing was now happening with Alyosha’s papa. The next day, of course, the inebriated tradesman, having sobered up, regretted the destruction of his plates and cups. Alyosha knew that tomorrow his father would probably allow him to return to the monastery, that perhaps he would do so even later that same day. And he was absolutely sure that his father might offend anyone else, but not him. Alyosha was certain that no one on earth would ever want to offend him, that not only didn’t they want to, but they couldn’t. This was an axiom for him, stated once and for all, without any discussion, and he went forward without any hesitation, convinced of it.

But at that moment another fear was stirring inside him of a completely different nature; it was all the more tormenting because he himself was unable to formulate it: it was fear of a woman, namely, Katerina Ivanovna, who’d urged him so insistently, in a note recently handed to him by Madame Khokhlakova, to come visit her for some reason. This demand and the necessity to go immediately struck some sort of distressing fear in his heart, and all morning, as time wore on, this feeling had been growing more and more painful, in spite of all the subsequent scenes and events in the monastery, and then at the father superior’s, and so on and so forth. The fact was that he didn’t know what she wanted to talk about or how he would reply. He wasn’t afraid of the fact that she was a woman; he knew few women, of course; nevertheless, all his life, from his childhood until he entered the monastery, he had lived entirely with them. He was afraid of this woman in particular, this Katerina Ivanovna. He’d been afraid of her from the very first time he’d met her. He had seen her only once or twice, perhaps even three times, and had once even spoken just a few words to her. He remembered her as a beautiful, proud, and powerful young woman. Though it wasn’t her beauty that tormented him, but something else. It was precisely the inexplicability of his fear that now increased that fear itself. He knew that this young woman’s aims were the noblest: she was trying to save his brother Dmitry, who was already guilty before her, and she was acting only out of generosity. But in spite of this awareness and the justice, which he had to acknowledge, of all these splendid, generous feelings, a chill ran up and down his spine as he got closer to her house.

He realized that he wouldn’t find his brother Ivan Fyodorovich, who was so close to her, there at the time: his brother was probably now with his father. It was even less likely that Dmitry would be there, and he had a presentiment why not. Thus, their conversation would take place in private. He very much wanted to run off to see his brother Dmitry before this fateful conversation with her. Without showing him the letter, he could talk to him about it. But brother Dmitry lived far away, and he probably wasn’t at home now either. Standing still for a moment, he reached a final decision. Crossing himself with a customary and speedy gesture, and smiling to himself about something, he headed directly to meet this fearsome lady.

He knew her house. But if he happened to go along Bolshaya Street, and then across the square, and so on, it would be a long way. Our little town is extremely scattered, and the distances in it are rather large. Besides, his father was waiting for him; he’d probably not yet forgotten his command and might become annoyed; therefore he had to hurry in order to get to both places. As a result of all these considerations, he decided to take a shortcut and go the back way; he knew all these paths in town like the palm of his hand. The back way meant there were no roads; he’d proceed along deserted fences, sometimes even climbing over other people’s wattle fences, bypassing other yards, where everyone would know him and greet him. In so doing he could reach Bolshaya Street in half the time. In one place he even had to pass very close to his father’s house, that is, past the garden of the neighboring house, belonging to a decrepit, crooked little house with four windows. The owner of this house, as Alyosha knew, was a crippled and elderly local tradeswoman, who lived there with her daughter; she’d been a refined lady’s maid in the capital and had recently lived in various generals’ houses; now for the past year, because of the old woman’s illness, she lived at home and still wore fancy clothes. However, this old woman and her daughter had sunk into dire poverty and even showed up every day at Fyodor Pavlovich’s kitchen for bread and soup, which Marfa Ignatyevna gladly provided. But the daughter, when she came for soup, wore her fancy dresses, even though one of them had a very long train. Alyosha had learned about this quite accidentally, from his friend Rakitin, who knew absolutely everything about the town; after he’d learned it, he’d forgotten about it right away. But, drawing even with the neighboring garden now, he suddenly remembered that long train, lifted his head, which had been bowed in thought, and . . . came upon something completely unexpected.

Behind the wattle fence in the neighbors’ garden, having climbed up on something, stood his brother Dmitry Fyodorovich, leaning over toward him, waving his arms vigorously, obviously fearing to call out, or even speak, so that he would not be overheard. Alyosha hastened to the fence.

“It’s a good thing you looked back: I was about to shout to you,” whispered Dmitry Fyodorovich to him joyfully and hurriedly. “Climb over here! Quickly! Ah, how splendid that you’ve come. I was just thinking about you.”

Alyosha himself was glad, but he didn’t know how to climb over the fence. So “Mitya” grabbed hold of his elbow with his muscular arm and helped him jump. Gathering up his cassock, Alyosha jumped over the fence with the agility of a barefoot street urchin.

“Hurry up, let’s go!” Mitya whispered enthusiastically.

“Where to?” whispered Alyosha, looking all around and finding himself in a completely empty garden in which there was no one except for them. The garden was small, although the little house stood no less than fifty paces away. “There’s no one here; why are you whispering?”

“Why am I whispering? Ah, devil take it,” shouted Dmitry Fyodorovich suddenly, in full voice. “Why am I whispering? Well, you yourself see what confusion nature can suddenly produce. I’m here in secret and I’m guarding a secret. I’ll explain later, but, understanding that it is a secret, I suddenly began speaking furtively and whispering like a fool, when it’s really unnecessary. Let’s go! That’s where! We’ll keep quiet until then. I want to kiss you!

“Glory to God in the world,

Glory to God in me![1]

“I was sitting here repeating that just before you came.”

The garden consisted of three acres or a little more, but it was planted with trees lining only the fences along both sides—apple trees, maples, lindens, and birches. The center of the garden was a clearing that produced several hundred pounds of hay in the summer. In the spring the garden was rented out by the mistress for a few rubles. There were rows of raspberries, gooseberries, and currants, also growing near the fences; beds with vegetables, planted recently, however, were close to the house itself. Dmitry Fyodorovich led his guest to a remote corner of the garden far from the house. All of a sudden, among the thick lindens and old bushes of currants and elderberries, viburnums and lilacs, he saw the remains of a very old green gazebo, blackened and crooked, with lattice walls, but still with a roof that could provide shelter from the rain. God knows when the gazebo had been built; according to legend, it was some fifty years ago, by the former owner of the house, Aleksandr Karlovich van Schmidt,[2] a retired colonel. But everything had rotted, the floor had fallen in, the boards were loose, and it smelled musty from the rotten wood. In the gazebo there was a green wooden table fastened to the floor; there were benches around it, also green, on which one could sit. Alyosha noticed immediately his brother’s ecstatic mood, but, upon entering the gazebo, he saw half a bottle of brandy on the table along with a glass.

“That’s brandy!” Mitya said with a laugh. “And you were already thinking, ‘He’s drinking again’? Don’t believe the phantom.

“Don’t believe the worthless, lying crowd,

Forget your doubts . . .[3]

“I’m not drinking, merely ‘treating myself,’ as your swine Rakitin says; he’ll become a civil councillor one day and will still be ‘treating himself’ all the time. Sit down. I’d like to take you, Alyoshka, and press you to my bosom until I crush you, because in the whole world . . . really and truly, re-al-ly and tru-ly (try to understand! understand!) I love only you!”

He uttered the last phrase in some sort of frenzy.

“Only you, as well as a ‘lowborn’ woman with whom I’ve fallen in love, and that has caused my downfall. But to fall in love doesn’t mean to love. One can fall in love while still hating. Remember! Now, while I can still speak cheerfully! Sit here at the table, while I sit alongside, look at you, and keep talking. You’ll keep quiet, and I’ll do all the talking, because the time has come. However, you know I realize that I should speak very softly, because here . . . here . . . the most unexpected ears may be listening. I’ll explain everything; as they say, ‘To be continued.’ Why have I been dying to see you, longing for you now, all these days, and right now? (It’s been five days since I cast my anchor here.) All these days? Because alone will I tell you everything, because it’s necessary, because I need you, because tomorrow I will fly from the clouds, because tomorrow life will end and begin again. Have you ever experienced, seen in your dreams, how one falls from a precipice into a pit? Well, that’s how I’m flying now, not in a dream. I’m not afraid: you shouldn’t be either. That is, I am afraid, but it’s a sweet feeling. That is, not sweet, but pure ecstasy. . . . Damn it all, it doesn’t matter what it is. A strong spirit, a weak spirit, and a womanish spirit—whatever it is! Let’s praise nature: you see how sunny it is, the sky is so clear, the leaves are all green, it’s still summer, it’s past three o’clock in the afternoon, and it’s still. Where were you headed?”

“I was going to see Father, but first I wanted to stop by Katerina Ivanovna’s.”

“To see her and then go to Father’s. Oh! What a coincidence! Why did I call you, why did I want to see you, why did I hunger and thirst with all the nooks and crannies of my soul and even with my ribs? Precisely to send you to see Father from me, and then to her, Katerina Ivanovna, and to end it all with her and with Father. To send an angel. I could send anyone, but I needed to send an angel. And here you are on your way to see both her and Father.”

“Did you really want to send me?” Alyosha asked with an anguished expression.

“Stop. You knew it. I see that you understood everything at once. But keep silent, for now, keep silent. Don’t feel sorry and don’t cry!”

Dmitry Fyodorovich stood up, thought for a while, and placed his finger on his forehead:

“She invited you herself; she wrote you a letter or something, and that’s why you’re going to see her, or else you wouldn’t be going, right?”

“Here’s the note,” Alyosha said and took it out of his pocket. Mitya read it quickly.

“And you were going along the back way! Oh, ye gods! I thank you for sending him along the back way and for sending him to me, like the golden fish to the fisherman in that silly old tale.[4] Listen, Alyosha, listen, brother. Now I intend to tell you everything. Because I have to tell someone. I already told the angel in heaven, and now I also have to tell an angel on earth. You’re the angel on earth. You’ll hear me out, you’ll consider it, and you’ll forgive. . . . That’s what I need, for someone above me to forgive. Listen, if two creatures suddenly break away from everything earthly, and take flight into the unknown, or, at least, if one of them does, and before that, flying away or coming to ruin, he goes to the other and says: ‘Do this and that for me, something that no one ever asks, but which one can only ask if he’s on his deathbed—would the other one really refuse . . . if he’s a friend, if he’s a brother?”

“I will do it, but tell me what it is, and tell me right now,” said Alyosha.

“Right now. . . . Hmm. Don’t hurry, Alyosha: you’re hurrying and worrying. There’s no reason to hurry. The world has come to a new place. Hey, Alyosha, it’s a pity that you can’t experience ecstasy! But what I am saying to him? As if you don’t experience it? What am I, a dummy? I say:

“Be noble, man![5]

“Whose verse is that?”

Alyosha decided to wait. He realized that perhaps all his concerns were really only here. Mitya thought for a moment, leaning his elbows on the table and resting his head on his palm. For a while they were both silent.

“Lyosha,”[6] said Mitya, “you’re the only one who won’t laugh! I’d like to begin . . . my confession . . . with Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy.’ ‘An die Freude.’ But I don’t know German, only the title, ‘An die Freude.’ Don’t think that I’m blathering because I’m drunk. Brandy is brandy, but I need two bottles to get drunk—

“And Silenus with his ruddy mug

Sat on his stumbling ass[7]—

“But I haven’t drunk even a quarter of the bottle and I’m not Silenus. I’m not Silenus, but I’m strong, because I’ve decided once and for all. Forgive my pun; you’ll have to forgive me many things today, not only for my puns. Don’t worry, I’m not padding the story; I’m talking business and I’ll come to it in a moment. I’ll get right to the point.[8] Wait, how does it go?”

He lifted his head, thought for a moment, and suddenly began in an enthusiastic voice:

“Wild and fearful in his cavern

Hid the naked troglodyte,

And the homeless nomad wandered

Laying waste the fertile plain.

Menacing with spear and arrow

In the woods the hunter strayed . . .

Woe to all poor wretches stranded

On those cruel and hostile shores!

From the peak of high Olympus

Came the mother Ceres down,

Seeking in those savage regions

Her lost daughter Proserpine.

But the goddess found no refuge,

Found no kindly welcome there,

And no temple bearing witness

To the worship of the gods.

From the field and from the vineyards

Came no fruits to deck the feasts,

Only flesh of bloodstained victims

Smoldered on the altar fires.

And wherever the grieving goddess

Turns her melancholy gaze,

Man in deepest degradation

Ceres beholds everywhere.”[9]

Sobs burst forth suddenly from Mitya’s breast. He grabbed Alyosha’s hand.

“My dear, dear friend, in degradation, even now in degradation. Man has to endure a great deal on earth, a great deal of misfortunes! Don’t think that I’m merely a boor in an officer’s uniform who drinks brandy and who leads a debauched life. I think about this all the time, brother, about this humiliated man, if only I’m not lying. May God keep me from lying now and from boasting. I think about this man because I myself am that man.

“Would he purge his soul from vileness

And attain to light and worth,

He must turn and cling forever

To his ancient Mother Earth.[10]

“But here’s where the problem lies: how can I enter into union with Mother Earth forever? I don’t kiss the earth; I don’t cleave her bosom; should I become a peasant or a shepherd? I move forward and don’t know whether I’ve fallen into stench and disgrace or into light and joy. That’s the trouble, because everything on earth is a riddle! And when I happened to sink in the deepest, the very deepest shame of debauchery (and that’s all that’s happened to me), then I’ve always read that poem about Ceres and man. Has it improved me? Never! Because I’m a Karamazov. Because if I go flying into the abyss, then it’s always headfirst and with my heels up, and I’m even happy that I’m falling in such a humiliating position and I consider it to be a thing of beauty for myself. And in this very disgrace, I suddenly begin to sing a hymn. I may be damned, I may be vile and base, but may I also kiss the hem of the robe that my God is wearing; I may be following the devil at the same time, but I’m still your son, O Lord, and I love you and experience joy, without which the world cannot exist.

“Joy everlasting fostereth

The soul of God’s creation,

Her secret force of ferment fires

The cup of life with flame.

Enticed each blade toward the light

And solar systems evolved

From chaos and dark night.

Filling the realms of boundless space

Beyond the stargazer’s sight.

At bounteous nature’s breast,

All things that breathe drink Joy,

All creatures, all nations,

She draws in her wake.

Her gifts to man are friends in need,

The wreath, the foaming must,

To angels—visions of God’s throne,

To insects—sensual lust.[11]

“But enough verse! I’ve shed tears and you should let me weep. It may be foolishness that everyone will laugh at, but you won’t laugh. Your eyes are also glistening. Enough verse. Now I want to tell you about the ‘insects,’ to whom God gave sensual lust:

“To insects—sensual lust!

“Brother, I am that very insect, and it’s talking about me in particular. And all of us, all Karamazovs, are the same; this insect resides in you, too, an angel, and it will give birth to tempests. It’s a tempest because sensual lust is a tempest, bigger than a tempest! Beauty is a terrible and horrible thing! It’s terrible because it’s indefinable; and it can’t be defined because God poses nothing but riddles. The riverbanks converge and all contradictions exist together. I’m a very uneducated man, brother, but I’ve thought a great deal about this. There are a great many secrets! Too many riddles burden man on this earth. Guess as best you can and crawl out of the water dry. Beauty! I can’t endure it that man, endowed with a lofty heart and mind, begins with an ideal of the Madonna and ends up with the ideal of Sodom. It’s even worse that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul doesn’t renounce the ideal of the Madonna; his heart may be on fire from it, may burn genuinely, as it did in days of innocent youth. No, man is broad, even too much so: I’d make him narrower. The devil only knows what it’s about! What seems to be a disgrace to the mind seems to be pure beauty to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, for the vast majority of men, beauty exists in Sodom—did you know this secret or not? It’s awful that beauty is not only terrible, but it’s a mysterious thing. God and the devil are struggling here, and the battlefield is the heart of man. However, a man always talks about what ails him. Listen, now to business.”

1 Dmitry’s own composition.

2 The former owner of Dostoevsky’s summerhouse in the town of Staraya Russa.

3 A quotation from Nikolai Nekrasov’s (1821–1878) poem “Where from the Gloom of Corruption” (1846), which also serves as the epigraph to Part II of Notes from Underground.

4 Pushkin’s fairy tale in verse “A Tale About a Fisherman and a Fish” (1833).

5 From Goethe’s poem “The Divine” (1783).

6 Another affectionate diminutive form of his name.

7 From the poem “Bas-relief” (1842) by Apollon Maikov; Silenus was the eldest of the satyrs. There is a pun in Russian: Silenus and silen (“strong”).

8 The Russian includes an anti-Semitic pun, “pull a Yid (zhid) out of my bosom,” a twist on the idiom tyanut’ zhily, “torture the life out of someone,” where zhila (tendon, sinew) is replaced by zhid (Yid).

9 Stanzas 2–4 of Schiller’s “The Eleusinian Festival” (1798) in Vasiliy Zhukovsky’s translation into Russian and Constance Garnett’s translation into English.

10 Stanza 7 from the same poem.

11 Stanzas 4 and 3 of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” in Fyodor Tyutchev’s translation.

IV

THE CONFESSION OF AN ARDENT HEART. IN ANECDOTES.

“I was carousing there. The other day Father said that I had spent several thousand rubles in seducing young girls. That’s a swinish fantasy: it never happened. As for what did, no money was ever required for ‘that.’ With me money is an accessory, the ardor of my heart, the setting. Today she would be my lady; tomorrow a streetwalker would be in her place. I amuse both of them; I throw handfuls of money on music, noise, and gypsies. If necessary, I give her some, because they take it, take it avidly, this I must confess; and they’re satisfied and grateful. The young ladies loved me, not all of them, but it did happen, it did. I always loved the little lanes, the remote, dark alleys, behind the square—there one can find adventures, unexpected occurrences, nuggets lying in the mud. I’m speaking allegorically, brother. In our little town where I was living there were really no such lanes, but there were moral alleys. But if you were like me, you’d understand what this means. I loved debauchery; I loved the shame of debauchery. I loved cruelty: am I not a bedbug? Not a noxious insect? In a word—a Karamazov! Once there was a picnic for the whole town; we traveled in seven troikas; in the darkness, during the winter, in the sleigh, I began squeezing the hand of one of the young girls and I forced her to kiss me; she was the daughter of a civil servant, a poor, sweet, gentle, meek girl. She let me; she let me do many things in the darkness. She thought, poor thing, that I would come the next day to propose to her (I was valued primarily as a good match); but I didn’t say a word to her afterward, not one syllable in five months. I saw how she watched me from a corner at dances (we were always having dances); I could see her little eyes burning with fire—the fire of gentle indignation. This game amused only my insect sensuality, which I was nourishing inside myself. Five months later she married a civil servant and moved away, still angry, perhaps still loving me. Now they’re living happily. Note that I didn’t tell anyone, didn’t defame her; although I’m base in my desires and I love baseness, I’m not dishonorable. You’re blushing and your eyes are flashing. You’ve had enough of this filth. And all of this is still nothing much, just little flowers, à la Paul de Kock,[1] even though a cruel insect was growing, developing in my soul. I have a whole album of reminiscences, brother. May God bless them, my darlings. In breaking it off, I always tried to avoid a quarrel. And I never betrayed anyone, never bragged. But enough. Did you really think this is the only reason I enticed you to come here? No, I’ll tell you a much more curious thing; but don’t be surprised that I’m not ashamed to tell you; I am even sort of glad to do so.”

“You’re saying that because I blushed,” Alyosha remarked suddenly. “I didn’t blush because of what you said and what you did, but because I’m the same as you are.”

“You? Well, that’s going a bit too far.”

“No, not too far,” Alyosha replied with fervor. (Obviously he’d thought about this for some time.) “They’re all rungs on the same ladder. I’m on the very lowest rung, and you’re up above, somewhere on the thirteenth. That’s how I view this matter; but it’s all the same thing, absolutely similar. Whoever steps on the bottom rung will definitely climb up to the top.”

“Then one shouldn’t step on it at all?”

“Whoever’s allowed do so, better not to step on it at all.”

“And are you allowed?”

“It seems I am not.”

“Hush, Alyosha, hush, my dear, I feel like kissing your hand, out of tender emotion. That witch Grushenka is an expert about men; she told me once that she’d devour you sometime. Enough. I’ll say no more! Let’s pass on from all these abominations, from this field fouled by flies, to my tragedy proper, that is, also a mere field fouled by flies, that is, all sorts of vileness. The fact is, that although the old man told lies about my seduction of innocence, in essence, in my tragedy, that’s what did happen, although only one time, and it really didn’t occur. The old man, who’s reproached me for something that didn’t happen, doesn’t even know that: I never told anyone; you’re the first one I’m telling, except, of course, for Ivan; he knows everything. He knew it before you did. But Ivan is silent as the grave.”

“Silent as the grave?”

“Yes.”

Alyosha was listening with great attention.

“I was serving in a frontier battalion, though only as a lieutenant; still it was as if under supervision, something like an exile. The little town received me very well. I threw lots of money around; they thought I was rich, and I thought so, too. However, I must also have pleased them in other ways. Although they shook their heads over me, they really liked me. My lieutenant colonel, who was already an old man, suddenly took a dislike to me. He kept constantly finding fault with me; and besides, the whole town was on my side; it was difficult to find fault. I myself was also to blame; I didn’t treat him with the proper respect intentionally. I was proud. This stubborn old man, who was not a bad fellow at all and was a most hospitable person, had had two wives, both of whom died. The first one was from some sort of plain folk, and left him with a daughter, also plain. When I was there this girl was about twenty-four years old, and she was living with her father and her aunt, her late mother’s sister. The aunt was plain in a humble way, and her niece, the colonel’s elder daughter, was simple in a lively way. When I reminisce, I like to say nice things about people: never, my dear, have I known a more charming woman than this girl was, Agafya, her name was, Agafya Ivanovna, just imagine. And she was not at all bad-looking, if judged by Russian taste—tall, plump, full-figured, with beautiful eyes, though her face was a bit coarse. She never married, although she’d had two suitors; she refused them, but didn’t lose her good nature. I became intimate with her, not in that way, no, it was innocent, just friendship. I often became close with women in quite an innocent way. I spoke with her in a most candid manner—believe me, but she merely laughed. Many women like candor, note that; in addition, she was a virgin and that really amused me. And here’s something else: she could never be called a young lady. She lived with an aunt in her father’s house, somehow willingly humbling herself, not considering herself the equal of other members of society. Everyone liked her and needed her, because she was an excellent seamstress: she had talent and didn’t take any money for her services; she did it out of kindness; but when she was given payment, she didn’t refuse. As for the colonel, he was something else! He was one of the most important people in our district. He lived on a large scale: he received the entire town, hosted dinners and gave dances. When I arrived and joined the battalion, it was said throughout the little town that soon the colonel’s second daughter, a rare beauty, would be arriving from the capital, where she’d just completed her studies at an aristocratic institute. This second daughter was none other than Katerina Ivanovna, the child of the colonel’s second wife. This second wife, now deceased, was from a notable general’s family, although, however, as I learned on good authority, she never brought the colonel any money. In other words, she came with well-connected relatives, but that’s all; there might have been hopes, but they came to nothing. Moreover, when the young lady from the institute arrived (to visit, not to live permanently), it was as if our whole town revived. Our two most distinguished ladies—two “Excellencies” and one a lieutenant colonel’s wife—everyone, everyone followed their lead and took part; they showered praise on her, began to cheer up; she was the belle of the ball and of picnics; they organized tableaux vivants to aide some governesses or other. I kept silent, continued to go on binges, and I pulled off one stunt that got the whole town talking. I saw that once she took my measure at the battalion commander’s, but I didn’t go up to her then; I seemed to spurn her acquaintance. I went up to her somewhat later, also at an evening gathering, and began talking to her; she scarcely looked at me, compressed her lips scornfully, and I thought: wait, I’ll have my revenge! I was a terrible lout, and in a majority of instances, I myself was aware of this. The main thing that I felt was that ‘Katenka’ was no mere innocent boarding-school girl, but that she was a person of character, proud and really virtuous, and worst of all, she had intelligence and education, while I had neither. You think I wanted to propose to her? Not at all, I merely wanted to take my revenge because I was such a fine fellow and she didn’t seem to realize it. Meanwhile, there were drinking bouts and rabble-rousing. Finally the lieutenant colonel had me arrested for three days. Just at that time my father sent me six thousand rubles, after I’d sent him a formal renunciation of all the rest, that is, we settled our accounts, so to speak, and I wasn’t going to demand anything further. I didn’t understand a thing at the time; and, brother, up until my arrival here, and even to these last few days, and even right up to today, I didn’t understand a thing about all these disputes over money with our father. But to hell with all of that; we’ll talk about it later. At the time, when I received the six thousand, I suddenly learned in a little letter from a friend a most curious thing, namely that there was some dissatisfaction with our lieutenant colonel: he was suspected of irregularities and, in a word, his enemies were preparing a special treat for him. Then the commander of the division arrived and raked him over the coals. A little later, he was ordered to retire. I won’t describe to you all the details of this affair; he had some real enemies. But suddenly in our town there was a noticeable cooling toward him and his entire family; everyone suddenly turned away from him. That’s when I took my first step: I met with Agafya Ivanovna, with whom I’d always maintained a friendship, and said:

“ ‘Your father’s account is missing some forty-five hundred rubles.’

“ ‘What are you saying? The general was here recently, and everything was all right.’

“ ‘That was then, but it’s not now.’

“She was terribly frightened:

“ ‘Don’t scare me, please. Where did you hear this?’

“ ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I won’t tell anyone. You know that on this score I’m silent as the grave. But this is what I wanted to add about this matter, so to speak, “just in case”: when they ask your papa for the forty-five hundred rubles, and he can’t produce the money, then he’ll be tried in court and forced to serve in the ranks during his old age, unless you send me your boarding-school young lady in secret, since I’ve just been sent some money, and perhaps I’ll give her the four thousand, and keep the secret sacred.’

“ ‘Ah, what a scoundrel you are!’ (So she said.) ‘What a wicked scoundrel! How dare you?’

“She walked out in terrible indignation, and I shouted after her one more time that the secret would be kept sacred and inviolable. These two women, Agafya and her aunt, I say in advance, during this whole episode, turned out to be pure angels, and they genuinely adored the sister, the proud Katya; they demeaned themselves on her account, they waited on her hand and foot. . . . Only Agafya told her about this little caper, that is, about our conversation. I found out about this later and knew it for sure. She didn’t hide it; and that, of course, is just what I wanted.

“Suddenly a new major arrived to take command of the battalion. And he did. The old lieutenant colonel suddenly fell ill; he was unable to move; he remained at home for two full days, and didn’t repay the sum of money. Our Dr. Kravchenko assured us that his illness was genuine. But I knew for a fact and had known secretly for some time that whenever the authorities dispatched someone to check on the money, which they had been doing for the last four years, each time after that it had vanished for a while. The lieutenant colonel had loaned it to a trustworthy person, a merchant in town, an old widower named Trifonov, who had a beard and who wore golden eyeglasses. He would go to the fair, transact some sort of business there, and immediately return the full sum to the lieutenant colonel; in addition, he would bring a present from the fair and pay interest on the money. But this last time (I found all this out accidentally, from an adolescent, Trifonov’s driveling son and heir, the most depraved young man the world has ever seen), this time, I tell you, Trifonov, upon his return from the fair, didn’t bring back any money. The lieutenant colonel rushed to see him: ‘I never received any money from you, and I couldn’t have’ was his answer. Well, so our lieutenant colonel remained at home, wrapped a towel around his head, while all three women applied ice to his temples; suddenly an orderly arrived with the accounts book and an order: ‘Turn over the public money immediately, in two hours.’ He signed the order; I saw his signature in the book subsequently—then he stood up, said that he was going to put on his uniform, ran into his bedroom, took his double-barreled hunting rifle, loaded it, inserted an army bullet, removed his right boot, placed the rifle against his chest, and began trying to find the trigger with his toe. But Agafya had already suspected; she’d remembered my words and crept into his room and found him just in time: she burst in, rushed to him from behind, threw her arms around him, and the gun fired toward the ceiling; no one was hit; the others came running in, they grabbed him, took away the rifle, and held his arms. . . . I learned all this later in detail. I was at home, it was getting dark, and I was just getting ready to go out; I got dressed, combed my hair, perfumed my handkerchief, put on my cap, and suddenly the door flew open, and—there right before me, in my own apartment, stood Katerina Ivanovna.

“Strange things happen sometimes: no one had noticed her on the street when she was making her way to my place, so it was as if it had never happened. I was renting an apartment from two very old civil servants’ wives; they waited on me; they were deferential, obeyed me in all respects, and both followed my order not to say a word about it afterward, like two lumps of iron. Of course, I understood everything at once. She came in and looked directly at me; her dark eyes were decisive, even audacious, but on her lips and around them, I saw her indecisiveness.

“ ‘My sister told me that you would give me four thousand, five hundred rubles if I came to get them from you . . . myself. I’ve come. . . . Give me the money!’ She couldn’t go on; she was gasping for breath, frightened; her voice broke off and the corners of her lips and the lines around her mouth trembled.

“Alyoshka, are you listening or are you asleep?”

“Mitya, I know you’re telling me the whole truth,” said Alyosha in agitation.

“I am indeed. If it’s the whole truth, just as it happened, then I won’t spare myself. My first thought was a Karamazov one. Once, brother, a camel spider bit me and as a result I lay in a fever for two weeks; well, now again all of a sudden, I felt a camel spider bite my heart, a noxious insect, do you understand? I looked her over. Have you seen her? She’s a beauty. But it was a different kind of beauty she had then. She was beautiful in that moment because she was noble, and I was a scoundrel; she was in the majesty of her nobility and sacrifice for her father, while I was a bedbug. And now she was completely dependent on me, a bedbug and a scoundrel, completely, body and soul. She had no way out. I’m telling you everything: that idea, the idea of a camel spider, had grabbed hold of my heart to such an extent that it almost expired from torpor alone. It seemed that there couldn’t be any sort of struggle: either behave like a bedbug, a wicked tarantula, without any pity. . . . It even took my breath away. Listen: naturally I would have shown up the next day to ask for her hand in marriage, so that it ended in the most honorable manner, so to speak, and so that no one, of course, would know what happened or could ever find out. Because though I’m a man of vile desires, I’m honest. Then, all of a sudden, at that very second, someone seemed to whisper into my ear: ‘But when you come to propose tomorrow, she won’t consent, and she’ll have her coachman throw you out. “Go ahead, defame me throughout the town,” she’ll say, “I’m not afraid of you!” ’ I looked at the young woman: my inner voice wasn’t lying. That’s what would happen. They would throw me out on my neck; I could judge by her expression now. Malice began to seethe within me; I wanted to commit the vilest, most swinish, merchant-like trick on her: to look at her with a sneer, and then and there, while she was standing before me, unnerve her with the sort of intonation only a vulgar little merchant would use:

“ ‘Those four thousand rubles! But I was joking, madam. What are you saying? You’ve been too gullible, madam. Perhaps I can give you two hundred or so willingly, with pleasure, but four thousand—that’s a sum that can’t be thrown away on such frivolity. You’ve troubled yourself for no good reason.’

“You see, I’d have lost everything, of course; she’d have run away, but, on the other hand, it would have ended infernally, vengefully. It would have been worth all the rest of it. Afterward I’d have been willing to howl with regret for the rest of my life, just to have pulled off that stunt! You understand, never before has this happened to me, that I regarded any other woman in a particular moment with such hatred—and I swear by the cross that I looked at her for three seconds or even five with such intense hatred—with the same hatred, which is only a hairsbreadth away from love, from insane love! I went over to the window, pressed my forehead to the frozen pane, and now recall how the ice burned my forehead like fire. Don’t worry, I didn’t keep her there for long; I turned around, went over to the table, opened the drawer, and took out a five percent banknote, with no name filled in, for five thousand rubles (it was stashed in my French dictionary). Then I showed it to her silently, folded it, handed it to her, opened the door to the hall, took a step back, bowed to her imposingly and respectfully from the waist, believe it! She shuddered all over, fixed her gaze on me for a second, turned terribly pale as a sheet, and suddenly, also without saying anything, not in a rush, but softly, quietly, bowed down to my feet, touched her forehead to the floor, not like a boarding-school girl, but like a real Russian! She jumped up and ran away. As she was running out, I happened to be wearing my sword; I withdrew it and was about to run it through myself—why? I don’t know, it would have been terribly stupid, of course, but it must have been from ecstasy. Do you understand that a man can kill himself from some kinds of ecstasy? But I didn’t run myself through; I merely kissed my sword and put it back in its scabbard—which there’s no need for me to tell you. And it even seems that as I’ve been telling you all about these struggles, I’ve padded it out a bit, to elevate myself. But so what? Let it be. May the devil take all those spies of the human heart! This is the whole story of my past ‘encounter’ with Katerina Ivanovna. Brother Ivan knows already about it, and now you do, too. But no one else.”

Dmitry Fyodorovich stood up, took a step in his agitation, then another, pulled out his handkerchief, wiped the sweat from his brow, then sat down again, although not in the same place where he’d been before, but in another, on the bench opposite, against the other wall, so that Alyosha had to turn around to see him.

1 Paul de Kock (1793–1871) was a popular French writer of romance novels, some of which were considered immoral.

V

THE CONFESSION OF AN ARDENT HEART. “UPSIDE DOWN.”

“Now,” said Alyosha, “I understand the first half of this affair.”

“You do understand the first half; it’s a drama and it took place there. But the second half is a tragedy and will take place here.”

“I don’t understand anything about the second half yet,” said Alyosha.

“And me? Do you think I understand it?”

“Wait, Dmitry, there’s one essential word here. Tell me: are you her fiancé? Are you still her fiancé?”

“I didn’t become her fiancé at that time, but I did three months after what happened. The next day, as it then came about, I told myself that the incident was all settled and done with; there would be no continuation. It seemed vile to me to show up with a proposal of marriage. On her side, for the full six weeks that she spent in our town—I didn’t hear a word from her. Except for one moment, it’s true: the day after her visit, her maid slipped in to see me and, without saying a word, handed me a packet. There was an address on it: to So-and-So. I tore it open—it contained the change from the five-thousand-ruble banknote. She needed only four thousand, five hundred; and from the sale of the note, there was also a charge of some two hundred rubles. So she sent me back two hundred and sixty rubles, I don’t remember exactly, and it contained only the money—no note, not a word, no explanation. I searched the packet for a pencil mark—there was nothing at all! So, I went on a binge with the remaining rubles, such that even the new major was forced to rebuke me.

“Well, the lieutenant colonel produced the battalion’s money all in order and to everyone’s astonishment, since no one believed that the sum had remained intact. He turned it over and then he fell ill; he took to his bed and remained there for about three weeks; then, all of a sudden, softening of the brain set in, and he died five days later. He was buried with military honors, but he hadn’t yet managed to retire. About ten days later Katerina Ivanovna, her sister, and her aunt, after burying their father, left for Moscow. Just before their departure, on the very day they were supposed to leave (I neither saw them nor escorted them), I received a tiny envelope with a sheet of thin blue paper; on it was written only one line in pencil: ‘I’ll write to you; wait. K.’ That’s all.

“I’ll explain it to you in a few words. In Moscow their affairs changed with the speed of lightning and the unexpectedness of the Arabian tales. That general’s wife, their principle relative, suddenly lost her two heiresses, her two closest nieces—they both died within a week from smallpox. The stricken old woman was delighted to see Katya as though her own daughter, as though she was her redeeming star; she flung herself at her and immediately rewrote her will in Katya’s favor, but that was for the future. Meanwhile, right then, she turned over eighty thousand rubles[1] as a dowry to her, to do with whatever she liked. She was a hysterical woman; I saw her in Moscow later. So that’s when I suddenly received in the mail the sum of four thousand, five hundred rubles; naturally I didn’t understand and was left in speechless astonishment. Three days later the promised letter arrived. It’s with me now, it’s always with me, I’ll die with it—do you want me to show it to you? You must read it: she offers herself as my fiancée, she proposes herself. ‘I love you madly,’ she writes, ‘if you don’t love me—it doesn’t matter, just be my husband. Don’t be afraid—I won’t do anything to shackle you in any way; I’ll be your furniture, the carpet on which you tread. . . . I want to love you forever, I want to save you from yourself . . . ’ Alyosha, I’m even unworthy of repeating these lines in my own vile words and my vile tone of voice, my usual vile tone of voice, which I could never remedy! That letter still wounds me; do you think it’s easy for me? Easy for me today? At that time I wrote her a reply (there was no way I could go to Moscow). I wept as I wrote it; I’m eternally ashamed of one thing: I mentioned to her that she was now wealthy and had a dowry, and that I was merely a poor lout—I mentioned the money! I should have endured in silence, but it slipped from my pen. I wrote immediately to Ivan in Moscow and explained everything in a letter to him as best I could; it was six pages long. I sent Ivan to see her. What are you looking at? Why are you staring at me? Well, yes, Ivan fell in love with her; he’s in love with her even now, this I know; you think I did a stupid thing, in the eyes of the world, but perhaps that same stupid thing can save us all now! Ugh! Can’t you see how she reveres him, how she respects him? Could she possibly, when comparing us both, love someone like me, especially after everything that happened here?”

“I’m sure she loves a man like you, not one like him.”

“She loves her own virtue, not me,” Dmitry Fyodorovich blurted out involuntarily, but almost maliciously. He started laughing, but a moment later, his eyes flashed, he blushed deeply, and he banged his fist forcefully on the table.

“I swear, Alyosha,” he cried with terrible and genuine anger at himself, “believe it or not, but as God is holy and as Christ is our Lord, I swear that even though I smiled just now at her noble feelings, I know that I’m a million times less worthy in my soul than she is, and that these best feelings of hers are sincere like a heavenly angel’s! That’s the tragedy: I know this for certain. What does it matter that a man raves a bit? Don’t I rave? But I’m sincere, very sincere. However, as far as Ivan is concerned, I understand how he must be disparaging nature now, especially with his intellect! To whom, to what has preference been shown? To a monster, who even at this moment when he was already her fiancé, and when everyone was watching, was unable to restrain his own debauchery—and this, while having a fiancée, a fiancée! Yet someone like me is still preferred, while he’s rejected. Why is that? Because the young woman wants to ruin her own life and fate out of gratitude! Absurd! I’ve never breathed a word of this to Ivan; and he, of course, has never said a word about it to me either, not the least little hint; but fate will be played out: the worthy man will be left standing, and the unworthy man will disappear in a back alley forever, into his filthy little back alley, in his beloved and appropriate back alley, and he will perish voluntarily and sink with pleasure into the slime and stench. I’ve become entangled in lies; I’ve run out of words, as if I weren’t even thinking. But it will turn out as I’ve described. I’ll drown in a back alley and she’ll marry Ivan.”

“Wait, brother,” Alyosha interrupted again, with extreme anxiety. “There’s one matter that you still haven’t explained to me: are you her fiancé or not? Are you still her fiancé? How can you want to break it off if she, your fiancée, doesn’t agree?”

“I am her fiancé, formal and blessed; it all took place in Moscow, upon my arrival, with a procession, icons, and in the best style. The general’s wife gave us her blessing and, would you believe, she even congratulated Katya: ‘You’ve chosen well,’ she said. ‘I can see all the way through him.’ And would you believe, she took a dislike to Ivan, and didn’t congratulate him. I also spoke with Katya a great deal while in Moscow; I told her all about myself, honorably, sincerely, in detail. She listened to everything:

“There was sweet confusion,

There were tender words . . .[2]

“Well, those were also proud words, too. She extorted a great promise from me to reform. I did promise her. And now . . .”

“What?”

“Now I called you and dragged you over here today, this very day—remember it!—to send you, once again, this very day, to Katerina Ivanovna, and to . . .”

“What?”

“To tell her that I’ll never come to see her again, and that I bow to her.”

“Is that really possible?”

“That’s why I’m sending you instead of going myself, because it’s impossible: how could I say that to her myself?”

“And where will you go?”

“To the back alley.”

“So you’re going to Grushenka!” Alyosha cried mournfully, clasping his hands. “So was Rakitin really telling the truth? And I thought you’d visited her a few times and had ended it.”

“Can a fiancé do that? Is that really possible, especially with a fiancée like her and in front of everyone? I have my honor, after all. As soon as I started seeing Grushenka, I stopped being Katerina Ivanovna’s fiancé and ceased to be an honest man; that I understand. Why are you looking like that? You see, at first I went to give her a beating. I found out and now I know for certain that Grushenka had been given a promissory note of mine by the staff captain, her father’s agent, so that she should exact payment, and that I’d calm down and desist. They wanted to frighten me. I went to give her a beating. I’d seen her before only fleetingly. She’s not that striking. I knew about the old merchant, who, in addition, is now ill, enfeebled, but he’s still leaving her a large sum of money. I also knew that she liked to hoard money, and was doing so, lending it for wicked interest rates, and that she was a rascal, a witch, and without pity. I went to give her a beating and stayed there. A storm broke, the plague struck, I became infected, and I still am now. I know that it’s all over, that nothing else can ever be. The cycle of the seasons is complete. That’s my affair. Then, as if on purpose, I was just a beggar; but three thousand rubles turned up in my pocket. I took Grushenka off to Mokroye, it’s about fifteen miles from here; I collected some gypsies, men and women, some champagne, got the men drunk on it, all the women and girls, too, squandering thousands of rubles. Three days later I was broke, but a hero. Do you think that this hero had achieved his goal? There was not one sign from her. I tell you: she has a certain curve. Grushenka, the witch, has a certain curve to her body; it even shows in her little foot, even in her little toe on her left foot. I’ve seen it and kissed it, but that’s all—I swear! She says, ‘If you want, I’ll marry you, but you’re poor. Tell me that you won’t beat me and will let me do anything I want, and then, perhaps, I’ll marry you.’ She says this and laughs. She’s laughing even now!”

Dmitry Fyodorovich got up from his seat almost in some kind of frenzy; and he suddenly seemed to be drunk. His eyes quickly filled with blood.

“Do you really want to marry her?”

“If she wants to, I’ll do it at once; if she doesn’t want to marry me, I’ll still stay there; I’ll become a caretaker in her yard. You . . . you, Alyosha,” he abruptly paused in front of him, grabbed hold of his shoulders, and began to shake him violently. “Do you know, you innocent boy, that all of this is raving, senseless raving, because that’s where the tragedy lies! You should know, Aleksey, that I can be a base man, with base and degenerate passions, but a robber, a pickpocket, a petty thief—Dmitry Karamazov could never be! Well, you should know that now I’m a petty thief, robber, and pickpocket! Just before I went to give Grushenka a beating, that same morning Katerina Ivanovna summoned me and in strict secrecy, so that no one would know (I don’t know why, but obviously she considered that necessary), asked me to go to the main town in the province and dispatch the sum of three thousand rubles at the post office to Agafya Ivanovna in Moscow; and to do it in town, so that no one here would find out. So, with that three thousand in my pocket, I wound up at Grushenka’s, and then, with that money, we went to Mokroye. Afterward I pretended that I’d gone into town, but I didn’t show her any receipt from the post office; I said that I’d sent the money and would bring her the receipt, but up to now I haven’t: I forgot. Now what do you think? You’ll go to see her and say, ‘He ordered me to give you his greetings.’ And she’ll ask you, ‘What about the money?’ And you could still say to her, ‘He’s a base sensualist and a vile creature with uncontrollable feelings. He never sent your money then, but squandered it, because, like an animal, he couldn’t control himself.’ Still you could add, ‘On the other hand, he’s not a thief; here are your three thousand rubles; he sends them back to you. Send them yourself to Agafya Ivanovna; and he told me to give you his greetings.’ But now she’ll ask, ‘Where’s the money?’ ”

“Mitya, you’re unhappy, yes, indeed! But still not as unhappy as you think—don’t kill yourself with despair, don’t do it!”

“What do you think, that I’ll shoot myself if I don’t manage to get the three thousand rubles to give back? That’s the point: I won’t shoot myself. I’m not strong enough now; maybe later, I will; but for now I’m going to see Grushenka. . . . And come what may!”

“And when you get there?”

“I’ll become her husband, if she’ll have me; if her lover ever comes, I’ll go into another room. I’ll clean her friends’ galoshes, heat the samovar, and run their errands . . .”

“Katerina Ivanovna will understand everything,” Alyosha suddenly announced triumphantly. “She’ll understand the true depth of this misfortune and she’ll calm down. She has a noble intellect and she’ll see for herself that it’s impossible to be unhappier than you are.”

“She won’t be reconciled to everything,” Mitya said with a grin. “There’s something here, brother, that no woman can ever be reconciled to. But do you know what’s best to do?”

“What?”

“Return her three thousand rubles.”

“Where will you get it? Listen, I have two thousand; Ivan will also give you a thousand, so that’s three; take it and give it back to her.”

“When will you get it, this three thousand? And, in addition, you’re still underage; but you must, you absolutely must, bow to her today, with the money or without, because I can’t drag this affair out any longer. Tomorrow’s already late, too late. I’ll send you to Father.”

“To Father?”

“Yes, to see Father before you go to her. Ask him for three thousand.”

“But, Mitya, he won’t give it.”

“Of course, he won’t. I know he won’t. Do you know, Alyosha, what despair is?”

“I do.”

“Listen: legally he doesn’t owe me anything. I’ve already received everything he owed me, that I do know. But morally, he still owes me something; isn’t that so? Why, he took mother’s twenty-eight thousand rubles and earned a hundred thousand with it. Let him give me only three thousand from that twenty-eight thousand, only three, and he’ll pull my soul out of hell;[3] it’ll absolve him for his many sins! For that three thousand rubles—I give my noble word, I’ll finish with him; he’ll never hear anything from me ever again. It’s the last chance I give him to be a father. Tell him that God Himself is sending him this chance.”

“Mitya, he’ll never give it to you.”

“I know he won’t; I know it perfectly well, especially now. And that’s not all: here’s what else I know. Just now, several days ago, perhaps even yesterday, he learned for the first time that Grushenka seriously (underline: seriously), in fact, may not be joking, and that she wants to leap into marriage with me. He knows her character; he knows this cat. So, in addition, would he really give me the money so that I could take advantage of such a situation, when he himself is so wild about her? But, as if this weren’t enough, I can tell you something else: I know that five days ago he went to the bank and withdrew three thousand rubles, took it in hundred-ruble banknotes, placed the money in an envelope, sealed it with five seals, and tied it with a pink ribbon. You see how much detail I know. On the envelope he wrote: ‘For my angel, Grushenka, if she wants to come.’ He scrawled it himself, in silence and in secret, and no one knows that the money is lying there except for the lackey Smerdyakov, in whose honesty he believes, as he does in his own. So he’s been waiting for Grushenka for the last three or four days, hoping she’ll come for the money; he let her know, and she told him that ‘maybe she’ll come.’ And if she does go to see the old man, can I really marry her after that? Do you understand now why I’m here in secret and keeping watch?”

“For her?”

“Yes. Foma rents a tiny room from some sluts, the owners of this house here; he’s our former soldier. He works for them. He guards the house at night, and during the day he goes out hunting grouse; and that’s how he manages to survive. I’ve settled in here with him; neither he nor the owners know this secret, that is, that I’m here keeping watch.”

“Only Smerdyakov knows?”

“He alone. He’ll let me know if she comes to see the old man.”

“Was it he who told you about the envelope?”

“Yes. It was a great secret. Even Ivan doesn’t know about the money or anything else. And the old man is sending Ivan on a drive to Chermashnya for two or three days: a buyer’s turned up for his grove:[4] he’ll pay eight thousand rubles to cut down the timber. The old man’s implored Ivan: ‘Help me,’ he said, ‘go there yourself,’ and that means for two or three days. He wants Grushenka to come when he’s not around.”

“So he must be waiting for Grushenka even today?”

“No, she won’t come today; there are signs. She certainly won’t come!” Mitya cried suddenly. “That’s what Smerdyakov also assumes. Father’s now getting drunk, sitting at a table with brother Ivan. Go to him, Aleksey, and ask him for the three thousand rubles . . .”

“Mitya, my dear, what’s wrong with you?” cried Alyosha, jumping up from his place and looking at Dmitry’s frenzied expression. For a moment he thought that Mitya had gone quite mad.

“What’s wrong? I haven’t lost my mind,” Dmitry Fyodorovich muttered, staring at him intently and even somewhat triumphantly. “Have no fear: I’m sending you to Father and I know what I’m saying: I believe in miracles.”

“Miracles?”

“A miracle of divine Providence. God knows my heart; he sees all my despair. He sees the whole picture. Would he really allow something terrible to happen? Alyosha, I believe in miracles. Go!”

“I will. Tell me, will you be waiting here?”

“I will. I know that it’ll take some time. You can’t just go there and expect it—bang!—just like that! He’s drunk now. I’ll wait for three hours, or four, five, six, or even seven, but you must only agree that today, even if it’s at midnight, you’ll go to Katerina Ivanovna with the money or without, and you’ll say, ‘He ordered me to bow to you.’ I really want you to say that to her: ‘He ordered me to bow to you.’ ”

“Mitya! But what if all of a sudden Grushenka comes today? And if not today, then tomorrow, or the day after?”

“Grushenka? I’ll keep watch, burst in, and put a stop to it.”

“But what if . . .”

“What if? Then I’ll murder. I won’t stand for it.”

“Murder whom?

“The old man. I won’t murder her.”

“Brother, what are you saying?”

“I really don’t know, I don’t. . . . Perhaps I won’t kill him, and perhaps I will. I’m afraid that his face may suddenly seem too repulsive to me at that moment. I hate his Adam’s apple, his nose, his eyes, and his shameless grin. I feel personal loathing. That’s what I fear. And I won’t be able to restrain myself . . .”

“I’ll go, Mitya. I believe that God will do as He knows best so that nothing terrible will happen.”

“And I’ll stay here and wait for a miracle. But if it doesn’t occur, then . . .”

Deep in thought, Alyosha set off to see his father.

1 This has previously been referred to as a “dowry of sixty thousand”; Dostoevsky was not always consistent with his use of figures.

2 Source unknown.

3 Cf. Jonah 2:6: “yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption.”

4 Dostoevsky’s father purchased a village by that name in 1832.

VI

SMERDYAKOV

He really did find his father still sitting at the table. The table had been set, as usual, in the drawing room, although the house had a proper dining room. This was the largest room in the house, with some old-fashioned pretentious furnishings. The furniture was ancient, white, and upholstered with old red silky material. In the spaces between the windows hung mirrors in ornate white-and-gilt frames with old-fashioned carving. On the walls, covered in white wallpaper, torn in many places, were two large portraits, one of some prince or other who’d been the governor-general of the province about thirty years ago and the other of some bishop, long since deceased. There were several icons on display in the front hallway, before which a lamp was lit at night . . . not so much out of reverence, but so that the room would be well lit. Fyodor Pavlovich went to bed very late, at three or four in the morning; until then he would pace the floor or sit in his armchair, thinking. Such was his habit. He would spend the night alone in the house, having sent the servants back to the lodge; but most often Smerdyakov would remain with him, sleeping on a bench in the front hall.

When Alyosha came in, dinner had already been consumed, but coffee and preserves had been served. Fyodor Pavlovich loved having something sweet after dinner with some cognac. Ivan Fyodorovich was seated at the table and was also drinking coffee. The servants Grigory and Smerdyakov were standing near the table. Both the gentlemen and the servants were apparently in a particularly good mood. Fyodor Pavlovich was roaring with laughter; even from the front porch, Alyosha could hear his shrill, familiar laugh, and he concluded at once, from the sound of this laughter, that his father was not yet drunk, but had merely reached the stage of very good humor.

“Here he is, here he is!” roared Fyodor Pavlovich, suddenly overjoyed at seeing Alyosha. “Join us, sit down, have some coffee—it’s a Lenten dish, Lenten, but it’s hot and very good! I won’t offer you any cognac, you’re fasting, but do you want some anyway, do you? No, I’d rather give you some liqueur; it’s renowned! Smerdyakov, go to the cupboard, it’s on the second shelf to the right; here’s the key, hurry!”

Alyosha was about to refuse the liqueur.

“Never mind, we’ll serve it anyway, not to you, but to us,” Fyodor Pavlovich said, beaming. “But wait, have you eaten or not?”

“I have,” said Alyosha, having had only a piece of bread and a glass of kvass in the father superior’s kitchen. “But I’d drink some hot coffee with pleasure.”

“Splendid! That’s my boy! He’ll have some coffee. Does it need to be warmed up? No, it’s still boiling. The coffee’s excellent: Smerdyakov made it. He’s an artist at brewing coffee and baking savory pies, making fish soup as well. Come and taste his fish soup sometime, let me know when you can. . . . But wait: just a little while ago I ordered you to move back home with your mattress and pillows. Have you brought them? Heh, heh, heh!”

“No, I didn’t,” replied Alyosha, smiling.

“Were you afraid, back then, were you frightened? Oh, you sweetheart, how could I possibly upset you? Listen, Ivan, I can’t stand how he looks me straight in the eye and laughs, I just can’t bear it. My insides start laughing at him; I do love him! Alyoshka, let me give you my parental blessing!”

Alyosha stood up, but Fyodor Pavlovich managed to reconsider.

“No, no, now I’ll merely make the sign of the cross over you, like that; sit down. Now you’ll have some enjoyment, something in your own line. You’ll laugh. Balaam’s ass has begun talking, and how he talks, how he does!”[1]

Balaam’s ass turned out to be the servant Smerdyakov. He was still a young man, some twenty-four years old, extremely unsociable and taciturn. It wasn’t that he was shy or bashful; no, rather he was arrogant and seemed to despise everyone. But now we must pause here to say a few words about him. He had been brought up by Marfa Ignatyevna and Grigory Vasilievich, but the child grew up “without any feeling of gratitude,” as Grigory was wont to say, a shy lad who looked at things from afar. In his childhood he very much liked to hang cats and then bury them with great ceremony. He would dress up in a sheet, using it as a kind of surplice, and would chant and wave something over the dead cats, as if he had a censer. He did all this on the sly, with the greatest secrecy. Grigory caught him at this practice once and gave him a sound beating. Smerdyakov withdrew into the corner and sulked for a week. “He doesn’t love us, that monster,” Grigory said to Marfa Ignatyevna. “He doesn’t love anyone. Are you really a human being?” he would ask, addressing Smerdyakov directly. “You aren’t a person: you emerged from the mildew in the bathhouse, that’s what you are . . .” Smerdyakov, as it turned out later, could never forgive him for saying those words. Grigory taught him to read and write and, when Smerdyakov turned twelve, began to instruct him in Holy Scriptures. But this came to nothing. Once, during the second or third lesson, the lad suddenly grinned.

“What’s so funny?” asked Grigory, regarding him threateningly from under his eyeglasses.

“Nothing, sir. The Lord God created light on the first day, but the sun, the moon, and the stars on the fourth day. Where did the light come from on the first day?”

Grigory was dumbfounded. The boy looked at his teacher cynically. There was even something haughty in his glance. Grigory couldn’t restrain himself. “I’ll show you where!” he cried and smacked his pupil ferociously across the cheek. The boy took the slap without uttering a word, but withdrew into the corner again and remained there for several days. It so happened that one week later he had his first attack of epilepsy, from which he suffered for the rest of his life. After he found out about this, Fyodor Pavlovich suddenly altered his view of the lad. Previously he’d regarded him with some disinterest, although he’d never abused him and, upon meeting him, would always give him a kopeck or two. If he was in a generous mood, he’d send the lad some sweet from his table. But then, when he learned of his illness, he took a decided interest in him; he summoned a doctor and tried to have him treated, only it turned out that no cure was possible. On the average, his fits occurred once a month and were of varying length. The fits were also of differing severity: some were mild, while others were very severe. Fyodor Pavlovich strictly forbade Grigory from administering any physical punishment to him, and began admitting him to his rooms upstairs. He also prohibited giving the lad instruction in any subject. But once, when the lad was already about fifteen years old, Fyodor Pavlovich noticed that he was skulking around his bookshelves, trying to read the titles through the glass. Fyodor Pavlovich had a rather large collection of books, more than a hundred volumes, but no one had ever seen him reading. He gave Smerdyakov a key to the cabinet at once and said: “Well, go on, read them; you’ll be my librarian. Better than loafing around the yard, sit down, and read. Here, read this one,” and Fyodor Pavlovich gave him a copy of Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.[2]

The lad read the book but was dissatisfied; he didn’t laugh even once; on the contrary, he finished it with a frown.

“Well? Not funny?” asked Fyodor Pavlovich.

Smerdyakov said nothing.

“Answer me, you fool.”

“None of it’s true,” mumbled Smerdyakov with a smirk.

“Go to hell, you have the soul of lackey. Wait: here’s Smaragdov’s Universal History.[3] It’s all true. Read this.”

But Smerdyakov didn’t read even ten pages of Smaragdov; he found it boring. So the bookcase was locked up again. Soon afterward Marfa and Grigory reported to Fyodor Pavlovich that Smerdyakov was suddenly becoming more and more fastidious: he’d sit down to his soup, pick up his spoon, and search in his bowl, bending over it, examining it, picking up a spoonful of soup and holding it up to the light.

“Did you find a cockroach or something?” Grigory would ask him.

“A fly, perhaps,” said Marfa.

The squeamish youth never replied, but he did the same thing with his bread, his meat, and with everything he ate: he’d raise a piece to the light on his fork and examine it as if under a microscope, debating for a long time whether he’d eat it or not, and finally putting it into his mouth. “Just look at what a gentleman he’s turned into,” Grigory muttered upon observing him. Fyodor Pavlovich, when he heard about Smerdyakov’s new habit, decided at once that he should become his cook and sent him off to Moscow to study. He spent several years there and returned with his face considerably changed. He had suddenly aged considerably, become wrinkled beyond his years; his skin had turned sallow, and he’d begun to resemble a eunuch. His character remained much the same as before he’d gone off to Moscow: he was still unsociable and didn’t feel the least need of any company. Even in Moscow, as they later reported, he’d hardly spoken. Moscow itself didn’t really interest him; he learned something about it, but for the most part, he didn’t pay the city any attention. He even went to the theater once, but sat there in silence and returned dissatisfied. On the other hand, he came back from Moscow very well dressed, wearing a fine suit and clean linen; he habitually brushed his clothes meticulously twice a day; and he very much liked to polish his fashionable calfskin boots with special English wax so they’d shine like a mirror. He proved to be an excellent cook. Fyodor Pavlovich paid him a salary, which Smerdyakov spent almost entirely on his wardrobe, on pomades, perfumes, and so forth. But he seems to have despised women almost as much as men; he behaved in an aloof manner with them, and was almost unapproachable. Fyodor Pavlovich began to regard him from another point of view. The thing was that his epileptic fits were becoming more frequent; and on those days, Marfa Ignatyevna would prepare the food, which Fyodor Pavlovich didn’t like at all.

“Why are your fits occurring more often?” Fyodor Pavlovich would ask sometimes, looking skeptically at his cook. “Perhaps you should get married. Do you want me to marry you off?”

But Smerdyakov merely blanched at these words and from this provocation, but made no reply. Fyodor Pavlovich would walk away with a dismissive wave. The main thing was that he was absolutely certain of Smerdyakov’s honesty, once and for all, and believed that he would never take or steal anything. Once it happened that Fyodor Pavlovich was drunk and he dropped in the mud in his own courtyard three rainbow-colored, hundred-ruble banknotes, which he’d just received; he noticed their absence a day later. He had just started searching for the money in his pockets when he suddenly saw all three notes lying there on his table. Where had they come from? Smerdyakov had picked them up and brought them in yesterday. “Well, brother, I’ve never seen anyone like you before,” Fyodor Pavlovich remarked and gave him ten rubles as a reward. One must add that he was not only convinced of his honesty, but for some reason he even loved him, although the young man glowered at him just as he did at other people, and continued to maintain his silence. He rarely spoke. If anyone wondered what he was thinking or what interested him, or what he had in mind most often, it was impossible to tell by looking at him. Meanwhile, sometimes when he was at home or in the courtyard or even in the street, it would happen that he paused, began thinking, and stood still for up to ten minutes. A physiognomist, glancing at him, would say that he had no ideas and no thoughts, but was experiencing some sort of contemplation. The painter Kramskoy has a remarkable work entitled The Contemplator:[4] it depicts the forest in winter and, on the road, wearing a ragged frock and bast shoes, a man is lost and standing all by himself; he seems to be deep in thought, but he’s not really thinking: he is “contemplating” something. If you were to poke Smerdyakov, he’d shrug and look at you as if he’d just awakened, but without understanding anything. It’s true that he would come to his senses immediately, and if he were asked why he was standing there and what he was thinking about, he probably wouldn’t remember anything; and he’d surely conceal whatever impression he was under during his contemplation. These impressions were dear to him, and he probably stores them up imperceptibly, and even unconsciously—why and for what purpose, of course, he himself doesn’t know either: perhaps, all of a sudden, having collected impressions over many years, he’d ditch all of them and set off on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to wander and save his soul; perhaps he might suddenly burn down his native village; perhaps it might transpire that he would do both things together. There are quite a few contemplators among the common folk. Smerdyakov was probably one of them; he was also perhaps gathering impressions avidly, hardly knowing why he was doing so.

1 Cf. Numbers 22:21–34. An ass carrying her master, Balaam, sees that their path is blocked by an angel of the Lord bearing a sword and refuses to proceed. Balaam beats the ass, which begins to speak and reproaches her master, who finally sees the angel and admits his mistake.

2 Nikolai Gogol’s first published collection of Ukrainian tales (1829–32).

3 A well-known primary-school history textbook by S. N. Smaragdov (1805–1871).

4 I. N. Kramskoy (1837–1887) was a very well-known Russian painter. This particular work was first exhibited in 1878.

VII

CONTROVERSY

But suddenly Balaam’s ass began talking. The subject was a strange one: that morning Grigory had gone to the merchant Lukyanov’s shop to buy a few things, and had heard from him about a certain Russian soldier who had, somewhere far away on the border, been taken prisoner by some Asians, and who’d been compelled, under threat of torture and certain death, to renounce Christianity and convert to Islam; he wouldn’t betray his faith, so he accepted his torments, allowing them to skin him alive; he died, praising and glorifying Christ—this test of faith had been described in the day’s newspaper. Grigory related the details of this episode at the table. After dinner, over dessert, Fyodor Pavlovich had always liked to laugh and talk, even if only with Grigory. This time he was in a particularly good mood, feeling expansive. After a drink of brandy and having heard about this incident, he remarked that such a soldier should immediately be elevated to sainthood; he suggested that his holy skin should be enshrined in some monastery: “That would bring in the common folk and raise some money.” Grigory frowned, seeing that Fyodor Pavlovich was not moved at all, and had even begun to blaspheme in his usual style. Then suddenly Smerdyakov, who was standing near the door, started grinning. Smerdyakov very often stood ready to serve at the table, that is, toward the end of dinner. Since Ivan’s arrival in our town, he was there in attendance almost daily.

“What are you grinning at?” asked Fyodor Pavlovich, who’d noticed Smerdyakov’s smirk, and who understood, of course, that it related to Grigory.

“It’s because, sir,” he blurted unexpectedly in a loud voice, “that if this praiseworthy soldier’s feat was so great, sir, then, in my opinion, there would have been no sin if, in this occurrence, he’d renounced the name of Christ, so to speak, and even denied his own christening, and, by so doing, saved his own life for future good deeds, which, in the course of years, he’d do as penance for his sin of cowardliness.”

“How would that not be a sin? You’re lying,” said Fyodor Pavlovich, “and for that you will go straight to hell, where you will be roasted like a side of mutton.”

This is just when Alyosha entered. Fyodor Pavlovich, as we have seen, was overjoyed to see him.

“This is on your theme, your theme!” he cried joyfully, making Alyosha sit down to listen.

“Concerning mutton, sir, it’s not true. There’ll be nothing of the sort there, sir, and there shouldn’t be, if it’s a question of justice,” Smerdyakov remarked firmly.

“How do you mean, ‘a question of justice,’ ” Fyodor Pavlovich cried with even more joy, nudging Alyosha with his knee.

“He’s a scoundrel, that’s who he is!” Grigory blurted out. He looked at Smerdyakov angrily, right in the eye.

“As for being a scoundrel, wait a bit, sir, Grigory Vasilievich,” Smerdyakov replied serenely and with restraint. “You’d better consider the case yourself: if I were taken prisoner by the tormentors of Christians, and if they were to demand that I curse God and renounce my own baptism, I’m fully capable of acting according to my own reason, because it wouldn’t be a sin.”

“But you said that already; don’t embroider, but prove it!” cried Fyodor Pavlovich.

“You soup-maker!” muttered Grigory Vasilievich contemptuously.

“As for being a soup-maker, you should wait a bit, sir, and instead of abusing me, consider it for yourself, Grigory Vasilievich. For as soon as I say to those tormentors, ‘No, I’m not a Christian, and I curse my true God,’ then immediately, according to God’s lofty judgment, immediately and expressly I become cursed as anathema, completely cut off from the holy church, as if I were a foreign heathen, and so, even at that very moment, sir—not only when I utter those same words, but even when I conceive of saying them, so that even a quarter of a second doesn’t pass, sir—then I’m cut off; is that so or not, Grigory Vasilievich?”

He turned to Grigory with evident enjoyment, replying in effect only to Fyodor Pavlovich’s questions, although he understood full well, but was intentionally pretending that Grigory had posed these questions to him.

“Ivan!” Fyodor Pavlovich cried suddenly. “Bend your ear closer to me. He’s saying all this for your benefit; he wants you to praise him. Do so.”

Ivan Fyodorovich listened with great seriousness to what his father was whispering so fervently.

“Wait, Smerdyakov, be quiet for a moment,” Fyodor Pavlovich cried once more. “Ivan, let me have your ear once more.”

Ivan Fyodorovich leaned over with the same serious demeanor.

“I love you just as much as I love Alyoshka. Don’t think that I don’t love you. Would you like some brandy?”

“Yes.” Ivan Fyodorovich looked intently at his father. “However, you yourself are really loaded,” he thought. At the same time he regarded Smerdyakov with intense curiosity.

“You’re accursed and anathema even now,” Grigory burst out suddenly. “How dare you, you rascal, argue after that, if . . .”

“Don’t abuse him, Grigory, don’t!” Fyodor Pavlovich interrupted him.

“Wait a moment, Grigory Vasilievich, at least a short time, sir, and listen further, because I haven’t finished everything I have to say. Because, at the very moment when I become immediately accursed, sir, at that lofty moment, sir, I become exactly like a foreign heathen, and my baptism is eradicated from me and cannot be reinstated. Isn’t that so?”

“Finish up, brother, quickly, finish up,” Fyodor Pavlovich said in haste, sipping from his goblet with pleasure.

“And if I’m no longer a Christian, then that means that I didn’t lie to the tormentors, when they asked me, ‘Are you a Christian or not?’ because God Himself had already annulled my Christianity, before I even had that thought or managed to utter a single word to my tormentors. If I had already been demoted, then by what means and by what sort of justice could I be called to account in the next world as a Christian if I’d already renounced Christ, and my baptism had been annulled merely for conceiving the idea of renouncing Christ? If I’m no longer a Christian, then that means I can’t renounce Christ, because there won’t be anything for me to renounce. Who can hold a vile Tatar heathen responsible, Grigory Vasilievich, even in the hereafter, for the fact that he wasn’t born a Christian? Who’ll punish him for that, especially when you can’t flay the same ox twice? For God Almighty Himself, even if he did hold the Tatar accountable, when he died, he would, I assume, impose on him the smallest possible punishment (since it wouldn’t be possible to exonerate him completely), judging that he was not to blame if he’d entered the world as a heathen born of heathen parents. Surely the Lord God can’t take a Tatar by force and say he’s a Christian? Why, then it would mean that Almighty God would be telling a real lie. And is it possible for Almighty God of the heavens and the earth to utter a lie, even in one word, sir?”

Grigory was thunderstruck and stared with bulging eyes at the speaker. Even though he understood very little of what he was saying, he suddenly understood enough of this nonsense: he stood there like a man who’d just bumped his head against a wall. Fyodor Pavlovich emptied his glass and burst into peals of shrill laughter.

“Alyoshka, Alyoshka, how do you like that? Oh, you, casuist! He must have spent some time with the Jesuits, Ivan. Oh, you stinking Jesuit. Who taught you? But you’re lying, you casuist, you’re lying, lying, lying. Don’t weep, Grigory, we’ll smash him to smoke and dust in a minute. Tell me this, you ass: you may be right before your tormentors, but you yourself renounced your faith in your heart and you say that at that very moment you became an accursed anathema; and if you are, they won’t stroke your head for it in hell. So what do you say about this, my fine Jesuit?”

“There’s no doubt, sir, that I’ve renounced it in my own heart; still, there’s no special sin committed, sir, and if there is a sin, it is of the most ordinary kind.”

“How is it the most ordinary sin?”

“You’re lying, you accursed fiend,” Grigory hissed.

“Judge for yourself, Grigory Vasilievich,” Smerdyakov continued in an even and steady tone of voice, conscious of his victory, but seeming to be magnanimous to his defeated foe. “Judge for yourself, Grigory Vasilievich: it’s written in Scripture that if you have faith, even the smallest seed, and you tell the mountain to move into the sea, it will do so, without delay, at your first command. So, Grigory Vasilievich, if I’m an unbeliever, and you’re such a believer, and you even abuse me constantly, then you yourself should try telling this mountain to move, not to the sea (because it’s very far from here to the sea, sir), but even to move to the stinking little river that flows at the foot of our garden, and you yourself will see that then nothing will happen, sir; everything will stay in the same place and order, no matter how much you shout at it, sir.[1] This means that you don’t believe properly, Grigory Vasilievich, but merely abuse others in every way possible. Once again, taking into consideration that no one in our era, not only you, sir, but no one at all, beginning even with the very highborn and going down to the lowest peasant, sir, can move that mountain into the sea, except for perhaps one person on the entire earth, two at the most, who live somewhere in the Egyptian desert, saving their souls in secret, such that you won’t locate them at all—and if that’s the case, sir, if everyone else is a nonbeliever, will the Lord really condemn all the rest of them, that is, the population of the entire world, except for those two hermits, and refuse to forgive anyone even in His eminent mercy? And therefore, I hope that even though I myself once had doubts, I will be forgiven when I shed tears of repentance.”

“Wait!” shrieked Fyodor Pavlovich in an apotheosis of ecstasy. “So you do assume that there are one or two people who can indeed move mountains? Ivan, put that in your pipe and smoke it; make a note of it: there you have the Russian character!”

“You observed quite correctly that it’s characteristic of the common folk’s faith,” Ivan Fyodorovich agreed with an approving smile.

“You agree! That means it’s so, if you agree! Alyoshka, is it the truth? Is the Russian character like that?”

“No, Smerdyakov does not possess the true Russian faith,” Alyosha said earnestly and firmly.

“I’m not talking about his faith; I’m talking about those two hermits in the desert, about their faith: that’s very Russian, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that characteristic is completely Russian,” Alyosha said with a smile.

“Your words are worth a piece of gold, you ass, and I’ll send it to you today, but in all the rest you’re still lying, lying, lying; you should know, you fool, that we here are nonbelievers out of negligence, because we don’t have time: in the first place, we’re overcome with practical concerns; in the second place, God provides so little time, only twenty-four hours in a day, so there’s no time to get enough sleep, let alone repent of one’s sins. But you renounced your faith to your tormentors when you had nothing else to think about but your faith and how to demonstrate it! So, brother, I think that constitutes a sin!”

“It may constitute a sin at that, but judge for yourself, Grigory Vasilievich: it more mitigates sin than constitutes one. Why, if at the time I believed in the holy truth, as one is supposed to, then it really would be sinful not to accept torments for one’s belief and to convert to the pagan Mohammedan faith. But then it wouldn’t have come to torture, sir, because all I would’ve had to do at that moment was say to that mountain, ‘Move and crush that tormentor,’ and it would’ve moved and crushed him like a cockroach, and I would’ve walked away as if nothing had happened, praising and glorifying God. And if at that very moment, I’d attempted all this and had intentionally shouted to the mountain, ‘Crush these tormentors,’ and if the mountain didn’t do so, then, tell me, how could I refrain from doubting at such a time and at such a terrible moment of great and mortal dread? Even apart from that, I know that I won’t fully reach the kingdom of heaven (because the mountain didn’t move at my urging: that means that they didn’t think much of my faith in the next world, and that I couldn’t expect a very great reward up there), so why on earth should I allow them to skin me alive for no purpose? Because even if they’d taken half the skin off my back, even then that mountain wouldn’t have moved at my word or cry. But at such a moment not only might doubt overcome me, but I might even lose my reason out of fear, since it would be completely impossible to rely on reason at that time. Therefore, how could I be held principally responsible, if, seeing neither here nor there reward or advantage for myself, at least I managed to save my own skin? But for that reason, trusting fully in the Lord’s mercy, I hope that I will be completely forgiven, sir . . .

1 Cf. Matthew 17:20 and 21:21.

VIII

OVER THE BRANDY

The argument ended, but strange to say, Fyodor Pavlovich, who had been so animated, toward the end suddenly became gloomy. He did so, and gulped down his brandy, which was a glass too much.

“Get out of here, you Jesuits,” he shouted at his servants. “Away, Smerdyakov. I’ll send you the promised piece of gold today, but get out. Don’t cry, Grigory; go to Marfa, she’ll console you, put you to bed. These scoundrels don’t give me any peace after dinner,” he blurted out in annoyance, as the servants were withdrawing immediately at his order. “Smerdyakov now injects himself in here after every dinner; he’s so curious about you. What did you do to enthrall him so?” he asked, turning to Ivan Fyodorovich.

“Absolutely nothing,” he replied. “He’s decided to respect me; he’s a lackey and a boor. He’s the cannon fodder of progress, however, when it comes time.”

“Progress?”

“There’ll be others, even better ones, but there’ll be some like him. At first they’ll be like him, but then afterward, better.”

“And when will the time come?”

“The rocket will be launched, but it will peter out, perhaps. For the time being the common folk don’t like listening to these soup-makers.”

“Indeed, but a Balaam’s ass like that keeps thinking and thinking, and the devil only knows what he comes up with.”

“He’ll accumulate some ideas,” Ivan said with a smirk.

“You see, I know he can’t stand me, or anyone else, and you as well, although it seems to you that he’s taken it into his head ‘to respect you.’ Alyoshka all the more, he despises Alyoshka. But he doesn’t steal, that’s what, he’s not a gossip; he keeps silent, he doesn’t wash our dirty linen in public, he makes tasty fish cakes; however, the hell with him. Is he really worth talking about?”

“Of course not.”

“And as for the ideas he’s conceived, speaking in general, the Russian peasant ought to be whipped. I’ve always maintained that. Our peasants are scoundrels; it’s not worth feeling sorry for them, and it’s a good thing to beat them now and again. The Russian land’s rich in birch trees. If they destroy the forests—Russia will perish. I stand up for clever people. We stopped beating our peasants because we’re so smart; but they continue to beat themselves. And that’s good. ‘For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again,’[1] or however it goes. . . . In a word, ‘it shall be measured to you.’ But Russia is all swinishness. My friend, if you only knew how I hate Russia. . . . That is, not Russia, but all these vices . . . but maybe Russia, too. Tout cela c’est de la cochonnerie.[2] Do you know what I like? I like wit.”

“You’ve downed another glass. I think you’ve had enough.”

“Wait, I’ll have one more, and then another, and then I’ll stop. No, wait a minute, you interrupted me. In Mokroye I asked an old man in passing, and he replied: ‘We really like,’ he says, ‘to sentence girls to be whipped, and we let the young lads do the whipping. Afterward, he who whips a girl today, asks her to marry him tomorrow. And this suits the girls, too.’ What Marquis de Sades we have![3] But it’s clever, isn’t it? We ought to go and take a look. Alyoshka, are you blushing? Don’t be embarrassed, child. It’s a pity that I didn’t stay for dinner before with the father superior and tell the monks about these girls of Mokroye. Alyoshka, don’t be angry that I offended your father superior earlier. Wickedness takes hold of me, brother. If there is a God, if He exists, then, of course, I’m guilty and I’ll answer; and if He doesn’t exist at all, then is that all your fathers deserve? It wouldn’t be enough to cut off their heads because they’re curbing progress. Would you believe, Ivan, that this tears my feelings to pieces? No, you don’t believe me, I can see it in your eyes. You believe it when people say that I’m just a buffoon. Alyosha, do you believe I’m not just a buffoon?”

“I believe you’re not just a buffoon.”

“And I believe that you believe and that you’re speaking sincerely. You regard things sincerely and you speak sincerely. But not Ivan. Ivan’s arrogant. . . . All the same, I’d like to get rid of your monastery. If one could take all that mysticism and abolish it immediately throughout the Russian land and bring all those fools to reason, just think of all the silver and gold the treasury would take in!”

“Why abolish it?” asked Ivan.

“So that truth would soon reign supreme, that’s why.”

“But if that truth were to come to reign, you’d be the first one to be robbed and then . . . destroyed.”

“Bah! You’re probably right. Ah, I’m an ass,” Fyodor Pavlovich cried suddenly, slapping his forehead lightly. “Well, then let your little monastery stand, Alyoshka, if that’s the case. But we, clever people, we’ll sit in the warmth and enjoy some brandy. You know, Ivan, that this must have been intentionally arranged by God Himself? Ivan, tell me: is there a God or not? Wait; tell me the truth, seriously. Why are you laughing?”

“I’m laughing because you yourself made such a witty comment before about Smerdyakov’s belief in the existence of two hermits who could move mountains.”

“So do I resemble him now?”

“Very much.”

“Well, that means I’m also a Russian; I have a Russian character, and you, a philosopher, may also be caught with this character. If you like, I’ll catch you. Let’s bet that I can catch you tomorrow. Still, tell me: is there a God or not? But take it seriously! I want to know for sure.”

“No, there is no God.”

Alyoshka, is there a God?”

“Yes, there is.”

“Ivan, is there immortality, well, any kind, even the smallest, tiniest bit?”

“No, there’s no immortality either.”

“None at all?”

“None at all.”

“That is, absolutely nothing or something? Perhaps there’s a little something? After all, even a little isn’t nothing!”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Alyoshka, is there immortality?”

“Yes.”

“Both God and immortality.”

“Both God and immortality. Immortality is in God.”

“Hmm. It’s more likely that Ivan’s right. Good Lord, just think only of how much faith, how much effort man’s devoted to this dream in vain, and for how many thousands of years! Who is it that’s making fun of man in this way? Ivan? I ask you for the last time, definitively, is there a God or not? It’s for the last time.”

“And for the last time, no, there isn’t.”

“Who’s making fun of people, Ivan?”

“It must be the devil,” Ivan said, grinning.

“Does the devil exist?”

“No, there’s no devil either.”

“Pity. Damn it, what I wouldn’t do to the man who first invented God. Hanging him from the bitter aspen tree would be too good for him.”[4]

“Civilization wouldn’t exist if man hadn’t invented God.”[5]

“Really? Without God?”

“Yes, and there wouldn’t be brandy. But I should take your brandy away from you.”

“Wait, wait, wait, my dear boy. One more little glass. I’ve offended Alyosha. You’re not angry, are you, Aleksey? You’re my dear, sweet little Aleksey.”

“No, I’m not angry. I know your thoughts. Your heart is better than your head.”

“My heart’s better than my head? Good Lord, look who’s saying that! Ivan, do you love Alyoshka?”

“I do.”

“Love him.” (Fyodor Pavlovich was really drunk.) “Listen, Alyosha, I was rude to your elder before. But I was agitated. But that elder is witty, don’t you think so, Ivan?”

“Yes, perhaps he is.”

“He is, he is. Il y a du Piron là-dedans.[6] He’s a Jesuit, a Russian one, that is. As in a noble creature, there’s such a hidden sense of indignation boiling within that he has to pretend . . . and has to assume a mantle of holiness.”

“Of course, however, he believes in God.”

“Not one bit. Didn’t you know? He himself tells everyone, that is, not everyone, but all those clever people who come to see him. He told Governor Schultz, ‘Credo,’ but I don’t know in what.”[7]

“Really?”

“Yes, indeed. But I respect him. There’s something Mephistophelian about him[8] or, even better to say, something from Hero of Our Time . . . Arbenin, or whatever his name is. . . .[9] That is, he’s a sensualist; he’s a sensualist to such a degree that I would now be afraid for my daughter or my wife, if either of them went to confess to him. You know when he begins telling stories. . . . Three years ago he had us to tea, served with liqueur (our ladies send him liqueur), and when he began describing the olden days, we split our sides laughing. . . . Especially how he cured one paralyzed woman. ‘If my legs didn’t ache,’ he said, ‘I’d do a dance for you.’ How do you like that? ‘I played a few of those Mount Athos[10] tricks in my time.’ He cheated the merchant Demidov out of sixty thousand rubles.”

“What, he stole it?”

“The man brought him the money, thinking he was a good man, and said: ‘Keep it for me, brother, since I’ll be searched tomorrow.’ And he kept it. ‘You donated it to the church,’ he said. I said, ‘You’re a scoundrel.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘not a scoundrel, but I have a broad nature. . . . ’ However, that wasn’t him. It was someone else. I confused him with someone else . . . without noticing. Well, give me one more little glass, and then enough: take away the bottle, Ivan. I lied, why didn’t you stop me, Ivan . . . or else say I was lying?”

“I knew you’d stop all on your own.”

“You’re lying: you did it to spite me, nothing but spite. You despise me. You came to visit me and you despise me in my own house.”

“I’ll leave then; the brandy’s gotten to you.”

“I asked you for Christ’s sake to go to Chermashnya . . . for a day or two, but you won’t go.”

“I’ll go tomorrow, if you insist.”

“You won’t go. You want to spy on me here, that’s what you want, you wicked soul, you, and that’s why you won’t go.”

The old man wouldn’t stop. He had reached the point of inebriation, when some drunks, quiet until then, suddenly grow really angry and reveal themselves.

“Why are you staring at me? What sort of eyes are those? Your eyes are looking at me and saying: ‘You drunken oaf.’ Your eyes are distrustful, they’re contemptuous. . . . You came with some crafty plan. Here Alyoshka looks at me and his eyes sparkle. He doesn’t despise me. Aleksey, don’t love Ivan . . .”

“Don’t be angry with Ivan! Stop abusing him,” Alyosha said suddenly and insistently.

“Well, perhaps. . . . Ugh, my head aches. Take the brandy away, Ivan, I’m telling you for the third time.” He became thoughtful for a while and then suddenly smiled slowly and slyly: “Don’t be angry, Ivan, at a puny old man. I know that you don’t love me, still, don’t be angry. There’s no reason to love me. Go to Chermashnya; I’ll join you there, I’ll bring you a gift. I’ll show you a girlie there; I noticed her a long time ago. She’s still running around barefoot. Don’t be afraid of barefoot girlies; don’t despise them—they’re pearls!”

And he kissed his own hand with a smacking sound.

“For me,” he said, suddenly springing back to life, as if sober for a moment, having just launched on his favorite theme, “for me. . . . Hey, lads! You’re little children, sweet little piglets, for me. . . . I never met an ugly woman in my whole life, that’s been my rule! Can you understand that? How could you understand: you still have milk in your veins instead of blood; you haven’t shed your shells yet! According to my rule, you can find something extraordinarily interesting, devil take it, in every woman, that you won’t find in any other. You only have to know how to find it, that’s the rub! It’s a talent! In my opinion there are no ugly women. Just the fact that she’s a woman is half the battle—how could you understand that? Even old maids, even in them you can find something that makes you wonder how men could’ve been such fools to let them grow old without having noticed them! You must first of all surprise them—that’s how one should approach them. Didn’t you know? You must make them become enraptured, transfixed, embarrassed that a gentleman could possibly fall in love with such a lowlife as they are. It’s truly splendid that there are and will always be such boors and gentlemen in the world, and there will always be a servant to wash floors and a master, and that’s all you need for happiness in life! Wait . . . listen, Alyoshka, I always surprised your late mother, but in a different way. I never used to embrace her, but all of a sudden, when the moment came, I would shower her with affection, crawl on my knees, kiss her feet, and always, always—I remember it as if it were today—I would reduce her to that mellow, jingling, nervous special laugh of hers. It was the only kind she had. I knew that this is how her illness would begin, and that the next day she’d start to shriek hysterically, and that this little laugh today didn’t indicate any sort of ecstasy, but it made a very good disguise. That’s what it means to find one’s own characteristic in the whole person! Once Belyavsky—a wealthy and handsome man who used to run after her and come to visit me—all of a sudden slapped my face, in her presence, at that. Then I thought that she, such a gentle sheep, would give me quite a beating for that slap; she really attacked me: ‘You’ she says, ‘you’re beaten, beaten, he slapped your face! You,’ she says, ‘you’ve tried to sell me! How dare he strike you in my presence? Don’t you dare come near me again, never, never! Now run and challenge him to a duel!’ So I took her to the monastery to calm her down, where the holy fathers told her off. But I swear to God, Alyosha, I never offended my little shrieker! Only once perhaps, in the first year of our marriage; she was praying a great deal; she would observe the feasts of Our Lady and then she’d drive me out to my study. I thought, I’ll beat this mysticism out of her! ‘You see,’ I said, ‘you see your icon there, well, I’ll take it down. Just look, you think it’s miraculous, but I will spit on it in front of you, and nothing will happen to me as a result!’ When she saw this, good Lord, I thought she’d kill me right then, but she merely jumped up, wrung her hands, and suddenly covered her face, began trembling all over, and fell down on the floor. . . . And there she stayed. . . . Alyosha, Alyosha! What’s the matter with you, what’s wrong?”

The old man jumped up in fright; from the moment he had mentioned his mother, Alyosha’s face had begun to change gradually. He blushed, his eyes began shining, his lips started to tremble. . . . The drunken old man kept spluttering, and didn’t notice a thing until that moment when something very strange happened to Alyosha: precisely what he’d described occurring to the “shrieker” was being repeated in him. Alyosha suddenly jumped up from the table in just the same way as his mother used to do; he wrung his hands and then covered his face with them; he sank onto the chair like someone cut down, and there he suddenly started shaking all over in a hysterical fit of sudden, violent, silent weeping. The extraordinary similarity with his mother struck the old man particularly.

“Ivan, Ivan! Give him some water! It’s like her, just like her, his mother! Squirt some water at him from your mouth; that’s what I used to do. It’s on account of his mother, his mother . . .” he muttered to Ivan.

“But, his mother, I think, was also my mother, wasn’t she?” Ivan burst out suddenly with unrestrained furious contempt. The old man winced at his flashing eyes. But then something strange occurred, though it lasted for only a second: it really seemed to have escaped the old man’s memory that Alyosha’s mother was also Ivan’s mother . . .

“How was she your mother?” he muttered, not understanding. “Why do you say that? What mother are you talking about? But was she really. . . . Ah, devil take it! Why, yes, she’s also your mother! Damn it! Well, brother, that was some sort of mental blackout. Forgive me. I thought that, Ivan . . . hee, hee, hee!” He stopped. A long, drunken, semi-senseless grin spread across his face. And then at that very moment a terrible noise and roar could be heard in the entrance; there were fierce shouts; the door flew open, and Dmitry Fyodorovich came bursting into the drawing room. The old man threw himself at Ivan in his fear:

“He’ll kill me, he’ll kill me! Don’t let him, don’t!” he started screaming, clinging to the hem of Ivan Fyodorovich’s coat.

1 Luke 6:38.

2 “That’s all swinishness” (Fr.).

3 Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), a French writer notorious for his cruelty and sexual perversions.

4 According to Matthew 27:5, Judas hanged himself after betraying Christ. Russian legend says it was from an aspen tree.

5 An echo of an idea proposed by Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872).

6 “There’s something of Piron in him” (Fr.). Alexis Piron (1689–1773) was a witty French epigrammatist and dramatist.

7 “I believe” (Lat.).

8 A reference to Faust’s devil in Goethe’s play Faust (Part 1, 1808).

9 Arbenin is the hero in Mikhail Lermontov’s (1814–1841) play Masquerade (1835). The protagonist of his novel Hero of Our Time (1839) is named Pechorin.

10 See above, p. 34.

IX

THE SENSUALISTS

Immediately after Dmitry Fyodorovich, Grigory and Smerdyakov came running into the living room. They’d been struggling with him in the entrance hall, refusing to admit him (as a result of Fyodor Pavlovich’s instructions given several days before). Taking advantage of the fact that Dmitry Fyodorovich, after rushing in, paused for a moment to look around, Grigory circled the table, closed the double doors leading to the inner space on the opposite side of the room, and stood in front of the closed door, stretching out his broad arms, prepared to defend the entrance, so to speak, with his last breath. Seeing this, Dmitry uttered a sound that was even more like a screech than a yell, and threw himself at Grigory.

“So she’s in there! They’ve hidden her there! Get away, you scoundrel!” He was about to push Grigory away, but Grigory managed to fend him off. Beside himself in rage, Dmitry swung with all his might and struck Grigory. The old man collapsed as if mowed down, while Dmitry, jumping over him, broke through the door. Smerdyakov remained in the living room, at the other end, pale and trembling, pressing himself close to Fyodor Pavlovich.

“She’s here,” cried Dmitry Fyodorovich, “I saw her turn toward this house, but didn’t catch up with her. Where is she? Where?”

This shout produced an incomprehensible impression on Fyodor Pavlovich. All his fear vanished.

“Hold him, hold him!” he roared and tore after Dmitry Fyodorovich. Meanwhile, Grigory had managed to get up from the floor, but he still seemed dazed. Ivan Fyodorovich and Alyosha ran after their father. In the third room one could hear something falling suddenly on the floor with a loud crash, crashing and shattering: it was a large glass vase (not too expensive) on a marble pedestal, which Dmitry Fyodorovich had bumped into as he ran through.

“Sic him!” roared the old man. “Help!”

Ivan Fyodorovich and Alyosha managed to catch up with the old man and forced him back into the living room.

“Why are you chasing him? He’ll kill you for sure!” Ivan Fyodorovich cried angrily at his father.

“Vanechka, Lyoshechka,[1] she must be here, Grushenka’s here. I myself,” he says, “saw how she was running this way . . .”

He was choking. This time he hadn’t been expecting to find Grushenka, and the sudden news that she was here immediately drove him crazy. He was all atremble, as if he’d taken leave of his senses.

“But you saw for yourself that she hasn’t come!” cried Ivan.

“Perhaps she came in the other door?”

“That door’s locked and you have the key . . .”

Dmitry suddenly reappeared in the living room. Of course, he’d found the other door locked, and the key to that door really was in his father’s pocket. All the windows in all the rooms were also locked; there was nowhere Grushenka could have entered and no way she could have left.

“Hold him!” screeched Fyodor Pavlovich, as soon as he saw Dmitry again. “He’s stolen some money from my bedroom.” And, breaking away from Ivan, he threw himself at Dmitry once more. But Dmitry raised both his arms and suddenly seized hold of the old man by the two last tufts of hair growing on his temples; he yanked at them and, with a crash, threw him down onto the floor. He even managed to kick him in the face him a few times. The old man let out a piercing moan. Ivan Fyodorovich, although he was not as strong as Dmitry, grabbed him and, using all his might, managed to pull him away from the old man. Alyosha also helped him, summoning all his strength to hold his brother in front.

“You madman; you’ve killed him!” cried Ivan.

“Serves him right!” Dmitry cried out, gasping for breath. “And if I didn’t kill him, I’ll come again to do so. You won’t manage to save him!”

“Dmitry! Get out of here at once!” Alyosha cried forcefully.

“Aleksey! You alone can tell me; I’ll believe only you: was she here just now, or not? I saw her myself as she was stealing along the fence from the lane in this direction. I called her name but she ran away.”

“I swear to you, she wasn’t here, and no one here was waiting for her at all.”

“But I saw her. . . . Therefore, she . . . And I’ll find out right away where she is. . . . Good-bye, Alyosha. Don’t say a word about the money to Aesop; now you must go to Katerina Ivanovna and say to her, ‘He asks me to bow to you, bow to you, bow to you!’ Precisely, to bow to her and to bow farewell. Describe this scene to her.”

Meanwhile, Ivan and Grigory lifted up the old man and sat him down in the armchair. His face was covered in blood, but he was conscious and was listening to Dmitry’s cries. It seemed to him that Grushenka was still somewhere in the house. Dmitry Fyodorovich glanced at him with hatred as he was leaving.

“I don’t regret shedding your blood!” he cried. “Watch out, old man, watch over your dream, because I have a dream, too! I curse you and renounce you forever . . .”

He ran out of the room.

“She’s here, she’s really here! Smerdyakov, Smerdyakov,” the old man wheezed, barely audibly, beckoning him with his finger.

“No, she’s not here, no, you crazy old man,” Ivan shouted at him spitefully. “Well, now he’s fainting! Water, a towel! Hurry up, Smerdyakov!”

Smerdyakov rushed to fetch some water. At last they undressed the old man, carried him into the bedroom, and put him to bed. They wrapped his head in a wet towel. Weakened by the brandy, from his powerful emotions, and the beating, he instantly closed his eyes and fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Ivan Fyodorovich and Alyosha returned to the living room. Smerdyakov cleared away the fragments of the broken vase, and Grigory stood next to the table, hanging his head sadly.

“Shouldn’t you put a wet towel on your head, too, and shouldn’t you go to bed?” Alyosha said, addressing Grigory. “We’ll keep an eye on him; my brother gave you a terrible wallop . . . on the head.”

“He dared hit me!” Grigory complained glumly and distinctly.

“He dared hit even his own father, not only you!” Ivan Fyodorovich replied, with a wry grin.

“I used to wash him in the tub . . . and he hit me!” repeated Grigory.

“Devil take it, if I hadn’t pulled him off, he might have even killed him. It wouldn’t have taken much to do in that Aesop,” Ivan Fyodorovich whispered to Alyosha.

“God forbid!” cried Alyosha.

“Why ‘God forbid’?” Ivan continued his whispering, with a malicious expression on his face. “One viper devours another; good riddance to both of them!”

Alyosha shuddered.

“Of course, I won’t let a murder take place, just as I didn’t allow it now. Stay here, Alyosha; I’ll go out for a breath of air; my head’s beginning to ache.”

Alyosha went into his father’s bedroom and sat at his bedside, behind a screen, for almost an hour. The old man suddenly opened his eyes and stared at Alyosha for a long time in silence, apparently recalling and thinking. All of a sudden his expression changed to one of unusual agitation.

“Alyosha,” he whispered warily. “Where’s Ivan?”

“In the courtyard. His head was aching. He’s keeping watch over us.”

“Pass me the mirror. It’s over there; give it to me.”

Alyosha handed him the small, round folding mirror from the dresser. The old man looked into it: his nose was somewhat swollen and there was a rather large crimson bruise on his forehead over his left eyebrow.

“What does Ivan say? Alyosha, my dear boy, my only son: I’m afraid of Ivan. I’m more afraid of Ivan than the other one. You’re the only one I’m not afraid of.”

“Don’t be afraid of Ivan either. Ivan’s angry, but he’ll defend you.”

“Alyosha, what about the other one? He’s gone off to see Grushenka! My dear angel, tell me the truth: was Grushenka here or not?”

“No one saw her; it was an illusion; she wasn’t here.”

“Mitya wants to marry her, marry her!”

“She won’t marry him.”

“She won’t, won’t, won’t, won’t, not for anything!” the old man said exuberantly, quivering all over, as if nothing better could possibly be said to him at that moment. He took hold of Alyosha’s hand and pressed it tightly to his heart. Tears even began to glisten in his eyes. “That icon of the Mother of God that I told you about recently, take it for yourself, carry it away. I permit you to return to the monastery. . . . I was joking before; don’t be angry. My head aches, Alyosha. . . . Lyosha, soothe my heart, be an angel, tell me the truth!”

“You’re still going on about the same thing: was she here or not?” Alyosha said sadly.

“No, no, no, I believe you, but here’s what: go to Grushenka yourself, or else arrange to see her; hurry up and ask her, as quickly as possible; use your own eyes and guess: who does she want, him or me? Well? So? Can you do it or not?”

“If I see her, I’ll ask,” Alyosha started to mutter, feeling embarrassed.

“No, she won’t tell you,” the old man interrupted. “She’s too flighty. She’ll start to kiss you and say she wants to marry you. She’s devious. Shameless. No, you mustn’t go see her, ever.”

“No, Father, it wouldn’t be a good idea, no, it wouldn’t.”

“Where was he sending you before when he shouted, ‘Go there!’ as he was leaving?”

“He was sending me to Katerina Ivanovna.”

“For money? To ask for money?”

“No, not for money.”

“He has no money, not a kopeck. Listen, Alyosha, I’ll spend the night and think things over; you can leave. Perhaps you’ll meet her. . . . Only be sure to come see me tomorrow morning, for certain. I have a little something to tell you tomorrow; will you come?”

“I will.”

“When you do, pretend that you came on your own to visit me. Don’t tell a soul that I asked you to come. Don’t say a word to Ivan.”

“All right.”

“Good-bye, my angel; I won’t ever forget that you intervened on my behalf earlier. Tomorrow I’ll tell you a little something . . . but I have to think about it tonight.”

“But how do you feel now?

“Tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll get up and feel fine, just fine, just fine, just fine.”

As he crossed the courtyard, Alyosha saw his brother Ivan sitting on a bench near the gate; he was sitting there and writing something in his notebook in pencil. Alyosha told Ivan that the old man had awakened and recovered his senses, and was permitting him to return to the monastery to spend the night.

“Alyosha, I’d very much like to meet with you tomorrow morning,” said Ivan, standing up and greeting him very affably. His affability was completely unexpected by Alyosha.

“Tomorrow I’ll be at the Khokhlakovs’,” replied Alyosha. “I may also go to see Katerina Ivanovna, if I don’t find her at home now.”

“You’re still going to Katerina Ivanovna’s now! It’s that ‘bow to her, bow to her’?” Ivan said, smiling suddenly.

Alyosha was flustered.

“It seems I understood everything from his previous exclamations and some of what transpired. Dmitry, probably, asked you to see her and say that he . . . well . . . well, in a word, that he was ‘bowing out.’ ”

“Brother, how will this horror between Father and Dmitry end?” cried Alyosha.

“It’s impossible to predict. Perhaps it’ll come to nothing: the matter will dissipate. This woman’s a beast. In any case, you have to keep the old man at home, and not allow Dmitry into the house.”

“Brother, let me ask one more thing: does any man really have the right, regarding other people, to decide which of them is worthy to live and which one is not worthy?”

“Why introduce the question of worth into this matter? This question is decided most of all in men’s hearts, not on the basis of worth, but for different reasons, much more natural ones. And as far as the right is concerned, who lacks the right to desire?”

“Not the death of another man?”

“Yes, perhaps even that. Why lie to oneself, when all men live like that? Perhaps they can’t live in any other way. Are you referring to my previous words about ‘two vipers devouring each other’? In that case, let me ask you: do you consider me, too, like Dmitry, capable of shedding Aesop’s blood, well, of killing him, huh?”

“What are you saying, Ivan? The thought has never even occurred to me! Nor do I consider Dmitry . . .”

“Thanks, at least, for that,” Ivan said, grinning. “You should know that I’ll always defend him. But in my desires, I allow myself complete leeway in that case. Good-bye until tomorrow. Don’t judge me and don’t consider me a villain,” he added with a smile.

They shook hands warmly, as never before. Alyosha felt his brother had taken the first step toward him, and that he had definitely done so for some special reason.

1 Affectionate diminutive nicknames for Ivan and Aleksey.

X

BOTH TOGETHER

Alyosha left his father’s house feeling more dejected and crushed than when he’d arrived there earlier. His thoughts also seemed fragmented and disconnected, and he himself felt so afraid to connect the fragments and reach any general conclusion from all the tormenting contradictions experienced in that one day. Something verged almost on despair, a feeling that had never before plagued Alyosha’s heart. Above all else loomed, like a mountain, a primary, crucial, and insoluble question: how would the matter between his father and his brother over this terrible woman be resolved? Now he himself had been a witness to it. He’d been present there and had seen them confront each other. However, only his brother Dmitry could wind up unhappy, absolutely and terribly unhappy: an unavoidable misfortune awaited him. It turned out that there were other people involved in this affair, perhaps far more than Alyosha had assumed previously. There was even something mysterious about it. Brother Ivan had taken a step toward him, something that Alyosha had long been hoping for, and now, for some reason, he felt deep within himself that this step closer was frightening him. And those women? It was strange: previously he had been going in a state of great embarrassment to see Katerina Ivanovna; now he didn’t feel anything of the sort; on the contrary, he was hastening to see her, as if expecting to find some guidance there. However, to carry out his commission was now apparently more difficult than before: the matter of the three thousand rubles had been resolved categorically, and brother Dmitry, feeling himself dishonored and already lacking all hope, of course, now wouldn’t stop, when faced with any degradation. Besides, he’d already instructed Alyosha to describe the scene that had just taken place at his father’s to Katerina Ivanovna.

It was already seven o’clock and getting dark when Alyosha arrived at Katerina Ivanovna’s; she lived in a very spacious, comfortable house on Bolshaya Street. Alyosha knew that she lived with her two aunts. One of them, however, was only the aunt of her half sister, Agafya Ivanovna; she was that wordless woman in her father’s house who, with her sister, had taken care of Katerina Ivanovna when she came home from the institute. The other aunt was a grand and imposing Moscow lady, though not very well off. Rumor had it that they both deferred to Katerina Ivanovna in all things and lived with her only for reasons of etiquette. Katerina Ivanovna, on the other hand, deferred only to her benefactress, the general’s widow, who’d remained in Moscow because of her illness and to whom she was obliged to write two letters every week with detailed news about herself.

When Alyosha entered the hallway and asked the maid, who’d let him in, to announce him, it was obvious that they already knew about his arrival in the living room (perhaps they’d seen him through the window); be that as it may, Alyosha suddenly heard some noise, the sound of women’s footsteps, the rustle of dresses: two or three women might have been coming out. It seemed strange to Alyosha that his arrival could cause such a commotion. However, he was ushered into the living room. It was a large room, fitted out with elegant and abundant furniture, not at all in the provincial style. There were many sofas and couches, and little divans, as well as both large and small tables; there were paintings on the walls, vases and lamps on the tables, many flowers, and even an aquarium near the window. As a result of the twilight, it was somewhat dark in the room. Alyosha noticed on the divan where, apparently, the ladies had just been sitting an abandoned silk mantilla; on the table in front of the divan stood two unfinished cups of chocolate, some biscuits, a crystal plate with Málaga raisins, and another with candy. Alyosha guessed that they’d been entertaining a guest, and he frowned. But at that moment the door-curtain was raised and Katerina Ivanovna came in with rapid, hurried steps and extended both her hands to Alyosha with a joyful, rapturous smile. Also at that moment the maid came in and placed two lit candles on the table.

“Thank heavens, at last you’ve come, too! I’ve been praying to God for this all day. Sit down.”

Alyosha had been struck by Katerina Ivanovna’s beauty before, when his brother Dmitry, some three weeks ago, had brought him to meet her for the first time to introduce him and acquaint him with her, in accord with her own extraordinary desire. The conversation between them at that meeting, however, didn’t develop. Supposing that Alyosha was very uncomfortable, Katerina Ivanovna seemed to spare him and spoke all the time with only Dmitry Fyodorovich. Alyosha kept silent, but he observed a great deal with utter clarity. He was struck by the arrogant young woman’s authoritativeness, her proud familiarity, and her self-assurance. All this was for certain. Alyosha felt that he was not exaggerating. He found her large, shining dark eyes splendid; they went especially well with her pale, even somewhat pale yellow elongated face. But in those eyes, just like in the outline of her charming lips, there was something with which, of course, his brother could fall terribly in love, but which, perhaps, it was impossible to love for very long. He almost blurted out his thought to Dmitry, when, after the visit, his brother had insisted and come to see him, imploring him not to conceal his impression upon seeing his fiancée.

“You’ll be happy with her, but perhaps . . . not without anxieties.”

“That’s just it, brother, women like that don’t change; they don’t submit to fate. So you think I won’t love her forever?”

“No, you may love her forever, but you might not be happy with her forever . . .”

Alyosha had stated his opinion at the time, blushing and annoyed with himself that, yielding to his brother’s entreaties, he’d uttered such “foolish” thoughts. This opinion seemed terribly “foolish” to him as soon as he asserted it. And he was ashamed to express such strong opinions about a woman. It was with even a greater surprise that now he felt that perhaps, at his first glance of Katerina Ivanovna, as she hastened in to see him, he’d been wrong at that time. This time her face glowed with genuine, magnanimous goodness, open and ardent sincerity. Of all the previous “pride and arrogance” that had struck Alyosha at the time, now only generous energy was noticeable, and some sort of clear, powerful belief in herself. Alyosha realized from his first glance, her first words, that the whole tragic nature of her position regarding her beloved was no secret to her and that perhaps she already knew everything, absolutely everything. But in spite of this fact, there was so much light in her face, so much belief in the future, Alyosha suddenly felt utterly and deliberately guilty before her. He was immediately smitten and attracted. Besides all of this, he noticed from her first words that she was in a state of extreme excitement, perhaps quite exceptional for her, a state that almost even resembled some sort of ecstasy.

“I was waiting for you so impatiently because now I can learn the whole truth from you alone—and no one else!”

“I’ve come,” muttered Alyosha, getting confused, “I . . . he sent me . . .”

“Ah, he sent you, that’s just what I anticipated. Now I know everything, everything!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, her eyes flashing suddenly. “Wait, Aleksey Fyodorovich, I’ll tell you in advance why I’ve been waiting for you so eagerly. You see, I may know much more than even you do; I don’t need any more news from you. Here’s what I do need: I need to know your own, personal, most recent impression of him; I need you to tell me in the most direct, unadorned, coarse manner (oh, as coarse as you would like)—how do you regard him now and his position after your meeting with him today? That might be better than if I myself, whom he no longer wishes to visit, had a personal conversation with him. Do you understand what I want from you? Now, tell me why he sent you to me (I knew that he would send you!)—speak simply, and tell me the latest word!”

“He ordered me . . . to bow to you and to say that he wouldn’t ever come again . . . but to bow.”

“To bow? Is that what he said, in his own words?”

“Yes.”

“In passing, perhaps, by chance, erring in his choice of words, saying the wrong thing?”

“No, he ordered me precisely to convey his word: ‘to bow to you.’ He repeated it two or three times, so that I wouldn’t forget to say it to you.”

Katerina Ivanovna blushed.

“Help me now, Aleksey Fyodorovich; now I do need your help: I’ll tell you what I’m thinking, and you tell me whether it’s correct or not. Listen, if he’d asked you in passing to bow to me, without insisting on your conveying his words, not emphasizing them, then it would be . . . it would be the end! But if he emphasized that word particularly, if he specially ordered you not to forget that bow—then, therefore, he was in a state of excitement and, perhaps, not himself? He made a decision and was frightened by it! He didn’t leave me with a resolute step; rather, he leapt headlong from a mountain. The emphasis on this word could have been pure bravado.”

“Yes, yes!” Alyosha agreed heatedly. “It now seems like that to me, too.”

“And if so, then he’s still not lost! He’s merely in despair; but I can save him. Wait: did he say anything to you about the money, about the three thousand rubles?”

“Not only did he say something, but this may have been troubling him most of all. He was saying that he was now bereft of his honor and that it didn’t make any difference,” Alyosha replied with passion, feeling with all his heart how hope was flowing into it, and that in fact there might be a way out and some salvation for his brother. “But do you really . . . know about this money?” he added and suddenly stopped short.

“I’ve known about it for a long time, and I know it for certain. I asked him in a telegram from Moscow, and I’ve long known that the money was not received. He didn’t send it, but I kept silent. Last week I learned how much he needed and still needs that money. . . . I posited only one goal: so that he knew where to turn and who would be his most loyal friend. No, he doesn’t want to believe that I’m his most loyal friend; he didn’t want to get to know me; he regarded me only as a woman. All week I’ve been troubled by a terrible concern: how can I arrange things so he isn’t ashamed before me by the loss of those three thousand rubles? That is, let him be ashamed before himself and before everyone else, but not before me. Why, he can confess everything to God without shame. Why doesn’t he still know how much I can tolerate for him? Why, oh why doesn’t he know me? How dare he not know me, after all that’s happened? I want to save him forever. Let him forget about me as his fiancée! And he’s afraid for his honor in front of me! Why, he wasn’t afraid to be honest with you, Aleksey Fyodorovich. Why haven’t I earned the same yet?”

She uttered the last words through tears gushing from her eyes.

“I must tell you,” Alyosha said, his voice also trembling, “what just happened between him and Father.” He recounted the whole scene, how he was sent there for the money, how Dmitry had burst in, beat up his father, and, afterward, had particularly and adamantly insisted once again that he “bow” to her. . . . “And then he went off to see that other woman,” Alyosha added softly.

“And do you think I can’t deal with that woman? Does he really think that I can’t deal with her? But he won’t marry her,” she said, suddenly bursting into a nervous laugh. “Can a Karamazov really burn with a passion like that forever? It’s passion, not love. He won’t marry her because she won’t have him,” Katerina Ivanovna said, once more with a strange grin.

“Perhaps he will marry her,” Alyosha muttered gloomily, lowering his eyes.

“I tell you he won’t! That young woman is an angel, do you know that? Do you?” Katerina Ivanovna cried with extraordinary fervor. “She’s the most fantastic of fantastic creations! I know how seductive she is, but I also know how good she is, how strong, how noble. Why are you looking at me like that, Aleksey Fyodorovich? Perhaps you’re surprised by my words; perhaps you don’t believe me? Agrafena Aleksandrovna, my angel!” she cried suddenly to someone, looking into the other room. “Come in here; this kind man, this is Alyosha; he knows everything about our affairs; show yourself to him!”

“I’ve been behind the curtain waiting for you to call me,” said a tender, somewhat sugary feminine voice.

The door-curtain went up, and . . . Grushenka herself, laughing and rejoicing, approached the table. Alyosha flinched a little. His eyes were riveted to her and he couldn’t help himself. Here she was, this terrible creature—this “wild beast,” as his brother Ivan had called her less than half an hour before. And yet, there she stood before him, seeming to be the most ordinary and simple creature—a kind, sweet woman, certainly beautiful, but so similar to other beautiful, but “ordinary” women! True, she was pretty, even very pretty—a Russian beauty, passionately beloved by many people. She was rather tall; however, a little shorter than Katerina Ivanovna (who was really tall); she was plump, with soft, even seemingly inaudible movements of her body, as though they’d become softer, in some special, overly sweet way, like her voice. She approached the table not at all as Katerina Ivanovna had—with a formidable, bold walk: on the contrary, hers was imperceptible. Her feet moving across the floor made no noise. She lowered herself softly into an armchair, softly rustled her luxurious black silk dress, and tenderly wrapped her white-as-snow ample neck and broad shoulders in an expensive black woolen shawl. She was twenty-two years old and her face expressed this age exactly. She was very pale, with a pink tint to her cheeks. The lines of her face seemed to be too broad, and her lower jaw protruded just a bit. Her upper lip was thin, and her lower lip, which stuck out a little, was twice as full, as if it were somewhat swollen. But her most marvelous, most abundant dark brown hair, her dark, sable-colored eyebrows, and her splendid blue-gray eyes with their long lashes would compel even the most apathetic and absentminded man, even somewhere in a crowd or out for a stroll, to stop suddenly before her face and to commit it to memory for a long time afterward. Alyosha was most struck by its childlike, openhearted expression. She regarded things like a child, rejoiced like a child; she had approached the table “rejoicing,” and now she was expecting something with the most childlike impatience and innocent curiosity. The look in her eyes brought joy to his heart—Alyosha felt this. There was something else in her, something he could not or would not know how to explain, but that, perhaps, affected him subconsciously; again it was the softness, the tenderness in the movements of her body, the feline way she moved. Still, hers was a powerful and ample body. Her full, broad shoulders were evident under her shawl, and her high, still quite youthful bosom. This body, perhaps, suggested the form of the Venus de Milo, although now in somewhat exaggerated fashion—this could be foreseen. Connoisseurs of Russian women’s beauty could infallibly predict, glancing at Grushenka, that this fresh, still youthful beauty would, by the age of thirty, lose its harmony and expand; her face would become flabby, too many wrinkles would quickly appear around her eyes and on her forehead; the color of her face would perhaps coarsen, turn red—in a word, her beauty was momentary, fleeting, a condition, as is so often encountered among Russian women in particular. Alyosha, of course, wasn’t thinking about any of this, but although he was charmed, he wondered with an unpleasant sensation, and as if with regret: why did she drag out her words and seem unable to speak in a natural manner? She did this, apparently, because she found beauty in this lengthening and intentional sugarcoating of her syllables and sounds. This was, of course, merely a bad habit of bad taste, bearing witness to her unrefined upbringing and her vulgar sense of decency. And yet this manner of speaking and her intonation seemed to Alyosha to be an impossible contradiction to the childlike expression of her face, and the gentle, happy, childlike brightness of her eyes! Katerina Ivanovna sat her down at once in the armchair opposite Alyosha, and kissed her ecstatically several times on her laughing lips. It was as if she was in love with her.

“We’re seeing each other for the first time, Aleksey Fyodorovich,” she said rapturously. “I wanted to get to know her, to see her; I wanted to go see her, but at my first request, she herself came to me. I knew that we would resolve everything, everything! My heart had a premonition. . . . They begged me not to take that step, but I foresaw the outcome and wasn’t mistaken. Grushenka explained everything to me, all of her intentions; like a good angel, she flew here and brought with her peace and joy . . .”

“She didn’t disdain me, the dear, honorable young lady,” Grushenka drawled with the same sweet, joyful smile.

“And don’t you dare speak to me like that, you enchantress, you sorceress! Disdain you? I’ll kiss your lower lip again. It looks like it’s swollen; so now it will be even more so: bigger and bigger. Look at how she laughs, Aleksey Fyodorovich; my heart rejoices, just looking at this angel . . .” Alyosha blushed and quivered slightly.

“You pamper me, dear lady; but perhaps I don’t deserve your kindness.”

“Don’t deserve it! She says she doesn’t deserve it!” cried Katerina Ivanovna again with the same passion. “You should know, Aleksey Fyodorovich, that we have a fantastical little head, that we are willful, with a heart as proud as can be! We are noble, Aleksey Fyodorovich, we are magnanimous, do you know that? But we have merely been unhappy. We were too ready to make every sacrifice for an unworthy, or perhaps even thoughtless, man. There was one man, also an officer; we fell in love with him, and sacrificed everything for him; this was a long time ago, five or six years ago, but he forgot us and got married. Now he’s become a widower; he wrote that he’s coming here—and you should know that we love only him, him alone, up to now, and we’ve loved him all our life! He’ll come and Grushenka will be happy again; she’s been unhappy these last five years. But who’ll reproach her, who can boast of her favor? Only that invalid old man, a merchant—but he was more like our father, our friend, our protector. He found us in despair then, deserted by the man we loved so much. . . . Why, she even wanted to drown herself, but the old man saved her, rescued her.”

“You defend me too much, dear lady, and you’re in such a hurry to do everything,” Grushenka said, drawling again.

“Defend you? Is it for me to defend you? Do we dare to defend you? Grushenka, my angel, give me your little hand; look at this plump, charming little hand, Aleksey Fyodorovich. Do you see it? It’s brought me happiness and resurrected me, and now I’ll kiss it, on the back and on the palm; there, there, and there!” And in a kind of ecstasy, she kissed Grushenka’s really delightful little hand three times, though perhaps it was a little too plump. Grushenka, holding out her hand, watched the “sweet young lady” with a delightful, clear, nervous laugh. Obviously she liked having her hand kissed. “Perhaps there’s too much ecstasy”—the thought flashed through Alyosha’s mind. He blushed. His heart felt a peculiar discomfort all the time.

“Don’t embarrass me, dear lady, by kissing my hand in front of Aleksey Fyodorovich.”

“Do you really think I was trying to embarrass you?” Katerina Ivanovna said, somewhat surprised. “Ah, my dear, you don’t understand me well at all.”

“Perhaps you don’t understand me altogether either, dear lady. I may be much worse than I appear to you. I have a wicked heart; I’m willful. I made Dmitry Fyodorovich, poor fellow, a captive, only to have some fun.”

“But now you’ll be the one who’ll save him. You’ve given me your word. You’ll explain it to him, you’ll reveal that you’ve been in love with another man for a long time, someone who’s now offering you his hand in marriage.”

“No, I didn’t give you my word at all. You said all that to me, but I didn’t give you my word.”

“Then I must not have understood you correctly,” Katerina Ivanovna said softly, turning a bit pale. “You promised . . .”

“Ah, no, angel-lady, I didn’t promise anything.” Grushenka interrupted her softly and evenly, with the same cheerful and innocent expression. “Now it’s clear, honorable young lady, how nasty and despotic I am compared to you. I do whatever I feel like doing. Previously I may have promised you something, but now I think again: what if all of a sudden I like him again, Mitya, that is—at one time I liked him very much, even for one whole hour. Maybe I’ll go to him and tell him now that he should be together with me from today onward. . . . That’s how inconstant I am . . .”

“Before you said . . . something very different . . .” Katerina Ivanovna could scarcely utter the words.

“Ah, that was before! But I have a tender, foolish heart. Just think, what he’s suffered on my account! But what if I go home and begin to feel sorry for him? What then?”

“I never expected . . .”

“Ah, young lady, how good and generous you are compared to me. Now you might well cease liking me for my obstinate character. Give me your dear little hand, you angelic young lady,” she asked tenderly and she took hold of Katerina Ivanovna’s hand with a kind of reverence. “Here, young lady, I’ll take hold of your hand and kiss it as you did mine. You kissed mine three times, and I should kiss yours three hundred times in return to get even with you. So be it. As God wills it; perhaps I’ll become your total slave and want to do whatever you command. As God determines, without any contracts or promises between us. Your little hand is so sweet, so very sweet! You’re a sweet young lady, my incredible beauty!”

She gently brought Katerina Ivanovna’s hand to her lips, with the strange purpose of “getting even” with her kisses. Katerina Ivanovna did not withdraw her hand: she had listened to Grushenka’s last words with timid hope, although her last words to serve as her “total slave” were very strangely expressed. She looked her in the eye and saw the same openhearted, trusting expression, the same clear merriment. . . . “Perhaps she’s too naïve!” The thought flashed as a hope into Katerina Ivanovna’s mind. Meanwhile, Grushenka, as if in raptures over the “sweet little hand,” slowly raised it to her lips. But there she held it for two or three moments, as if ruminating on something.

“Do you know what, my angelic young lady,” she drawled abruptly in the most tender and sugary little voice, “do you know what, perhaps I won’t kiss your hand after all.” She gave a small, merry laugh.

“As you wish. What’s the matter with you?” Katerina Ivanovna asked suddenly with a shudder.

“So that you’ll remember that you kissed my hand, but I didn’t kiss yours.” All of a sudden something flashed in her eyes. She stared intently at Katerina Ivanovna.

“You impudent creature!” Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed, as if suddenly understanding something; turning red, she jumped up from her place. Grushenka stood up, too, without hurrying.

“So now I’ll tell Mitya how you kissed my hand, but I didn’t kiss yours. Oh, how he’ll laugh!”

“You bitch! Get away!”

“Ah, what shame, young lady, what shame. Such words are indecent, young lady.”

“Get out, you slut!” howled Katerina Ivanovna. Every one of her features trembled on her contorted face.

“Slut, you say? Yet when you were a young girl, you used to visit gentlemen when night was falling to ask for money; you wanted to sell your beauty. You see, I know all about it.”

Katerina Ivanovna shrieked and was about to throw herself at Grushenka, but Alyosha held her back with all his might:

“Don’t make a move, don’t say a word! Don’t speak, don’t reply; she’s leaving, this minute!”

At this moment Katerina Ivanovna’s two relatives came running into the room in response to her screams, as did the maid. They all rushed to her.

“I’m going,” said Grushenka, grabbing her shawl from the divan. “Alyosha, dear, see me out, will you?”

“Leave, leave right now!” Alyosha said, clasping his hands in entreaty.

“Dearest Alyoshenka, see me off! I’ll tell you a little something along the way! I arranged this whole scene for your benefit, Alyoshenka. See me off, my dearest; afterward you’ll be glad you did.”

Alyosha turned around, wringing his hands. Grushenka, with a ringing laugh, ran out of the house.

Katerina Ivanovna had a nervous fit. She sobbed, and was shaken by spasms. Everyone fussed over her.

“I warned you,” said her older aunt. “I tried to keep you from doing this. . . . You’re too passionate. . . . How could you take such a step? You don’t know these creatures, and they say that this one’s the worst of the lot. No, you’re too headstrong!”

“She’s a tiger!” howled Katerina Ivanovna. “Why did you restrain me, Aleksey Fyodorovich? I’d have given her a beating, a real beating!”

She wasn’t able to control herself in front of Alyosha, but perhaps she didn’t want to.

“She should be thrashed in public, on a scaffold, by the public executioner!”

Alyosha backed his way toward the door.

“But, my God!” cried Katerina Ivanovna suddenly, clasping her hands. “He did it! How could he be so dishonorable, so inhuman? Why, he told that creature what happened then, on that fateful, accursed day! ‘You went to sell your beauty, dear young lady.’ She knows! Your brother’s a scoundrel, Aleksey Fyodorovich!”

Alyosha wanted to say something, but he couldn’t find any words. His heart ached.

“Leave, Aleksey Fyodorovich! I’m ashamed, I feel awful! Tomorrow . . . I beg you on my knees, come again tomorrow. Don’t condemn me; forgive me; I don’t know what I’ll do with myself now!”

Alyosha left, as if staggering. He also felt like crying, as she did. Suddenly the maid caught up with him.

“The young lady forgot to give you this letter from Madame Khokhlakova; it’s been here since dinnertime.”

Alyosha mechanically took the little pink envelope and thrust it, almost unconsciously, into his pocket.

XI

ONE MORE REPUTATION RUINED

It was no more than about half a mile from town to the monastery. Alyosha made his way quickly along the road, which was deserted at that hour. It was almost nighttime and it was hard to distinguish objects at a distance of some thirty paces. There was a crossroads halfway back. There, under a solitary willow tree, some sort of figure could be seen. Alyosha had just reached the crossroads when the figure jumped up, rushed at him, and shouted in a fierce voice:

“Your money or your life!”

“Oh, it’s you, Mitya!” Alyosha said, but with a violent shudder.

“Ha, ha, ha! You didn’t expect me? I thought: where should I wait for you? At her house? There are three roads leading from there, and I could have missed you. I finally decided to wait for you here, because you would have to pass by this way; there’s no other way to get to the monastery. Well, tell me the truth; crush me like a cockroach. . . . What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing, brother. . . . You scared me. Ah, Dmitry! Father’s blood a while ago . . .” Alyosha started crying; he’d wanted to cry for a long time, and now something suddenly seemed to break loose in his soul. “You almost killed him . . . you cursed him . . . and now . . . this minute . . . you’re making jokes. . . . ‘Your money or your life!’ ”

“Well, so what? Is it indecent? Untimely?”

“No . . . it’s just that . . .”

“Wait. Take a look at this night: you see how gloomy it is, those clouds, the wind that’s come up! I hid here, under this tree, waiting for you, and suddenly I thought (so help me God!): why should I go on suffering? Why wait any longer? Here’s a willow, I have a kerchief, a shirt; I can twist it into a rope in a minute; in addition, I have suspenders, and—I won’t burden the earth anymore, won’t dishonor it with my vile presence! And then I heard you coming—good Lord, it was as if all of a sudden something descended on me: so there’s one man whom even I love; and now, here he comes, that dear man, my sweet little brother, whom I love more than anyone else, the only one whom I really love! And so, I loved you so much, loved you so much at that moment, that I thought: I’ll throw myself on him right now! And a foolish idea occurred to me: ‘I’ll amuse him; I’ll scare him.’ So I shouted like a fool, ‘Your money!’ Forgive my stupidity—it’s mere nonsense; in my soul there’s nothing indecent. . . . Well, devil take it. But tell me, what happened there? What did she say? Crush me, smite me, don’t spare me! Was she furious?”

“No, not that. . . . It was not at all like that, Mitya. There . . . I found both of them there.”

“What do you mean, both of them?”

“Grushenka was at Katerina Ivanovna’s.”

Dmitry Fyodorovich was flabbergasted.

“Impossible!” he cried. “You’re raving! Grushenka at her place?”

Alyosha described everything that had taken place from the moment he had arrived at Katerina Ivanovna’s. He spoke for about ten minutes; it can’t be said that it was a smooth or coherent account, but, it seems, he communicated the essence clearly, conveying the principal words and actions, and vividly portraying, often by means of one detail, his own feelings. Brother Dmitry listened in silence, staring with terrible stillness, but it was clear to Alyosha that he already understood everything and grasped the whole essence. But the further the story progressed, the more his face became not exactly gloomy, but somehow menacing. He knitted his brows and clenched his teeth; his steady gaze became even steadier, more stubborn, more terrifying. . . . The most unexpected moment came when, all of a sudden, his entire facial expression changed with incomprehensible rapidity from angry and ferocious; his compressed lips parted and Dmitry Fyodorovich suddenly erupted into the most unrestrained, most genuine laughter. He literally burst out laughing; for a long time he couldn’t even speak because of his laughter.

“So she wouldn’t kiss her hand! So she didn’t kiss it and ran away!” he cried in some sort of morbid ecstasy—one could even say brazen-faced ecstasy, if this emotion hadn’t been so unaffected. “So she yelled, ‘She’s a tiger!’ And that’s what she is! That she should be led to the scaffold? Yes, yes, indeed, I’m of the same opinion, she should have been, she should have been long ago! You see, brother, let her go to the scaffold; but I must still recover first. I understand this queen of brazenness, that’s really who she is; her true essence was revealed in her remark about that little hand, that infernal woman! She’s the queen of all the infernal women one can imagine in the world! A delight of her own kind! So she ran home? Now I’ll . . . ah. . . . I’ll go see her! Alyoshka, don’t blame me, but I agree: strangling is too good for her . . .”

“And what about Katerina Ivanovna?” Alyosha cried sadly.

“I can see her, too. I see right through her, as never before. It’s a full discovery of all four continents on earth—five, that is! What a step! It’s the very same little Katenka, the boarding-school girl who wasn’t afraid to come running to a ridiculous rude officer out of a generous desire to save her father, risking major insult! But our pride, our need to take risks, our defiance of fate, our infinite audacity! You say that her aunt tried to stop her? That aunt, you know, is autocratic; she’s the sister of a general’s widow in Moscow; she’s even snootier. Her husband was convicted of embezzlement of public funds, lost everything, his whole estate, and his proud wife suddenly lowered her self-assurance, and hasn’t raised it since. So she tried to restrain Katya, but she wouldn’t listen to her. ‘Everything,’ she said, ‘I can overcome everything; everything is subject to me; if I want, I can even bewitch Grushenka,’ and she herself believed it; she was showing off; whose fault was it? Do you think she kissed Grushenka’s hand first intentionally, with shrewd calculation? No, in truth she really fell in love with Grushenka, that is, not with Grushenka, but with her dream, her delirium—because it’s as if she were saying, ‘It’s my dream, my delirium!’ Dearest Alyosha, how did you manage to escape from them? You ran away, gathering up the hem of your cassock? Ha, ha, ha!”

“Brother, you seem not to have paid attention to how much you offended Katerina Ivanovna by telling Grushenka about that day. She suddenly threw it in her face that ‘you went in secret to sell your beauty to gentlemen’! Brother, what could be worse than such an insult?” Alyosha was most of all tormented by the idea that his brother was pleased by Katerina Ivanovna’s humiliation, although, of course, that couldn’t really be true.

“Bah!” Dmitry Fyodorovich cried with a sudden frown and slapped his forehead. Only now did he pay attention to what Alyosha had said, although Alyosha had said all of it together, both Katerina Ivanovna’s insult and her cry: “Your brother is a scoundrel!”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, perhaps I did tell Grushenka about that ‘fateful day,’ as Katya says. Yes, it is so; I did, I remember! It was then, in Mokroye; I was drunk and the gypsy women were singing. . . . But I was sobbing at the time, sobbing, on my knees, praying to Katya’s image, and Grushenka understood it. . . . At the time she understood everything, and I remember that she herself was crying. . . . Ah, devil take it! Could it be any different now? She was crying then, but now. . . . Now ‘it’s a dagger into the heart!’ That’s the way it is with women.”

He lowered his eyes and became pensive.

“Yes, I’m a scoundrel! Undoubtedly a scoundrel,” he said suddenly in a gloomy tone of voice. “It doesn’t matter whether I cried or not, I’m still a scoundrel! Tell her that I accept the designation, if that will console her. Well, enough, good-bye, what’s the point of any more talk? There’s nothing good about it. You must follow your road, and I’ll proceed along mine. I don’t want to see you again, until the very last moment. Good-bye, Aleksey!” He shook Alyosha’s hand firmly, his eyes still downcast, not lifting his head, and, as if tearing himself free, he began to stride rapidly toward town. Alyosha followed him with his eyes, not believing that he had gone so suddenly.

“Wait, Aleksey, one more confession, to you alone!” Dmitry Fyodorovich said suddenly, turning back. “Look at me, look closely; you see, here, right here—there’s a terrible disgrace being prepared.” (In saying “right here,” Dmitry struck his chest with his fist with such a strange expression, as if the disgrace lay there in his chest, in some place, a pocket, perhaps, or something sewn around his neck.) “You know me already: a scoundrel, an acknowledged scoundrel! But you must know that whatever I did before, do now, or will do in the future—nothing, nothing can compare in its vileness with the disgrace that right now, at this very minute, I carry here on my chest, here, right here, and that is being put into motion now, and will come to pass, although I’m in full control to stop; I can stop or carry it out, mark my words well! You should know that I’ll carry it out; I won’t stop. I told you everything a while ago, but I didn’t tell you this because even I’m not obstinate enough! I can still stop; in doing so, I can still restore half of my lost honor tomorrow, but I won’t stop; I’ll carry out my vile plan, and you should be a witness in advance, that I intentionally told you in advance. Darkness and destruction! There’s nothing to explain; you’ll find out in time. A stinking back alley and an infernal woman! Good-bye. Don’t pray for me; I’m not worth it, and it’s unnecessary, completely unnecessary . . . I don’t need it at all! Off with you!”

He suddenly withdrew, this time for good. Alyosha headed for the monastery. “How can it be that I’ll never see him again? What’s he saying?” he wondered anxiously. “I’ll see him tomorrow for sure; I’ll look for him, I really will. What’s he talking about?”

He went around the monastery and proceeded through the pine grove straight to the hermitage. They let him in, even though at this hour they were admitting nobody. His heart was trembling as he entered the elder’s cell: Why, oh why, had he left? Why had the elder sent him out “into the world”? Here there was silence, holiness, while there—commotion, darkness, in which you lose your way and get lost . . .

The novice Porfiry and Father Paisy were in the elder’s cell; they stopped by every hour all day long to inquire after Father Zosima’s health, which, as Alyosha found out with dread, was becoming worse and worse. Even his usual evening talk with the brothers couldn’t take place that day. Every day in the evening after the service, before going to bed, the monastic brothers would gather in the elder’s cell, and each one would confess aloud his sins that day, his sinful dreams, thoughts, temptations, even quarrels among themselves, if there were any. Some confessed on their knees. The elder absolved, reconciled, instructed, imposed penance, blessed them, and dismissed them. It was against the monastic “open confessions” that the opponents of the elders protested, arguing that it was a profanation of the sacrament of confession, almost a sacrilege, although in fact it was something quite different. They even pointed out to the church authorities that such confessions didn’t achieve their worthy goals, but in fact led deliberately to sin and temptation. Many of the brothers felt oppressed by going to see the elder; they went against their will, because everyone went, and they didn’t want to be seen as having proud and rebellious intentions. They said that several of the brothers who attended evening confessions would make arrangements between themselves in advance: “I’ll say that I got angry with you, and you confirm it.” This was so they’d have something to say and get it over with. Alyosha knew that sometimes this really happened. He also knew that there were some among the brothers who resented the fact that it was customary to submit letters they received from their relatives to the elder to be read before they got to see them. Of course it was assumed that all of this was done voluntarily and sincerely, with all one’s heart, in the name of deliberate humility and valuable edification, but in fact, as it turned out, it sometimes occurred with a lack of sincerity, on the contrary, artificially and dishonestly. But the older and more experienced of the brothers insisted that for those “who had come within those walls to truly save their souls, all of these obediences and penitential acts would turn out to be salutary and would bring them great benefit; on the other hand, those who were burdened or who grumbled were not true monks and had entered the monastery in vain; their place was out in the world. Just as it was out in the world, even within the walls of the temple one could not be safe from sin and from the devil; therefore there was no reason to encourage sin.

“He’s grown weaker and keeps dozing,” Father Paisy whispered to Alyosha after blessing him. “It’s even hard to wake him. But we shouldn’t disturb him. He woke up for about five minutes, asked to convey his blessing to the brothers, and asked them to pray for him that night. He intends to take Communion again in the morning. He mentioned you, Alyosha, and asked if you’d left the monastery; we told him that you were in town. ‘I sent him away and gave him my blessing; his place is there, and not here for the present.’ Thus he spoke about you. He mentioned you lovingly, with caring; do you understand how he’s honored you? But how did he decide that you should spend a period of time in the world? That means he foresees something special in your fate! You should understand, Aleksey, that even if you return to the world, it should be to accomplish the tasks he set for you, and not for vain frivolity or worldly enjoyment . . .”

Father Paisy left. There was no doubt in Alyosha’s mind that the elder was dying, though he might live another day or two. Alyosha decided resolutely and passionately that in spite of his promise to see his father, the Khokhlakovs, his brother, and Katerina Ivanovna—he would not leave the monastery at all tomorrow and would remain with the elder until the very end. His heart was burning with love, and he bitterly reproached himself that in town, at a moment like this, he had even forgotten about the person he’d left on his deathbed in the monastery, someone he revered more than anyone on earth. He entered the elder’s small bedroom, went down on his knees, and bowed to the earth before his sleeping elder. The elder was immobile in his sleep, barely breathing evenly and almost imperceptibly. His face was serene.

Returning to the other room, the very one in which that morning the elder had received his guests, Alyosha, without undressing and removing only his boots, lay down on the hard, narrow weathered sofa on which he’d spent every night for a long time, bringing only his pillow. He’d long forgotten to make use of his mattress, which his father had been hollering about not long before. He would remove only his cassock and cover himself with it as a blanket. But before he went to sleep, he sank down on his knees and prayed for a long time. In his fervent prayers, he didn’t ask God to clear up his confusion, but he merely craved joyful, tender emotion, the kind he had known before, which always visited his soul after singing the praises and glory of God, as he usually did in his evening prayers before going to bed. This joy would always bring him gentle, peaceful sleep. Praying now, he suddenly felt in his pocket the little pink envelope that Katerina Ivanovna’s maid had passed to him when she’d caught up with him along the road. He grew upset, but finished his prayer. Then, after some hesitation, he opened the envelope. It contained a brief note written by Lise—Madame Khokhlakova’s young daughter, who had laughed at him that morning in the elder’s cell.

“Aleksey Fyodorovich,” she wrote,

I’m writing to you in secret, even from my mother, and I know this is wrong. But I can’t live any longer unless I tell you what has occurred in my heart, and for the time being no one, except for the two of us, should find out. But how can I tell you all that I so want to convey? Paper, they say, will not blush; but I can assure you this isn’t true, and that it’s blushing now, just the way I am. Dear Alyosha, I love you; I have loved you since childhood, since Moscow, when you were not at all like the way you are now, and I’ll love you all my life. My heart has chosen you; I wish for us to unite our lives and live out our lives together until old age. Of course, this is on the condition that you leave the monastery. Concerning our age, we’ll wait as long as the law prescribes. Before then I’ll certainly get better, and I’ll be able to walk and even dance. There should be no doubt of that.

You see how I’ve thought it all through; there’s only one thing I can’t imagine: what will you think of me when you read this? I’m constantly laughing and playing pranks; the other day I made you angry, but I assure you that now, before I picked up my pen, I prayed in front of the icon of the Mother of God; even now I’m praying and almost weeping.

My secret is in your hands: tomorrow, when you come, I don’t know how I’ll look at you. Ah, Aleksey Fyodorovich, what if I can’t control myself again, and start laughing like a fool when I look at you, as I did recently? You’ll think I’m a nasty mocker and won’t believe my letter. Therefore I implore you, my dear, if you have sympathy for me, when you come tomorrow, don’t look me straight in the eye, because if I meet your gaze, perhaps I’ll suddenly start laughing; besides, you’ll be wearing that long gown. . . . Even now I grow very cold when I think about this; therefore, when you come in, don’t look at me for a while; look at my mother or even at the window . . .

Here I’ve written you a love letter; my God, what have I done? Alyosha, don’t despise me, and if I’ve done anything very nasty and offended you, forgive me. Now the secret of my reputation, perhaps ruined forever, is in your hands.

I shall certainly weep today. Good-bye, until our awful meeting. Lise.

P.S. Alyosha, you must come, you must, you must! Lise.

Alyosha read the letter with astonishment; he read it through twice, and then all of a sudden, he started chuckling softly and sweetly. He almost shuddered; that laugh seemed sinful to him. But a moment later he started laughing again, just as softly and happily. He folded the letter slowly and inserted it into the envelope, crossed himself, and went to bed. The disturbance in his soul soon passed. “Lord, have mercy on all of them; keep all these unhappy and troubled souls I met today in Your charge, and guide them. All ways are Thine: save them by Thy wisdom. Thou art love; Thou will send them all joy!” muttered Alyosha, crossing himself, and he fell into peaceful sleep.

PART TWO

BOOK FOUR

LACERATIONS[1]

1 The Russian word is nadryv, usually defined as a tear or rent, a strain, a crack-up, or a violent expression of emotion. Constance Garnett came up with “laceration,” and after considering the alternatives and conferring with colleagues, I have decided to adopt her word.

I

FATHER FERAPONT

Early in the morning, still before daybreak, Alyosha was roused. The elder had awakened and was feeling very weak; nevertheless, he wished to be moved from his bed to his armchair. He was fully conscious; while his face looked extremely tired, it was bright, almost joyful, and his eyes were cheerful, affable, and engaging. “I may not live through this day,” he said to Alyosha; then he expressed a desire to confess and take the sacraments at once. He always confessed to Father Paisy. After he’d completed the two sacraments, extreme unction began. The monks gathered; the cell gradually filled up with the inhabitants of the hermitage. Meanwhile, the day had dawned. Monks also began arriving from the monastery. When the service ended, the elder expressed the desire to bid farewell to all of them and kiss them all. Because of the small size of the cell, the early visitors withdrew to allow others to enter. Alyosha stood next to the elder, who was once again seated in his chair. He spoke and instructed as best he could; his voice, though weak, was still fairly steady.

“I’ve taught you for so many years, and therefore spoken to you for so long, that speaking has become a habit, and in so doing, also instructing you, so that it is almost harder for me to remain silent, my dear fathers and brothers, even now, in spite of my weakness,” he said in jest, looking kindly at those assembled around him. Afterward Alyosha remembered a few things he’d said at the time. But even though he spoke distinctly and his voice was fairly steady, his words were rather disconnected. He spoke of many things; it seemed that he wanted to say everything, to repeat it all before the time of his death, everything that he hadn’t finished saying during his life, and not merely for the sake of instructing them, but as if yearning to share his joy and ecstasy with everyone and all things, to pour out once again in his life everything that was in his heart . . .

“Love one another, Fathers,” instructed the elder (as far as Alyosha could recall afterward). “Love God’s common people. Those of us who have come here and shut ourselves up within these walls are no holier than laymen; on the contrary, everyone who has come here, by that very fact, has acknowledged that he is worse than those laymen, as well as everyone and everything on earth. . . . And the longer a monk spends within these walls, the more aware he should be of this and become conscious of it. Otherwise he would have had no reason to come here. When he acknowledges that not only is he worse than those laymen, but also that he is responsible before them for all men and all things, for all human sins, general and individual, only then will the goal of our seclusion have been achieved. You should know, my dear ones, that every individual is undoubtedly responsible for everyone and everything on earth, not only with respect to general guilt, but also each individual is responsible for every single person and all mankind on earth. This awareness is the crown of a monk’s path, and of every man on earth. Monks are no different from other people; they are merely what every person on earth should be. Only then would our heart be moved to infinite, universal, insatiable love. Then each of us will be capable of winning over the whole world with love and of washing away the sins of the world with our tears. . . . Each of you must tend to his own heart and confess to himself constantly. Don’t be afraid of your sins, even as you acknowledge them, as long as there is repentance; do not set conditions with God. Once again I say: do not be proud. Do not be proud before those lesser than you, nor before those greater than you. Do not despise those who spurn you, slander you, revile you, or libel you. Do not despise atheists, teachers of evil, materialists, or even the wicked, especially the good among them, because there are many who are good among them even in our time. Remember them in your prayers as follows: ‘Save, O Lord, those who have no one to pray for them; also save those who don’t wish to pray to You.’ And add: ‘I am not praying about them from my pride, Lord, for I myself am vile and worse than everyone and everything.’ Love God’s common people; do not allow the flock to be lured away by strangers, for if you fall asleep while in laziness or in your squeamish pride or, worse, in your covetousness, then they will come from all sides and lure away your flock. Teach the Gospel to the common people incessantly. . . . Avoid corruption. Do not come to love gold and silver, do not hoard them. . . . Believe and raise the banner. Hold it high . . .”

The elder, however, spoke in a more disconnected fashion than Alyosha wrote and subsequently reported. Sometimes he broke off completely, as if he were collecting his strength; he gasped for breath, yet seemed to be in some sort of ecstasy. The monks listened to him with tender emotion, although many of them were surprised by his words and found them obscure. . . . But afterward, they remembered everything he’d said. When Alyosha happened to leave the cell for a moment, he was struck by the general agitation and expectation of those brothers crowded into the cell and those standing nearby. This expectation among them was almost anxious; some were solemn. Everyone was expecting something immediate and extraordinary upon the elder’s passing. This expectation, on the one hand, was almost somehow giddy, but even the most severe monks succumbed to it. Father Paisy’s face was the harshest of all. Alyosha had left the cell simply because he’d been mysteriously summoned, through one of the monks, by a strange letter to him from Madame Khokhlakova brought by Rakitin. She relayed to Alyosha a very curious but extremely timely bit of news. It seems that yesterday, among the devout common people, there were some women who’d come to pay their respects to the elder and to ask for his blessing; there was one elderly woman from town, Prokhorovna, a sergeant’s widow. She asked the elder: could she pray for the repose of her son Vasenka’s soul; he’d gone to serve far away, out in Siberia, to Irkutsk, and she hadn’t heard any news from him in over a year. The elder answered her with strictness, forbidding her to do so, and calling such practice akin to sorcery. But then, forgiving her ignorance, he added, “as if glancing into the book of the future” (as Madame Khokhlakova expressed it in her letter), the consolation that “her son Vasya was surely alive, and that he would come back to her soon or send her a letter, and that she should go back home to wait for him. And then what happened?” added Madame Khokhlakova in ecstasy, “the prophecy came true literally, and even more than that.” As soon as the old woman returned home, they handed her a letter from Siberia; it had been waiting for her. But that’s still not all: in this letter, written along the way, from Yekaterinburg, Vasya informed his mother that he himself was returning to Russia with an official, and that about three weeks after receiving this letter, “he hoped to be able to embrace his mother.” Madame Khokhlakova insistently and passionately implored Alyosha to convey news of this “miracle of prophecy” to the father superior and all the brothers: “This should be made known to everyone, to everyone!” she cried, concluding her letter. It had been written quickly, in a hurry; the writer’s agitation was evident in every line. But there was nothing for Alyosha to convey to the brothers, because they already knew all about it: Rakitin had sent for the monk, and had commissioned him, in addition, to inform “the most reverend Father Paisy that he, Rakitin, had a matter of such importance that he shouldn’t delay even for a minute and that he humbly begged forgiveness for his boldness.” Since the monk had conveyed Rakitin’s request to Father Paisy before he gave the letter to Alyosha, he found after reading it that there was nothing more to do but report the message to Father Paisy merely in the form of a document. And even this stern and skeptical man, after reading and frowning at the news of this “miracle,” was unable to refrain completely from experiencing some inner emotion. His eyes shone, and a serious and solemn smile formed on his lips.

“That’s not the worst we shall behold!” suddenly seemed to burst forth from him.

“That’s not the worst we shall behold, not the worst!” the monks repeated around him, but Father Paisy, frowning once again, requested that for the time being, the news not be shared with anyone, “until it was further confirmed, because there is a great deal of frivolousness in the secular world, and this event might well have occurred naturally,” he added cautiously, as if to clear his conscience, but he himself didn’t quite believe his own utterance, a fact that his listeners could also perceive. At that very hour, of course, the “miracle” became known to the entire monastery and many of the secular visitors, who’d come to the monastery to hear a liturgy. No one seemed more struck by the reported miracle than the monk “from St. Sylvester’s,” who’d arrived the day before, from a small monastery in Obdorsk, located in the far north. He’d paid his respects to the elder yesterday, standing next to Madame Khokhlakova, and, indicating the “healing” of this lady’s daughter, had asked him, with deep emotion, “How do you dare perform such deeds?”

The fact was that now he was somewhat confused and almost didn’t know whom to believe. Yesterday evening he’d visited Father Ferapont in his private cell beyond the apiary: he was perplexed by this meeting, which had produced an extraordinary and terrible impression on him. This elder, Father Ferapont, was the very same elderly monk, devout in fasting and maintaining a vow of silence, whom we have mentioned already as an opponent of Father Zosima and, primarily, the institution of elders, which he considered as a detrimental and frivolous innovation. This opponent was extremely dangerous, in spite of the fact that since he maintained a vow of silence, he hardly spoke to anyone. He was dangerous, primarily, because many of the brothers sympathized completely with him, and many of the secular visitors considered him a very righteous man and a great ascetic, in spite of the fact that they undoubtedly viewed him as a holy fool. But it was this last quality that attracted them.

This Father Ferapont never went to see the elder Zosima. Although he lived in the hermitage, he was not much bothered by its rules, again because he behaved as if he were a holy fool. He was about seventy-five years old, if not more, and lived beyond the hermitage apiary, in a corner of the wall, in an old, almost dilapidated wooden cell; it had been built in olden times, during the last century, also for a great ascetic and observer of the vow of silence, Father Iona, who lived until the age of one hundred and five; many of his most interesting feats are recounted in the monastery and the surrounding area to this day. Father Ferapont had finally managed to get himself established in the same solitary cell some seven years earlier, that is, in a simple hut, but one that was much like a chapel, because it contained many donated icons, with icon lamps burning constantly in front of them; Father Ferapont had been, as it were, charged with looking after them and keeping the lamps burning. He ate (as it was said—and it was the truth) only two pounds of bread every three days, no more; the beekeeper, who lived near the apiary, would bring him bread every three days; but Father Ferapont rarely exchanged a word even with the beekeeper who served him. These four pounds of bread, together with some Communion bread sent to the holy fool regularly on Sunday after the last liturgy by the father superior, constituted his entire rations for the week. The water in his jug was changed daily. He rarely appeared at church services. Visiting worshippers would see how he sometimes spent the whole day in prayer, never rising from his knees or looking around. If he entered into conversation with them, he was curt, abrupt, strange, and always almost rude. On the other hand, there were very rare times when he also spoke with visitors; but for the most part he merely uttered some strange word, always posing a great riddle to them, and afterward, in spite of all entreaties, he would never say a word of explanation. He had no ecclesiastical rank; he was only a simple monk. A very strange rumor circulated among the most ignorant people, however, that Father Ferapont was in communication with heavenly spirits, and that he engaged in conversation only with them, and that was why he didn’t speak with other people. The monk from Obdorsk, after making his way to the apiary as directed by the beekeeper, also a very taciturn and disconsolate monk, proceeded to the corner of the wall where Father Ferapont’s little cell was located. “He might speak with you, since you’re a newcomer; but maybe you won’t get anything out of him,” the beekeeper cautioned him. The monk approached, as he himself related subsequently, with the greatest fear. The hour was already quite late. This time Father Ferapont was sitting near the door to his cell, on a low bench. A huge old elm tree was rustling softly above him. The evening was getting chilly. The monk from Obdorsk prostrated himself before the holy fool and asked for his blessing.

“Do you want me to prostrate myself in front of you, monk?” asked Father Ferapont. “Arise!”

The monk stood up.

“In blessing, you have blessed yourself; sit beside me. Where be you from?”

What startled the poor monk most of all was that Father Ferapont, in spite of his undoubtedly strict fasting and advanced age, was still a tall, strong old man, holding himself erect, not hunched over, with a fresh face, although thin, yet healthy. Unquestionably he still possessed considerable strength. His build was athletic. In spite of his many years, his hair was not yet all gray; he had extremely thick, previously black hair on his head and in his beard. His eyes were gray, large, shining, but extremely protruding, noticeably so. He spoke with a strong emphasis on the letter o.[1] He was wearing a long reddish peasant’s coat of heavy convict cloth, as it used to be called, fastened by a thick rope at the waist. His neck and chest were bare. Under his coat one could glimpse a coarse, almost completely blackened shirt, which for months he never took off. They said that under his coat he also wore iron chains weighing some thirty pounds. He had some old, almost worn-out shoes on his bare feet.

“From the small Obdorsk monastery, St. Sylvester,” the newly arrived monk replied humbly, while his quick, inquisitive little eyes, although somewhat frightened, observed the hermit.

“I’ve been to your Sylvester. I’ve lived there. Is your Sylvester well?”

The monk hesitated.

“You’re a foolish lot! How do you observe fasts?”

“Our refectory is organized according to the old hermitage rules: during the forty days of Lent no meals are served on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the brothers receive white bread, stewed fruit with honey, cloudberries, or salted cabbage mixed with oat flour. On Saturdays, white cabbage soup, noodles with peas, and kasha, all with vegetable oil. On weekdays we have dried fish and kasha with our cabbage soup. During Holy Week, from Monday evening to Saturday evening, for six days, no food is prepared, only bread and water, and only a limited amount; but if possible, we don’t eat every day, just like the first week of Lent. We eat nothing at all on Good Friday, and the same on Holy Saturday until three o’clock; then we eat a little bread and water and drink a small cup of wine. On Maundy Thursday we eat food cooked without oil, or dry food, and we drink wine. For the Laodicean Council declared about Thursday:[2] ‘It is unworthy to dishonor the whole season of Lent by breaking the fast on Holy Thursday.’ That’s how we observe the fast. What is that compared with you, Great Father?” the monk added, feeling emboldened. “For all the year round, even on Holy Easter, you eat only bread and water, and what we eat in two days lasts you all week. Such abstinence is truly marvelous.”

“And milk-agaric mushrooms?” Father Ferapont asked suddenly, pronouncing the letter g with aspiration, almost like kh.

“Mushrooms?” repeated the astonished monk.

“Exactly. I can give up bread, not needing it all, and go into the forest and there live on mushrooms or berries; but these monks can’t live without their bread, therefore they’re bound to the devil. Nowadays the pagans say there’s no reason to fast so strictly. Their reasoning is arrogant and vile.”

“Oh, that’s true,” said the monk, sighing.

“Have you seen devils among them?” asked Father Ferapont.

“Among whom?” the monk inquired timidly.

“I went to see the father superior last year at Pentecost, but I haven’t been back since. I saw a devil sitting on one monk’s chest, hiding under his cassock, only his horns sticking out; another had a devil with shifty eyes poking out of his pocket; and I was afraid; a devil had taken up in one man’s belly, in the dirtiest part; another had a devil hanging around his neck, unbeknownst to him, and he was carrying it around.”

“Did you . . . see them?” inquired the monk.

“I tell you—I do see them, through and through. As I was leaving the father superior, I looked—and one was hiding from me behind the door, a great big one, a yard and a half or more tall, with a long, thick brown tail; when the end of his tail got stuck in the doorjamb, since I’m no fool, I suddenly slammed the door shut, and his tail was caught. He started to wail and began thrashing about, but I made the sign of the cross over him three times, I did. He died right then and there, like a squashed spider. He must have rotted there in that corner, stinking, but they didn’t see him or smell him. I haven’t been back there in a year. I’m telling you because you’re a foreigner.”

“Your words are frightening! But tell me, oh great and blessed Father”—the monk felt braver and braver—“is it true what the glorious rumors say, even in faraway lands, that you’re in constant contact with the Holy Ghost?”

“It descends. It happens.”

“How does it descend? In what form?”

“A bird.”

“The Holy Ghost in the form of a dove?”

“There’s the holy spirit and there’s the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit can appear as other birds: sometimes a swallow, or a goldfinch, or a blue tit.”

“How can you tell it apart from a real blue tit?”

“It speaks.”

“How does it speak? In what language?”

“Human language.”

“What does it say to you?”

“Just today it proclaimed that a fool would visit me and ask improper questions. Monk, you want to know too much.”

“Your words are terrible, Most Blessed and Holy Father,” the monk said, shaking his head. But there was a frightened look in his little eyes.

“Do you see this tree?” asked Father Ferapont, after a brief moment of silence.

“I do, Most Blessed Father.”

“You think it’s an elm, but for me it’s not.”

“What is it?” the monk asked, after a pause of pointless silence.

“It happens during the night. Do you see those two branches? At night it’s Christ holding out his arms to me and seeking me with those arms. I see it clearly and I tremble. It’s terrible, terrible!”

“What’s terrible if it’s Christ Himself?”

“He’ll grab me and carry me off.”

“Alive?”

“In the spirit and power of Elias,[3] haven’t you heard? He’ll embrace me and carry me away . . .”

Although after this conversation the monk from Obdorsk returned to his designated little cell, which he was sharing with one of the other brothers, in rather intense confusion, his heart still undoubtedly inclined more toward Father Ferapont than to Father Zosima. The monk from Obdorsk was first of all in favor of fasting; and it was not at all surprising that someone who fasted the way Father Ferapont did should “witness wonders.” His words, of course, seemed absurd, but Lord knows what was hidden in them, those words; after all, holy fools speak and act in even stranger ways. As for the part about the devil’s tail being caught in the doorjamb, he was absolutely and willingly ready to believe it, not only in the allegorical sense, but also in the literal sense. Besides, even before his visit to this monastery, he had harbored a strong prejudice against the institution of elders, which he knew about only through accounts, and he followed many others in certainly viewing it as a harmful innovation. After spending a day in the monastery, he’d managed to detect the secret murmuring of several insensitive brothers who were opposed to the institution of elders. He was also by nature an adroit and intrusive man, with inordinate curiosity about everything. That’s why the great news of the new “miracle” performed by the elder Zosima plunged him into extreme confusion. Alyosha recollected afterward that among the monks who’d crowded around the elder’s cell had been the figure of the inquisitive monk from Obdorsk, who scurried from one group to another, listening and asking questions. But he didn’t pay much attention to him and recalled all this only later. . . . Besides, he had no time for all this: the elder Zosima, feeling tired once again, had gone back to bed; suddenly, as he was closing his eyes, he thought about Alyosha and called him to his side. Alyosha went rushing in. Only Father Paisy remained near his bed, with Father Iosif and the novice Porfiry. The elder, opening his weary eyes and staring intently at Alyosha suddenly asked him:

“Is your family waiting for you, my son?”

Alyosha hesitated.

“Don’t they need you? Didn’t you promise someone yesterday to come today?”

“I did . . . my father . . . my brothers . . . others, too.”

“You see. You must go immediately. Don’t be sad. You should know that I won’t die before saying my last words in your presence. I’ll say that word to you, my son; I’ll dedicate it to you. To you, my dear son, because you love me. Meanwhile, go to those whom you promised.”

Alyosha submitted immediately, although it was hard for him to leave. But the promise to hear his last words on earth, and, primarily, because they were to be bestowed on him, stirred his soul with ecstasy. He began to hurry, so that, after finishing everything he had to do in town, he could return as soon as possible. It was also Father Paisy who delivered a parting word to him that produced a strong and unexpected impression. It was said as the two of them left the elder’s cell together.

“Remember, young man, perpetually,” began Father Paisy directly, without any preface, “that secular learning, which has become a great power, has, especially in the last century, analyzed everything divine that was left to us in the Holy Books; and, after cruel analysis by the learned of this world, absolutely nothing is left of all that was sacred. However, they analyzed only in parts, and overlooked the whole; indeed, their blindness is reason to ponder. While the whole still stands before their eyes as steadfastly as before, the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.[4] Hasn’t it survived for nineteen centuries? Isn’t it alive even now in the movements of individual souls and of masses of the common people? It lives steadfastly even in the movements of the souls of those utterly destructive atheists! For even those who reject Christianity and who rebel against it, in essence they still share the same Christian character, and such they have remained, because up to now neither their wisdom nor the ardor of their hearts was able to create a higher image of man and his dignity than the ideal demonstrated in days of old by Christ. Whatever were their attempts, the result was only abominations. Remember this especially, young man, since you’re being sent out into the world by your departing elder. Perhaps, recalling this great day, you won’t forget my words either, uttered from my heart to guide you, for you’re young and the temptations of this world are great and beyond your strength to bear. And now, go, my orphan.”

With these words Father Paisy blessed him. As he was leaving the monastery and pondering these unexpected words, Alyosha suddenly understood that he was now encountering, in this previously stern and severe monk, a new, unexpected friend, and a new mentor who loved him tenderly—just as if the elder Zosima had bequeathed him to Father Paisy as he was dying. A thought suddenly occurred to Alyosha: “Perhaps this actually transpired between them.” The unexpected and erudite reasoning he had just heard, precisely that and not some other, bore witness to Father Paisy’s warm heart: he was hastening to arm the young man’s mind for the struggle against temptations, and to protect the young soul willed to him with the strongest defense he could imagine.

1 A characteristic of the dialect spoken in the north of Russia.

2 This church council took place in the mid-fourth century near the modern-day city of Denizli, Turkey.

3 Cf. Luke 1:17. Elias is the Latin and Greek equivalent of Elijah.

4 Matthew 16:18.

II

AT HIS FATHER’S

First of all Alyosha went to see his father. As he drew near, he remembered that his father had categorically insisted the day before that he should come without his brother Ivan knowing he was there. “Why?” Alyosha now wondered suddenly. “If my father wants to say something to me alone in secret, then why do I have to arrive in secret? Probably yesterday in his agitation he wanted to say something different but didn’t manage it,” he decided. Nevertheless, he was very glad when Marfa Ignatyevna, after opening the gate for him (Grigory, it turned out, was ill and resting in the cottage), answered his question, saying that Ivan Fyodorovich had left the house two hours before.

“And Father?”

“He’s awake, having his coffee,” Marfa Ignatyevna replied somewhat dryly.

Alyosha entered. The old man was sitting alone at the table, in his slippers and wearing an old overcoat; he was examining some accounts for his own amusement, but without paying much attention. He was all alone in the whole house (Smerdyakov had also gone in search of some supplies for dinner). But it was not these accounts that interested him. Although he’d gotten out of bed early in the morning, and was trying to keep his spirits up, he still looked tired and weak. His forehead, on which huge purple bruises had spread during the night, was wrapped in a red kerchief. His nose had also swelled, and some minor bruises had appeared in blotches; they definitely imparted to his entire face an especially malicious and bad-tempered look. The old man knew this himself and regarded Alyosha with a hostile scowl as he came in.

“The coffee’s cold,” he cried shrilly, “I won’t offer you any. I’ve ordered only some Lenten fish soup today, brother, and I’m not inviting anyone to join me. Why have you come?”

“To see how you are,” replied Alyosha.

“Yes. Besides, yesterday I myself ordered you to come. It’s all such nonsense. You’ve troubled yourself for no reason. But, as a matter of fact, I knew you’d drag yourself over here . . .”

He said this with the most hostile feeling. At the same time he stood up from his place and glanced at his nose in the mirror (perhaps for the fortieth time that morning). He also started to readjust the red kerchief on his forehead to be more attractive.

“Red is better; white would look too much like a hospital,” he remarked sententiously. “Well, how are things over there? How’s your elder?”

“Very bad; he may die today,” replied Alyosha, but his father wasn’t listening, and he forgot his question at once.

“Ivan left,” he said suddenly. “He’s trying his best to steal Mitka’s fiancée; that’s why he’s living here,” he added spitefully; twisting his mouth, he looked at Alyosha.

“Did he really tell you that himself?” asked Alyosha.

“Yes, he said so some time ago. What do you think: he said it some three weeks ago. You don’t think he came here to murder me in secret, too? Why else did he come?”

“What are you saying? Why are you talking like that?” Alyosha asked, terribly disconcerted.

“He’s not asking for money, it’s true, but he still won’t get a kopeck out of me. My dearest Aleksey Fyodorovich, I intend to live on earth as long as possible; therefore I need every kopeck, and the longer I live, the more I will need it,” he continued, pacing the room from corner to corner, his hands in the pockets of his capacious, soiled overcoat, made of yellow summer calamanco. Now I’m still a man, only fifty-five years old, but I want to remain so for at least twenty more years; and as I grow older—I’ll become repulsive and women won’t come to me of their own accord, and that’s when I’ll need the money. That’s why now I save more and more for myself, sir, my dear son, Aleksey Fyodorovich; you might as well know, because I intend to live in filth until the end, you should know. It’s sweeter living in filth: everyone insults it, but everyone lives in it, only in secret; but I do so openly. All the other scoundrels have attacked me for my openheartedness. As for your paradise, Aleksey Fyodorovich, even if it really exists, it’s unacceptable for a decent person. I don’t want to go there; you should know that. In my opinion, I’ll fall asleep and won’t wake up, and there’s nothing else; remember me or not, as you wish, if not, then don’t, and damn you! That’s my philosophy. Yesterday Ivan spoke here very well, although we were all drunk. Ivan’s a braggart; he has no genuine learning . . . nor does he have any real education; he keeps silent and smiles at you without speaking—that’s how he turns it to his advantage.”

Alyosha listened to him and said nothing.

“Why doesn’t he talk to me? If he does speak, he puts on airs; your Ivan is a scoundrel! I’ll marry Grushka now, if I decide to.[1] Because with money, Aleksey Fyodorovich, you can get anything you want. That’s what Ivan’s afraid of; he’s watching me so that I won’t get married; that’s why he’s prompting Mitka to marry Grushka: that way he’ll keep me from marrying her (as if I would leave him the money, if I didn’t marry her!); on the other hand, if Mitka marries Grushka, then Ivan can have his rich fiancée all to himself, that’s what he thinks! Your Ivan’s a scoundrel!”

“You’re so irritable. It’s because of yesterday; you ought to go lie down,” said Alyosha.

“You say that,” the old man remarked suddenly, as if it had just occurred to him for the first time, “you say that, but I’m not angry at you, but at Ivan; if he said that himself to me, I’d get very angry. It’s only with you that I have such good moments; otherwise, I’m a wicked man.”

“You’re not a wicked man, just corrupted,” said Alyosha with a smile.

“Listen, I wanted to get that thief Mitka locked up this morning; and even now I still can’t decide what to do about him. Of course, in these modern times, it’s customary to regard mothers and fathers as a prejudice, but according to the law, it’s not permitted even now to drag old fathers around by their hair, or to kick them in the face on the floor of their own houses, or to brag about killing them outright—all in the presence of witnesses. I could, if I wanted to, squash him and have him locked up for what he did yesterday.”

“So you don’t want to lodge a complaint?”

“Ivan dissuaded me. I don’t give a damn about Ivan, but I do know one thing . . .”

And leaning over to Alyosha, he continued in a confidential half whisper:

“If I lock him up, she’ll hear that I did so, and will run to him at once. And if she hears today that he beat me to within an inch of my life, a weak old man, she might give him up and come to see me. . . . That’s the sort of person she is, likely to do the opposite of what’s expected. I know her through and through! Well, won’t you have some brandy? Have some cold coffee: I’ll pour a quarter of a glass of brandy into it; it tastes very good, my dear.”

“No, it’s unnecessary, thank you. I’ll take this roll with me, if you’ll allow me,” said Alyosha, and picking up a three-kopeck French roll, he put it into the pocket of his cassock. “And you shouldn’t drink any more brandy,” he advised cautiously, looking into the old man’s face.

“You’re right; it irritates me, instead of comforting me. But I’ll have only one glass. . . . I’ll get it out of my little cupboard . . .”

He opened his “little cupboard” with a key, poured himself a glass, drank it, then locked the cupboard and put the key back in his pocket.

“Enough, I won’t die from just one glass.”

“And you’ve become kinder,” said Alyosha with a smile.

“Hmm. I love you even without any brandy, but with scoundrels, I’m a scoundrel, too. Vanka won’t go to Chermashnya—why not?[2] He wants to spy on me: will I give Grushenka a lot of money, if she comes? They’re all scoundrels! But I don’t acknowledge Ivan at all. Where did he come from? He’s not one of us. And what exactly will I leave to him? You may as well know that I won’t leave a will at all. And I’ll crush Mitka, like a cockroach. I squash black cockroaches at night with my slipper: they crack when you step on them. And your Mitka will, too. Your Mitka, because you love him. You do love him, but I’m not afraid you do. But if Ivan loved him, I’d be afraid for myself. But Ivan doesn’t love anybody. He’s not one of us; these people like Ivan aren’t like us, they’re like a cloud of dust. . . . If a wind comes up, the dust disperses. . . .[3] Yesterday something foolish occurred to me, when I ordered you to return home today: I wanted to find out about Mitka from you: if I were to give him a thousand rubles or even two thousand, would he agree, that beggar and scoundrel, to go away from here altogether, for five years or, even better, for thirty-five years, but without Grushka, and to give her up once and for all, huh?”

“I’ll . . . I’ll ask him . . .” Alyosha muttered. “If it were all three thousand, then perhaps he’d . . .”

“You’re lying! There’s no need to ask now, no need to ask him anything! I’ve reconsidered. It was just a foolish idea that popped into my head yesterday. I won’t give him anything, not a single kopeck; I need my own money for myself,” the old man said with a wave of his hand. “I’ll squash him like a cockroach even without that. Don’t say a thing to him, or else he’ll begin to hope. And there’s nothing more for you to do here, so go away. Will he marry that fiancée of his or not, that Katerina Ivanovna, whom he’s carefully hidden from me all this time? It seems you went to see her yesterday, right?”

“She doesn’t want to give him up for anything.”

“That’s whom those tender young ladies love, hard drinkers and scoundrels! They’re worthless, these pale young ladies; what a difference it would be. . . . Well! If I had his youth, and if I still looked as I did then (because I was much better-looking than he is at twenty-eight), I’d be running after women, just like he is. What a rascal he is! But he won’t get Grushenka, he won’t! I’ll make mincemeat out of him!”

With these last words, he flew into a rage again.

“Go away; there’s nothing for you to do here today,” he snapped abruptly.

Alyosha approached him to bid him farewell and kissed him on the shoulder.

“Why did you do that?” the old man asked, a little surprised. “We’ll see each other again. Or do you think we won’t?”

“No, not at all. It didn’t mean anything.”

“Nor did I; it didn’t mean anything,” the old man said, staring at him. “Listen,” he called after him, “listen to me. Come again sometime, soon, and have some fish soup. I’ll make you fish soup, a special soup, not like today’s! You must come! Tomorrow, you hear, come tomorrow!”

As soon as Alyosha had gone out the door, he went to the cupboard again and poured himself another half a glass.

“I won’t have any more!” he muttered, clearing his throat; he locked the cupboard again, put the key back in his pocket, went into his bedroom, lay down on his bed in exhaustion, and immediately fell fast asleep.

1 Grushka is an impolite diminutive of her name.

2 Vanka is an impolite diminutive of Ivan’s name.

3 Cf. Psalms 1:4.

III

HE GETS INVOLVED WITH SCHOOLBOYS

“Thank heavens he didn’t ask me about Grushenka,” Alyosha thought in turn, as he was leaving his father and heading to Madame Khokhlakova’s house. “Or else I’d have had to tell him about my meeting with Grushenka yesterday.” Alyosha felt painfully that overnight the two rivals had gathered new strength and that their hearts had hardened again with the new day: “My father’s irritated and spiteful; he’s thought up something new and is sticking with it. And what about Dmitry? His heart must also have become stronger, and he must also be irritated and spiteful and, of course, have thought up some plan. . . . Oh, I certainly must manage to find him today no matter what.”

But Alyosha wasn’t able to think for very long: an incident occurred suddenly along the road, one that seemed not to be very important, but affected him deeply. As soon as he’d crossed the square and turned into the lane to emerge onto Mikhailovskaya Street, which runs parallel to Bolshaya Street but is separated from it by a ditch (our whole town is crisscrossed by ditches), he saw below a small group of schoolboys gathered in front of the little bridge, all young children, between the ages of nine and twelve, no more. They were on their way home after classes, some carrying their backpacks over their shoulders, others with little leather sacks, a strap slung over one shoulder; some were wearing jackets, others little coats, and others had on high boots with the tops folded down, something that little children whose well-to-do fathers spoil them like to show off. The whole group was talking excitedly about something, apparently conferring. Alyosha could never pass a group of children with indifference; this was also the case in Moscow. Although he liked children aged about three years, he also liked schoolboys between the ages of ten and eleven. Therefore, in spite of the fact that he was now feeling burdened with cares, he suddenly wanted to turn toward them and enter their conversation. As he approached, he looked into their excited, rosy little faces, and suddenly noticed that they all had stones in their hands, and some of them were holding two stones. On the other side of the ditch, at a distance of about thirty paces from the group, stood another boy, near the fence, also a schoolboy, also with a sack at his side; he was around ten years old, no more, even a little less—pale, sickly, and with little shining dark eyes. He was observing the group of six schoolboys attentively and inquisitively: obviously his comrades, all coming from school, but with whom, clearly, he was now in conflict. Alyosha approached and, addressing a curly-haired, blond, rosy-cheeked boy wearing a black jacket, he fixed his gaze on him and observed:

“When I used to carry a sack like yours, we’d keep them on our left side, so that we had our right hands free; but yours is on your right side, so it’s hard for you to get to.”

Alyosha began simply with this practical comment, without any premeditated cunning; meanwhile, for an adult to gain the trust of a child, especially a whole group of children, it’s impossible to begin any other way. One must open in an earnest, matter-of-fact manner, so you’re on an equal footing. Alyosha understood this instinctively.

“But he’s a lefty,” replied another boy, sprightly and vigorous, about eleven years old. All the other boys stared at Alyosha.

“He even throws stones with his left hand,” remarked a third boy. Just then a stone came flying at the group and grazed the left-handed boy’s hand; but it flew past, although it had been tossed skillfully and energetically. It had been thrown by the boy on the other side of the ditch.

“Get him, hit him back, Smurov!” everyone started shouting. But Smurov (the lefty) didn’t wait and immediately returned fire: he hurled a stone at the boy across the ditch, but it was unsuccessful: the stone landed on the ground. The boy across the ditch hurled another stone at the group, this time aiming right for Alyosha, and struck him rather painfully on his shoulder. The pocket of the boy across the ditch was filled with stones ready to throw; one could tell from thirty yards away by the bulge in his jacket.

“He was aiming at you, at you; he threw it at you on purpose. You’re Karamazov, aren’t you? Karamazov?” the boys shouted, laughing. “Well, all together now. Fire!”

Six stones went flying from the group. One struck the boy in the head, and he fell down, but a minute later, he jumped up and began hurling stones at the group in a rage. A constant exchange of fire ensued; many of the boys in the group had their pockets filled, too.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves, gentlemen? Six against one! You’ll kill him!” cried Alyosha.

He jumped up and stood facing the flying stones to shield the boy across the ditch. Three or four stopped throwing for a minute.

“He started it!” shouted the boy wearing the red shirt in an angry, childlike little voice. “He’s a scoundrel. The other day in class he stabbed Krasotkin with his penknife and drew blood. Even though Krasotkin didn’t want to snitch, he must be stoned . . .”

“But for what? You probably tease him, don’t you?”

“He even threw a stone at your back again. He knows you,” shouted the children. “Now he’s throwing stones at you, not at us. Well, everyone, throw again, and don’t miss, Smurov!”

And the exchange of fire began again, this time very malicious. One stone hit the boy across the ditch in the chest; he cried out, burst into tears, and ran up the hill, to Mikahilovskaya Street. They all shouted, “Aha, he’s a coward; he ran away, the wet loofah!”[1]

“You still don’t know, Karamazov, what a vile creature he is. He ought to be killed,” repeated the boy in the jacket, with flashing eyes, apparently older than the others.

“What is he?” asked Alyosha. “Is he a snitch?”

The boys exchanged glances, as if with derision.

“Are you headed there, to Mikhailovskaya Street?” continued the same boy. “You can catch up with him. . . . You see, he’s stopped again, just standing there, waiting, looking at you.”

“He’s looking at you, he’s looking at you!” the boys shouted.

“So ask him if he likes a tattered wet loofah. You hear, ask him that.”

General laughter burst out. Alyosha looked at them, and they at him.

Smurov issued a warning: “Don’t go, he’ll hurt you.”

“Gentlemen, I won’t ask him about the loofah, because that’s probably how you tease him, but I’ll find out from him why you hate him so . . .”

“Find out, go find out,” the boys cried with a laugh.

Alyosha crossed the little bridge and walked up the hill past the fence, right to the shunned lad.

“Look,” the others cried after him in warning. “He’s not afraid of you. He’ll suddenly stab you, in an underhanded way . . . as he did Krasotkin.”

The boy was waiting for him, without moving. Coming right up to him, Alyosha saw a lad of no more than nine years old, weak and small, a pale, thin, elongated little face, with dark eyes staring at him with malice. He was dressed in a rather shabby old coat, which he’d horribly outgrown. His bare arms protruded from the sleeves. There was a large patch on the right knee of his trousers, and on his right boot, there was a large hole where his big toe was, smeared heavily with black ink. Both pockets of his coat were stuffed with stones. Alyosha paused two feet in front of him, regarding him inquisitively. The boy, guessing by Alyosha’s eyes that he didn’t want to hit him, dropped his arrogance and even began to speak.

“I’m one person, and there’re six of them. . . . I’ll beat them all alone,” he said suddenly, his eyes flashing.

“One stone must have hurt you badly,” observed Alyosha.

“And I hit Smurov in the head!” cried the boy.

“They told me over there that you know me and were throwing stones at me for some reason,” said Alyosha.

The boy regarded him gloomily.

“I don’t know you. Do you really know me?” Alyosha asked.

“Don’t bother me!” the boy cried suddenly and angrily, but he didn’t stir from his place, as if waiting for something, his eyes still flashing angrily.

“All right, I’ll go away,” said Alyosha. “But I don’t know you and I’m not teasing you. They told me how they tease you, but I don’t want to do so. Good-bye.”

“Friar, friar, pants on fire!” shouted the boy, following Alyosha with the same malicious, challenging look; at the same time he assumed a defensive stance, as if Alyosha would certainly attack him now; but Alyosha turned around, looked at him, and walked away. But he hadn’t managed to take three steps before he was hit painfully in the back by a large cobblestone, which had been in the boy’s pocket.

“So you hit from behind? Then they must be telling the truth when they said that you act in an underhanded manner?” Alyosha said and turned to him again, but this time the boy violently hurled a stone right at his face, though Alyosha managed to shield himself, and the stone hit his elbow.

“You should be ashamed of yourself! What have I done to you?” he cried.

The boy waited in silence and defiance for only one thing, for Alyosha to attack him for sure; but seeing that even now Alyosha didn’t come at him, he became as furious as a wild animal; he threw himself at Alyosha, and before he had time to move away, the nasty lad lowered his head and, seizing Alyosha’s left arm with both his hands, bit down hard on his middle finger. He clamped his teeth on it and didn’t release it for about ten seconds. Alyosha yelled from the pain, pulling his finger away with all his might. The boy finally let it go and retreated to his previous distance. Alyosha’s finger had been badly bitten, right below the nail, down to the bone; blood was flowing. Alyosha pulled out his handkerchief and wrapped it tightly around his wounded hand. He took a full minute to bandage his finger. All that time the boy stood there waiting. At last Alyosha lifted his gentle gaze to the boy’s face.

“Well, fine,” he said. “You see how badly you bit me. Are you satisfied? Now tell me what it is I’ve done to you.”

The boy regarded him with astonishment.

“I don’t know you at all and I’m seeing you for the first time,” Alyosha continued in the same serene manner, “but it can’t be that I’ve done nothing to you. You wouldn’t hurt me for no reason. So what have I done? How am I guilty before you?”

Instead of an answer, the boy suddenly burst into tears, loudly, and just as suddenly ran away. Alyosha followed him quietly to Mikhailovskaya Street, and watched as the lad ran off into the distance, never slowing his pace, never turning around to look, and crying just as loudly. Alyosha resolved to locate him for certain as soon as he found the time, and to clarify this extremely remarkable riddle. Right now he had no time to do so.

1 The Russian word is mochalka, meaning a washcloth or a loofah, the fibrous substance of the fruit of a tropical gourd; the word is also sometimes translated as “wisp of tow.”

IV

AT THE KHOKHLAKOVS’

Alyosha soon reached Madame Khokhlakova’s handsome, two-story, privately owned stone house, one of the best houses in our town. Although Madame Khokhlakova resided for the most part in another province, where she had an estate, or in Moscow, where she had her own house, she did own her own house also in our little town, left her by her forebears. The estate in our district was the largest of her three properties, and up to now she had spent little time in our province. She ran to greet Alyosha in the entrance hall.

“Did you receive the letter about the new miracle? Did you?” she asked quickly and nervously.

“Yes, I did.”

“Was it distributed? Shared with everyone? He brought a son back to his mother!”

“He’ll die today,” said Alyosha.

“I heard. I know. Oh, how I want to talk to you! With you or with anyone else about all of this. No, with you, with you! And what a pity that I can’t get to see him. The whole town is excited; everyone is in a state of expectation. But now . . . do you know that Katerina Ivanovna is here now?”

“Ah, that’s very fortunate!” cried Alyosha. “I’ll see her here at your house; she told me yesterday to be sure to come see her today.”

“I know. I know everything. I heard in detail about everything that happened at her house yesterday . . . and about all those horrors with that . . . creature. C’est tragique,[1] and in her place I’d have . . . I don’t know what I would’ve done in her place! But your brother, your Dmitry Fyodorovich, is quite something. Oh, God! Aleksey Fyodorovich, I’m getting confused, just imagine: your brother’s sitting there, that is, not the awful one from yesterday, but the other one, Ivan Fyodorovich, is sitting in there and talking to her: it’s a solemn conversation. . . . And you can’t believe the conversation occurring between them now—it’s terrible, it’s a laceration, an awful tale that can’t be believed: they’re both ruining themselves for unknown reasons; they both know it and are enjoying it. I’ve been waiting for you! I’ve been longing for you! The main thing is, I can’t take this anymore. I’ll tell you everything, but for now, there’s something different and most important. Ah, I’ve even forgotten that this is the most important thing. Tell me, why is Lise having hysterics? As soon as she heard that you were coming, she started having hysterics!”

“Maman, you’re the one having hysterics now, not me,” Lise’s weak voice said, chirping through the crack in the door to one of the side rooms. The crack was very small, and her voice was strained, as if she wanted to laugh but was trying with all her might to overcome the urge. Alyosha noticed the crack in the door at once; undoubtedly Lise was peeking in at him from her wheelchair, but he couldn’t see her.

“It’s no wonder, Lise, no wonder . . . I’ll soon have hysterics, too, from your whims; but, by the way, she’s so indisposed, Aleksey Fyodorovich; all night she was so ill, feverish and moaning! I did all I could to wait until the morning to call Herzenshtube. He said he couldn’t understand a thing and that it’s necessary to wait it out. This Herzenshtube always comes and says that he can’t understand a thing. As soon as you approached the house, she screamed and started having hysterics, ordered to be wheeled back to her former room . . .”

“Mama, I didn’t know at all that he’d come; that isn’t why I asked to be wheeled into this room.”

“That’s not true, Lise. Yuliya ran in to tell you that Aleksey Fyodorovich was coming; she was your lookout.”

“Dear, kind Mama, that’s not very clever on your part. If you want to make amends now and say something very clever, then, dear Mama, tell this kind gentleman, Aleksey Fyodorovich, who’s just come in, that he’s shown his own lack of intelligence by the sheer fact that he decided to come see us today after yesterday’s events, and in spite of the fact that everyone’s laughing at him.”

“Lise, you take such liberties; I assure you that I’ll take stern measures at last. Who’s laughing at him? I’m so glad he’s come, I need him; he’s essential. Oh, Aleksey Fyodorovich, I’m extremely unhappy!”

“What’s the matter with you, Mama, dear?”

“Ah, these whims of yours, Lise, your fickleness, your illness, this awful, feverish night, this awful and perpetual Herzenshtube, and, primarily, this perpetual, perpetual, and perpetual! And finally, everything, everything. . . . And finally, even this miracle! Oh, I was so struck, so shaken by this miracle, dear Aleksey Fyodorovich! And then this tragedy in the living room, which I can’t stand, I simply can’t, I warn you in advance, I can’t stand it. It’s a comedy, perhaps, and not a tragedy. Tell me, will Father Zosima live to see tomorrow, will he? Oh, my God! What’s wrong with me? I close my eyes for a moment and can see it’s all nonsense, nonsense.”

“I’d really like to ask you,” Alyosha suddenly interrupted her, “to give me some clean rag to bandage my finger. I hurt it and it’s very painful.”

Alyosha unwrapped his bitten finger. The kerchief was heavily stained with blood. Madame Khokhlakova screamed and closed her eyes.

“Good Lord, what a wound. That’s awful!”

But as soon as Lise saw Alyosha’s finger through the crack, she flung the door open with all her might.

“Come in here, come to me,” she shouted insistently and commandingly. “Right now, without any foolishness! Oh, Lord, why have you been standing there in silence at such a moment? He could have bled to death, Mama. Where did this happen? How did it happen? First of all, water, water! You have to wash the wound, simply place it in cold water, to ease the pain, and press it, press it. . . . Hurry, hurry, water, Mama, in a washbasin. Hurry up,” she concluded nervously. She was terribly frightened; Alyosha’s wound upset her terribly.

“Shouldn’t we send for Herzenshtube?” cried Madame Khokhlakova.

“Mama, you’re killing me. Your Herzenshtube will come and say that he doesn’t understand a thing! Water, water! Mama, for heaven’s sake, you go yourself and tell Yuliya to hurry up; she gets delayed and never comes right away! Faster, Mama, or I shall die . . .”

“It’s nothing at all!” said Alyosha, frightened by their alarm.

Yuliya came running in with the water. Alyosha put his finger into the basin.

“Mama, for heaven’s sake, bring some bandages; and that cloudy astringent for cuts, whatever it’s called! We have some, we do, we do. . . . Mama, you know where the jar’s kept, in your bedroom in the little cupboard on the right, there’s a large jar and some bandages . . .”

“I’ll bring it right away, Lise, but stop shouting and don’t worry. You see how bravely Aleksey Fyodorovich bears his adversity. And where did you manage to hurt yourself so badly, Aleksey Fyodorovich?”

Madame Khokhlakova left in a hurry. That was what Lise had been waiting for.

“First of all, answer the question,” she said quickly to Alyosha. “Where did you manage to hurt yourself? Then I’ll talk with you about something else. Well?”

Alyosha, feeling instinctively that the time left before her mother’s return was valuable to her, hurriedly, leaving out many details and shortening his account, but precisely and clearly, related to her his puzzling encounter with the schoolboys. After hearing him out, Lisa threw up her arms.

“How can you, how can you, especially wearing that cassock, get involved with schoolboys?” she cried angrily, as if she had some rights over him. “Why, after that, you yourself are just a boy, the littlest boy there can ever be! However, you must find out about that awful boy somehow and tell me everything, because there’s some secret involved here. Now, the second thing, but first a question: can you, Aleksey Fyodorovich, in spite of suffering from pain, speak about completely unimportant matters, but speak coherently?”

“I’m absolutely capable, and I don’t feel the pain as much now.”

“That’s because your finger’s in the cold water. We have to change it right away because it gets warm quickly. Yuliya, bring a piece of ice from the cellar at once and a new basin of water. Now that she’s left, to business: be so good, dear Aleksey Fyodorovich, as to return to me at once the letter I sent you yesterday—at once because Mama may come in at any moment, and I don’t want . . .”

“I don’t have the letter with me.”

“That’s not true. You do have it. I knew you would say that. It’s in your pocket right there. I’ve been regretting that joke all night. Give me the letter right now. Give it back!”

“I left it at home.”

“But you can’t consider me a child, a teeny-tiny little girl, after my letter with that foolish joke! I beg your forgiveness for that foolishness, but you must absolutely bring that letter back to me, if you really don’t have it now—bring it today, absolutely, you must!”

“It’s not possible to bring it today because I’m going back to the monastery, and perhaps I won’t come to see you for three or four days because the elder Zosima is . . .”

“Four days, what nonsense! Listen, did you laugh at me very hard?”

“I didn’t laugh one bit.”

“Why?”

“Because I believed every word of it.”

“You’re insulting me.”

“Not at all. When I read it, I thought that’s the way it would be, because as soon as Father Zosima dies, I have to leave the monastery immediately. Then I have to continue my course of study, take the examination, and when you’re old enough, we’ll get married. I will love you. Even though I didn’t have time to think about it, I did conclude that I couldn’t find a better wife than you, and the elder has ordered me to marry . . .”

“But I’m a freak; they have to wheel me around in a chair!” Liza said with a laugh, her cheeks turning bright red.

“I myself will wheel you around; but I’m sure that you’ll be cured by that time.”

“But you’re mad,” Liza said nervously, “to make such nonsense out of this joke! Ah, here’s Mama, perhaps just in time. Mama, you’re always late; you took so long! And here’s Yuliya bringing some ice!”

“Ah, Lise, don’t shout. The main thing is not to shout. From your shouting. . . . What’s to be done if you yourself put the bandages in another place? I searched and searched. . . . I suspect you did it on purpose.”

“I couldn’t know that he’d come with a bitten finger, or else I might really have done it on purpose. Mama, you angel, you’re beginning to say really witty things.”

“Perhaps they’re witty, but what a show of concern for Aleksey Fyodorovich’s finger and all that! Oh, dear Aleksey Fyodorovich, what’s killing me is no one thing in particular, not some Herzenshtube, but everything, all together, that’s what I can’t endure.”

“Enough, Mama, about Herzenshtube,” Liza said with a merry laugh. “Give me the bandage now, Mama, and the bottle. This is merely Goulard’s extract,[2] Aleksey Fyodorovich; now I remember the name of it, but it’s a splendid extract. Mama, just imagine, he had a fight with some schoolboys on his way here, and this one boy bit him; isn’t he a child, just a child himself? Can he get married after this, because, just imagine, he wants to get married, Mama. Imagine that he’s married: isn’t that funny? Isn’t that awful?”

And Lise kept laughing with her shrill, nervous giggle, cunningly staring at Alyosha.

“How married, Lise? Why are you bringing this up? It’s not at all appropriate, when that boy may have been rabid!”

“Ah, Mama, are there really rabid boys?”

“Of course there are, Lise—as if I said something foolish. A rabid dog bit your boy; he became rabid and, in turn, bit someone near him. She bandaged your finger very well, Aleksey Fyodorovich, I couldn’t have done it as well. Do you feel pain now?”

“Only a little now.”

“And you’re not developing a fear of water?” asked Lise.

“Well, enough, Lise. Perhaps I spoke too quickly about the rabid boy, but you came to the conclusion right away. Katerina Ivanovna just found out that you arrived, Aleksey Fyodorovich, and she rushed over here. She longs for you, she really does.”

“Ah, Mama, go there alone; he can’t go right now; he’s suffering too much.”

“I’m not suffering at all; I can easily go there,” said Alyosha.

“What? Are you leaving? Are you? Are you really?”

“Why? After I finish there, I’ll come back here and we’ll be able to talk as long as you like. I really want to see Katerina Ivanovna now, because in any case I want to return to the monastery as soon as possible today.”

“Mama, escort him now and take him away. Aleksey Fyodorovich, don’t bother to come back after you visit Katerina Ivanovna, but go straight to your monastery, and good riddance to you! I want to sleep; I didn’t sleep all night.”

“Ah, Lise, that’s only a joke on your part, but what if you really did fall asleep?” cried Madame Khokhlakova.

“I don’t know how I . . . I can stay another three minutes, if you like, even five,” muttered Alyosha.

“Even five! Take him away at once, Mama, this monster!”

“Lise, you’ve gone crazy. Let’s go, Aleksey Fyodorovich. She’s too naughty today; I’m afraid to irritate her. Oh, the trouble with nervous women, Aleksey Fyodorovich! But perhaps she really did get sleepy while you were here. How did you manage to make her sleepy so quickly, and how lucky that is!”

“Ah, Mama, how nicely you’ve begun to speak. I’ll kiss you for that.”

“And I’ll kiss you, too, Lise. Listen, Aleksey Fyodorovich,” Madame Khokhlakova whispered quickly and surreptitiously, as she was leaving with Alyosha. “I don’t want to suggest anything, nor raise any curtains, but if you go in there, you’ll see for yourself everything that’s going on there, this horror, this most fantastic comedy: she loves your brother Ivan Fyodorovich and assures herself with all her might that she loves your brother Dmitry Fyodorovich. It’s horrible! I’ll go in with you, and if they don’t chase me away, I’ll stay to the end.”

1 “It’s tragic” (Fr.).

2 A solution containing lead used as an astringent from the eighteenth century into the twentieth.

V

LACERATION IN THE DRAWING ROOM

But the conversation in the drawing room was already drawing to a close; Katerina Ivanovna was very excited, although she had a very decisive look. At the moment when Alyosha and Madame Khokhlakova came in, Ivan Fyodorovich was just standing up, preparing to leave. His face was somewhat pale, and Alyosha regarded him with uneasiness. The fact was that this crucial moment was now resolving one of his doubts, one troubling mystery that had been tormenting him for some time. As long as a month ago, it had been suggested to him that his brother Ivan was in love with Katerina Ivanovna, and the main thing was that he intended to “win her over” from Mitya. To the very last moment, this idea seemed monstrous to Alyosha, and it disturbed him greatly. He loved both his brothers and feared such a rivalry between them. Meanwhile, yesterday Dmitry himself had suddenly declared openly that he was glad for the rivalry with his brother Ivan, and that this would even help him in many ways. How would it help? To let him marry Grushenka? But Alyosha considered this desperate and extreme. In addition to all this, Alyosha had undoubtedly believed until last evening that Katerina Ivanovna loved his brother Dmitry passionately and stubbornly—but he had believed this only up until yesterday evening. In addition, for some reason he’d imagined that she was incapable of loving a man like Ivan, and that she loved his brother Dmitry, just as he was, in spite of the monstrousness of such a love. However, yesterday during the scene with Grushenka, he’d suddenly envisaged something different. The word “laceration,” just uttered by Madame Khokhlakova, had almost made him shudder, because it was just last night that, half asleep toward daybreak, all of a sudden, probably as a response to a dream, he had cried out “Laceration!” All night he’d dreamed about yesterday’s scene at Katerina Ivanovna’s. Now, suddenly, the explicit and stubborn assurance by Madame Khokhlakova that Katerina Ivanovna loved his brother Ivan—and that she was only deceiving herself intentionally, while playing some sort of game, some “laceration,” and tormenting herself with a feigned love for Dmitry out of some sort of gratitude—struck Alyosha: “Yes,” he thought, “the complete truth may be concealed precisely in these words.” But in that case, what would his brother Ivan’s position be? Alyosha felt instinctively that a character such as Katerina Ivanovna needed to dominate, but she could dominate only someone like Dmitry, and not someone like Ivan. For Dmitry would (let’s assume, after a long delay) finally submit to her domination “for his own happiness” (which Alyosha even desired), but not Ivan; Ivan couldn’t submit to her, and such submission wouldn’t provide him with any happiness. Such was the view of Ivan that Alyosha had formulated to himself. All of these hesitations and observations occurred to him and crossed his mind just at the moment when he entered the drawing room. One more idea came into his mind—suddenly and irrepressibly: “What if she doesn’t love anyone, neither the one nor the other?” I must note that Alyosha was even somewhat ashamed of his ideas, and had reproached himself for having them, during the course of the last month, as they had been occurring to him. “Well, what do I understand about love and women, and how can I resolve such matters?” he thought with a reproach after each one of his ideas and surmises. Meanwhile, it was impossible not to think. He understood intuitively that now, for example, in the fates of his two brothers this rivalry was too important a question and that too much depended on it. “One viper will devour the other,” his brother Ivan had said yesterday, in anger about his father and his brother Dmitry. Therefore, in his eyes his brother Dmitry was a viper, and perhaps had been one for a long time. Was it since his brother Ivan had known Katerina Ivanovna? Of course, yesterday these words had burst forth reluctantly from Ivan, but that made them even more important. If that was the case, what chance was there for peace between them?

On the contrary, weren’t there new reasons for hatred and hostility in their family? And the main question was, for whom should Alyosha feel sorry? And what was he supposed to wish for each of them? He loved them both, but what could he wish for each of them with such terrible contradictions? It was possible to become completely lost in all this muddle; but Alyosha’s heart couldn’t endure such uncertainty, because the nature of his love was always active. He couldn’t love passively; if he loved someone, he set about trying to help him. And for that, he had to set himself a goal; he had to know for sure what was best for each and what each needed; having ascertained the correctness of the goal, naturally, he wanted to help each one of them. But instead of a clear goal in everything, there was only vagueness and muddle, “laceration,” as had just been uttered. But what could he understand even in this rupture? He didn’t understand the first thing in all of this muddle.

Upon seeing Alyosha, Katerina Ivanovna said quickly and joyfully to Ivan Fyodorovich, who’d stood up and was preparing to leave:

“One minute! Stay another minute. I want to hear the opinion of this man, whom I trust with all my being. Katerina Osipovna, don’t you leave either,” she added, addressing Madame Khokhlakova. She sat Alyosha down next to her, and Khokhlakova sat opposite them, next to Ivan Fyodorovich.

“All my friends are here, everyone I have in the world, my dear friends,” she began sincerely, with genuine tears of suffering in her voice; Alyosha’s heart was stirred once again. You, Aleksey Fyodorovich, were a witness yesterday to this . . . horror, and you saw how I behaved. You, Ivan Fyodorovich, didn’t see it, but he did. I don’t know what he thought of me yesterday; I know only one thing, that if the same scene were to be repeated again today, right now, I’d express the same feelings I did yesterday—the same feelings, the same words, the same actions. You remember my actions, Aleksey Fyodorovich; you yourself restrained me in one of them . . .” (Saying this, she blushed, and her eyes began to shine.) “I declare to you, Aleksey Fyodorovich, that I can’t be reconciled to any of it. Listen, Aleksey Fyodorovich, I don’t even know whether I love him now. I feel pity for him: that’s poor proof of love. If I loved him, continued to love him, then perhaps I wouldn’t pity him now; on the contrary, I’d hate him . . .”

Her voice started to quiver and little tears glistened on her lashes. “This young woman is right and sincere,” he thought, “and . . . and she doesn’t love Dmitry anymore.”

“That’s so! It is so!” Madame Khokhlakova started to exclaim.

“Wait, dear Katarina Osipovna. I haven’t told you the main point, the final decision I made last night. I feel that perhaps my decision is terrible—for me, but I foresee that I won’t change it for anything, for anything, in my entire life, that’s how it will be. My dear, my kind, my constant, generous adviser, my confidant, the only friend I have in the world, Ivan Fyodorovich, who approves and praises my decision . . . he knows what it is.”

“Yes, I approve of it,” said Ivan Fyodorovich in a soft but steady voice.

“But I wish that Alyosha (ah, Aleksey Fyodorovich, forgive me for calling you simply Alyosha), I wish that Aleksey Fyodorovich said to me now, in the presence of my two friends—am I right or not? I have an instinctive premonition that you, Alyosha, my dear brother (for you are my dear brother),” she said ecstatically again, seizing his cold hand in her warm little hand, “I foresee that your decision, your approval, in spite of all my torments, will give me peace, because, after your words, I will quiet down and be reconciled, that I foresee.”

“I don’t know what you’re asking me,” said Alyosha with a flushed face. “I know only that I love you and that at this minute I wish you more happiness than I wish for myself! But I don’t know anything about these matters,” he hastened to add for some reason.

“In these matters, Aleksey Fyodorovich, in these matters the main things are honor and duty, and I don’t know what else, but something higher, perhaps even higher than duty itself. My heart speaks to me about this irresistible feeling, and it draws me irresistibly. In a few words, I’ve already decided everything: if he even marries that . . . creature,” she began solemnly, “whom I can never, ever forgive, I still won’t desert him! From this time forth, I’ll never, ever desert him!” she said in the ruptured voice of pale, tormented ecstasy, which she’d somehow managed to wring from her soul. “That is, not that I’ll chase after him, throwing myself at him, provoking him—oh, no, I’ll move to another town, wherever you wish, but all my life, my entire life, I’ll follow him, without tiring. When he grows unhappy with that creature, and that will certainly happen soon, let him come to me; he’ll encounter a friend, a sister. . . . Only a sister, of course, and that will be forever, so that he’ll be convinced, at last, that this sister really is his sister, loving him, and sacrificing her entire life for him. I’ll prove my point, I’ll insist that at last he’ll come to know me and will confide everything in me, without any shame!” she exclaimed as if in a frenzy. “I’ll be his god to whom he will pray—he owes me that at least for his betrayal and for what he caused me to endure yesterday. And let him see for the rest of his life that I’ll be true to him and to my word for the rest of my life, in spite of the fact that he was unfaithful and had betrayed me. I’ll be . . . I will become nothing but a means for his happiness (or how to put it?), an instrument, a mechanism for his happiness, and this will last my whole life, my whole life, so that he may see it from then on for the rest of his life! That’s my decision! Ivan Fyodorovich approves of it entirely.”

She was gasping for breath. Perhaps she wanted to express her thoughts in a much more adequate, sincere, natural way, but everything came out very hastily, and too openly. There was much youthful lack of restraint, much that reflected yesterday’s irritation, a need to show her pride; she felt all this herself. Her face suddenly grew dark, and the look in her eyes became ugly. Alyosha noticed all this at once and his heart was moved to sympathize. And just then his brother Ivan chimed in.

“All I did was express my thought,” he said. “Anyone else would have spoken in too fragmented and too forced a manner, but not you. Another would have been wrong, but you’re right. I don’t know how to explain it, but I see that you’re sincere to the highest degree and therefore you’re also right.”

“But that’s only for this moment. . . . And just what is this moment? It’s only yesterday’s insult—that’s what this moment means!” Madame Khokhlakova said suddenly, unable to restrain herself, evidently not wanting to interfere, but being unable to hold back, and suddenly uttering a true thought.

“Indeed, indeed,” interjected Ivan, in some sort of excitement and obvious irritation at having been interrupted. “Indeed, but with another person this moment is merely a result of yesterday’s impression, and only a moment; but with Katerina Ivanovna’s character, this moment will last her entire life. What for others is merely a promise, for her is an age-old, burdensome, perhaps gloomy, but unceasing duty. And she’ll be nourished by the feeling of this duty fulfilled! Your life, Katerina Ivanovna, will now be lived in painful suffering over an awareness of your own feelings, your own heroic deed, and your own grief; subsequently, this suffering will ease, and your life will turn into sweet contemplation, once and for all, of a resolute and proud design, really proud, but in any case, desperate, but which you’ve fulfilled; and this awareness will finally bring you the most complete satisfaction and will reconcile you with all the rest . . .”

He uttered all this decisively, with some malice, evidently intentional, and even, perhaps, not wishing to conceal his intention, that is, that he was speaking deliberately and mocking her.

“Oh, good Lord, this is all so wrong!” cried Madame Khokhlakova once again.

“Aleksey Fyodorovich, speak! I desperately want to know what you’ll say!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, bursting into tears. Alyosha got up from the couch.

“It’s nothing, nothing!” she continued through tears. “It’s because I’m upset, from not sleeping last night; but next to these two friends like you and your brother, I still feel strong. . . . Because I know . . . that you both will never desert me . . .”

“Unfortunately, tomorrow I may have to go to Moscow and leave you for a long time. . . . And, unfortunately, that’s inevitable,” Ivan Fyodorovich said suddenly.

“To Moscow tomorrow!” Katerina said, suddenly grimacing. “But . . . my God, that’s so fortunate!” she cried in a voice altered in a single moment and banishing her tears in the same moment, so that no trace of them remained. Indeed, an astonishing change came over her instantly, which surprised Alyosha greatly: instead of a poor, insulted young woman, weeping now in the midst of a breakdown in her emotions, there suddenly appeared a woman, completely in control of herself, even extremely satisfied with something, just as if she were overjoyed by something.

“Oh, it’s not fortunate that I’m losing you, that goes without saying,” she said, as if correcting herself with a nice, knowing smile. “A friend such as you mustn’t think that; on the contrary, I’m too unhappy to be losing you”—she rushed to Ivan Fyodorovich impetuously and, seizing both his hands, squeezed them with warm feeling—“what’s fortunate is that you’ll be able to convey to my aunt and to Agatha in Moscow my entire situation, my whole terrible dilemma, in full candor to Agatha, but sparing my dear aunt, as you yourself know how to do. You can’t imagine how unhappy I was yesterday and this morning, wondering how I’d write this awful letter to them . . . because one really can’t convey it all in a letter. . . . Now it’ll be easy for me to write because you’ll be there in person and will explain it to them. Oh, I am so glad! But I’m glad only about this, believe me once more. You yourself, of course, are irreplaceable. . . . I’ll go write the letter immediately,” she concluded suddenly, and even took a step as if to leave the room.

“What about Alyosha? Aleksey Fyodorovich’s opinion, which you so frantically wanted to hear?” cried Madame Khokhlakova, a biting and angry note sounding in her voice.

“I haven’t forgotten that,” Katerina Ivanovna stopped abruptly. “And why are you being so hostile to me at this moment, Katerina Osipovna?” she asked with bitter, heated reproach. “I repeat what I said. I desperately want his opinion, but that’s not all: I want to learn his decision! Whatever he says, will be—that’s the degree to which, on the contrary, I’m eager to hear your words, Aleksey Fyodorovich. . . . But what’s the matter with you?”

“I never thought . . . I can’t imagine it!” Alyosha cried suddenly in a sorrowful voice.

“What? What?”

“He’s going to Moscow, and you cried that you were glad—you said that on purpose! And then you started to explain why you weren’t glad about that; rather, on the contrary, you regretted it . . . you were losing a friend, but even then you were playing a part . . . as if you were acting in a comedy in the theater!”

“In a theater? How? What do you mean?” cried Katerina Ivanovna, utterly astonished, blushing deeply, and scowling.

“Although you assure him that you’re sorry to lose a friend, nevertheless you insist to his face that it’s fortunate he’s going away . . .” Alyosha managed to say, now almost gasping for air. He stood next to the table but didn’t sit down.

“What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”

“I myself don’t know. . . . I had something like a sudden illumination. . . . I know that I’m not expressing it well, but I’ll speak anyway,” Alyosha continued in the same trembling, broken voice. “My illumination is that perhaps you don’t love brother Dmitry . . . didn’t from the very start. . . . And Dmitry, perhaps, doesn’t love you at all . . . didn’t from the very start . . . and merely venerates you. . . . In truth, I don’t know how I dare utter all this now, but someone has to speak the truth . . . because no one here wants to speak the truth . . .”

“What truth?” cried Katerina Ivanovna, with a hysterical note echoing in her voice.

“Here’s what the truth is,” blurted Alyosha, as if he were flying off a roof. “Call Dmitry now—I’ll go find him—and let him come here and take you by the hand; then let him take brother Ivan by the hand and join your two hands. Because you torment Ivan, simply because you love him . . . and you torment him because you love Dmitry in laceration . . . you don’t love him for real . . . but because you’ve convinced yourself that you do.”

Alyosha broke off and fell silent.

“You . . . you . . . you’re a little holy fool, that’s what you are!” Katerina Ivanovna blurted out suddenly, her face pale and distorted from rage. Ivan Fyodorovich all at once burst out laughing and stood up. He held his hat in his hands.

“You’re mistaken, my good Alyosha,” he said with an expression on his face that Alyosha had never seen before, an expression of great youthful sincerity and strong, irresistibly candid feeling. “Katerina Ivanovna never loved me! She knew all along that I love her, although I never said a word to her about my love—she knew, but she didn’t love me. I was also never her friend, not even for one day: a proud woman has no need of my friendship. She kept me nearby as a means of exacting constant revenge. She took out her revenge on me for all the insults she’s endured constantly, every moment all during this time from Dmitry, insults from their very first meeting. . . . Because their very first meeting remained in her heart as an insult. That’s the sort of heart she has! All the time I’ve been listening to her talk about her love for him. I’m leaving now, but you should know, Katerina Ivanovna, that you really love only him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him. That’s your rupture. You love him just as he is; you love him for insulting you. If he ever reformed, you’d desert him and stop loving him entirely. You need him so as to be constantly aware of your heroic feat of fidelity and to reproach him for his infidelity. And it’s all a result of your pride. Oh, there’s a great deal of degradation and humiliation involved, but it’s all from pride. . . . I’m too young and I loved you too intensely. I know that I shouldn’t have said this to you, that it would’ve been more dignified on my part just to leave you; it wouldn’t have been so insulting to you. But I’m going far away and will never come back. It’s forever. . . . I don’t want to stay beside a rupture. However, I no longer know how to speak; I’ve said everything. . . . Farewell, Katerina Ivanovna, there’s no reason to be angry with me, because I’ve been punished a hundred times more than you: punished only by the fact that I won’t ever see you again. Farewell. I don’t need to shake your hand. You’ve tormented me too knowingly for me to forgive you at this moment. Afterward I’ll forgive, but for now, I don’t need your hand.

“Den Dank, Dame, begehr ich nicht,”[1]

he added with a crooked smile, demonstrating, incidentally, that he could also read Schiller and recite him from memory, which Alyosha would never have believed. Ivan left the room, not even saying good-bye to the hostess, Madame Khokhlakova. Alyosha clasped his hands in dismay.

“Ivan,” he cried after him, as if he were lost, “come back, Ivan! No, no, now he won’t come back for anything!” he cried again in a sorrowful realization. “But it’s me, I’m to blame, I started it! Ivan spoke with malice, in an ugly way. Unjustly and maliciously . . .” Alyosha exclaimed like a half-wit.

Katerina Ivanovna suddenly went into the next room.

“You didn’t do anything. You’re really wonderful, like an angel,” Madame Khokhlakova whispered quickly and ecstatically to the grief-stricken Alyosha. “I’ll do my best to ensure that Ivan Fyodorovich doesn’t leave . . .”

Her face beamed with joy, to Alyosha’s great chagrin; but Katerina Ivanovna suddenly came back. In her hands were two hundred-ruble banknotes.

“I have a great favor to ask you, Aleksey Fyodorovich,” she began, addressing Alyosha directly in an evidently serene and smooth voice, as if nothing had happened. “A week ago, yes, it seems, a week ago, Dmitry Fyodorovich committed a passionate and unwarranted act, a very ugly one. There’s a bad place not far from here, a tavern. There he met a retired officer, a staff captain whom your father used to employ for some business or other. For some reason Dmitry Fyodorovich got angry with that staff captain and grabbed him by the beard and in front of everyone led him in this humiliating position for some distance along the street; and it’s said that a young boy, the staff captain’s son, who’s a student in the local gymnasium, and who’s still a child, seeing this scene, ran after them, crying all the way, and begging for his father; he appealed to everyone to defend his father, and everyone laughed. Forgive me, Aleksey Fyodorovich, I can’t help recalling his disgraceful act without indignation . . . the sort of action that only Dmitry Fyodorovich could be capable of in his anger . . . and in his passions! I can’t even recount this affair: I’m not able to. I can’t find the right words. I made inquiries about this wronged man and found out that he’s very poor. His name is Snegiryov. He committed some offense in the service; he was dismissed, and I can’t tell you why; and now he’s living with his family, an unfortunate family of ailing children and a wife, who’s insane, and they have fallen into extreme poverty. He’s lived in town for a long time; he works somewhere; he was a scribe somewhere, but now suddenly they’re not paying him anything. I’ve cast my eye on you—I don’t know, I’m getting confused—you see, I wanted to ask you, Aleksey Fyodorovich, my dearest Aleksey Fyodorovich, to visit him, find some pretext, go to him, that is, to this staff captain—oh, Lord, how confused I’m getting—tactfully, cautiously, as only you alone can do”— Alyosha suddenly blushed—“and manage to give him this assistance, here, two hundred rubles. He’ll certainly accept it . . . that is, you’ll persuade him to take it. . . . Or no, how to put it? You see, it’s not a payment to placate him, so he won’t file a complaint (because, it seems, he’s planning to do so), but simply in sympathy, a desire to help, from me, from me, Dmitry Fyodorovich’s fiancée, and not from him. . . . In a word, you know how to do this. . . . I’d go myself, but you can do this much better than I can. He lives on Ozernaya Street, in the house of a woman named Kalmykova. . . . For heaven’s sake, Aleksey Fyodorovich, do this for me, and now . . . now I’m a little . . . tired. Good-bye . . .”

Suddenly she turned so quickly and disappeared behind the door-curtain again that Alyosha didn’t have time to speak—and he very much wanted to. He wanted to ask her forgiveness, castigate himself—to say something because his heart was full and he definitely didn’t want to leave the room without speaking. But Madame Khokhlakova grabbed his hand and she herself led him out. She stopped him in the entrance hall, as she had before.

“She’s proud, struggling with herself, but she’s kind, grand, generous!” Madame Khokhlakova cried in a half whisper. “Oh, how I love her, especially sometimes, and how glad I am again for everything! Dear Aleksey Fyodorovich, you didn’t know this: you should know that all of us, all of us—me, her two aunts, well, everyone, even Lise—for the last month have desired nothing else and have implored her to break it off with your beloved Dmitry Fyodorovich, who doesn’t want to know her and doesn’t love her at all, and to marry Ivan Fyodorovich, an educated and excellent young man, who loves her more than anything on earth. We organized a plot, and perhaps I’m not leaving even because of it . . .”

“But she’s been crying, insulted yet again!” cried Alyosha.

“Don’t believe a woman’s tears, Aleksey Fyodorovich. I’m always against women in such cases, and for the men.”

Lise’s frail voice came from behind the door: “Mama, you’re spoiling and ruining him.”

“No, I’m the reason for everything, I’m terribly guilty!” repeated the inconsolable Alyosha in a burst of tormented shame for his utterance; he even hid his face with his hands in shame.

“On the contrary, you behaved like an angel, like an angel, I’m ready to repeat that thousands upon thousands of times.”

“Mama, how did he behave like an angel?” Lise’s frail voice cried again.

“It suddenly occurred to me for some reason, looking at all of this,” continued Alyosha, as if not even hearing Lise, “that she loves Ivan, so I uttered that foolish thing . . . and what will happen now?”

“To whom? To whom?” cried Lise. “Mama, you’re undoubtedly trying to be the death of me. I ask you, but you don’t reply.”

At that moment the maid came running in.

“Katerina Ivanovna’s in a bad way. . . . She’s wailing . . . hysterically, and struggling.”

“What on earth?” cried Lise, her voice trembling. “Mama, I’m the one who becomes hysterical, not her!”

“Lise, for God’s sake, don’t scream. You’ll be the death of me. You’re still too young to know everything that adults know; I’ll come and tell you everything that you can understand. Oh, my God. I’m coming, I’m coming. . . . Hysterics are a good sign, Aleksey Fyodorovich, it’s splendid that she’s having hysterics. That’s just what she needs. In this case I’m always against the woman, against all these hysterics and women’s tears. Yuliya, go in and tell her I’m coming. And the fact that Ivan Fyodorovich left, that’s her own fault. But he won’t go away. Lise, for God’s sake, don’t scream! Ah, yes, you’re not shouting, I am; forgive your mama, but I’m in ecstasy, ecstasy, ecstasy! Have you noticed, Aleksey Fyodorovich, how young, how very young Ivan Fyodorovich looked when he left? He said all this and then he just left! I thought he was a scholar, an academic, and all of a sudden he behaved so passionately, he was candid and youthful, inexperienced and young, and all of this was splendid, splendid, just like you. . . . And he recited that German verse, just like you! But I must run, I must. Aleksey Fyodorovich, hurry to carry out that commission and then come right back. Lise, do you need anything? For God’s sake don’t delay Aleksey Fyodorovich for a minute, he’ll come back to see you . . .”

Madame Khokhlakova ran out at last. Alyosha, before he left, wanted to open the door for Lise.

“Not for anything!” cried Lise. “Now, not for anything! Speak to me like this, through the door. How did you become an angel? That’s the only thing I want to know.”

“For my terrible foolishness, Lise. Good-bye.”

“Don’t you dare leave like this!” Lise shouted.

“Lise, I’m in serious grief! I’ll return shortly, but I’m in great, great grief!”

And he ran out of the room.

1 “Madame, I do not want your gratitude” (Ger.). From Friedrich Schiller’s ballad “Der Handschuh” (“The Glove” or “The Gauntlet,” 1797).

VI

LACERATION IN A PEASANT HUT

Alyosha was certainly grieving, as never before. He’d rushed in and had “made a fool of himself”—and in what? In feelings of love! “What do I understand about that? What can I make of such matters?” he asked himself for the hundredth time, blushing. “Oh, shame would be nothing, only a fitting punishment—the fact is that I’ll certainly be the cause of new unhappiness. . . . But the elder sent me to bring peace and to unite. Is this the way to do it?” Then he suddenly recalled again how he “had joined their hands,” and he became terribly ashamed again. “Even though I did it all sincerely, I should be cleverer in the future,” he concluded at once and didn’t even smile at his conclusion.

Katerina Ivanovna’s commission was to be carried out on Ozernaya Street; brother Dmitry lived in a lane along the way, not far from Ozernaya Street. Alyosha decided to drop in on him in any case before he went to see the staff captain, although he had a premonition that he wouldn’t find his brother at home. He suspected that Dmitry might intentionally be hiding from him now; but no matter what, he’d have to seek him out. Time was passing. The thought of his dying elder didn’t leave him even for one minute, and hadn’t even for one second since he’d left the monastery.

In Katerina Ivanovna’s commission there was one circumstance that also interested him greatly: when she’d mentioned the child, the schoolboy, the staff captain’s son, who’d run alongside his father, crying as he did, it had occurred to Alyosha that this lad was probably the same schoolboy who’d bitten his finger when Alyosha had asked how he’d offended him. Now Alyosha was almost certain of it, not really knowing why. In such a manner, sidetracked by gratuitous considerations, he was distracted and decided not to “think” about the “misfortune” he’d caused, not to torment himself with repentance, but to carry on with his mission, and let come what may. With that thought he felt decidedly stronger. By the way, as he turned into the lane toward his brother Dmitry’s house, he took out of his pocket the roll his father had given him and ate it. This fortified his strength.

It turned out that Dmitry wasn’t at home. The landlords of the wretched little house—an old joiner, his elderly wife, and his son—even regarded Alyosha with suspicion. “It’s already the third night he hasn’t slept here; perhaps he’s left,” replied the old man in reply to Alyosha’s persistent questions. Alyosha understood that he was just following instructions. To his question “Is he at Grushenka’s or is he hiding out at Foma’s again?” (Alyosha intentionally asked so directly), all three of them looked afraid. “They like him, so naturally, they’re defending him,” thought Alyosha. “That’s good.”

At last he located Kalmykova’s house on Ozernaya Street; it was a dilapidated little shack, crooked, with three windows opening onto the street, with a dirty courtyard, in the midst of which stood a single cow. The door was across the courtyard into a hallway; to the left lived the old landlady with her elderly daughter, and it seemed that both of them were deaf. To his question about the staff captain, repeated several times, one of them, understanding at last what they were being asked, motioned to him with her finger across the entrance hall, and pointed to the living room. The staff captain’s apartment really did turn out to be a simple hut. Alyosha was about to take hold of the iron handle to open the door when suddenly he was struck by unusual silence behind the door. He knew, however, from Katerina Ivanovna’s words, that the staff captain was a family man: “Either they’re all asleep or, perhaps, they heard that I’ve come and are waiting until I open the door; better if I knock first”—and so he did. An answer was heard, but not immediately, perhaps ten seconds later.

“Who’s that?” someone shouted in a loud, very angry voice.

Then Alyosha opened the door and stepped across the threshold. He entered the hut, which, although rather spacious, was extremely crowded with people and domestic belongings. On the left stood a large Russian stove. A rope had been stretched from the stove to the window on the left, and various items of clothing were hanging from it. Beds were located along both walls, to the right and the left, covered with knitted blankets. On one of them, on the left, there sat a pile of four print-covered pillows, each smaller than the next. On another bed to the right, there was only one very small pillow. Further, in the corner there was a small area separated by a curtain or a sheet, also tossed over the cord. Behind this curtain one could glimpse a bed made up on a bench and a place next to it. A simple square wooden peasant’s table had been moved away from the corner and stood near the middle window. All three windows, each with four tiny, greenish mildewed panes, were very dark and shut tight, so that it was rather stuffy in the room and there was not much light. On the table there was a frying pan with the remains of some fried eggs, a small piece of half-eaten bread, and, in addition, a small bottle of vodka with the faint remains of earthly bliss at the bottom.

Sitting on a chair next to the bed on the left was a woman who might have passed for a refined lady; she was wearing a cotton dress. Her face was very drawn and sallow; her extremely sunken cheeks indicated at first glance that she was sickly. But Alyosha was struck most of all by that poor lady’s look—extremely inquisitive and, at the same time, terribly haughty. All the while Alyosha was speaking with her husband, the lady said not a word, but held the same inquisitive and haughty expression, her big brown eyes moving from one speaker to the other. Next to this lady near the left window stood a young girl with a rather unattractive face; she had thin, reddish hair, poorly arranged, but was still dressed very neatly. She examined the newly arrived Alyosha with disdain. On the right, also near the bed, sat another woman. She was a pitiful creature, also young, a mere twenty years old, but hunchbacked and lame, with withered legs, as Alyosha was later informed. Her crutches stood nearby, in a corner, between the bed and the wall. The poor girl’s extraordinarily lovely and kind eyes regarded Alyosha with some serene gentleness. At the table, finishing the fried eggs, sat a gentleman of about forty-five, short, skinny, with a weak constitution, red-haired with a sparse reddish beard, very much like a wet loofah (for some reason this comparison occurred at first glance to Alyosha; he remembered it afterward). It was obvious that this was the gentleman who’d shouted, “Who’s that?” to him from behind the door, since there was no other man present in the room. But when Alyosha entered, he jumped up from the bench on which he’d been sitting, and hastily wiped his mouth with a tattered napkin, and rushed over to Alyosha.

“It’s a monk collecting for the monastery; he’s come to the right place!” said the young girl who was standing in the left corner in a loud voice. But the gentleman, who’d rushed up to Alyosha, spun on his heels in an instant and replied in an excited and broken voice:

“No, ma’am, Varvara Nikolavna, that’s not it, ma’am, you didn’t guess correctly! Allow me to ask in turn,” he said, turning to Alyosha again, “what occasioned this visit to these depths?”

Alyosha looked at him attentively; it was the first time he’d seen this man. There was something awkward about him, hurried, and irritable. Although he’d obviously just consumed some vodka, he was not drunk. His face expressed some sort of extreme insolence, and, at the same time—strange to say—evident cowardice. He seemed like a man who’d been submitting and tolerating a great deal for a long time, but who had now jumped up and was asserting himself. Or, even better, he resembled a man who very much wanted to strike you, but who was terribly afraid that you’d strike him back; a crazed humor could be heard in the words and intonation of his rather piercing voice, now wicked, now timid, unable to maintain the tone and breaking off. The question about the “depths” he’d posed had seemed to tremble from his throat; he was wide-eyed and advanced so close to Alyosha that Alyosha automatically took a step back. This gentleman was dressed in a dark, very shabby nankeen coat, patched and soiled. His trousers were light-colored, such that no one wears anymore, checked and made of very thin material, so crumpled below and riding up, just as if he had outgrown them, like a little boy.

“I am . . . Aleksey Karamazov . . .” Alyosha began in reply.

“I understand that very well, sir,” snapped the gentleman immediately, indicating that he already knew who he was. “I’m a staff captain, sir, Snegiryov, sir, in turn; still, it’s desirable to know, what occasioned this visit . . .”

“I simply dropped by. I really wanted to have a word with you. If you’ll permit me.”

“In that case, here’s a chair, sir. Please be seated, sir. That’s what they used to say in old comedies, ‘Please be seated.’ ” With a quick movement, the staff captain grabbed the empty chair (a simple wooden peasant’s chair, not upholstered), and placed it almost in the center of the room; then he grabbed another similar chair for himself, and sat down opposite Alyosha, as before, so close that their knees were almost touching.

“Nikolai Ilych Snegiryov, sir; retired staff captain in the Russian infantry, sir, although chastened for his vices, but a staff captain nonetheless. I really ought to say, ‘Staff captain Yes-sir,’ and not Snegiryov, because it was only in the last half of my life that I learned to say ‘Yes, sir.’ One acquires that word when humiliated.”

“That’s quite right,” Alyosha said with a smile. “But is it acquired involuntarily or intentionally?”

“With God as my witness, it’s acquired involuntarily. I never had to say it, all my life I never did, but then I fell and got up with that word. It’s done by a higher power. I see that you’re interested in contemporary questions. How is it that I’ve occasioned your curiosity, since I live in circumstances where it’s impossible to receive you hospitably.”

“I’ve come . . . about that same matter . . .”

“What matter is that?” the staff captain interrupted him.

“Your meeting with my brother Dmitry Fyodorovich,” Alyosha replied clumsily.

“What meeting was that, sir? You don’t mean that same meeting, sir? In other words, about the loofah, sir, the bathhouse loofah?” he suddenly moved forward, so that now his knees were positively knocking against Alyosha’s. His lips were compressed such that they resembled a thin thread.

“What loofah is that?” muttered Alyosha.

“He’s come to complain about me, Papa!” shouted a voice familiar to Alyosha as that of the schoolboy, issuing from behind the curtain in the corner. “I bit his finger before!”

The curtain was pulled back and Alyosha saw his former enemy, in the corner, under the icons, lying on a little bed made of a bench and a chair. The boy was lying there, covered by his little coat and an old padded quilt. Obviously he was unwell and, judging by his burning eyes, was running a fever. He regarded Alyosha without fear now, as though to say, “I’m at home now; you can’t touch me.”

“Bit whose finger?” the staff captain said, about to jump up from his chair. “Was it your finger he bit, sir?”

“Yes, mine. He was throwing stones before at some schoolboys on the street; six of them were throwing stones at him, and he was alone. I went up to him, and he threw a stone at me, then another at my head. I asked him what I’d done to him. He suddenly threw himself at me and bit my finger painfully, I don’t know why.”

“I’ll beat him at once, sir! I’ll give him a beating this very minute, sir,” the staff captain said, now up from his chair.

“I’m not here to complain at all; I’ve only told you what happened. . . . I don’t want him to receive a beating. And now, it seems that he’s ill . . .”

“Did you really think that I’d beat him, sir? That I’d take my little Ilyushechka[1] and give him a beating for your enjoyment? Would you like it done now, sir?” asked the staff captain, suddenly turning to Alyosha as if he wanted to throw himself at him. “I’m sorry, sir, about your precious little finger, but would you like me, before I beat Ilyushechka, to chop off my own four fingers, right now, before your very eyes, for your warranted satisfaction? With this very knife? Four fingers, I think, should be enough to satisfy your thirst for revenge, sir, or would you like a fifth?” He paused suddenly and seemed to gasp for breath. Every feature on his face was in motion and twitching. He looked extremely brazen. He seemed to be in a frenzy.

“I think I understand everything now,” Alyosha replied softly and sadly, continuing to stay seated. “In other words, your boy’s a good lad, he loves his father, and he threw himself at me as your offender’s brother. . . . Now I understand,” he repeated pensively. “But my brother Dmitry Fyodorovich is sorry for his action, I know that, and if it were possible for him to see you or, even better, to meet you again at the same place, then he would ask your forgiveness in front of everyone. . . . If you wish it.”

“That is, after pulling my beard, he’ll ask my forgiveness. . . . Everything, he thinks, will be settled and I’ll be satisfied, is that it, sir?”

“Oh, no, on the contrary; he’ll do anything you like and do it as you like.”

“So, if I asked His Highness to go down on his knees before me in that same tavern, sir—it’s called ‘the Capital City’—or on the square, sir, he’d do it?”

“Yes, he’d even go down on his knees.”

“I’m pierced to the quick, sir. Reduced me to tears and pierced me to the quick, sir. I’m too disposed to emotion. Allow me to introduce you to my family: my two daughters and my son—my brood, sir. When I die, who’ll take care of them, sir? And while I’m alive, who besides them will take care of a wretch like me? The Lord did a great thing for every man like me, sir. Because it’s necessary that someone should even look after a man like me, sir . . .”

“Ah, that’s absolutely true,” exclaimed Alyosha.

“But that’s enough clowning around; some fool comes in and you put us to shame!” the young girl at the window shouted unexpectedly, turning to her father with a disdainful and contemptuous expression.

“Wait a bit, Varvara Nikolavna, allow me to maintain the tone,” her father cried to her, although in a commanding voice, still looking at her very approvingly. “That’s the sort of character we have, sir,” he said, turning to Alyosha again,

“And in all of nature

There was nothing he wanted to bless.[2]

“That is, it should be in the feminine: ‘she wanted to bless,’ sir. But also allow me to introduce my spouse: here’s Arina Petrovna, a crippled lady, sir, aged forty-three; her legs move, but only a little, sir. She’s from simple folk, sir. Arina Petrovna, compose your features: here’s Aleksey Fyodorovich Karamazov. Stand up, Aleksey Fyodorovich.” He took him forcefully by the hand, which could hardly be expected from him, and suddenly raised him up. “You’re being introduced to a lady; you must stand up, sir. It’s not that same Karamazov, Mama, who . . . hmm, and so on, but his brother, outstanding for his humble virtues. Allow me, Arina Petrovna, allow me, Mama, allow me to kiss your hand in advance.”

And he kissed his spouse’s hand respectfully and even tenderly. The young girl at the window turned her back to the scene with indignation; his spouse’s haughtily inquiring face suddenly expressed extraordinary gentleness.

“Hello; sit down, Mr. Chernomazov,” she said.[3]

“Karamazov, Mama, Karamazov (we’re simple folk, sir),” he whispered again.

“Well, Karamazov, or whatever it is; I always think Chernomazov. . . . Have a seat. Why did he make you stand? A lady who’s a cripple, he says. I have legs, but they’re swollen, like yesterday, and I myself am withered. Previously I was fat, but now it’s as if I swallowed a needle.”

“We’re simple folk, sir, simple folk, sir,” the captain prompted once again.

“Papa, ah, Papa!” the hunchbacked girl, who, up to this time had been sitting quietly on her chair, said suddenly. Now she covered her eyes with a kerchief.

“Buffoon!” blurted out the girl standing by the window.

“You see what kind of news we have to share,” said the mother, spreading her arms and indicating her daughters. “It’s like clouds passing over, and then we have music again. Previously, when we were military people, we had many such guests, my good man. I’m not making comparisons. Each to his own taste. Then the deacon’s wife would come and say: ‘Aleksandr Aleksandrovich is a splendid fellow, but Nastasya Petrovna,’ she said, ‘is the devil incarnate.’ ‘Well,’ I reply, ‘it’s all a matter of taste, but you’re just a small pile, but you smell vile.[4] And you,’ she says, ‘should only obey.’ ‘While you,’ I tell her, ‘are a black sword. And whom did you come to instruct?’ ‘I,’ she says, ‘am letting in some fresh air, but yours is foul-smelling.’ ‘Just ask,’ I reply, ‘all these officers, if the air in me is foul or something else.’ And since that time I’ve been thinking about it. Just the other day I was sitting here as I am now, and I see that same general come in, the one who came here during Holy Week. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘Your Excellency, is it fitting for a noble lady to let in fresh air?’ ‘Yes,’ he answers, ‘you should open your little ventilation window or your door to let in some fresh air, because the air here is not fresh.’ And that’s how it goes. What’s wrong with the air here? The dead smell even worse. ‘I won’t,’ I say, ‘foul your air. I’ll order some shoes and leave.’ Now then, my darlings, don’t scold your dear mother! Nikolai Ilych, Father, how is it I haven’t pleased you? I have only Ilyushechka left; he comes home from school and he still loves me. Yesterday he brought me an apple. Forgive, Father, forgive, my darlings, your dear mother, forgive me, all alone, why has my breath become so offensive?”

And suddenly the poor woman burst out crying; tears streamed down her face. The staff captain rushed over to her at once.

“Mama, Mama, my dearest, enough, enough! You’re not alone. Everyone loves you, adores you!” and he began again to kiss both her hands and to stroke her face tenderly with his palms; grabbing a napkin, he began to wipe the tears from her face. It seemed to Alyosha that his eyes were also gleaming with tears. “Well, sir, did you see, sir? Did you hear, sir?” He suddenly turned to Alyosha in anger, pointing to the poor, half-witted woman.

“I see and I hear,” muttered Alyosha.

“Papa, Papa! Is it possible you agree with him. . . . Let him be, Papa!” the boy shouted suddenly, sitting up in his little bed and looking at his father with a feverish gaze.

“Enough of your playing the fool, exhibiting your stupid tricks, which don’t lead anywhere!” Varvara Nikolavna shouted from her corner, now really angry, and she even stamped her foot.

“Your anger is quite justified this time, Varvara Nikolavna, and I’ll fulfill your request. Put your hat on, Aleksey Fyodorovich, and I’ll take my cap, and let’s go, sir. I have some serious words to say to you, but outside of these walls. That girl sitting over there is my daughter, sir, Nina Nikolaevna, sir; I forgot to introduce you to her. She’s a heavenly angel incarnate . . . who’s come down to us mortals . . . if you can only understand . . .”

“There he’s trembling so hard, as if he is having a convulsion,” continued Varvara Nikolavna indignantly.

“And this one, who’s now stamping her foot at me and who accused me of being a fool just now—is also a heavenly angel incarnate, sir, and she called me a fool for good reason. Come along, Aleksey Fyodorovich, we have to finish here, sir . . .”

Grabbing Alyosha by the arm, he led him out of the room and right onto the street.

1 An affectionate diminutive for Ilyusha.

2 From Pushkin’s lyric poem “The Demon” (1823).

3 An unintentional pun on Karamazov. Kara means “black” in Turkish; cherno is the Russian translation.

4 This passage is replete with scatological language.

VII

AND IN THE FRESH AIR

“The air is fresh, sir, but in my mansion it’s not so fresh at all, in every sense of the word. Let’s go, sir, for a little stroll. I’d very much like to solicit your interest, sir.”

“And I have a very important matter to discuss with you . . .” replied Alyosha. “But I don’t know quite how to begin.”

“Of course you have something to discuss with me. Without it, you’d never have come to see me. Or did you really come merely to complain about my boy? That’s unlikely, sir. By the way, about the boy, sir: I couldn’t explain everything while we were in there, sir; but here I can now describe that entire scene, sir. You see, my ‘loofah’ was thicker a week ago, sir, I mean my little beard; the schoolboys mainly, sir, nicknamed my beard a loofah. Well, sir, when, sir, your brother Dmitry was pulling me by the beard out of the tavern and onto the square, it happened that the schoolboys were just coming out of school, and with them, my Ilyusha. When he saw me in such a state, he ran over to me: ‘Papa,’ he shouts, ‘Papa!’ He grabs hold of me, embraces me, wants to pull me away, and cries to my assailant: ‘Let him go, let him go! He’s my papa, my papa, forgive him!’ That’s just what he shouted, ‘Forgive him!’ My boy grabs his hand, that very hand, sir, and kisses it, sir. . . . I remember that moment, the expression on his little face at the time, sir, I haven’t forgotten, sir, and I won’t forget it, sir!”

“I swear,” exclaimed Alyosha, “that my brother will express his regret in the most sincere, most thorough manner, even if he has to go down on his knees in that same square. . . . I’ll make him do it, or else he’s no longer a brother of mine!”

“Aha, so this is still only your plan. It’s not from him, but from the nobility of your own warm heart, sir. You should have said so, sir. No, in that case, allow me to finish telling you about your brother’s most chivalrous and soldierly nobility, because he expressed it at the time, sir. When he finished pulling me by my loofah, he sets me free, sir, and he says: ‘You,’ he says, ‘are an officer, and I’m an officer; if you can find a second, a respectable man, then send him to me; I will give you satisfaction, even though you’re really a scoundrel!’ That’s what he said, sir! Truly a gallant spirit! Ilyusha and I withdrew, but a genealogical family picture remained, imprinted on Ilyusha’s soul forever. No, it’s not for us to remain gentry, sir. Judge for yourself, sir, you’ve just been inside our mansion—what did you see there? Three ladies: one crippled and half-witted, one crippled and hunchbacked, and the third, not crippled and far too smart; she’s a student, sir, trying to get to Petersburg so she can work there on the banks of the Neva for the rights of Russian women. I won’t mention Ilyusha, he’s only nine, sir; I’m alone in the world and if I die, what will become of all these depths of misery, that’s what I am asking you, sir. And if that’s so, and I challenge him to a duel, and if he kills me right then and there, what will happen? What will become of all of them? It’s even worse if he doesn’t kill me, but only cripples me: I won’t be able to work, but I’ll still be a mouth to feed. Who’ll feed it then, my mouth, and who’ll feed the rest of them, sir? Or will I have to take Ilyusha out of school and send him out to beg for alms every day? That’s what it means for me, sir, to challenge him to a duel, sir. It’s nonsense, sir, and nothing more, sir.”

“He’ll beg your forgiveness; he’ll bow down at your feet in the middle of the square,” cried Alyosha again, with an impassioned look.

“I wanted to take him to court,” continued the staff captain, “but take a look at our legal code; will I get much compensation for a personal injury from an assailant, sir? And then, all of a sudden Agrafena Aleksandrovna”—Grushenka—“summons me and cries, ‘Don’t you dare think of that! If you take him to court, I’ll tell everyone he gave you a beating for your crooked deals. Then they’ll come to prosecute you.’ The Lord alone knows who did those deals, sir, and who ordered small fry like me to act, sir. Wasn’t it her and Fyodor Pavlovich? ‘And in addition,’ she adds, ‘I’ll banish you for good and you won’t earn another kopeck from me in the future. I’ll tell my shopkeeper (that’s what she called her old man: ‘my shopkeeper’), and he’ll get rid of you.’ And I think, if her shopkeeper gets rid of me, what will happen to me? How will I earn any money? They’re the only two I have left, since your father, Fyodor Pavlovich, not only stopped hiring me, for another reason, sir, but he himself got hold of some receipts of mine and plans to drag me into court. As a result of all this, I’ve kept quiet, sir, and you’ve seen the depths we’re in. But now let me ask you, sir, did Ilyusha hurt your finger very badly when he bit you? I didn’t dare go into details before in his presence in my mansion.”

“Yes, it was extremely painful, and he was very incensed. He took his revenge for you out on me as a Karamazov; that’s clear to me now. But if you’d seen him throwing stones at his fellow schoolboys! It’s very dangerous; they could have killed him. They’re children and very foolish; a stone could be thrown and break someone’s head.”

“That’s just what happened, sir. He came home today and he’d been hit not in the head, but in the chest, sir, just above his heart, sir; he was crying and moaning, and now he’s fallen ill.”

“You know, he was the first to attack all of them; he was angry because of you; they say he stabbed a boy named Krasotkin with a penknife some time ago . . .”

“I heard about this; it is dangerous, sir: that boy’s father is an official here, and we may not have heard the end of it, sir . . .”

“I’d urge you,” Alyosha continued heatedly, “not to send him back to school for some time, until he calms down . . . until his anger passes . . .”

“Anger, sir!” repeated the staff captain, “precisely, sir, his anger. He’s a small creature, but his anger is great. You don’t know everything, sir. Allow me to explain that episode to you. The fact is that after the incident with your brother, all the boys in school began to tease him by calling him a ‘loofah.’ Schoolboys are a pitiless bunch: apart they can be heavenly angels, but together, especially in school, they can often be extremely pitiless. When they started to tease him, a valiant spirit arose in Ilyusha. An ordinary lad, a weak son, would have resigned himself, would have felt ashamed of his father, but my boy stood up against everyone for his father. For his father, and for truth, sir, for justice, sir. Because what he endured then as he was kissing your brother’s hand and shouting, ‘Forgive my papa, forgive my papa,’ only God knows and me, sir. For our children—that is, not yours, but ours, sir—the children of the contemptible, but the decent poor, sir—know what the truth is, even at the age of nine, sir. How would the rich know? They don’t delve into such depths their whole lives, but at that moment on that square, sir, my Ilyusha, as he was kissing your brother’s hands, at that very minute he discovered the whole truth, sir. This truth entered into him, sir, and crushed him forever, sir,” the staff captain muttered heatedly, as if in a frenzy again, and as he did, he pounded his right fist on his left palm, as if trying to express in reality how “the truth” had crushed Ilyusha. “That very day he came down with a fever, sir; he was delirious all night. All that day he spoke to me very little; he even remained silent, but I noticed one thing: he was staring, staring at me from the corner, and turning toward the window, pretending to study his lessons, but I could see that he wasn’t really studying. The next day I had a great deal to drink, sir, and don’t remember very much, sir; I’m a sinful man, sir, from my grief, sir. Mama also began to weep, sir; I love her very much, sir—but I spent my last kopeck on drink, sir. You, sir, shouldn’t despise me: in Russia men who drink are the kindest people. The kindest people among us are those who drink the most. I lay down and don’t remember much about Ilyusha that day, but that was the day when the schoolboys were laughing at him, sir: ‘Loofah,’ they shouted at him, ‘they dragged your father out of the tavern by his loofah, while you ran alongside and begged for his forgiveness.’ On the third day he came home from school again, and I saw that he looked terrible and pale. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. He made no reply. Well, we couldn’t talk in our mansion without Mama and the girls interfering; besides, the girls knew all about it even from the very first day. Varvara Nikolavna had even begun to grumble: ‘Fools, clowns, can’t we ever be logical?’ That’s exactly right, Varvara Nikolavna. ‘Can’t we ever be logical?’ With that I put an end to it for now. Toward evening I managed to take the boy out for a walk. You should know that previously every evening he and I, sir, would go out for a walk along the same road you and I are on now, from our gate to that very large stone by the wattle fence at the side of the road, where the town pasture begins: it’s a deserted and splendid place, sir. We’d walk there, sir, usually with his little hand in mine; his hands tiny, his fingers slender and cold, his little chest weak. ‘Papa,’ he says, ‘Papa!’ ‘What?’ I reply. I could see that his little eyes were shining. ‘Papa, how he treated you then, Papa!’ ‘What can I do, Ilyusha?’ I asked. ‘Don’t make peace with him, Papa, don’t make peace! The schoolboys say that he gave you ten rubles for that.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘Ilyusha, I wouldn’t take any money from him at all.’ He was shaking all over; he took my hand in both of his, and kissed me again. ‘Papa,’ he says, ‘Papa, challenge him to a duel; in school they tease me and say you’re a coward and won’t challenge him and will accept ten rubles from him.’ ‘I can’t challenge him, Ilyusha,’ I reply and explain to him briefly everything I just told you. He heard me out and then said, ‘Papa, still, don’t make peace with him; when I grow up I’ll challenge him to a duel myself and I’ll kill him!’ His little eyes were shining and on fire. Well, I’m his father and I had to tell him the truth. ‘It’s a sin,’ I say to him, ‘to kill, even in a duel.’ ‘Papa,’ he says, ‘I’ll tackle him as soon as I’m big enough, and I’ll knock his sword out of his hand with my own sword; I’ll throw myself at him, tackle him, brandish my sword over him and I’ll say, “I could kill you now, but I forgive you, so there!” ’ You see, you see, sir, what the ravings of his little mind were during those two days; he’d been planning this revenge with his sword day in and day out and must have been raving about it at night, sir. Only then he began to come home from school badly beaten, I found out about it three days ago, and you’re right, sir; I won’t send him back to that school anymore, sir. I learned that he stood alone against the whole class, and that he was provoking them all; he himself was very bitter, his heart was ablaze. I grew afraid for him then. We went for a walk again, a stroll. ‘Papa,’ he asks, ‘are rich people the strongest on earth?’ ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘Ilyusha, there is no one stronger than rich people.’ ‘Papa,’ he says, ‘I’ll become rich, become an officer, and vanquish everyone; the tsar will reward me, I’ll come back home and no one will dare . . . ’ Then he fell silent and says, his little lips trembling as they had before: ‘Papa, what a nasty town we live in.’ ‘Yes,’ I reply, ‘Ilyushechka, our town isn’t very nice.’ ‘Papa, let’s move to another town, to a nice town,’ he says, ‘where they don’t know us.’ ‘We’ll move,’ I say, ‘we’ll move, Ilyusha, as soon as I save up enough money.’ I was delighted with the chance to distract him from such dark thoughts, and he and I began to dream how we would move to another town, buy a horse and cart. ‘We’ll put Mama and your sisters into it, cover them up, and we ourselves will walk alongside; you’ll get to ride now and then, and I’ll walk alongside, because we have to protect our horse, so we can’t all ride. And we’ll set off.’ He was enthralled with this, most of all by our having our own horse that he would get to ride. It’s well known that a Russian boy is born with a horse. We jabbered on for a long time; thank heavens, I thought, I’ve diverted him, comforted him. That was two days ago, in the evening, but last night things turned out differently. He went to school again in the morning, and returned depressed, even very depressed. In the evening I took him by the hand, and we went for a walk, but he was silent and wouldn’t talk. A breeze came up, the sun was setting, autumn was in the air, and it was growing dark—we walked, but both of us felt sad. ‘Well, my boy, how shall we set off on our travels?’ I asked, hoping to bring him back to our topic from the day before. He remained silent. But I felt his little fingers trembling in my hand. ‘Hey,’ I thought, ‘this is very bad; something happened.’ We reached this very stone, where we are now, and sat down on it; there were many kites flying at the time, fluttering and humming, about thirty of them. It’s the season for kites, sir. ‘There,’ I say, ‘it’s time, Ilyusha, for us to fly our kite from last year. I’ll fix it. Where did you put it?’ My boy was silent, looking to one side, with his back toward me. The wind suddenly moaned and blew up some sand. . . . All of a sudden he rushes to me, embraces me with his two little arms, and holds on tight. You know, when children are silent and proud, and keep their tears to themselves, they can suddenly burst forth, if a great sadness occurs, and then the tears don’t simply flow, sir, they come in great torrents, sir. With these warm torrents he suddenly drenched my whole face. He wept as though having a convulsion, shaking, squeezing me to himself, while I sat on the stone. ‘Papa,’ he cries, ‘Papa, dearest Papa, he really humiliated you!’ I started crying, too, sir; we sat there, embracing, and shaking. ‘Papa,’ he says, ‘Papa!’ ‘Ilyusha,’ I say, ‘Ilyushechka!’ No one saw us then, sir, only God as our witness, maybe He’ll note it in my record of service, sir. Thank your brother, sir, Aleksey Fyodorovich. No, sir, I won’t beat my boy for your brother’s satisfaction, sir!”

He finished once more with his earlier malicious affectation of a holy fool. Alyosha felt, however, that the staff captain trusted him, and if someone else were in his place, this man wouldn’t be “conversing” in the same way and wouldn’t have conveyed what he had. This encouraged Alyosha, whose soul was trembling with tears.

“Ah, how I’d like to make peace with your boy!” he exclaimed. “If you could only arrange it . . .”

“Exactly, sir,” muttered the staff captain.

“But there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about now. Listen,” Alyosha continued in an excited tone of voice. “Listen. I have a message for you: that same brother of mine Dmitry also offended his own fiancée, a generous young woman, about whom you’ve probably heard. I have the right to reveal this insult to you; I even have the obligation to do so, because she, having learned of your insult, and having found out all about your unfortunate situation, has commissioned me at once . . . that is, recently . . . to bring you this help from her; but it’s from her alone, not from Dmitry, who has abandoned her. It’s not from me, his brother, not at all, and not from someone else, but from her, only her! She entreats you to accept her help. . . . You’ve both been insulted by the same man. . . . She remembered about you only when she suffered the same kind of insult from him (similar in its degree) as you received from him! In other words, a sister is coming to a brother with help. . . . To be exact, she commissioned me to persuade you to accept two hundred rubles as if from a sister. No one will find out about it; no unjust slander can arise. . . . Here’s the two hundred rubles, and I swear that you must accept them, otherwise . . . otherwise, all men must be enemies on earth! But there are brothers on earth. . . . You have a noble soul. . . . You must understand this, you must!”

Alyosha held out the two new colorful hundred-ruble bills to him. They were both standing near a large stone, near a fence, and no one else was around. The bills seemed to produce a terrible impression on the staff captain: he shuddered, but at first seemed astonished. He had never dreamed of anything like this, and he had never anticipated an outcome like this. Help from someone, and especially in such a significant amount, had never occurred to him, even in his dreams. He took the bills and for a minute he could hardly speak; something entirely new appeared in his face.

“Is this for me, sir? So much money, two hundred rubles! My goodness! I haven’t seen so much money in four years, good Lord! And she says, like a sister . . . is it really true, is it?”

“I swear to you that everything I said, everything, is true!” cried Alyosha. The staff captain’s face turned red.

“Listen, my dear, listen, sir; if I accept it, won’t I be a scoundrel? In your eyes, Aleksey Fyodorovich, won’t I be, won’t I be a scoundrel? No, sir, Aleksey Fyodorovich, hear me out, hear me out, sir,” he hastened to say, constantly touching Alyosha with both of his hands. “You’re trying to persuade me to take what ‘a sister’ is sending me, but inside, in yourself, sir, won’t you feel contempt for me, if I do take it, sir? Eh?”

“No, not at all! I swear by my own salvation, no! And no one will ever find out, only we know it: I, you, she, and one other lady, her good friend . . .”

“The heck with the lady! Listen, Aleksey Fyodorovich, hear me out, sir; now the moment has come, sir, for you to hear me out, because you can’t even understand what these two hundred rubles could mean to me now,” continued the poor man, gradually reaching a kind of disorderly, almost violent frenzy. He seemed confused, speaking very rapidly and hastily, as if he might not be able to finish. “In addition, since it was honestly acquired from such a respected and sacred ‘sister,’ sir, do you know that I would be able to treat Mama and my daughter Ninochka—my little hunchbacked angel? Dr. Herzenshtube came, out of the goodness of his heart, and spent an hour examining both of them: ‘I don’t understand a thing,’ he says. ‘However, mineral water, which is available at the local pharmacy’—he wrote a prescription—‘would be sure to do her good,’ and he also prescribed healing footbaths. That mineral water costs thirty kopecks, and she would probably have to drink forty pitchers of it. So I took the prescription and placed it on a shelf under the icons, and there it lies. And he also prescribed hot baths in some solution for Ninochka, every day, morning and evening. But how can we effect such a cure in our mansion, without servants, without assistance, without a bath, and without water, sir? And Ninochka’s rheumatic, too, I don’t think I told you that; her entire right side aches at night; she suffers, and believe me, sir, this angel endures and doesn’t moan, so as not to wake us. We eat whatever we can get; she takes what’s left over, what’s hardly fit only to feed the dog. ‘I’m not worth this piece,’ she says, ‘I’m taking it away from you; I’m a burden to you.’ That’s what her angelic eyes are trying to say. We serve her, but she finds that onerous: ‘I’m not worth it, I’m not; I’m unworthy and crippled, I’m useless.’ As if she weren’t worth it, sir, when she’s entreated God for all of us with her angelic gentleness; without her, without her soft words, we’d be living in hell, sir; she’s even placated Varya. Don’t condemn Varvara Nikolavna, either, sir; she’s also an angel, she’s been offended. She came to us for the summer, with only sixteen rubles; she’d earned them giving lessons and had put them aside for her trip back to Petersburg in September, that is now. But we took her money and lived on it and now she has nothing for her return, sir. And she can’t return because she works for us like a convict—we’ve harnessed and saddled her like a nag; she runs errands, cleans, washes, sweeps the floors, and helps Mama get into bed; and Mama is so capricious, sir, she’s tearful, sir, she’s insane, sir! Well, now on those two hundred rubles I could hire a servant, sir, do you understand, Aleksey Fyodorovich, I could undertake treatments for these two dear creatures, sir, send the schoolgirl to Petersburg, sir, buy some meat, sir, feed them properly, sir. Good Lord, this must be a dream!”

Alyosha was extremely glad that he had provided so much happiness and that the poor man had agreed to be made happy.

“Wait, Aleksey Fyodorovich, wait,” the staff captain cried again, grasping at a new dream, and once more he began prattling with frenzied haste: “Do you know that Ilyusha and I will realize our dream: we’ll buy a horse and cart, a jet-black horse it’ll be, that’s what precisely he asked for, and we’ll set off as we were imagining the other day. There’s a lawyer in another province whom I know, sir, a childhood friend, sir; and I’ve heard, through a trustworthy person, sir, that if I were to come, he’d give me work as a clerk in his office; and who knows, maybe he’ll actually do that. . . . Then I could put Mama and Ninochka in the cart, let Ilyushechka drive, and I’d walk, I would; I could take them all, sir. . . . Good Lord, if only I could get that bad debt paid back, then I’d have enough money even for that!”

“There will be enough, there will!” cried Alyosha. “Katerina Ivanovna will send you more money, as much as you need, and you know, I have some money, too; take as much as you need, as if from a brother, from a friend, you’ll pay it back later. . . . (You’ll get rich, you will!) And you know, you’ll never be able to conceive of a better plan than this move to another province! It’s your salvation, and the main thing is, it’s for your boy—and you know, the sooner you move, the better, before winter, before the cold sets in, and you should write to us from there, and we’ll remain as brothers. . . . No, this is no dream!”

Alyosha was about to embrace him, he was feeling so gratified. But, after glancing at him, he suddenly stopped; the staff captain stood there, his neck outstretched, his lips protruding, his face pale and frenzied, and whispering something with his lips, as if wishing to speak; there was no sound, yet he kept moving his lips; it was very strange.

“What’s the matter?” Alyosha asked, disconcerted.

“Aleksey Fyodorovich . . . I . . . you . . .” muttered the staff captain and broke off, staring strangely and violently at him with the look of someone who’d decided to throw himself off a mountain and, at the same time, with some sort of grin on his lips. “I, sir, you, sir. . . . Would you like me to show you a little trick I know, sir?” he muttered suddenly in a fast, firm whisper, his voice no longer breaking.

“What trick?”

“A nice little trick, a little hocus-pocus,” the staff captain continued whispering, his mouth curling to the left side, and screwing up his left eye. But he didn’t stop staring at Alyosha, as if his eyes were riveted to him.

“What’s the matter with you? What trick?” Alyosha cried, now entirely alarmed.

“Here it is. Watch!” the staff captain squealed suddenly.

And showing him the two colorful banknotes, which, all during this entire conversation, he’d been holding by the corner between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, he suddenly crumpled them ferociously and squeezed them tightly in his right fist.

“Did you see, sir, did you, sir?” he shrieked to Alyosha, pale and frenzied, and all at once he raised his fist and, with all his might, hurled the two crumpled banknotes onto the sand. Did you see, sir?” he shrieked again, pointing to them on the ground. “Well, so there, sir!”

And suddenly, raising his right foot, he began with wild fury trampling them with his heel, gasping for breath, and exclaiming with every stamp of his foot:

“So much for your money, sir! So much for it, sir! So much for your money, sir! So much for it, sir!” All of a sudden he jumped back and stood straight up before Alyosha. His whole countenance expressed inexplicable pride.

“Tell those who sent you that the ‘loofah’ won’t sell his honor, sir!” he shrieked, raising his arm in the air. Then he turned rapidly and took off running; but he hadn’t gone even five paces before he turned around completely and suddenly waved good-bye to Alyosha. But then again, before he had taken another five steps, he turned around for the last time, this time without a crooked grin on his face; on the contrary, his face was covered in tears. Weeping, sobbing, gasping for breath, he shouted hastily:

“What would I tell my boy if I took the money from you for our shame?” After saying this, he ran without turning around. Alyosha watched him go with inexpressible sadness. Oh, he understood that until the very last moment the staff captain himself hadn’t known that he would crumple and throw away the banknotes. As he ran, he didn’t turn around again, just as Alyosha knew he wouldn’t. Alyosha didn’t want to pursue him or call him back; he knew why. When he’d disappeared from sight, Alyosha picked up the two banknotes. They were merely creased and crumpled, trampled in the sand, but entirely unharmed, and they even rustled like new ones when Alyosha unfolded them and smoothed them out. After having done so, he folded them, stuffed them in his pocket, and went to see Katerina Ivanovna to report on his success in carrying out her commission.

BOOK FIVE

PRO AND CONTRA

I

A BETROTHAL

Madame Khokhlakova was again the first to meet Alyosha. She was hurrying: something important had occurred. Katerina Ivanovna’s hysterics had ended in a faint, after which came “terrible, horrible weakness; she lay down, turned her eyes up, and became delirious. Now she had a fever; they’d summoned Herzenshtube, and sent for her aunts. They’d already arrived, but the doctor was still not there. Everyone was seated in her room, waiting. Something was going to happen, but she’d lost consciousness. What if it turned into brain fever?”

When she shouted this, Madame Khokhlakova had an expression of serious apprehension. “This is serious, very serious!” she added after every word, as if everything that had happened to her previously had not been serious. Alyosha heard her out with sadness: he was about to begin relating his adventures to her, but she interrupted him at his very first words; she didn’t have the time to listen. She asked him to stay with Lise and to wait for her there.

“Lise, dearest Aleksey Fyodorovich,” she whispered almost into his ear, “Lise has greatly surprised me just now, but she’s moved me, too; therefore my heart forgives her everything. Just imagine, as soon as you’d gone, she suddenly and sincerely began to regret that she’d laughed at you yesterday and today. But she wasn’t laughing at you, she was merely joking. But she was feeling such deep regret, almost to the point of tears, that I was very surprised. She’d never felt so sorry before, as when she laughed at me and made a joke of it. And you know she laughs at me all the time. But now she’s being serious; everything is serious. She values your opinion highly, Aleksey Fyodorovich, and if possible, don’t be offended by her and don’t bear her any grudge. I do all I can to spare her; she’s such a clever little thing—would you believe it? Just now she was saying that you were a friend from her childhood—‘the most serious friend from my childhood’—just imagine, ‘the most serious’—but what about me? She has extremely earnest feelings in this respect, and even memories, but the main thing is, she uses these phrases and words, the most unexpected, and all of a sudden they come bursting out. She recently spoke about a pine tree, for example; a pine grew in our garden from her early childhood; it may still be there, so there’s no need to use the past tense. Pine trees aren’t people, Aleksey Fyodorovich; they don’t change quickly. ‘Mama,’ she says, ‘I remember that pine tree, as if in a dream,’ that is, a pun, ‘sosnu, kak so sna.’[1] She must have explained it differently, because it sounds like nonsense. Sosna is such a stupid word, but she said something so original, I can’t convey it. I’ve forgotten it completely. Well, good-bye—I’m very upset and will certainly lose my mind. Ah, Aleksey Fyodorovich, twice in my life I’ve lost my mind, and they cured me. Go to Lise. Reassure her, as you always know how to do splendidly. Lise,” she cried, approaching her door, “I’ve brought you Aleksey Fyodorovich, whom you offended so badly; he’s not angry at you at all, I can assure you; on the contrary, he’s surprised you could think that.”

“Merci, Maman; come in, Aleksey Fyodorovich.”

Alyosha went in. Lise looked somewhat embarrassed and suddenly blushed. She was obviously ashamed of something, and, as usually happens, she spoke very quickly about peripheral matters, as if that was all she was interested in at that time.

“Mama told me just now, Aleksey Fyodorovich, the whole story of those two hundred rubles and about your commission . . . to that poor officer . . . and she told me the whole horrible tale, how he was insulted; and you know that, although Mama confuses things badly, jumping from one thing to the next . . . I listened and wept. Well, did you manage to give him the money, and how is the unfortunate fellow doing now?”

“That’s just the point, I didn’t give it to him, and there’s an entire story connected to that,” replied Alyosha, for his part seeming to be more upset that he hadn’t been able to hand over the money; meanwhile Lise observed that he, too, was looking away, and was also trying to talk about other things. Alyosha sat down at the table and began speaking, but from his first words he shed his embarrassment and captivated Lise in turn. He spoke under the influence of strong emotion and the recent extraordinary impression, and he managed to tell it all well and in detail. Previously while still in Moscow, during Lise’s childhood, he had loved coming to see her and relating either things that were happening to him then, or things that he had read, or events from his own childhood. Sometimes they daydreamed together, and constructed whole stories together, most of them happy and amusing. Now they were both suddenly transported to their previous time in Moscow, two years ago. Lise was extremely moved by his story. Alyosha was able to depict with warm feeling an image of “Ilyushechka” for her. When he finished describing the scene in all its detail, how this unfortunate man trampled the banknotes, Lise threw up her hands and exclaimed with unrestrained emotion:

“So you didn’t give him the money, and you let him get away! My God, you could have run after him and caught up with him . . .”

“No, Lise, it’s better that I didn’t run after him,” said Alyosha. He stood up and walked anxiously across the room.

“How is it better? Why is it? Now they have no bread and will starve!”

“They won’t starve, because these two hundred rubles won’t pass them by. He’ll accept them tomorrow all the same. Tomorrow he’ll accept them for sure,” repeated Alyosha, pacing in deep thought. “You see, Lise,” he continued, suddenly stopping right in front of her, “I was the one who made a mistake, but it will turn out for the best.”

“What sort of mistake and why will it be for the best?”

“Here’s why: he’s a man with a weak and cowardly character. He’s suffered a great deal and is very good-natured. Now I keep thinking about why he suddenly took such offense and trampled on the money, because I can assure you that up to the very last moment, he didn’t know what he’d do. . . . And it seems to me that he had much to be offended by . . . and it couldn’t be otherwise in his situation. . . . In the first place, he was embarrassed that he’d shown so much delight about the money in front of me, and hadn’t concealed it from me. If he’d felt only a little pleased and not shown it, if he’d been able to show off, the way others do in taking money, and behave in an affected manner, then he could’ve endured it and taken the money; but he rejoiced too honestly, and that was humiliating. Ah, Lise, he’s an upright and good man; that’s the problem in these cases! All the time he was speaking, his voice was so weak, enfeebled, and he spoke so quickly, continually giggling, or else he crying . . . he really was crying, he was so delighted . . . and he spoke about his daughters . . . and about a job that he’d be offered in another town. . . . And he’d just poured out his soul when he suddenly grew ashamed that he’d revealed his entire soul to me. Then he started to hate me. He’s one of the terribly bashful poor. The main thing is, he was embarrassed that he’d accepted me so soon as his friend, and had surrendered so quickly; first he threw himself at me, tried to scare me, but then, as soon as he saw the banknotes, he began to embrace me. As he did so, he kept touching me with his hands. This must have been when he started to feel humiliated; then I made the mistake, a very important one: I suddenly told him that if he didn’t have enough money for the move to another town, that he’d be given more, and that even I’d provide him with more money, as much as he needed. That was what suddenly struck him: why had I leapt up to help him? You know, Lise, this is terribly difficult for such a sensitive man when everyone begins to regard him as if they were his benefactors. . . . I’ve heard this; the elder told me. I don’t know how to express it, but I’ve seen it myself very often. And I myself feel the exact same thing. And the main thing is that although he didn’t know until the very last moment that he’d trample on the banknotes, he had a hunch about it; I’m sure of that. That’s why his enthusiasm was so strong: he’d had a premonition. Even though all of this is so appalling, still, it’s for the best. I even think it couldn’t be any better . . .”

“Why, why couldn’t it be any better?” cried Lise, looking at Alyosha with great astonishment.

“Because, Lise, if he hadn’t trampled the money, but had accepted it instead, about an hour after he’d returned home, he would have burst into tears at his humiliation, that’s what certainly would have happened. He’d have wept, and perhaps the next day at first light he’d have come to see me and thrown the money down, and perhaps trampled on it as he just did. But now he went away terribly proud and in triumph, although he knows that he ‘ruined himself.’ Therefore, nothing is easier than to compel him to take these two hundred rubles no later than tomorrow, because he’s demonstrated his honor, thrown away the money, and trampled it. . . . He couldn’t have known when he trampled on it that I would bring him the money again tomorrow. Meanwhile, he’s greatly in need of the money. Even though he’s proud now, still even today he’ll think about the help he lost. Tonight he’ll think about it even more; he’ll see it in his dreams; by tomorrow morning, perhaps, he’ll be ready to come and ask for forgiveness. But I’ll appear before him at that moment: ‘Here you are,’ I’ll say, ‘a proud man, and you have proved it; now take the money, and forgive us.’ Then he’ll take it.”

Alyosha uttered the last phrase, “Then he’ll take it,” ecstatically. Lise clapped her hands.

“Ah, it’s true, ah, I suddenly understand! Ah, Alyosha, how do you know all this? You’re so young, yet you already know in your heart. . . . I’d never have imagined . . .”

“The main thing now is to persuade him that he’s on an equal footing with all of us, in spite of the fact that he’s taking money from us,” continued Alyosha ecstatically, “and not merely on an equal footing, but even on a higher footing . . .”

“ ‘On a higher footing,’ that’s splendid, Aleksey Fyodorovich, but go on, go on . . .”

“That is, perhaps that wasn’t the right way to express it . . . ‘on a higher footing,’ but that doesn’t matter because . . .”

“Ah, never mind, never mind, of course it doesn’t matter! Forgive me, dear Alyosha . . . You know, up to now I almost didn’t respect you . . . that is, I did respect you, but on an equal footing, but now I’ll respect you on a higher footing. . . . Dear Alyosha, don’t get angry that I’m ‘being witty,’ ” she said now with strong emotion. “I’m amusing and small, but you . . . you. . . . Listen, Aleksey Fyodorovich, isn’t there in all our reasoning, that is, your reasoning . . . no, better to say, our reasoning, isn’t there some contempt for him, for this unfortunate man . . . in that we’re now analyzing his soul like this, as if from on high, eh? In that we’re deciding so certainly that he’ll accept the money, eh?”

“No, Lise, there’s no contempt,” Alyosha replied firmly, as if prepared for this question. “I’ve already thought about this myself as I was coming over here. How can it be contempt when we’re just like him, when all of us are just like him? Because we are just like him and no better. And even if we were better, we would still act the same way in his situation. . . . I don’t know about you, Lise, but I think that I have a petty soul in many respects. But he doesn’t have a petty soul; on the contrary, he has a very delicate soul. No, Lise, there’s no contempt for him involved! You know, Lise, my elder said once: ‘You have to take care of other people as if they were children, or as if they were patients in a hospital . . . ’ ”

“Ah, Aleksey Fyodorovich, ah, my dearest, let’s take care of people as if they were patients!”

“Let’s do that, Lise, I’m ready, although I’m not completely prepared; sometimes I’m so impatient, and at other times I don’t notice things. But it’s different with you.”

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

“It’s so good that you say that, Lise.”

“Aleksey Fyodorovich, you’re amazingly good, but sometimes you seem a little pedantic . . . yet, you’re really not so pedantic. Go to the door, open it quietly, and see if Mama’s eavesdropping,” Lise said suddenly in a nervous, hasty whisper.

Alyosha went, opened the door, and reported that no one was listening.

“Come here, Aleksey Fyodorovich,” continued Lise, blushing more and more. “Give me your hand, like that. Listen, I have an important confession to make to you: my letter to you yesterday was not sent in jest, but in earnest . . .”

And she covered her eyes with her hand. It was apparent that she was very embarrassed to make this confession. All of a sudden she seized his hand and kissed it impetuously three times.

“Ah, Lise, that’s splendid,” Alyosha exclaimed joyfully. “I was absolutely convinced that you wrote it in earnest.”

“Convinced, just imagine!” she said, suddenly drawing his hand aside but not releasing it, however, from her hand, blushing all the more, and emitting a happy little laugh. “I kissed his hand and he says, ‘that’s splendid.’ ” But she was reproaching him unjustly: Alyosha was also very flustered.

“I’d like it if you always liked me, Lise, but I don’t know how to make that happen,” he muttered a little, blushing.

“Alyosha, dear, you’re cold and impertinent. Do you see? He’s pleased to choose me as his spouse, and then he rests content. He was already convinced that I wrote to him in earnest. How do you like that! That’s impertinence—that’s what!”

“Is it really so bad that I was convinced?” Alyosha asked suddenly with a laugh.

“Ah, Alyosha, on the contrary, it’s very good,” said Lise, regarding him tenderly and happily. Alyosha stood, still holding his hand in hers. Suddenly he bent down and kissed her right on her little lips.

“What’s this? What are you doing?” cried Lise. Alyosha was completely flustered.

“Well, forgive me, if I didn’t. . . . Perhaps I’m being terribly stupid. . . . You said I was cold, so I went and kissed you. . . . But I see it was stupid . . .”

Lise started laughing and covered her eyes with her hands.

“And in that attire!” burst from her in the middle of her laughing; but she suddenly stopped laughing and became very serious, almost stern.

“Well, Alyosha, I think we should wait a bit with our kisses, because we both don’t know how to do it, and we have a long time to wait,” she concluded suddenly. “You’d better tell me why you’re choosing me, such a fool, a sickly little fool, while you’re so clever, such a thinker, such a good observer? Ah, Alyosha, I’m terribly happy because I’m not worthy of you!”

“Wait, Lise. I shall be leaving the monastery altogether in a few days. Once out in the world, I must get married, that much I know. That’s what he ordered me to do. Who could I find better than you . . . and who, besides you, would have me? I’ve thought it all out. In the first place, you’ve known me since childhood; in the second place, you have many abilities that I’m completely lacking. Your soul is more cheerful than mine; and the main thing is, you’re more innocent than I am; I’ve had contact with many things, very many. . . . Ah, you don’t know that after all I’m also a Karamazov! What does it matter that you laugh and joke, about me, too; on the contrary, go ahead, laugh, I’m very glad for it. . . . But you laugh like a little girl, while you think of yourself as a martyr . . .”

“What do you mean? How is that possible?”

“Yes, Lise, your question just now: whether we might be harboring contempt for that unfortunate man when we were dissecting his soul just now—that’s a martyr’s question. You see, I don’t have any idea to express this; but someone who’s able to formulate such a question is himself capable of suffering. While sitting in your wheelchair, you must have thought about many things already . . .”

“Alyosha, give me your hand. Why are you withdrawing it?” Lise asked, her voice trailing off, weak from happiness. “Listen, Alyosha, what will you wear when you leave the monastery, what sort of clothes? Don’t laugh, don’t get angry; this is very, very important to me.”

“I still haven’t decided, Lise; but what would you like me to wear?”

“I would like you to wear a dark blue velvet jacket, a white piqué vest, and a soft gray felt hat. . . . Tell me, did you really believe me before when I said I didn’t love you, and when I disavowed yesterday’s letter to you?”

“No, I didn’t believe you.”

“Oh, you unbearable man, you’re incorrigible!”

“You see, I knew that you . . . it seems, love me; but I pretended to believe that you didn’t love me, so it would be . . . easier for you . . .”

“That’s even worse! Both worse and better than anything. Alyosha, I love you terribly. Just now, before you came, I was guessing my fortune: will I ask him for yesterday’s letter, and if he takes it out calmly and gives it to me (which one could always expect him to do), that will mean that he didn’t love me at all, didn’t feel anything, but is simply a stupid and unworthy little boy, and I’m done for. But you left the letter in your cell, and that encouraged me: isn’t it true that you left it in your cell because you had a premonition that I would demand that you give it back, which you didn’t want to do? Isn’t that so? Well, isn’t it?”

“Oh, Lise, it wasn’t like that at all; I have the letter with me now and I did before, too, right here in my pocket. Here it is.”

Alyosha took out the letter and, laughing, showed it to her from a distance.

“Only, I won’t give it back; look at it while I hold it in my hand.”

“What? So you were lying before? You’re a monk, but you were lying?”

“Perhaps I did lie,” Alyosha said with a laugh. “So as not to give you back the letter, I lied. It’s very dear to me,” he added suddenly with strong feeling, blushing once more. “It will be forever and I’ll never give it to anyone.”

Lise looked at him in rapture.

“Alyosha,” she whispered again, “look behind the door again to see if Mama isn’t perhaps eavesdropping.”

“All right, Lise, I will, but isn’t it better not to look? Why suspect your mother of such meanness?”

“What meanness? If she’s eavesdropping on her daughter, it’s her right, and not meanness,” Lise blurted out. “You can be sure, Aleksey Fyodorovich, that when I myself will be a mother and if I have a daughter like me, I will certainly eavesdrop on her.”

“Really, Lise? That’s not good.”

“Ah, my goodness, what sort of meanness is it? If it were just some normal social conversation and I was eavesdropping, then it would be meanness; but here, her own daughter’s shut herself up with a young man. Listen, Alyosha, you should know that I’ll also spy on you after we’re married, and open all of your letters and read them. . . . So you should be prepared for that . . .”

“Yes, of course, if that’s so,” muttered Alyosha, “but that’s not right . . .”

“Ah, what contempt! Alyosha, dear, let’s not quarrel the very first day. It’s better if I tell you the whole truth: of course it’s very bad to eavesdrop, and of course I’m not right and you are; but still, I will eavesdrop.”

“All right. But you won’t find out anything bad,” Alyosha said with a laugh.

“Alyosha, will you submit to me? I have to know beforehand.”

“With great willingness, Lise, and absolutely, but not in the most important things. In those, if you disagree with me, I will still do what duty demands.”

“That’s how it should be. So you should know that I, on the contrary, will not only submit to you in the most important things, but in everything, and I solemnly swear now that it will be in everything and for my entire life,” Lise exclaimed heatedly, “and I will do it with joy, with joy! Not only do I swear that I will never eavesdrop on you, not once, never; and I won’t read any of your letters, because you’re right and I’m not. And even though I’ll desperately want to eavesdrop, that I know, nevertheless, still I won’t do it, because you consider it improper. Now you’re like my Providence. . . . Listen, Aleksey Fyodorovich, why are you so sad lately, both yesterday and today; I know you have worries, misfortunes, but I see in addition to that, you have some particular sadness, some secret sadness, perhaps? Eh?”

“Yes, Lise, there is a secret sadness,” Alyosha said sadly. “I see that you love me, since you guessed that.”

“What sort of sadness? About what? Can you say?” Lise asked with timid entreaty.

“I’ll tell you afterward, Lise, after . . .” said Alyosha in confusion. “Now it might not be understood. And I myself might not be able to explain it.”

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

“Yes, and my brothers,” said Alyosha, as if in reflection.

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

Alyosha noticed this remark with some surprise, but he didn’t reply.

“My brothers are destroying themselves,” he continued, “and so is my father. And they’re destroying others as well as themselves. This is ‘the earthy Karamazov force,’ as Father Paisy expressed it recently, ‘earthy and fierce, unfinished. . . . Does the spirit of God hover over this force? I don’t know. I know only that I myself am also a Karamazov. . . . I’m a monk, a monk? Am I a monk, Lise? You just said that I’m a monk?”

“Yes, I did.”

“But perhaps I don’t even believe in God.”

“You don’t believe? What’s wrong with you?” Lise asked softly and cautiously. But Alyosha didn’t answer her. In his words uttered too suddenly there was something that was too mysterious and too personal, perhaps unclear to him, but that was certainly tormenting him.

“And now, besides everything, my friend, the best man in the world, is departing this earth. If you knew, if you only knew, Lise, how I’m connected, how I’m joined spiritually with this man! And I shall remain alone. . . . I shall come to you, Lise. . . . We’ll be together in the future . . .”

“Yes, together, together! From now on always together for our whole life. Listen, kiss me, I’ll allow it.”

Alyosha kissed her.

“Well, now go. Christ be with you!” (And she made the sign of the cross over him.) “Go to him now, while he’s still alive. I see that it was cruel of me to detain you. I’ll pray today for him and for you. Alyosha, we will be happy! Will we be happy, will we?”

“It seems we will, Lise.”

As he left, Alyosha thought it best not to go in to see Madame Khokhlakova and, without saying good-bye to her, he was about to leave the house. But he had only opened the door and started down the staircase when Madame Khokhlakova, from out of nowhere, was standing in front of him. From her first word, Alyosha guessed that she was waiting for him intentionally.

“Aleksey Fyodorovich, this is terrible. It’s childish nonsense and sheer rubbish. I hope you don’t dare even think that. . . . Foolishness, foolishness, and more foolishness!” she hurled at him.

“But don’t tell her that,” said Alyosha, “or she’ll be very upset, and that won’t be good for her.”

“I hear sensible advice from a sensible young man. Do I understand that you agreed with her merely out of compassion for her invalid condition and a desire not to anger her by a contradiction?”

“Oh, no, not at all. I was speaking with her very earnestly,” Alyosha declared decisively.

“Earnestness is impossible in this case, unthinkable, and in the first place, I’ll no longer receive you; in the second place, I will leave town and take her away. You should know that.”

“But why?” asked Alyosha. “It’s not soon at all; we’ll have to wait at least a year and a half.”

“Ah, Aleksey Fyodorovich, of course that’s true, and in a year and a half you’ll quarrel with her a thousand times and separate. But I’m so unhappy, so unhappy! Even if it’s all nonsense, it still overwhelmed me. Now I feel like Famusov in the last scene, you’re Chatsky, she’s Sofiya, and just imagine, I came running out to the stairs to meet you and there in the play the fatal scene also takes place on the stairs.[2] I heard everything, and was barely able to stand it. So this is the explanation of her terrors last night and her hysterics today! Love for the daughter and death for the mother. I’ll go to my grave. Now the second thing and the most important: what about that letter she sent you. Show it to me now, right now!”

“No, that’s not necessary. Tell me, how is Katerina Ivanovna’s health? I must know.”

“She’s still delirious; she hasn’t come to. Her aunts are here, and all they do is sigh and put on airs; Herzenshtube came and was so frightened that I didn’t know what to do with him and how to save him—I even wanted to summon a doctor. They took him away in my carriage. And now, all of a sudden, to complete the picture, you suddenly come with this letter. It’s true that it’ll be only after a year and a half. In the name of all that’s great and holy, in the name of your dying elder, show me that letter, Aleksey Fyodorovich, show it to me, her mother! If you wish, you can hold it in your own fingers; I’ll read it while you hold it.”

“No, I won’t show it to you, Katerina Osipovna, even if she’d allowed me. I’ll come tomorrow and, if you like, we can talk over many things, but for now—good-bye!”

And Alyosha ran down the stairs and into the street.

1 Sosna is the Russian word for “pine tree”; so sna means “half awake.”

2 A reference to the final scene of Alexander Griboedov’s (1795–1829) famous comedy The Misfortune of Being Clever (the title is also translated as Woe from Wit; 1823), where Famusov eavesdrops on his daughter Sofiya’s final conversation with the hero Chatsky.

II

SMERDYAKOV WITH A GUITAR

And he had no time at all. He’d suddenly had an idea while still saying good-bye to Lise. The idea was this: how could he, in the cleverest way, manage to catch his brother Dmitry, who was obviously trying to avoid him? It was no longer early: it was already past two in the afternoon. With all his being, Alyosha was hoping to return to the monastery, to “the great one” who was dying, but the necessity of seeing his brother Dmitry overpowered everything else: in Alyosha’s mind the conviction that a great inevitable catastrophe was about to occur grew stronger with every passing hour. What the catastrophe was and what exactly he wanted to say to his brother, perhaps he himself could not even specify. “If my benefactor dies without me, at least I won’t reproach myself all my life that I might have saved something but didn’t do so, just went past, hurrying home. By doing this, I will follow his wish . . .”

His plan consisted in catching his brother accidentally, namely: to climb over that wattle fence, as he’d done yesterday, enter the garden, and wait in the gazebo. “If he’s not there,” thought Alyosha, “I won’t tell Foma or the women of the house; I’ll just wait for him and, if necessary, hide in the gazebo until evening. If, as before, he’s on the lookout for Grushenka, it’s very likely that he’ll come to the gazebo.” Alyosha didn’t think too much about the details of his plan, but he decided to implement it, even if it meant not getting back to the monastery that day . . .

Everything happened without hindrance: he climbed over the fence, in almost the same place as he had yesterday, and made his way to the gazebo in secret. He didn’t want anyone to see him: both the landlady and Foma (if he was here) might take his brother’s side and obey his orders; therefore they might not let Alyosha into the garden, or else they might warn his brother beforehand that he was being looked for and asked about. There was no one in the gazebo. Alyosha sat down in the same place as yesterday and waited. He examined the gazebo: for some reason it seemed much older than it had yesterday; now it even seemed decrepit. On the other hand, the day was just as clear as yesterday. There was a circle on the green table from the overturned glass of brandy. As always during tedious periods of waiting, foolish and unrelated thoughts came into Alyosha’s mind: for example, why had he, upon entering the gazebo, sat in exactly the same place as yesterday, and why not in a different spot? Finally he became very depressed—depressed by the fearful uncertainty. But he hadn’t been there for more than a quarter of an hour when suddenly, somewhere very close to him, he heard the sounds of a guitar. Someone was sitting or had just gotten seated some twenty paces away from him, no farther, somewhere in the bushes. Alyosha suddenly recalled that as he’d been leaving his brother in the gazebo yesterday, to the left in front near the fence he’d seen an old, low green garden bench among the bushes. Some people must be there now. Who were they? One male voice began singing in a sugary falsetto, accompanying himself on the guitar:

By invincible force

I’m bound to my dear,

Lord have mer-r-r-cy

On her and on me!

On her and on me!

On her and on me![1]

The voice stopped. It was a lackey’s tenor and a lackey’s song. Another voice, a woman’s, suddenly said, affectionately and, as it were, timidly, but with mincing affectation:

“Why haven’t you come to see us in so long, Pavel Fyodorovich? Why do you spurn us?”

“Not at all, ma’am,” replied the male voice, though politely, but mainly with insistent and firm dignity. It was obvious that the man dominated while the woman was making advances. “The man, it seems, is Smerdyakov,” thought Alyosha, “at least I can tell by his voice; and the lady is probably the daughter of the owner of the cottage, having returned from Moscow; she wears a dress with a long train and visits Marfa Ignatyevna to get some soup.”

“I love verses terribly, especially if they rhyme nicely,” continued the woman’s voice. “Why don’t you go on?”

The voice started singing again:

A tsar’s crown [would I give up][2]—

So my dear would be healthy.

Lord have mer-r-r-cy

On her and on me!

On her and on me!

On her and on me!

“It sounded even better the last time,” the woman’s voice remarked. “You sang about the crown: ‘So my darling would be healthy.’ That was more affectionate; you’ve probably forgotten.”

“Poetry is nonsense, ma’am,” Smerdyakov snapped.

“Oh, no! I’m very fond of it.”

“As for poetry, ma’am, it’s pure nonsense, ma’am. Judge for yourself: who in the world talks in rhymes? And if we all started speaking in rhymes, even by order of the authorities, would we ever say very much, ma’am? Poetry’s a waste of time, Marya Kondratyevna.”

“You’re so clever about so many things. How did you ever get so smart?” the woman’s voice said, fawning more and more.

“I could have done even more, ma’am, known even more, ma’am, if it hadn’t been for my destiny since childhood. I’d have killed a man with a pistol if he called me a scoundrel, because I’m descended from Smerdyashchaya [Lizaveta] without a father; they also used to tease me in Moscow for that, promulgated thanks to Grigory Vasilievich, ma’am. He reproaches me for rebelling against my own birth: ‘You,’ he says, ‘tore open her womb.’[3] Well, womb or not, I’d have let myself be murdered when still in the womb, so that I wouldn’t have been born into this world at all, ma’am. They used to say at the market, and your mama did, too, with great indelicacy, that she wore her hair in a Polish plait and that she was ‘a tiny bit’ short. Why say ‘a tiny bit’ when she could simply have said ‘a bit,’ the way others do? She wanted to make it sound plaintive, like a peasant’s tears, ma’am, but those are real peasant’s feelings. Can a Russian peasant have feelings compared to an educated man? He can’t have any feelings because of his lack of education. From my childhood on, whenever I hear the phrase ‘a tiny bit,’ I’m ready to throw myself against a wall. I hate all Russia, Marya Kondratyevna.”

“If you were a military cadet or a brave hussar, you wouldn’t talk like that; you’d wave your sword and defend all Russia.”

“Not only don’t I want to be a military hussar, Marya Kondratyevna, but, on the contrary, I wish for the destruction of all soldiers, ma’am.”

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

“It’s not necessary at all, ma’am. In 1812 there was a great invasion of Russia by the French emperor, the first Napoleon, the father of the one who’s reigning now;[4] and it would have been a good thing if the French had conquered us then: a clever nation would have conquered an extremely stupid one, ma’am, and joined us to itself. Things would be quite different now.”

“Are things really so much better in their country than in ours? I wouldn’t trade even one of our dandies for three young Englishmen,” Marya Kondratyevna said tenderly, no doubt accompanying her words with a most languorous look from her little eyes.

“People have their preferences, ma’am.”

“And you yourself are just like a foreigner, a noble foreigner; I’m blushing as I’m saying this.”

“If you want to know, then people over there and ours here are similar in their depravity. They’re all rascals, ma’am, but the difference is that theirs go around wearing polished boots, while our scoundrels stink in their poverty and see nothing wrong in it. The Russian people need to be thrashed, ma’am, as Fyodor Pavlovich said correctly yesterday, though he’s insane, along with all of his children, ma’am.”

“But you yourself say that you’ve great respect for Ivan Fyodorovich.”

“But he said I was a stinking lackey. He thinks I might revolt; but he’s mistaken, ma’am. If I had a certain amount of money in my pocket, I’d have left here long ago. Dmitry Fyodorovich is worse than any lackey in his conduct, his intellect, and his indigence, ma’am, and he doesn’t know how to do anything, yet he’s respected by everyone. I may be only a soup-maker, but with luck I could open a café-restaurant on Petrovka Street in Moscow. That’s because I can cook à la mode, and no one else in Moscow, except for foreigners, knows how to do that. Dmitry Fyodorovich is a tramp, ma’am, and even if he were to challenge the son of the most noble count in the country to a duel, and that fellow were to accept, ma’am, how is he any better than me, ma’am? Because he’s so much dumber than me. Look at how much money he’s squandered for nothing!”

“A duel, I think, is a fine thing,” Marya Kondratyevna remarked suddenly.

“How’s that, ma’am?”

“It’s so frightening and brave, especially if the young officers with pistols in their hands exchange fire over some female. It’s quite a picture. Ah, if only they allowed young women to watch, I’d really like to see one.”

“It’s all right if you’re the one who’s pointing the pistol, but if the other person’s aiming at your mug, you must feel very stupid. You’d run away, Marya Kondratyevna.”

“Would you really run away?”

But Smerdyakov didn’t deign to reply. After a moment’s silence, another chord rang out from his guitar, and in a falsetto he began singing the final verse of the song:

No matter how much I try

I shall go far away.

To en-n-joy life

And to live in the capital!

I won’t grieve,

I won’t grieve at all,

I don’t intend to grieve at all!

Then something unexpected occurred. Alyosha suddenly sneezed; the ones on the bench fell silent. Alyosha stood up and walked in their direction. It really was Smerdyakov, all dressed up, hair greased down, perhaps even curled, and wearing polished shoes. The guitar lay on the bench. The lady was Marya Kondratyevna, the daughter of the house; she was wearing a light blue dress with a train two yards long; the girl was still young and would have been rather pretty, if it weren’t for her very round face and many freckles.

“Will brother Dmitry return soon?” Alyosha asked as calmly as he could.

Smerdyakov got up from the bench slowly, as did Marya Kondratyevna.

“How should I know about Dmitry Fyodorovich? It would be another matter if I were his keeper,”[5] said Smerdyakov quietly, distinctly, and with disdain.

“I merely asked if you knew,” explained Alyosha.

“I don’t know a thing about his comings and goings, and I don’t want to, sir.”

“My brother told me specifically that you’d tell him about everything that happened in the house, and that you’d promised to let him know if Agrafena Aleksandrovna arrived.”

Smerdyakov cast a deliberate and unruffled glance at him.

“How did you manage to get in here at this time, since the gate was locked tight an hour ago?” he asked, staring at Alyosha.

“I came from the lane over the fence, straight to the gazebo. I hope you’ll excuse me for that,” he said, turning to Marya Kondratyevna. “I was in a hurry to find my brother.”

“Ah, as if we could be offended by you,” said Marya Kondratyevna, who was flattered by Alyosha’s apology, “since Dmitry Fyodorovich often reaches the gazebo that way; we don’t even know when he’s here sitting in the gazebo.”

“I’m very eager to find him; I really want to see him or to find out from you where he is now. Believe me, it’s a very important matter.”

“He doesn’t tell us,” lisped Marya Kondratyevna.

“Although I’ve come here as an acquaintance,” Smerdyakov began again, “even here he’s pestered me inhumanly with endless inquiries about the master: ‘What,’ he asks, ‘is happening there? Who’s coming and going? Can’t I tell him more.’ He’s even threatened me with death twice.”

“What do you mean?” Alyosha replied in surprise.

“Do you think he’d think about it twice, sir, given his character, which you yourself were able to observe yesterday, sir? ‘If,’ he says, ‘if I let Agrafena Aleksandrovna in, and she spends the night here, I’ll be the one to pay the price.’ I’m really afraid of him, sir, and if I weren’t more afraid of doing so, I should report him to the authorities. God only knows what he might do, sir.”

“Just the other day he said to him, ‘I’ll crush you in a mortar,’ ” added Marya Kondratyevna.

“Well, if it’s in a mortar, then perhaps it’s only talk . . .” observed Alyosha. “If I could meet him now, I’d also say something to him about that . . .”

“Well, the only thing I can say is,” replied Smerdyakov, as if reconsidering suddenly, “I’m here as an old friend and neighbor; why shouldn’t I come, sir? On the other hand, Ivan Fyodorovich sent me to see him early this morning at his apartment on Ozernaya Street, without a letter, sir, to see if Dmitry Fyodorovich would come at once to the local inn on the square to have dinner together. I went, sir, but I didn’t find Dmitry Fyodorovich in his apartment, sir, and it was already eight o’clock. ‘He was here,’ they said, ‘but he left, and hasn’t returned.’ Those are the very words his landlords used. It was as if they had some understanding, sir, a mutual one, sir. Now, perhaps, he’s sitting in a tavern with his brother, since Ivan Fyodorovich didn’t come home for dinner and Fyodor Pavlovich had dinner alone an hour ago and now has retired for the night. I beg you, sir, most earnestly, not to say anything about me or about what I told you, sir, because he’d kill me for no reason at all.”

“Did brother Ivan invite Dmitry to a tavern today?” Alyosha repeated quickly.

“Exactly, sir.”

“To the Metropolis on the square?”

“That very one, sir.”

“That’s very likely!” cried Alyosha, very upset. “Thank you, Smerdyakov, that’s important news. I’ll go there at once.”

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

“Oh, no; I’ll show up in the tavern as if by chance. You can rest assured.”

“Where are you going? I’ll unlock the gate for you,” Marya Kondratyevna began shouting.

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

The news had shaken Alyosha badly. He set off for the tavern. It wasn’t proper for him to go in wearing his monastic robe, but it was possible to inquire on the stairs and to summon them. But just as he neared the tavern, a window suddenly opened and his brother Ivan shouted down to him:

“Alyosha, can you come in here to see me or not? I’d be very grateful.”

“I certainly can, but I don’t know if I can enter dressed like this.”

“I’m in a separate room. Come down the stairs and I’ll meet you . . .”

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

1 The third line comes from the Orthodox liturgy, and here constitutes a blasphemous travesty.

2 The bracketed words aren’t sung but are implicitly understood.

3 Exodus 13:12, i.e., “opened her womb.”

4 Napoleon I was the uncle, not the father, of Napoleon III.

5 An echo of Genesis 4:9, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

III

THE BROTHERS GET ACQUAINTED

However, Ivan was not in a separate room. It was only a table near the window, shielded by screens, but those sitting behind the screen couldn’t see any other customers. The room was the first from the entrance, with a buffet along one wall. Waiters were continually darting to and fro. The only other customer was an old retired military man sitting in the corner, drinking tea. On the other hand there was the usual hubbub in other rooms: shouts for waiters, the opening of beer bottles, the clicking of billiard balls, and the droning of the organ. Alyosha knew that Ivan almost never visited this tavern and that in general he wasn’t a fan of taverns; therefore, he reflected, Ivan had shown up here only because he’d arranged to meet their brother Dmitry. However, Dmitry wasn’t there.

“I’ll order you some fish soup or something else; you can’t live on tea alone,” cried Ivan, apparently terribly pleased that he’d enticed Alyosha to come in. He himself had now finished dinner and was having tea.

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

“And some cherry preserves? They have some. You recall as a child how much you loved cherry preserves at Polyonov’s?”

“You remember that? Yes, I’ll have some preserves; I still like them.”

Ivan summoned the waiter and ordered the soup, tea, and preserves.

“I remember everything, Alyosha. I remember you until you were eleven; I was fifteen at the time. Fifteen and eleven—that’s such a difference that brothers at that age can never be friends. I don’t know whether I even liked you then. During the first years when I went to live in Moscow, I didn’t think about you at all. Then, when you wound up in Moscow, it seems that we met somewhere only once. And now I’ve been here for four months but we’ve yet to exchange a word. I’m leaving tomorrow and while sitting here, I thought, how can I get to see him to say good-bye, and you just happened to walk past.”

“And did you want to see me very much?”

“Very much. I want to get acquainted with you once and for all and for you to get to know me. And then also to say good-bye. I think the best time to get acquainted is just before parting. I’ve seen how you’ve been looking at me these last three months; there was some sort of constant expectation in your eyes, and I can’t stand that, so I didn’t approach you. But in the end I learned to respect you: the little man knows how to stand his ground. Note: although I’m laughing now, I’m also being serious. You do stand firmly, don’t you? I like that sort of person, whatever they stand by, even if they’re just little boys like you. Your expectant glance ceased to bother me in the end. . . . On the contrary, I came to like your expectant glance. It seems that you love me for some reason, Alyosha. Don’t you?”

“I do love you, Ivan. Brother Dmitry says: ‘Ivan’s silent as the grave.’ I say: ‘Ivan’s a riddle.’ Even now you’re a riddle to me; but I’ve understood something about you, and that was only since this morning.”

“What’s that?” Ivan asked with a laugh.

“You won’t get angry?” said Alyosha, also laughing.

“Well?”

“That you’re exactly the same as other twenty-three-year-old young men, just a very young, fresh, nice boy, still wet behind the ears! Well, are you very offended?”

“On the contrary, I’m struck by a coincidence!” Ivan cried cheerfully and with passion. “Would you believe that after our recent meeting at her house, all I’ve been thinking about with regard to myself is about that twenty-three-year-old young man, wet behind the ears, and you suddenly guessed that exactly and began there. I’ve been sitting here and do you know what I’ve said to myself: that if I didn’t believe in life, if I’d lost faith in a dear woman, lost faith in the order of things, even become convinced that, on the contrary, everything was disorderly, cursed, perhaps, diabolical chaos, if I were struck by every horror of human disillusionment—still I would want to live, and once having tasted that cup, I wouldn’t turn away from it until I’d consumed it all! However, by the age of thirty I will fling that cup down, even if I haven’t finished it, and will go away . . . I don’t know where. But until the age of thirty, and this I know for certain, my youth will overcome everything—every disillusionment, all aversion to life. I’ve asked myself many times: is there in this world such despair that would triumph over my frenzied and perhaps obscene thirst for life? And I decided that it seems there isn’t, that is, until the age of thirty, and then I’ll have had enough, or so it seems to me. Some sniveling consumptive moralists, especially poets, call this thirst for life base. In part it’s a trait of the Karamazovs, that’s true, this thirst for life, no matter what; and you have it, too. But why is it base? The centripetal force on our planet is still very powerful, Alyosha. I want to live and I am living, even though that defies logic. Even if I don’t believe in the order of things, I still love the sticky little leaves as they open each spring,[1] the blue sky, and some people whom you love, do you believe it, and don’t know why; I love some great deeds performed by men, in which, perhaps, I no longer believe, but which I still treasure in my heart for old times’ sake. Look, they’ve brought your fish soup: eat to your heart’s content. The soup’s excellent: they know how to make it. I’d like to visit Europe, Alyosha, I shall go from here; however, I know that I’ll be visiting a graveyard, but the most cherished graveyard, that’s what it is! The dead who lie there are the most cherished by us; each and every stone above speaks of such burning life in the past, of such fervent belief in their deeds, in their truth, in their struggle, and in their learning, that I, I know in advance, will fall down on the earth and will kiss those stones and weep over them—while, at the same time, I’m absolutely convinced with all my heart that it’s long been a graveyard, and nothing more. I won’t be weeping from despair, but simply because they’ll be tears of happiness. I’ll revel in my own emotional tenderness. I love the sticky little leaves of spring and the blue sky, that’s what! There’s no intellect, no logic involved; it’s a matter of loving with one’s insides, one’s gut, one’s first strengths of youth. . . . Do you understand any of my nonsense, Alyosha, or not?” Ivan said suddenly and began laughing.

“I understand all too well, Ivan: you want to love with your insides, your gut—you said it magnificently, and I’m extremely glad that you want to live so much,” exclaimed Alyosha. “I think that everyone on earth should love life above all else.”

“To love life more than its meaning?”

“Absolutely; to love it before logic, as you say, absolutely before logic, and only then will I understand its meaning. That’s what I’ve been dreaming about for some time. Half your task is done, Ivan, and you’ve succeeded: you love life. Now you must try to complete the second half and you’ll be saved.”

“You’re trying to save me, but perhaps I’m not even lost! And what does it consist of, your second half?”

“You must resurrect your dead, who, perhaps, never really died. Well, let’s have tea. I’m glad we’re talking, Ivan.”

“I see that you’re inspired. I really love such professions de foi[2] from such . . . novices. You’re a determined person, Aleksey. Is it true that you want to leave the monastery?”

“It is. My elder is sending me out into the world.”

“Then we’ll see each other in the world; we’ll meet before I turn thirty, before I fling down the cup. Father doesn’t want to fling down his cup until he’s seventy; he even dreams about turning eighty, he says so himself, seriously, even though he’s a buffoon. He stands on his voluptuousness, also as if on a rock . . . although after thirty, it’s true, there may be nothing else to stand on. But it’s vile to live until seventy: better live only to thirty: one can preserve a ‘shadow of nobility,’ fooling oneself. Have you seen Dmitry today?”

“No, but I’ve seen Smerdyakov.” And Alyosha told his brother promptly and in detail about his meeting with Smerdyakov. Ivan began listening anxiously and asked several times to have things repeated.

“Only he asked me not to tell brother Dmitry what he’d said about him,” added Alyosha.

Ivan frowned and became pensive.

“Did you frown because of Smerdyakov?” asked Alyosha.

“Yes, because of him. Devil take him; I really wanted to see Dmitry, but now I don’t have to . . .” Ivan said hesitantly.

“Are you really leaving so soon, brother?”

“Yes.”

“What about Dmitry and Father? How will all this end between them?” Alyosha asked anxiously.

“You keep going on about that nonsense! What does it have to do with me? Am I my brother Dmitry’s keeper?” Ivan began to snap irritably, but suddenly he smiled bitterly. “It was Cain’s reply to God about his brother’s death, wasn’t it?[3] Perhaps that’s what you were thinking at this very moment. But, damn it, I really can’t stay here and be their keeper. I’ve finished my business and I’m off. Or do you think I’m jealous of my brother and that these last three months I’ve been trying to steal that beauty Katerina Ivanovna away? Hey, what the devil, I had business of my own here. I’ve finished my business, and I’m leaving. I finished it recently: you were a witness.”

“Was that at Katerina Ivanovna’s just before?”

“Yes, indeed. And I finished it once and for all. So, what is it? What do I have to do with Dmitry? Dmitry’s not involved at all. I had my own business with Katerina Ivanovna. On the other hand, you yourself know that Dmitry behaved as if he were in a conspiracy with me. I didn’t ask him at all, but he solemnly handed her over to me and blessed the union. It’s all very funny. No, Alyosha, no; if only you knew how free and easy I feel now! I was sitting here eating my dinner, and would you believe it, I was about to order champagne to celebrate my first hour of freedom. Ugh, almost half a year—and all of a sudden, I cast it all away. Well, even yesterday I could never have suspected that it would be so easy to finish, if I’d wanted to!”

“Are you talking about your love, Ivan?”

“Love, if you like, yes; I fell in love with a young lady, a student. I tormented myself over her and she tormented me. I agonized over it and suddenly it all dissipated. Just before, I was speaking with inspiration; but when I left, I burst out laughing—would you believe it? No, I’m speaking literally.”

“Even now you’re retelling it so cheerfully,” observed Alyosha, looking intently at Ivan’s suddenly merrier face.

“How could I know that I don’t love her at all? Ha-ha! And now it’s turned out that I don’t. But how I felt attracted to her! Even earlier today I felt attracted to her when I delivered my speech. And do you know, even now I find her attractive, while it’s still easy to leave her. Do you think I’m bragging?”

“No, but perhaps it wasn’t love.”

“Alyoshka,” said Ivan with a laugh, “don’t you start deliberating about love! It’s indecent for you. Recently, just before, you jumped into the discussion! I forgot to kiss you for that. . . . How she was tormenting me! In truth, I was sitting next to a laceration. Oh, she knew I loved her! And she loves me, not Dmitry,” Ivan insisted gleefully. “Dmitry’s merely a laceration. Everything that I was saying to her before is the genuine truth. But the main fact is that she needs perhaps fifteen or twenty years to figure out that she doesn’t love Dmitry at all, and loves only me, whom she torments. And perhaps she’ll never figure it out, even in spite of today’s lesson. Well, that’s even better: I can pick myself up and go away forever. By the way, how is she now? What happened after I left?”

Alyosha told him about her hysterics and said that she seemed to be unconscious and delirious.

“Isn’t Khokhlakova lying?”

“It seems not.”

“I must inquire. However, no one’s ever died from hysterics. Even if it’s that, God gave hysterics to women as a blessing. I won’t go there at all. Why meddle again?”

“However, you told her before that she’d never loved you.”

“I did that on purpose. Alyoshka, I’m going to order champagne; we’ll drink to my freedom. No, if you only knew how relieved I am!”

“No, brother, better not to drink,” Alyosha said suddenly. “Besides, I feel somehow dejected.”

“Yes, you’ve been dejected for a while; I noticed it long ago.”

“So you’ll definitely leave tomorrow morning?”

“Morning? I didn’t say it would be in the morning. . . . However, perhaps it will. Would you believe, I had dinner here today only so as not to dine with the old man, because I find him so repulsive. I would’ve left him a long time ago. Why are you so upset that I’m leaving? We still have God only knows how much time before my departure. A whole eternity of time, immortality!”

“If you leave tomorrow, what sort of eternity is that?”

“But how does that concern us?” Ivan said with a laugh. “Don’t we have enough time to discuss the things that really matter, the reason we came here? Why do you look so surprised? Answer me: why did we meet here? To talk about love for Katerina Ivanovna, about the old man, and Dmitry? About life abroad? The fate of Russia? About the emperor Napoleon? Well, was it for that?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“In other words, you yourself know why. It’s one thing for other people, but for us it’s different, we who’re wet behind the ears; first and foremost we have to solve the eternal questions, that’s our concern. All of young Russia is now debating the age-old questions. Precisely now, when the old men have suddenly taken up practical questions. Why have you been watching me these last three months with such expectation? To interrogate me: ‘In what do you believe or do you not believe at all?’ That’s what all your three months of observation have been leading to, isn’t that right, Aleksey Fyodorovich?”

“Perhaps, that’s right,” said Alyosha with a smile. “You’re not laughing at me now, brother, are you?”

“Me? Laughing? I don’t want to upset my little brother, who’s been watching me for three months in expectation. Alyosha: look straight at me. I’m also a little boy just like you, only I’m not a novice. And just what have Russian boys been up to now? Some of them, that is. Here, for example, this stinking tavern here; they gather and are seated in a corner. All their lives they haven’t met each other; and when they leave the tavern, they won’t see each other for the next forty years. So what? What will they talk about when they’re here in the tavern for such a short time? About universal questions, nothing else: Is there a God? Is there immortality? And those who don’t believe in God, they’ll talk about socialism and anarchism, about the remaking of all humanity according to a new structure, but the same devil comes of it, it’s the very same questions turned upside down. And that’s all they do, this majority, this majority of the most original Russian boys. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes, for genuine Russians the questions of whether there is a God and is there immortality, or, as you just said, the questions turned upside down, arise, of course, first and foremost, and that’s as it should be,” said Alyosha, looking at his brother with the same gentle, inquiring smile.

“Here’s what, Alyosha: sometimes it’s not smart to be a Russian at all; nevertheless, it’s impossible to conceive of anything more foolish than what Russian boys concern themselves with now. But there’s one Russian boy, Alyoshka, whom I love terribly.”

“You put that so skillfully,” Alyosha said, suddenly laughing.

“Well, tell me where to start. You give the orders. With God? Does God exist or not?”

“Wherever you like. Begin with that, or ‘the question turned upside down.’ Yesterday you announced at father’s house that there is no God,” Alyosha said, looking curiously at his brother.

“Yesterday at dinner in the old man’s house I was intentionally teasing you with that, and I saw how your eyes started to catch fire. But now I’m not against talking with you and I’m being very serious. I want to get closer to you, Alyosha, because I don’t have any friends, I want to try. Well, just imagine, perhaps, that I accept God, too,” said Ivan with a laugh. “You didn’t expect that, did you?”

“Yes, of course, only if you’re not joking again now.”

“ ‘Joking.’ Yesterday at the elder’s they said I was joking. You see, my dear, there was one old sinner in the eighteenth century who proclaimed that if there were no God, one would have to invent Him, ‘s’il n’existait pas Dieu, il faudrait l’inventer.’[4] And man has actually invented God. And what’s strange, what’s wondrous, isn’t that God Himself really exists; what’s wondrous is that such an idea—the idea of the necessity of God—could enter the mind of such a wild and wicked animal as man, an idea that’s so holy, so touching, so very wise, and does him so much honor. As far as I’m concerned, I resolved long ago not to think about whether man created God or God created man. Of course, I won’t sort through all the contemporary axioms in this respect offered by Russian boys, all derived from European hypotheses; because what’s a hypothesis over there is immediately an axiom here with a Russian boy, and not only with the boys, but with their professors, too, because Russian professors are just the same as Russian boys. Therefore I avoid all hypotheses.

“So what’s the problem that stands before you and me now? The problem is that I should try to explain my essence to you as briefly as possible. That is, what kind of man I am, what do I believe, and what do I hope for—that’s so, isn’t it? Therefore I declare that I accept God pure and simple. However, here’s something that must be noted: if there’s a God and if he really created the earth, then, as we all know, He created it according to Euclid’s geometry[5] and the human mind, with its comprehension of only three dimensions. Meanwhile there existed before and even now there exist mathematicians and philosophers who doubt that the entire universe, and, even more far-reaching, that all existence was created only according to Euclidean geometry; they even dare to imagine that two parallel lines, which, according to Euclid, can never ever meet on earth, might meet somewhere in infinity. I, my dear, have decided that if I can’t understand even that, how could I possibly understand God. I acknowledge humbly that I lack the ability to resolve such questions; I have a Euclidean mind, earthly, so how can I possibly solve problems that are not of this world?[6] I advise you never to think about that, Alyosha, my friend, most of all about God: whether He exists or not? All of these are questions beyond the scope of a mind created with an understanding of only three dimensions. And so, I accept God, not only willingly, but, not least, in all 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 shall all merge, I believe in the Word,[7] toward which the universe is striving, and which itself ‘was with God,’ and which is God, and so on and so forth. Many words have been written on this subject. It seems that I’m on a good path, right? Well, just imagine, in the final result I don’t accept God’s world, and though I know that it exists, I don’t accept it at all. It’s not God that I don’t accept, you must understand, but the world created by Him; I don’t accept God’s world and can’t agree to accept it. I make the following proviso: I’m convinced, like a child, that suffering will be healed and alleviated; that all the offensive comicality of human contradictions will disappear, like a pitiful mirage, like the vile ruminations of an infinitesimally small, feeble, Euclidean mind, which, in the last analysis, at world’s end, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so valuable will transpire that it will be sufficient for all hearts, for the comforting of all indignations, for the expiation of people’s wicked deeds, all the blood shed by them, it’ll be possible not only to forgive, but even to justify everything that’s happened to people—may all this come to pass; but I don’t accept it and don’t wish to accept it! Even if parallel lines meet and I myself get to see it, see it and say they’ve met, still I won’t accept it. That’s my essence, Alyosha, that’s my thesis. I’ve said all this in earnestness. I began this conversation with you as stupidly as I could on purpose, but it’s led to my confession, because that’s what you need to hear. You didn’t want to hear about God; you merely wanted to know what your beloved brother lives by. And now I’ve told you.”

Ivan concluded his long tirade suddenly, with some particular and unexpected emotion.

“Why did you begin ‘as stupidly’ as you could,” asked Alyosha, regarding him thoughtfully.

“In the first place, for the sake of being Russian: Russian conversations on these subjects are always conducted as stupidly as possible. The more stupid, the clearer it is. Stupidity is brief and frank, while intellect twists and hides. Intellect is a scoundrel, while stupidity is direct and honest. I’ve brought the conversation to my despair, and the more stupid it is, the more advantageous it is for me.”

“Will you explain to me why it is that you ‘don’t accept the world’? ” asked Alyosha.

“Of course, I will; it’s not a secret. That’s what I’ve been leading up to. My little brother, I don’t want to corrupt you or tear you away from your foundation; perhaps I wanted to heal myself by using you,” Ivan said, smiling suddenly, just like a sweet little child. Alyosha had never before seen him smile like that.

1 From Pushkin’s lyric “Chill Winds Still Blow” (1828).

2 “Professions of faith” (Fr.).

3 See Genesis 4:1–18.

4 “If God did not exist, He would have to be invented” (Fr.). From Voltaire’s Epistles CXI (1769).

5 Euclid (fourth–third centuries B.C.) was a Greek mathematician who deduced the theorems of what is now called Euclidean geometry from a small set of axioms.

6 Cf. John 18:36: “Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ ”

7 Cf. John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

IV

REBELLION

“I must admit something to you,” began Ivan. “I could never understand how it’s possible to love one’s neighbors.[1] It’s exactly one’s neighbors, in my estimation, that it’s impossible to love, though one might love one’s more distant neighbors. At some point I read somewhere about ‘John the Merciful’[2] (a particular saint), that when a beggar who was hungry and freezing came to see him, asking to be warmed, he lay down in bed with him, embraced him, and began to breathe into his mouth, which was putrid and foul from some terrible disease. I’m convinced that he did this from some false laceration, from love imposed by duty, part of the ecclesiastical penance he’d taken on. To love a man, it’s necessary that he be hidden from view; once he’s shown his face, the love vanishes.”

“Father Zosima has spoken about this more than once,” remarked Alyosha. “He also said that the face of a man often hinders people from loving, people who are inexperienced in love. But there’s a great deal of love in humanity, and it comes close to being like Christ’s love; this I know myself, Ivan.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about that and I can’t understand it; the vast mass of people are also like me in that respect. The question is whether this comes from men’s bad qualities or is simply in their nature. In my own view, Christlike love for people is a miracle impossible on earth. True, He was God. But we aren’t gods. Let us suppose, for instance, that I’m suffering deeply—someone else can never know how much I’m suffering because he’s another and not me; besides, a man rarely agrees to acknowledge that another person is suffering (as if this were some distinction). Why doesn’t someone recognize my suffering, do you think? Maybe because I smell bad, for example, or have a stupid face, or once stepped on his toe. Besides, there’s suffering and then there’s suffering: humiliating suffering, which debases me—hunger, for example—my benefactor might still allow me, but when it comes to loftier suffering, say for an idea, no, he’ll permit that only in rare cases, because he may look at me, for example, and suddenly see that my face doesn’t match his fantasy of what someone should look like if he’s suffering for some idea. So right away he withholds any charity from me, even though he doesn’t do so out of wickedness. The poor, especially the well-born poor, should never show themselves in public, but should ask for alms through ads in newspapers. One can still love one’s neighbor abstractly, and sometimes even from a safe distance, but up close it’s almost impossible. If all this took place onstage, or in a ballet, and when the poor made their entrance they came in wearing silken rags and torn lace, and they begged for alms while dancing gracefully, then one might even admire them. Admire, but still not love them. But enough about this. I merely wanted to lay out my point of view. I wanted to say something about the suffering of humanity in general, but we’d best confine ourselves to the suffering of little children. That will reduce the scope of my argument by tenfold; still it’s better to talk only about children. Naturally, reducing it so much is not to my advantage. In the first place, it’s possible to love children even close up, even when they’re dirty, even if they’re ugly (though it seems to me that children can never be ugly). In the second place, I won’t speak about adults, because in addition to the fact that they’re repulsive and undeserving of love, they’ve taken their reward: they’ve eaten of the apple and know good from evil, and have become ‘as gods.’[3] Even now they continue to eat of the apple. But little children have eaten nothing and therefore are in no way guilty. Do you love children, Alyosha? I know you do, and you’ll understand why I want to speak only about them now. If they, too, suffer enormously on earth, of course they must be suffering for their fathers, punished for their fathers who’ve tasted of the apple—but such reasoning is from another world, unintelligible to the human heart here on earth. The innocent must not be made to suffer for others, especially when they’re so innocent! You may be surprised to hear me say this, Alyosha, but I too love little children very much. Please recognize that people who are cruel, passionate, voluptuous, and Karamazov-like sometimes love children, too. Children, while they’re still children—up to the age of seven, for example—are altogether different from grown-ups: they’re completely different creatures with a different nature. In prison I once met a certain criminal: during his career he’d slaughtered entire families in their homes, which he’d broken into at night to rob; along the way he’d also happened to murder some children. But when he was in prison, he came to love children in a very strange way. He spent all his time looking out his window at the children playing in the prison courtyard. He even managed to teach one little boy to come up to his window, and the two of them became great friends. . . . You don’t know why I’m telling you all this, do you, Alyosha? I have a headache and I’m feeling sad.”

“You’re speaking with a strange look,” Alyosha said uneasily, “as though you’re quite mad.”

“Incidentally, a certain Bulgarian that I met recently in Moscow,” Ivan Fyodorovich went on, as if not hearing his brother, “told me how the Turks and Circassians[4] in Bulgaria are committing atrocities everywhere because they fear a general uprising among the Slavs; that is, they burn, murder, and rape women and children, nail prisoners to fences by their ears, leave them until morning, and then hang them, and so on and so forth; it’s impossible to imagine everything they do. People sometimes talk about man’s ‘bestial’ cruelty, but that’s terribly unfair and insulting to beasts: a beast can never be as cruel as man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. A tiger simply tears its prey apart and gnaws at it; that’s all he knows how to do. It never occurs to him to nail his prey up by his ears for the night, if he could even do it. These Turks, in comparison, took a voluptuous pleasure in torturing children, starting with cutting them out of their mothers’ wombs with a dagger, tossing nursing infants up in the air, and catching them on the ends of their bayonets before their mothers’ eyes. Doing this in front of their mothers was a particular source of delight. But here’s another scene that especially caught my attention. Just imagine: a nursing infant in the arms of its trembling mother surrounded by invading Turks. They’ve come up with an amusement: they caress the infant and try to make him laugh; they succeed and the infant starts laughing. At that moment the Turk aims his pistol at the child, holding it not more than four inches away from the baby’s face. The infant laughs merrily, reaches out its little hands to grab the pistol, and all of a sudden the artist pulls the trigger right in the baby’s face and blows his little head apart. . . . Artistic, isn’t it? By the way, the Turks, they say, are very fond of sweets.”

“Brother, why are you telling me all this?” asked Alyosha.

“I think that if the devil doesn’t exist and that man has created him, he did so in his own image and likeness.”[5]

“In that case, it’s just as he created God.”

“It’s marvelous how you’re able to twist words, as Polonius says in Hamlet,”[6] said Ivan with a laugh. “You caught me; good, I’m glad. Your God must be a fine one if man created Him in His own image and likeness. You just asked me why I was telling you all this: you see, I’m something of an amateur collector of certain little facts, and, would you believe, I write them down and save them from newspapers and stories, from wherever I encounter them, from little anecdotes, and I’ve put together a fine collection. The Turks, of course, are in my collection, but then they’re foreigners. I have an assortment of domestic anecdotes that are even better than the Turkish ones. You know, we’re generally more partial to beatings—birch rods and lashing—that’s more our national tradition. Nailing people up by the ears is unthinkable here in Russia: we’re Europeans, after all, but birch rods and lashes are really our own, and can’t be taken away from us. Abroad I hear they hardly do any beating nowadays; their conduct is more humane, or else they’ve passed laws, and a man won’t dare beat another man; on the other hand, they’ve made up for it with another purely national institution, just as we have, though it’s so national that it would be impossible here, though it does seem to be catching on among us, especially since the movement toward religion began among our upper classes. I have in my possession a lovely pamphlet, translated from French, which describes how in Geneva, very recently, only some five years ago, they executed a criminal, a murderer by the name of Richard, twenty-three years old, who’d repented and converted to Christianity on the very scaffold. This Richard was an illegitimate child who, at the age of six, was given as a gift by his parents to some Swiss mountain shepherds, who raised him to work for them. He grew like a little wild beast; the shepherds didn’t teach him anything; on the contrary, when he was seven years old, they sent him out to herd the flock in cold, wet weather, with hardly any warm clothes and almost without feeding him. And, of course, in doing so, no one had a second thought or felt the slightest regret for treating him this way. Quite the opposite: they felt they had every right since Richard had been given to them as a thing, and they didn’t even think they had any obligation to feed him. Richard himself testified that during those years, just like the prodigal son in the Gospel,[7] he craved even the slop that was given to the pigs being fed for market; but they wouldn’t give him even that, and they beat him when he stole it from the pigs; thus passed his whole childhood and youth, until he grew up and, having become stronger, went off to steal some things. The savage began to earn money as a day laborer in Geneva; he drank up his earnings, lived like a monster, and in the end wound up robbing and murdering some old man. They caught him, tried him, and sentenced him to death. They’re not at all sentimental there. In prison he was immediately surrounded by pastors and members of various Christian sects, benevolent ladies, and so on. He was taught how to read and write, instructed in the Gospel, shamed, cajoled, pressured, nagged, hounded, and, at last, he solemnly confessed his crime. He converted; he himself wrote to the judge that he was a monster, and that in the end he’d been deemed worthy: God had made him see the light and sent him grace. All Geneva was moved by him, all philanthropic, pious Geneva. All those who were exalted and well bred rushed to the prison to see Richard; they kissed him, embraced him, and cried, ‘You’re our brother; grace has descended upon you!’ Richard himself wept in response with tender emotion: ‘Yes, grace has come upon me! In the past, during my childhood and youth, I was delighted with the pigs’ slop, but now I’ve found grace and shall die in the Lord!’ ‘Yes, yes, Richard, die in the Lord; you shed blood and now you must die in the Lord. Even though you’re innocent and knew nothing about the Lord at all when you longed to have the pigs’ fare, and you were beaten when you stole their slop (which was very wrong because it’s forbidden to steal), you still have shed blood and must die.’ His last day dawned. Grown weak and emotional, Richard weeps and keeps crying out, ‘This is the happiest day of my life; I’m going to the Lord!’ ‘Yes,’ cry the pastors, the judges, and all the benevolent ladies. ‘This is your happiest day, because you’re going to the Lord!’ They all walk or ride to the scaffold in a procession behind the cart of shame in which Richard’s being transported. Now they reach the scaffold. ‘Die, our brother,’ they shout to him. ‘Die in the Lord, whose grace has descended upon you.’ Now they drag brother Richard, covered by his brothers’ kisses, up the scaffold, placing his head on the guillotine; then they chop off his head in brotherly fashion because grace has now descended upon him, too. No, that’s quite a typical story. The pamphlet was translated into Russian by some highborn Lutheran philanthropists and distributed to newspapers and other publications for the enlightenment of the Russian people. The good thing about the story of Richard is that it’s particularly national. Here in Russia it’s ridiculous to cut off a brother’s head just because he’s become our brother and grace has descended upon him; but I have to repeat that we have our own special customs, which are almost worse. We have our own historical tradition of taking immediate satisfaction in the torture of a beating. Nekrasov has a poem in which a peasant beats a horse with a whip, going for the animal’s eyes, ‘his meek eyes.’[8] Who hasn’t witnessed that? It’s peculiarly Russian. He describes how a feeble nag has been harnessed to a cart that’s so heavily loaded that the horse can’t possibly pull it. The peasant beats her, beats her in a frenzy, in the end without even any sense of what he’s doing, beats her in an intoxication of cruelty, viciously, over and over again: ‘Even if you’re too weak, you must pull it; you may die, but you will pull it!’ The nag tries and struggles, but he begins beating her, the poor, defenseless creature, right across her weeping eyes, ‘her meek eyes.’ The frantic beast tugs, moves the load forward, trembling, hardly breathing, twisting to one side, with a lurch that seems somehow unnatural and disgraceful—it’s terrible in Nekrasov’s poem. But that’s just a horse; God gave us horses so we could beat them. That’s what the Tatars taught us, and they left us the knout as a reminder. But it’s possible to beat people as well. I’ve noted that here we have an educated, cultured gentleman and his lady beating their own seven-year-old daughter with birch rods; I’ve written a detailed account of it. Her papa’s glad that the birch branches have knotted twigs: it’ll ‘sting more,’ he says and begins ‘stinging’ his own daughter. I know for certain that there are such men who grow more excited with every lash of the knout to the point of voluptuousness, to intense sensual pleasure, more and more with each successive lash, increasingly aroused. They beat for a minute, for five minutes, for ten, further, faster, harder, harsher. The child cries out; at last the child can no longer cry out—gasping for breath: ‘Papa, Papa, dear Papa, Papa dear!’ By some diabolical accident, the case is brought to court. A lawyer is hired. The Russian people have for some time referred to such lawyers as ‘a conscience for hire.’ The lawyer shouts out in defense of his client. ‘The case,’ he says, ‘is an ordinary straightforward family affair. A father whipped his daughter, and, to the great shame of our present situation, the case has reached the court!’ The jury’s persuaded and delivers a favorable verdict. The public roars its approval that the tormentor’s been vindicated. Alas, I wasn’t there; I would have recommended that donations be made to honor the torturer! Charming scenes, these are. But I have even better stories about children; I have many, many such tales to tell about Russian children, Alyosha. A father and mother came to hate their little five-year-old child; they were ‘decent and respectable people, well bred and educated.’ You see, once again I absolutely insist that many people share this trait—this love of tormenting children, but only children. These very same tormentors are benevolently—even gently—disposed to all the rest of humanity, but, like any educated and humane European, they dearly love to torment children, they even love the children themselves for just this reason. It’s precisely the defenselessness of such creatures that inflames the tormentors, the angelic trusting aspect of these children who have nowhere to hide and no one to appeal to—that’s what sets the tormentors’ despicable blood on fire. In every person, of course, a wild beast lies hidden, a beast of uncontrollable fury, of voluptuous excitement, aroused by the screams of the tormented victim, a wild beast without restraint, released from his chains, a beast of every disease that stems from debauchery—gout, cirrhosis, and so on. These educated parents subjected their five-year-old daughter to every conceivable torment. They beat her, whip her, kick her, without knowing why themselves, until her whole body is a mess of bruises. Finally they achieve the ultimate degree of refinement: in the cold and frost they lock her up all night in their outhouse because she hadn’t asked to be taken out to relieve herself in the middle of the night (as if a five-year-old, fast asleep with her angelic dreams, could learn to ask at that age); and for this they smear her entire face with excrement and make her eat it—and this was her mother, her own mother, who forced her to do it! And this mother could still manage to sleep while the poor child’s groans could be heard at night, locked up in that vile place! Do you understand this—when the little creature, who couldn’t even understand what was happening to her, would beat her wounded little breast with her tiny little fist in that vile place, in the darkness and the cold, and cry out with her meek, bloodstained, forgiving little tears to her ‘dear, kind God,’ to defend her—do you understand this absurdity, my friend and my brother, my godly and humble novice, do you understand why this absurdity is necessary and why it was created? Without it, they say, man could not exist on the earth, because he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between good and evil. But why should he know that diabolical difference if it costs so much? The whole world of knowledge isn’t worth this little child’s pleading to her ‘dear, kind God.’ I’m not talking now about the suffering of grown-ups, those who’ve chosen to eat the apple; the hell with them and may the devil take them all; but these children, these little ones! I’m tormenting you, Alyoshka; it seems you’re not really yourself. I’ll stop now, if you wish.”

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

“One more, then, only one more picture, and that just because it’s something of a curiosity; it’s very typical; the fact is, I just read it in a compilation of our old historical artifacts, either in a journal, the Russian Archive, or was it in Russian Antiquities? I have to check because I’ve forgotten where I came across it. It referred to a time during the darkest period of serfdom, at the beginning of the century—long live the Liberator of the People![9] There was at that time a general with grand connections, a very prosperous landowner. But he was one of those (although it’s true that then there were very few of them) who, after retiring from the service, was pretty much convinced that he had the right to dispose of the lives of his serfs as he saw fit. In those days there were such men. So this general was living on his estate with two thousand serfs, swaggering and treating his less prosperous neighbors as if they were his minions and his jesters. He had kennels with hundreds of dogs and almost a hundred huntsmen, all of them in uniform and all on horseback in charge of the hounds. One day a little serf boy, no more than eight, was playing; he threw a stone and hurt the leg of one of the general’s favorite dogs. ‘How did my favorite dog go lame?’ They reported to him that a little boy had thrown a stone and had hurt the dog’s leg. ‘Ah, so it was you,’ said the general, looking the boy over. ‘Grab him!’ They took him away from his mother; he spent all that night in a lockup. Early the next morning the general rides out in full dress for the hunt, surrounded by his dogs and his hangers-on, his huntsmen, and his masters of the hounds, all on horseback. His serfs are gathered all around for the purpose of their edification; the mother of the guilty lad stands right in front. They bring the boy out of the lockup. It was a gloomy, dark, cloudy autumn day, perfect for a hunt. The general ordered that the boy be undressed: he was stripped naked. He was shaking, beside himself with fear, not daring to utter a sound. . . . ‘Make him run,’ commanded the general. ‘Run, run!’ the hunters shouted out to him. The boy started running. . . . ‘Tally-ho!’ shouts the general and turns the whole pack of borzois loose. They hunt him down before the mother’s eyes and the dogs tear the child to pieces! It seems that the general was later declared legally incapable of managing his own estate. Well . . . what do you think should be done with him? Should he be shot? Shot to satisfy our moral sentiments? Tell me, Alyoshka!”

“Shoot him!” Alyosha said softly, with a pale, crooked grin on his face, lifting his eyes to his brother.

“Bravo!” cried Ivan in delight. “If even you say that, then . . . a fine ascetic novice you are! So that’s the kind of little devil sitting in your heart, Alyoshka Karamazov!”

“It was an absurd thing for me to say, but . . .”

“That’s exactly it, ‘but’ . . .” shouted Ivan. “You must know, you novice, that such absurdities are needed on this earth. The world is founded on absurdities; without them, perhaps, nothing would happen. We all know what we know!”

“What do you know?”

“I don’t understand a thing,” continued Ivan, as if in a state of delirium. “Now I don’t even want to understand anything. I just want to stick with the facts. Long ago I resolved not to understand anything. If I conceive a desire to understand something, then I’ll immediately betray the facts; I’ve determined to stick with the facts . . .”

“Why are you testing me like this?” Alyosha cried out in pain and grief. “Will you tell me finally?”

“Of course, I will; that’s what I’ve been heading up to. You’re dear to me; I don’t want to let you go, and I won’t give you up to your Zosima.”

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

“Listen to me: I chose to speak only about children so that my meaning would be clearer. I won’t say a word about all the other human tears, which have soaked the earth from its crust to its very center; I’ve narrowed my subject intentionally. I myself am nothing more than a bedbug and confess in all humility that I don’t understand a thing about why phenomena are organized the way they are. It may be that human beings themselves are to blame: they were given paradise, but they wanted freedom and stole fire from heaven,[10] knowing that in doing so, they were condemned to misery; so there’s no reason to pity them. With my pitiful, earthly Euclidean intellect, all I know is that suffering exists, that no one can be held guilty for it, that one thing follows another, in the most uncomplicated way, everything flows and evens out—but all this is nothing but Euclidean nonsense; I know all that, but I can’t agree to live by it! So what if I know that no one can be blamed for it; I need retribution, otherwise I’ll destroy myself. And I want retribution not somewhere, sometime, in eternity, but right now, here on earth, so that I myself can see it. I have believed in it and I want to see it for myself; and if by that time I’m already dead, let me be resurrected to witness it, because if it all takes place without me, that will be insufferable. I can’t have suffered just to serve as fertilizer for some future harmony with my own crimes and suffering. I want to see with my own eyes how the doe will lie down with the lion,[11] and how the victim will rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be here when everyone finds out why things are the way they are. All the religions of the world are based on this longing to know, and I am a believer. But what about little children—what can I do with them? That’s a question I can’t answer. I repeat for the hundredth time—there’s a multitude of questions, but I chose only the children because what I have to say is incontrovertibly clear. Listen, if everyone must suffer so that through this suffering they’ll succeed in acquiring eternal harmony, then tell me, please, what do children have to do with it? It is completely incomprehensible why they also have to suffer and be required to buy eternal harmony with their suffering. Why have they also ended up as the compost needed to fertilize someone else’s future harmony? I understand solidarity in sin among people, and I even understand solidarity in retribution, but solidarity in sin cannot include little children; and if it’s really true that they’re in solidarity with their fathers in all the sins of the fathers, then that’s a truth not of this world, and I find it utterly incomprehensible. Perhaps some joker will say that a child will grow up and begin to sin anyway, but this little boy didn’t ever grow up; he was torn to pieces by the dogs when he was eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I’m not blaspheming! Of course, I can well imagine what a total upheaval of the universe must occur when everything in heaven as well as down below joins together in one voice of praise and everything that lives and that has lived, proclaims: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed!’ For when the mother comes to embrace the tormentor whose dogs tore her son to pieces, and all three of them tearfully proclaim, ‘Thou art just, O Lord,’ then the crown of supreme knowledge will be attained and everything will be explained. But that’s where the snag comes for me and what I can’t accept. While I’m living on this earth, I have to operate by my own lights. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really will turn out that if I live until that moment or if I’m resurrected to witness it, then perhaps I’ll join in proclaiming with everyone else, seeing the mother embracing the child’s tormentor, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ But I don’t want to join them now. While there’s still time, I’m eager to protect myself and therefore I absolutely reject this complete harmony. It isn’t worth a single tear of even one little tortured child who beat her breast with his little fist, and who in that foul-smelling outhouse prayed with her unredeemed tears to her ‘dear, kind God!’ It’s not worth it because her little tears achieved no redemption. They must be redeemed, or else there can’t be any harmony. But how would you redeem them? With what is that really possible? By their being avenged? But what use is that vengeance, what good to me is hell for the tormentors? What can hell remedy when these children have already been tortured to death? And what sort of harmony is there if hell exists? I want to forgive and embrace, I don’t want there to be any more suffering. And if the suffering of children serves to increase the total sum of suffering that’s required to secure the truth, then I insist right now that the truth in its entirety is not worth such a price. In the end, I don’t want the mother to embrace the tormentor whose dogs tore her son to pieces! She dare not forgive him! If she wants, she can forgive him for herself alone; let her forgive the tormentor for her endless suffering as a mother; but she has no right to forgive him for the suffering of her tortured child; she dare not forgive the tormentor, not even if her child himself were to forgive him! And if that’s so, if they dare not presume to forgive, then what happens to the harmony? Is there a creature in the whole world who’s able, who has the right to forgive? I don’t want any such harmony; out of love for mankind, I don’t want it. I prefer to remain with sufferings unexpressed. It’s better if I remain with my unavenged suffering and my unappeasable indignation, even if I’m wrong. Too high a value has been placed on harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much for an entrance ticket. And so, I hasten to return my ticket. If I’m an honest man, I’m obliged to return it as soon as possible. That’s what I’m doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha; it’s only that I’m respectfully giving Him back my ticket.”

“That’s rebellion,” replied Alyosha softly, casting his eyes down.

“Rebellion? I wouldn’t want you to use that word,” Ivan said with emotion. “I don’t think it’s possible to live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me honestly, I call upon you to answer: imagine that you’re building up the structure of human destiny with the goal of making people happy, of granting them peace and tranquility once and for all; but imagine that in order to do this, it would be necessary and unavoidable to torture one tiny creature, that very same child who was beating his little fists against his chest, to make use of his unavenged tears to erect that structure—would you agree to be the architect under these conditions? Tell me the truth!”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Alyosha said quietly.

“And could you permit the idea that the people for whom you were erecting this structure would themselves agree to accept their happiness at the cost of the unavenged blood of this little tortured creature? And if they accepted it, would they remain happy for all time?”

“No, I couldn’t permit that. Brother,” Alyosha said suddenly, his eyes flashing, “you just asked if there’s any being in the whole world who has the right and could forgive. But there is such a being, and He can forgive everything—forgive everyone for everything—because He Himself gave His own innocent blood for everyone and for everything. You forgot about Him; the whole structure of human destiny is built upon Him, and it is to Him that people cry out: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.’ ”

“Ah, the ‘One without sin’ and His blood! No, I haven’t forgotten Him; on the contrary, I’ve been altogether astonished that you haven’t mentioned Him sooner, because in arguments your cohort usually brings Him up right at the start. You know, Alyosha—don’t laugh, but I composed a prose poem, about a year ago. If you can allow me another ten minutes of your time, I’ll tell it to you.”

“You wrote a prose poem?”

“Oh, no, I didn’t actually write it,” Ivan said with a laugh. “Never in my life have I written even two verses. But I conceived of this poem and I remember it. When I thought it up, I was consumed with it. You’ll be my first reader—that is, my first listener. Why should an author neglect to have even one listener?” Ivan asked with a smile. “Shall I tell it to you?”

“You have my full attention,” Alyosha replied.

“My prose poem is entitled ‘The Grand Inquisitor’; it’s a ridiculous piece, really, but I want to tell it to you.”

1 Cf. Leviticus 19:18 and Mark 12:31: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

2 Also known as Saint John the Almsgiver, Patriarch of Alexandria in the seventh century.

3 Cf. Genesis 3:5: “and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

4 An ethnic group in the northwest Caucasus.

5 Cf. Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his own image.”

6 See the conclusion of act 1, scene 3 of Hamlet.

7 Cf. Luke 15:11–32.

8 N. A. Nekrasov’s long narrative poem “Before Dawn” (1859). It is likely that this poem was also the source of Raskolnikov’s dream of the beaten horse in Crime and Punishment.

9 Tsar Alexander II (reigned 1855–1881), who freed the serfs in 1861.

10 In Greek mythology Prometheus, a Titan, rebelled against the gods of Olympus by stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity.

11 Cf. Isaiah 11:6.

V

THE GRAND INQUISITOR

“But even in this case it isn’t possible to begin without a preface—that is, without a literary preface. Ugh!” said Ivan with a laugh. “And what sort of storyteller am I? You see, the action takes place in the sixteenth century; at that time—you should probably already know this from school—it was customary in works of poetry to bring the heavenly powers down to earth. I’m not even talking about Dante: in France judicial clerks as well as monks in the monasteries would stage entire productions in which the Madonna, angels, saints, Christ, and God Himself were all brought onto the stage. In those days this was all done very simply. In Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris,[1] which takes place during the reign of Louis XI, in honor of the French dauphin’s birth in Paris, a free performance at the town hall was presented for the edification of the people; it was called Le bon jugement de la très santé and gracieuse Vierge Marie,[2] and in it she herself makes an appearance and renders her bon jugement. Among us, in Moscow, before the reign of Peter the Great, similar dramatic performances, especially from the Old Testament, were sometimes presented; but in addition to performances of that kind, there were also many tales and ‘verses’ circulating throughout the world in which, of necessity, saints, angels, and the powers of heaven took part. In our monasteries the monks were busy translating, copying, and even composing such poems, even under the Tatar yoke. There exists, for example, one little monastic poem (translated from Greek, of course), ‘The Descent of the Virgin into Hell,’[3] with scenes no less vivid than Dante’s. The Mother of God visits hell, and the archangel Michael leads her on her way through ‘the torments.’ She sees the sinners and their particular sufferings. Among them, by the way, there’s a particularly entertaining group of sinners pictured in a burning lake: some are sinking to the bottom and can’t swim out; and then there are those ‘whom God forgets’—an extremely deep and powerful expression. And so the Virgin, shocked and weeping, falls down before the throne of God and begs for mercy for all those in hell, all those whom she’s seen there, without exception. Her conversation with God is immensely interesting. She pleads with Him, and will not leave; when God points to the wounds where her Son’s hands and feet were nailed to the cross and asks, ‘How can I forgive His tormentors?,’ she orders all the saints, martyrs, angels, and archangels to kneel down with her and implore God for mercy for all, without distinction. This scene ends when she obtains from God a respite from suffering every year from Good Friday to Pentecost; the sinners in hell immediately offer their thanks to the Lord and cry out, ‘Thou art fair, O Lord, in Thy judgment.’ Well, my own little poem would have been something like that, had it appeared around that time. He appears on the scene; true, He doesn’t say anything in the poem—He merely appears and then moves on. Fifteen centuries had already passed since He’d promised to return in His glory, fifteen centuries since the prophet wrote: ‘Behold, I come quickly.’[4] ‘Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, neither the Son, but the heavenly Father,’[5] as He Himself prophesied while He was still on earth. But mankind awaits Him with the same faith and the same tender emotion. Oh, with even greater faith, since fifteen centuries have passed since that time when signs from heaven ceased being sent to man:

“ ‘Believe what the heart says,

There are no pledges from heaven.’[6]

“And all that’s left is belief in what the heart says! It’s true that there were many miracles back in that time. There were saints who worked miraculous cures; and the Queen of Heaven herself visited some righteous people, according to their life stories. But the devil never sleeps, and doubts were beginning to arise among men about the authenticity of these miracles. And just then there appeared in the north, in Germany, a terrible new heresy.[7] A huge star, ‘burning like a lamp’ (that is, the church), ‘fell upon the source of the waters, and they were made bitter.’[8] These heretics blasphemously began to dismiss miracles. But the remaining believers were all the more zealous in their beliefs. The tears of mankind rose up to Him as before; believers continued to wait for Him, love Him, hope for Him, yearned to suffer and die for Him, as before. . . . Mankind had prayed with faith and fervor for so many centuries: ‘O Lord God, hasten Thy coming.’ They had called out to Him for so many ages that He, in His infinite mercy, came down to those imploring Him. Before that time He’d come down and visited some of the righteous, martyrs, and holy hermits on the earth, as is recorded in their ‘saints’ lives.’ Among us, Tyutchev, with absolute faith in the truth of his own words, announced:

“ ‘Burdened with carrying the cross,

The King of Heaven in a slave’s guise

Trudged his way among all of you,

My native land, blessing you.’[9]

“And this was certainly the case, I can assure you. And He deigned to appear before the people just for a moment—to the tormented, suffering, stinking, sinful people, who loved Him like little children.

“The action of my poem takes place in Spain, in Seville, during the most terrible time of the Inquisition,[10] when every day fires burned throughout the land in praise of God:

“ ‘In magnificent autos-da-fé,[11]

They burned the wicked heretics.’[12]

“Needless to say this wasn’t the second coming in which He comes, as promised, at the end of time in all His heavenly glory, which would be like sudden ‘lightning flashing from the east to the west.’[13] No, He merely desired to visit His children just for a moment, and precisely there, where flames were crackling around the heretics. In His infinite mercy He walks among the people once again in that same human guise in which He’d appeared for three years some fifteen centuries before. He came down to the ‘hot squares’[14] of the southern town, where, as it happens, on the day before almost one hundred heretics, ad majorem gloriam Dei,[15] had been burned at one time by the cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor in a ‘magnificent auto-da-fé,’ in the presence of the king, the court, the knights, the cardinals, the most splendid ladies of the court, and a large crowd of people from the city of Seville. He appeared quietly, unnoticed, but everyone—and this is strange—recognizes Him. This might be one of the best parts of the poem—that is, why exactly is it that they recognize Him. The people are drawn to Him irresistibly; they surround Him; the crowd gathers, and they follow Him. He proceeds silently among them with a gentle smile of infinite compassion. The sun of love burns in His heart; rays of Light, Enlightenment, and Strength shine forth from His eyes, stream over the people, and stir their hearts with reciprocal love. He stretches forth his arms, blesses them, and in drawing near to Him, even to His garments, they are embraced by a healing power. An old man, blind from childhood, exclaims from the crowd: ‘Lord, heal me, and I will see Thee.’ The scales seem to fall from his eyes, and the blind man sees Him.[16] The people weep and kiss the ground He walks on. Children scatter flowers before Him, sing, and cry out ‘Hosanna!’ ‘It is He, it is He,’ everyone repeats, ‘it has to be He, it can be no one else but Him.’ He stops on the porch of the Seville cathedral at the very moment when weeping mourners are carrying in a little white open coffin of a child: there’s a little girl lying in it, seven years old, the only child of a prominent citizen. The dead child is covered with flowers. ‘He will raise up your child,’ the crowd shouts out to the wailing mother. The priest, coming to meet the coffin, appears perplexed and frowns. But the mother of the dead child wails; she throws herself at His feet and cries, ‘If it is really You, raise up my child!’ She stretches forth her arms to Him. The procession pauses; the little coffin is lowered onto the porch at His feet. He looks down at it with compassion, and His lips pronounce softly, ‘Talitha cumi—damsel, arise.’[17] The little girl sits up in her coffin, looks around, and smiles, her wondering eyes wide open. She’s holding a bouquet of white roses that she’s been given. There’s consternation and confusion among the people, shouts and sobs; at that very moment the cardinal himself, the Grand Inquisitor, walks across the square past the cathedral. He’s almost ninety years old, tall and erect, with withered features and sunken eyes from which a gleam of light still shines like a spark of fire. He’s not wearing his resplendent cardinal’s vestments, in which he appeared the previous day before the people, when they burned those enemies of the Roman faith—no, at this moment he’s wearing the coarse old cassock of an ordinary monk. Behind him, at a distance, follow his grim assistants and servants of the ‘Holy’ Guard. He stops in front of the crowd and observes the scene from afar. He sees all of it—how they placed the coffin at His feet, how He raised up the maiden—and his face grows dark. He knits his thick gray brows and his face gleams with sinister fire. He points his finger and orders his Guard to seize Him. And his power is so great and the people are so well trained and subdued, trembling and submissive, that the crowd immediately makes way for the Guard, and in the deathlike silence that suddenly descends upon them, they lay their hands on Him and lead Him away. Acting as one, the crowd instantly bows down to the ground in front of the old Inquisitor, who blesses the people in silence and walks on. The Guard brings the prisoner to a cramped, dark, vaulted prison cell in an ancient building of the Holy Ecclesiastical Court, and there they lock Him up. The day passes and the dark, hot, ‘airless’ Seville night falls. The air is ‘fragrant with laurel and lemon.’[18] In the pitch dark the iron door of the prison suddenly opens, and the old man himself, the Grand Inquisitor, slowly enters the prison carrying a lamp. He’s alone and after he enters, the door is immediately locked. He pauses at the doorway and for a long time, a full minute or two, stares into His face. Finally he approaches quietly, places the lamp on the table, and asks, ‘Is it You? Really You?’ But receiving no reply, he quickly adds: ‘Don’t answer; keep silent. And what could You say? I know all too well what You would say. You don’t even have the right to add to what You’ve already said. Why have You come to interfere with us? For You have come to interfere with us—You Yourself know that. But do You know what will happen tomorrow? I don’t know who You are, and I don’t want to know whether You are the one or just a semblance of Him. But tomorrow I shall condemn You and burn You at the stake, like the most wicked heretic, and the very same people who were kissing Your feet today will tomorrow, with a single wave of my hand, rush to rake up the coals at the stake, do You know that? Yes, perhaps You do,’ he added in deep thought, not taking his eyes off the prisoner.”

“I don’t quite understand, Ivan, what this is all about,” Alyosha said with a smile, though he’d been listening all the while in silence. “Is this some wild fantasy or some mistake on the part of the old man, some impossible quid pro quo?”[19]

“Let’s assume it’s the latter,” Ivan said with a laugh, “if our contemporary version of realism has spoiled you and you’re unable to stand anything fantastical—if you want a quid pro quo, let it be that. It’s true,” he laughed again, “that the old man is ninety years old and he might well have lost his mind over his fixation. The prisoner could have shocked him by His appearance. This might be, in the end, just delirium, a ninety-year-old man’s delusion as he nears death, aroused by yesterday’s auto-da-fé of a hundred heretics. But isn’t it all the same to us whether it’s a quid pro quo or a never-ending fantasy? The point is that the old man finally had to speak up, after ninety years; he had to say aloud things he’d been silent about for the past ninety years.”

“And the prisoner just keeps silent? Looks at him and says not one word?”

“Yes, that’s how it has to be in any case,” said Ivan, laughing again. “The old man himself reminds Him that He doesn’t have the right to add a single word to what’s already been said. If you like, this is the defining feature of Roman Catholicism, as I see it, at least: ‘Everything,’ it maintains, ‘has been given by You to the pope and it’s now all in his hands, so You shouldn’t come back and interfere—at least for the time being.’ That’s how they speak and even how they write—the Jesuits, at least. I read this myself in the works of their theologians. ‘Do You have the right to reveal to us even one of the mysteries of that world from which You’ve come?’ my old man asks him, and he answers the question himself. ‘No, You don’t have the right to add to what’s been said before, or to take away the people’s freedom, which You insisted upon when you walked on the earth. Everything that You would now proclaim would infringe on man’s freedom of belief, because it will appear as a miracle, and their freedom was dearer to You than anything back then, fifteen hundred years ago. Wasn’t it You who repeated so often, ‘I will make you free.’ But now You’ve had a good look at these free people,’ adds the old man suddenly with a wistful smile. ‘Yes, this freedom business cost us dearly,’ he went on, regarding Him with a stern expression, ‘but we’ve finally completed this business in Your name. We’ve struggled with this freedom of Yours for fifteen centuries, but now it’s finished once and for all. You don’t believe that? You’re giving me a meek look and don’t even consider me worthy of Your indignation. But You should know that now, right at this moment, these people are more convinced than ever that they’re completely free—meanwhile they themselves have brought their freedom to us and obediently placed it at our feet. But who was it who did this? Is this the freedom You wanted?’ ”

“Once again, I don’t understand,” Alyosha interrupted. “Is he being ironic? Is he laughing at Him?”

“Not at all. He’s claiming credit for himself and his church for finally putting an end to freedom in order to make men happy. ‘For only now’—he’s talking about the Inquisition, of course—‘has it become possible for the first time to take man’s happiness into account. Man was made to be a rebel; can rebels ever be happy? They warned You,’ he says to Him, ‘You’ve had no lack of warnings and admonitions, but You didn’t listen to any of them; You rejected the only way that men might have been made happy, but, fortunately, as You were leaving, You left this task to us. You promised; You gave Your word, giving us the right to bind and to loose,[20] and of course You can’t possibly even think about taking that away from us now. So why at this moment have You come here to interfere with us?”

“And what do you mean, ‘no lack of warnings and admonitions’?” asked Alyosha.

“That’s exactly the point the old man’s intent on making.”

“ ‘The terrible and clever spirit, the spirit of self-annihilation and nonexistence,’ the old man continues, ‘is the great spirit that spoke to you in the wilderness, and in books we’re told that he supposedly “tempted” You. Isn’t that so? And could one possibly state anything truer than what he asked You in those three questions You rejected, questions that are referred to in Scripture as the “temptations”?[21] The fact is, if there was ever really an astounding miracle on earth, it took place that day, the day of the three temptations. It was precisely in the posing of those three questions that a genuine miracle occurred. If it were possible to think, imagine, just for the sake of argument, that those three questions posed by the terrible spirit had been lost from all books without a trace, and that one had to restore them, conceive of them again, reinvent them completely, put them back into Scripture, and that in order to do so, one had to gather all the wise men on earth—rulers, head priests, scholars, philosophers, poets—to present them with this problem: to come up with three questions that would not only be appropriate to the occasion, but would also express in a few words, in three human phrases the entire future history of the world and of all mankind—do You think that all the wisdom on earth, taken together, could ever conceive of anything approaching in strength and depth those three questions that were actually presented to You during that time in the wilderness by the powerful and clever spirit? From these questions alone, from the miracle of their appearance, You can understand that You’re not just dealing with transitory human intelligence, but with something eternal and absolute. Because in those three questions the entire future history of mankind is brought together into a whole and predicted; in them are manifested three commanding ideas in which all the unresolved historical contradictions of human nature on earth are united. At that time it couldn’t have been so clear, since the future was unknown, but now, after fifteen centuries, we see that everything in these three questions was seen so clearly and foretold, and was so truly fulfilled, that it’s impossible to add to them or take anything away from them.

“ ‘Decide for yourself who was right: You or the one who was interrogating You? Remember the first question; if not literally, its meaning was this: “Do You want to go into the world with empty hands, with some promise of freedom, which people in their simplicity and their innate unruliness can’t make sense of, which they fear and dread—because nothing has ever been more intolerable for an individual man and for human society in general than freedom. Do You see these stones in this scorched and barren desert? Turn them into bread and mankind will run after you like a flock, obedient and full of gratitude, although trembling eternally lest You withdraw Your hand and deny them bread.” But You didn’t want to deprive them of freedom and You rejected that proposal, because what sort of freedom would it be, You thought, if obedience can be bought by bread? And so You answered that man does not live by bread alone; but do You not know that in the name of this same earthly bread, the spirit of the earth will rise up against You and engage in battle and will defeat You and instead follow him, exclaiming, “Who is like unto the beast? He it is that gave us fire from heaven!”[22] Do You not know that centuries will pass and mankind will proclaim through the mouths of its wise men and scientists that there is no crime and, therefore, there is no sin; there are only hungry people. “Feed them and then ask virtue of them!”—that’s what they will write on the banner that they will raise against You and under which Your temple will be destroyed. In place of Your temple a new building will be erected; the terrible Tower of Babel will rise again,[23] and even though like the earlier one it won’t be completed, You might have been able to avoid this new tower and to shorten the sufferings of mankind by a thousand years—because they’ll come right back to us with their tower after a thousand years of agony! They’ll come to find us once again beneath the earth, hiding in catacombs (for once again we’ll be persecuted and tortured); they’ll find us and cry out: “Feed us, because those who promised us fire from heaven didn’t give it to us.” And then we’ll finish building their tower, because he who feeds them will finish building it; and we alone will feed them, in Your name, and we’ll lie to them, saying that we’re doing it in Your name. Oh, never, ever will they manage to feed themselves without us! No science will ever give them bread while they remain free, but all this will end when they bring their freedom and lay it at our feet and say: “It’s better that you enslave us, but feed us!” They themselves will come to understand at last that freedom and enough earthly bread for everyone are inconceivable together, for never will they be able to share it among themselves. They will also become convinced that they can never be free because they’re weak, depraved, worthless, and rebellious. You promised them the bread of heaven, but I repeat once again, can that compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, irrevocably vicious, and endlessly ungrateful human race? And if for the sake of heavenly bread thousands of men, tens of thousands, will follow You, what will happen to the millions and tens of thousand millions of creatures who won’t be strong enough to give up earthly bread in favor of heavenly bread? Or do You value only the tens of thousands of the great and strong, while the remaining millions of weak people, as numerous as grains of sand, but who also love You, must merely serve as material for the great and strong? No, we care for the weak as well. They are sinful and rebellious, but in the end they, too, will become obedient. They will marvel at us and see us as gods for the fact that we’ve taken on the burden of freedom to rule over them—so terrible will it seem to them in the end to be free! But we will tell them that we obey You and that we rule in Your name. We’ll be deceiving them again, because we won’t allow You to return to us. Our suffering will consist of this deception, because we will need to lie to them. That is the meaning of the first question You were asked in the wilderness, and that is what You rejected in the name of the freedom that You placed above all else. Yet in that question is hidden the great secret of this world. If You had accepted the “loaves of bread,” You would have been responding to the universal and everlasting yearning of humanity, both as individual creatures and as all one, namely, “Who is there to worship?” For having been left in a state of freedom, man has no greater, more urgent, or more agonizing need than to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship someone beyond dispute, someone so far beyond question that all people will immediately join in worship. Because the anxiety of these pitiful creatures isn’t simply in finding what anyone or another might consider worthy of worship, but in finding someone that all can believe in and worship: what is essential is that all men are joined in this together. This demand for a shared community of worship is the principal torment of each person individually and of humanity in general, dating back to the very beginning of time. For the sake of this common worship, people have repeatedly taken up the sword to massacre one another. They have created gods and challenged each other: “Give up your gods and come and worship ours, or else we will kill you and your gods!” And so it will be until the end of time, even when gods disappear from the earth: people will still bow down before idols. You knew, You could not help but know this fundamental fact of human nature; but You rejected the single irresistible banner offered to You, the one that would lead everyone to worship You without question—the banner of earthly bread—and You rejected it in the name of freedom and spiritual bread, the bread of heaven. And look at what You did after that—and once more, all in the name of freedom! I tell You again that for human beings there’s nothing more tormenting than the search to find someone to whom they can instantly turn over that gift of freedom with which these ill-fated creatures are born. But only those who can appease their consciences can succeed in taking possession of their freedom. In bread You were offered a banner that could never be questioned: give people bread and they will bow down, because nothing is more unquestionable than bread. But if at the same time someone beside You can seize possession of their conscience—oh, then they will even give up Your bread and follow the one who has captivated their conscience. About that, You were right. Because the secret of man’s being is not only in living, but in having something to live for. Without a firm belief in the purpose of life, people will not agree to live and will sooner destroy themselves, rather than continue to live on earth, even though they may be surrounded by loaves of bread. True enough, but what came of it? Instead of taking man’s freedom from him, You increased it even more! Perhaps You forgot that serenity and even death are dearer to human beings than the freedom of choice that comes with the knowledge of good and evil. There’s nothing more alluring to people than freedom of conscience, but there’s also no greater source of suffering. And instead of a solid foundation for calming their conscience once and for all—Your choice was to give them everything that’s vague and enigmatic, theoretical and indeterminate, everything that’s beyond the ability of human beings. In doing this, You acted as though You had no love for them at all—You, who came to give Your life for them! Instead of coming to possess people’s freedom, You multiplied it and burdened the souls of human beings with unending agonies. You desired man’s love, given freely, wished for him to follow after You freely, fascinated and captivated by You. Instead of the unyielding ancient law, with a free heart man himself was now to decide what is good and evil, merely having Your image before him as guidance. But did You really not know that in the end he would disregard and even reject Your example and Your truth, if he were to be subjected to such an overwhelming burden as freedom of choice? People would exclaim at last that the truth didn’t lie within You, because it would not be possible to leave them in a greater state of confusion and suffering than You did, burdening them with innumerable anxieties and unanswerable questions.

“ ‘In this way, You Yourself sowed the seeds for the destruction of Your kingdom and no one else is more to blame for that. But was it this that was offered to You? There are only three forces on earth powerful enough to conquer and capture forever the conscience of these weak rebellious people, to ensure their happiness—they are: miracle, mystery, and authority. You rejected the first, the second, and the third—all three—and You set Yourself up as an example. When the dreaded cunning spirit placed You on the pinnacle of the temple and said: “If You want to find out if You are indeed the Son of God, cast Yourself down, for it is said that angels will catch Him and carry Him, and He will not fall and bruise Himself, and You will know then whether You are the Son of God, and You will prove then how great Your faith is in Your Father.” But after hearing him out, You refused his offer and did not obey and did not cast Yourself down. Oh, of course You acted proudly and magnificently, like God, but human beings, the weak human race, are they gods? Oh, You understood at the time that if You had taken even one step, if You had attempted to cast Yourself down, You’d be tempting God and would have lost all Your faith in Him; You would have dashed Yourself to pieces on the very earth that You had come to save, and the cunning one, who had succeeded in tempting You, would have rejoiced. But, I once again I ask how many there are like You? Could You really believe even for a moment that people could resist such a temptation? Was the nature of human beings created in such a way that they could reject the possibility of a miracle and, at such terrible moments of life, moments defined by the most terrible fundamental and tormenting spiritual questions, manage to go on with nothing but the free judgment of their hearts? Oh, You knew very well that Your act of rejection would be memorialized in Scripture, and would be passed down through future ages to the farthest ends of the earth, and You hoped that, following Your example, man, too, would remain with God, without any need of a miracle. But what you evidently didn’t know was that as soon as man rejects miracle, he is also rejecting God, because man is seeking not so much God as he is the miraculous. And since man is incapable of enduring life in the absence of miracles, he will create new ones for himself, his own miracles, and he will bow down to the miracles of sorcerers, to the witchcraft of old women, though he might be a rebel, a heretic, and an atheist a hundred times over. You did not come down from the cross when people shouted insults at You, mocked You, and taunted You, “Come down from the cross and we will believe that You are really He.” You did not respond by coming down because once again You were unwilling to enslave man through miracles; You wished for faith freely given, not based on any miracles. You wanted a love that was free, not the servile raptures of the slave brought to his knees before the authority that had overpowered him forever. But even in this You estimated man too highly, because all men are, of course, nothing but slaves, even though they are created as rebels. Look around You and judge for Yourself: fifteen centuries have passed; come and look at them: is there anyone at all You have raised up to Your level? I give You my word that man is created weaker and viler than You imagined! Can he, can he ever really do what You accomplished? Showing him so much respect, it seems as if You ceased to have compassion for him, because You demanded too much from him—You loved him more than he loved himself! Had You respected him less, you might have demanded less of him, and that would have been more like love, because his burden of responsibility would have been lighter. Man is weak and worthy of contempt. What if now he is rebelling everywhere against our power and takes pride in his rebellion? It’s the pride of a child, of a schoolboy. It’s the pride of little children acting up in class and driving their teacher away. But an end will come to the children’s fun and it will cost them dearly. They will tear down the temples and drench the earth in blood. But these stupid children will finally understand that even though they are rebels, they are impotent rebels, incapable of sustaining their own rebellion. Bathed in their own foolish tears, they will come to recognize at last that He Who created them as rebels must most certainly have been making fun of them. They will arrive at this conclusion in despair, and what they say will be blasphemous—which will make them even unhappier, because human nature cannot bear blasphemy and, in the last analysis, will always punish itself for it. And so, unrest, confusion, and unhappiness—that is now man’s fate after You endured so much for the sake of their freedom! In visions and allegories, Your great prophet testifies that he saw all those who took part in the first resurrection, and there were twelve thousand people from each tribe.[24] But if there were so many of them, they must have been gods, rather than men. They took up Your cross; they endured dozens of years in the barren wilderness, naked and hungry, feeding on locusts and roots. Of course, You can point with pride to these children of freedom, to their love freely given, to their free and splendid sacrifice in Your name. But bear in mind that there were only a few thousand of them, and they were akin to gods—but what about the others? How are the others, the weak people, to blame for not being able to withstand what the strong ones did? How is a weak soul to blame if it’s unable to accept a gift that is so terrifying? Could it really be that You came only for the chosen few? But if that’s true, then it is a mystery that we cannot understand. And if it is a mystery, then we, too, have the right to preach a mystery and to teach people that it is not the free choice and freedom of judgment in their hearts that’s important, and isn’t love, but what matters is mystery, which they must follow blindly, even if it works against their own conscience. That is exactly what we have done. We have corrected Your example and based it upon miracle, mystery, and authority. And the people rejoice in the sense that they are once again led like a flock of sheep and that at last such a terrible gift, which had brought them so much suffering, has been lifted from their hearts. Were we right in doing what we did and teaching what we taught? Tell me: did we not love humanity, so humbly conscious of its powerlessness, did we not lovingly lighten their burden, allowing their weak nature to sin, albeit with our permission?

“ ‘Why have You come now to interfere with us? And why are You staring at me so piercingly in silence with Your gentle eyes? Get angry with me: I don’t want Your love, because I myself feel no love for You. What’s the point of my pretending that I don’t know with whom I’m speaking? You already know everything I have to say. I can read that in Your eyes. How can I succeed in hiding our secret from You? Perhaps You want to hear it from my own lips; very well, then listen to me: we are not with You; we are with him—that is our secret! It’s been quite some time—eight centuries—since we joined with him. Exactly eight centuries ago we accepted what You so indignantly rejected from him, that last gift he offered to You when he showed You all the kingdoms of the earth. We accepted Rome from him and the sword of Caesar, proclaiming ourselves the sole rulers of the earth—the only tsars—although even up to now we have not been able to bring our work to its full completion.[25] But who is to blame for that? Oh, the work is still only beginning, but it has begun. There will be a long wait before its completion, and the earth will suffer a great deal, but we will ultimately triumph and will become Caesars, and then we will devise a plan to ensure the happiness of all humanity. You Yourself could have taken up Caesar’s sword back then. Why did You reject that last gift? Had You accepted the final bit of advice from the powerful spirit, You would’ve accomplished everything that man seeks on earth—that is: have someone to worship, someone to whom he could surrender his conscience, making it possible for everyone to be united at last into one general unanimous and harmonious anthill—because the striving for universal oneness is the third and final anguish of mankind. Humanity as a totality has always aspired to organize itself into a universal whole. There have been many great nations with a great history, but the greater these nations were, the more unhappy they became, because they felt more than others a need for the universal unity of all people. The great conquerors, the Tamerlanes and Genghis Khans,[26] blew like whirlwinds across the face of the earth, striving to subdue its people, but even they, although unconsciously, were expressing the same great need for universal worldwide unification. If You had accepted the world and the royal purple robe of Caesar, You would have established a universal kingdom and bequeathed humanity universal peace. For who could rule over people except those who own their consciences and provide them with bread? We accepted Caesar’s sword, and in doing so, of course, we have rejected You and followed him. Oh, there will be ages of chaotic, unrestrained free thought yet to come, along with science and cannibalism, because once people have begun to erect their Tower of Babel without us, they’ll end up eating one another. But at that point the beast will come crawling to us, and he’ll lick our feet and splatter them with his bloody tears. And we will mount the beast and raise the cup on which will be written the word “Mystery!” But then and only then will the kingdom of peace and happiness be established for all people. You take pride in Your elect, but You have only Your elect, while we will bring peace to everyone. And besides: how many of those elect, those powerful ones who could become the chosen, have finally gotten weary of waiting for You, and have shifted—or will in the future—the strength of their spirit and the passion of their hearts to other endeavors and end by raising their banner of freedom against You? It was You Yourself who raised that banner. But with us, everyone will be happy and people will no longer rebel or destroy each other, as they do now with Your freedom, all over the world. Oh, we will convince them that they’ll be free only when they give up their freedom for us and submit to us. And in claiming that, will we be right or will we be lying? They themselves will become convinced that we’re right, for they’ll recall the horrors of confusion and enslavement to which Your freedom has led. Freedom, freedom of thought, and science will lead them into such labyrinths and to such wonders and insoluble mysteries that some of them, the strongest and most rebellious, will destroy themselves; others, rebellious but weak, will destroy each other, and the rest, weak and miserable, will come crawling to our feet and whine to us: “Yes, you were right; you alone grasp His mystery—we’re coming back to you. Save us from ourselves!” After receiving bread from us, of course they’ll clearly see that we will take the bread that is earned by their own hands and give it back to them without any miracle; they’ll see that we didn’t turn stones into bread, but in truth they’ll be more grateful for receiving bread from us than for the bread itself! For they’ll remember all too well that in the past, without us, even the bread they made turned into stones in their hands, but when they came back to us, those very stones turned back into bread in their hands. They know only too well the joy of submission! And until men understand that, they will be unhappy. Tell me, who is most responsible for their lack of understanding? Who was it who scattered the flock and sent it off on unknown paths? But the flock will gather again and will submit once again, and for all time. Then it is we who will provide all humanity with gentle, humble happiness, the happiness of weak creatures, in accordance with their nature. Oh, at last we’ll persuade them not to be proud, because it was You who raised them up and, in so doing, taught them to be proud. We will show them that they’re weak, that they’re nothing but pitiful children, but that the happiness of children is the sweetest all. They’ll grow timid and will look to us, and cling to us in fear, like baby chicks to a mother hen. They’ll be astonished and awestruck by us, and we will take pride in the power and cleverness that enabled us to subdue such an unruly flock of thousands of millions. They’ll tremble helplessly before our wrath; their minds will grow timid; their eyes will be quick to shed tears, just like women and children; but they’ll be just as ready, at the slightest sign from us, to switch to delight and laughter, joyful mirth, and happy children’s songs. Yes, we’ll put them to work, but in their leisure hours, we’ll organize their lives in the manner of a children’s game, with a chorus of children’s songs and innocent dances. Oh, we’ll allow them to sin—they’re weak and helpless; they’ll love us like children because we allow them to sin. We’ll tell them that each and every sin can be expiated, if it is committed with our permission; we permit them to sin because we love them and, so be it, we take on the punishment for these sins ourselves. We’ll take on their sins ourselves and they will adore us like saviors who have taken on all their sins before God. And from us they will have no secrets. We’ll allow them or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not have children—all depending on whether they have been obedient to us or not—and they’ll obey us gladly, cheerfully. The painful secrets that torment their consciences most—all of them, all of them will they bring to us and we’ll resolve all their problems. They’ll joyfully accept our solution because it will spare them from intense anxiety and the agonies they now experience in having to make such decisions freely, on their own. And everyone will be happy, all the millions of creatures, except for the hundred thousand or so who are called upon to rule over them. Because only we, we who are the keepers of their secrets, only we will be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy children, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have taken on themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil. They will die in peace, will expire quietly in Your name, and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret and for their own happiness attract them with promises of an eternal heavenly reward. Because if there really were anything in the other world, it would not be for people like them. They say and prophecy that You will come again and reign triumphant—that You’ll come with Your chosen ones, Your proud and strong; but we will say that they have saved only themselves, while we have saved everyone. It is prophesied that the harlot who is mounted upon the beast[27] and holds the secret in her hands will be subject to humiliation, that the weak will rise up again and rend her purple garments, and will strip naked her “vile” body. But then I will rise up and point to the thousands of millions of happy children who have known no sin. And we who have taken their sins upon us for their happiness, we will stand before You and will say: “Judge us, if You can and if You dare.” You should know that I am not afraid of You. Know that I, too, have been in the wilderness, and that I, too, fed on locusts and roots, that I, too, embraced the freedom that You brought as a blessing to humanity, and I, too, was preparing to count myself among Your chosen ones, among the powerful and strong, striving to “fulfill the number.”[28] But I came to my senses and determined that I would not serve madness. I turned back and joined the ranks of those who corrected Your example. I left the proud ones and returned to the humble, for their happiness. What I am telling You will come to pass and our kingdom will come. I say it once more: tomorrow You will see this obedient flock, at a signal from me, hasten to pile up the hot embers around the stake on which I have You burned because You came to interfere with us. Because if there was ever anyone who deserves our consuming flames, it is You. Tomorrow I will have you burned. Dixi.’ ”[29]

Ivan ceased speaking. He had grown more and more excited as he’d gone on, and he’d spoken with passion; when he stopped, he suddenly smiled.

Alyosha, having listened to him in silence, had been extremely agitated toward the end, and several times had been on the verge of interrupting his brother’s speech, but he had restrained himself. Now suddenly his words burst out in a rush.

“But . . . that’s absurd!” he cried, blushing. “Your poem is actually in praise of Jesus, not disparagement . . . as you had apparently intended. And who will believe what you say about freedom? Is that really the way it’s to be understood? That’s not the belief of the Russian Orthodox Church. . . . It’s Rome, and not even all of Rome—it’s not true—it’s the worst part of Catholicism, the Inquisitors and the Jesuits! There couldn’t possibly be a character as fantastical as your Inquisitor. And just what are these sins of people that he’s taking on himself? Who are these keepers of mystery who have taken some curse on themselves for the happiness of humanity in general? When have they ever been seen? We know about the Jesuits; people speak ill of them, but they’re not really the way they’re described in your poem, are they? They’re not like that at all, not at all. . . . They’re simply the Roman army for the future universal earthly kingdom, ruled by an emperor—the pontiff of Rome at its head. . . . That’s their ideal goal, but there’s no mystery about it, and no noble note of sorrow. . . . It’s the simplest lust for power, for filthy earthly gains, enslavement . . . something like the serfdom of the future, but they themselves are the landowners . . . that’s all it is. Maybe they don’t even believe in God. Your suffering Inquisitor is merely a fantasy . . .”

“Wait, wait,” said Ivan with a laugh, “how excited you are! A fantasy, you say. Well, so be it! Of course it’s a fantasy. Allow me, however, to ask: do you really think that over the last centuries the workings of the Roman Catholic Church amount to anything more than a striving for power, for filthy earthly gains? Doesn’t it happen to be Father Paisy who teaches you that?”

“No, no, on the contrary—Father Paisy did once say something along these lines . . . but of course, it’s not the same at all, not the same,” Alyosha added hurriedly.

“That’s a valuable piece of information, in spite of your insisting that what he says is ‘not at all the same.’ What I’m asking you is why your Jesuits and Inquisitors have joined together only for the sake of filthy earthly gains? Why couldn’t there be among them even one martyr oppressed by great sadness and driven by a love of humanity? Just suppose that there’s only one of all those who desire filthy earthly gains—even just one man, like my old Inquisitor, who himself lived on roots in the wilderness and who raged like a man possessed, attempting to conquer his flesh, to make himself free and perfect, but who all his life loved humanity, and he suddenly regains his sight and sees clearly that it is no great blessing to achieve perfection of the will, if at the same time he remains convinced that millions of God’s other creatures have been placed on earth as a mockery, and will never be able to cope with their own freedom. He perceives that no giants will ever emerge from these pitiful rebels to complete the tower, and that it wasn’t such geese that the great idealist ever dreamed of joining in ultimate harmony. Understanding all this, he goes back and joins . . . the intelligent people. Couldn’t this have really happened?”

“Joined whom? Who are these intelligent people?” Alyosha cried out, almost beside himself. “They have no intelligence and no secrets or mysteries. . . . They’re only atheists; that’s their entire secret. Your Inquisitor doesn’t believe in God—that’s his whole secret!”

“And what if that’s the case? At last you’ve guessed it. It’s certainly true, certainly the case that his whole secret is that, but wouldn’t that be suffering, at least for a man like him, who had wasted his whole life in the wilderness and who wasn’t cured of his love for humanity? In his declining years, he becomes clearly convinced that only the guidance of the great and terrible spirit could somehow result in the construction of any tolerable order of life for the weak rebels, those ‘imperfect, experimental beings, created in mocking.’ And so, arriving at this conclusion, he sees that it is his obligation to follow the guidance of the great cunning spirit, the terrible spirit of death and destruction, and for that purpose, he must resign himself to accept lies and deception and lead people consciously to death and destruction, all the while deceiving them so that somehow they fail to notice where they’re being led, so that at least along the way these poor blind creatures may consider themselves happy. And please recognize that the deception is in the name of Him in Whose ideal the old man had believed throughout his long life! Is that not terribly unfortunate? And even if only one such man turned up at the head of that entire army ‘desiring power only for filthy gains,’ wouldn’t one such man be enough to make for a tragedy? More than that, even one such man standing at the head of the army is ultimately sufficient to establish the overriding idea of the entire Roman enterprise with all its hosts of armies and Jesuits, its loftiest ideal. I tell you honestly that I firmly believe that a man like this has never been lacking among those standing at the head of the movement. Who knows, even among the Roman popes there may have been such a man. Who knows, perhaps just such an accursed and obstinate old man, loving humanity so much in his own way, now exists in the form of a whole multitude of old men, joined together not at all by chance, but by agreement, as a secret cabal organized long ago to preserve the mystery, to keep the secret from the weak and unhappy, with the aim of securing their happiness. This must certainly be the case; it’s bound to be. It seems to me that even among the Masons there’s something akin to this mystery at their foundation, and that’s why the Catholics hate the Masons so much, because they see them as rivals, fragmenting the unity of the idea, since there must be only one united flock and one shepherd. . . . But in defending my idea this way, I might sound like an author who can’t bear your criticism. So, enough of this.”

“Maybe you’re a Mason yourself!” Alyosha suddenly blurted out. “You don’t believe in God,” he went on, but now with deep sorrow. And at the same time it seemed to him that his brother was regarding him with ridicule. “How does your poem end?” he asked suddenly, looking down at the floor. “Or was that the ending?”

“I wanted to end it like this: after the Inquisitor falls silent, he waits a while for his prisoner to answer him. He finds the silence hard to endure. He saw how the prisoner listened to him quietly and attentively, all the time with a direct and gentle look, apparently not wishing to object. The old man wants Him to say something, however bitter or painful it might be. But all of a sudden He approaches the old man in silence and kisses him softly on his withered and bloodless lips. That is His only answer. The old man shudders. Something seems to stir at the corners of his mouth; he goes to the door, opens it, and says to Him: ‘Go now and don’t come again . . . don’t ever come back . . . ever, ever!’ And he releases Him into the ‘dark squares of the towns.’[30] The prisoner takes His leave.”

“And the old man?”

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

“And are you with him in this—you, too?” Alyosha cried out sadly. Ivan laughed.

“It’s all just nonsense, Alyosha. It’s a ridiculous poem by a ridiculous student who’s never written two lines of poetry. . . . Why are you taking it so seriously? Surely you don’t think I’m going straight to the Jesuits to join the mob of men who are busy correcting His great example? Oh, good Lord, this isn’t any of my business! I’ve told you: all I want to do is live until I’m thirty, and then—dash the cup to the floor!”

“But the sticky little leaves, the graves so precious to you, the blue sky, the woman you may love! How will you be able to live and love them?” Alyosha asked sorrowfully. “How can you possibly, with such hell in your heart and your head? No, that’s just why you’re going away, to join them . . . and if you don’t, you’ll kill yourself—you’ll never be able to last!”

“There’s a kind of strength that can endure everything!” Ivan said, now with a cold smile.

“What kind of strength?”

“The strength of the Karamazovs . . . the strength of Karamazov baseness.”

“To drown in debauchery, you mean, to crush one’s soul in corruption—is that it?”

“Perhaps it is . . . until the age of thirty I might be able to escape it, but then . . .”

“How will you escape it? In what way? With the thoughts you have, it’s impossible.”

“In the Karamazov way, yet once more.”

“Meaning that ‘everything is permitted’? All things are lawful—and is that it?”[31]

A scowl appeared on Ivan’s face and he suddenly grew strangely pale.

“Ah, you’ve seized on yesterday’s phrase, which so offended Miusov . . . at which point our brother Dmitry naïvely jumped up and paraphrased it,” he said with a crooked smile. “Yes, perhaps ‘everything is permitted,’ since that phrase has come up. I won’t object. And Mitenka’s rendition isn’t so bad, either.”

Alyosha stared at him in silence.

“I thought, brother, that in my going away from here, in all the world I would at least have you,” Ivan said suddenly with unexpected emotion. “But now I see that there’s no place for me even in your heart, my beloved hermit. I won’t reject the formula ‘everything is permitted.’ Will you reject me because of that?”

Alyosha rose up, went over to him, and silently kissed him softly on the lips.

“That’s plagiarism!” cried Ivan, suddenly feeling something like ecstasy. “You stole that from my poem! I thank you, though. Get up, Alyosha. Let’s go; it’s time for the two of us to get going.”

They went outside but paused when they reached the entrance to the tavern.

“Here’s how it is, Alyosha,” said Ivan in a determined voice. “If I’m ever really able to appreciate the sticky little leaves, I shall love them only by remembering you. It’s enough for me that you’re here somewhere, and I won’t yet stop wanting to live. Is that enough for you? If you like, you can take this as a confession of love. And now, you go to the right, and I go to the left[32]—and that’s enough, you understand, enough. That is, even if I don’t leave tomorrow (and it seems, I will certainly be going), and if somehow we were to meet again, don’t say another word about these subjects. I insist on this specifically. And also about our brother Dmitry, I particularly ask you never to say another word to me again,” he added, suddenly angrily. “The subject’s been exhausted—everything’s been said over and over again, hasn’t it? And for my part, I will also promise you one thing: when at the age of thirty I want to ‘dash the cup to the floor,’ then, wherever you may be, I’ll come to talk it over with you—even if I have to come from America, I assure you. I’ll be sure to come back just for that purpose. And it will also be very interesting to have a look at you then: to find out what you’ll be like by that time. This is a rather solemn promise, you know. In truth, we may be parting for seven years, or maybe even ten. Well, go now to your Pater Seraphicus[33]—after all, he’s dying, and if he dies without you, you’ll be angry with me for keeping you back. Good-bye then; kiss me once more, that’s the way. Now go . . .”

Ivan turned away suddenly and went on his way, without looking back. It was just the way their brother Dmitry had left Alyosha the day before, although their parting had been quite different. This strange little perception flashed through Alyosha’s saddened mind like an arrow, sorrowful and grieving as he was at this moment. He waited for a while, watching his brother walk into the distance. For some reason he suddenly noticed that his brother Ivan swayed as he walked, and that if you looked from behind, his right shoulder seemed to be lower than his left. He had never noticed this before. But suddenly he turned, too, almost running toward the monastery. It was growing dark now, and he felt almost afraid; something new was growing inside him, something he couldn’t explain. The wind rose up again, as it had the night before, and the age-old pine trees rustled gloomily around him as he entered the hermitage grove. He was almost running. “Pater Seraphicus—he’d gotten that name from somewhere—but from where?” flashed through Alyosha’s mind. “Ivan, poor Ivan—when will I ever see you again? Here’s the hermitage, oh, Lord! Yes, yes, that’s who he is, he is Pater Seraphicus—he’ll save me . . . from him and for all time!”

Afterward, several times in his life, he found himself unable to understand how, after parting with Ivan, he could suddenly forget all about his brother Dmitry, though that very morning, just a few hours before, he had been so firmly resolved to find him, even if it meant not being able to return to the monastery that night.

1 A French gothic novel also known as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) by Victor Hugo (1802–85), a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement.

2 “The Compassionate Judgment of the Most Holy and Gracious Virgin Mary” (Fr.).

3 An apocryphal tale translated from a twelfth-century Byzantine source.

4 Revelation 3:11.

5 Cf. Mark 13:32.

6 A phrase from V. A. Zhukovsky’s translation of Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Sehnsucht” (“Yearning,” 1801).

7 The Protestant Reformation.

8 Cf. Revelation 8:10–11.

9 The final stanza of a lyric by Russian poet F. I. Tyutchev (1803–1873) entitled “These Poor Villages” (1855).

10 An ecclesiastical tribunal established by Pope Gregory IX ca. 1232 for the suppression of heresy.

11 “Acts of faith” (Fr.).

12 From the poem “Coriolanus” (1834) by the poet A. I. Polezhaev (1804?–1838).

13 Cf. Matthew 24:27.

14 Another quotation from Polezhaev.

15 “For the greater glory of God” (Lat.). Motto of the Jesuit order.

16 Cf. Mark 8:22–25.

17 Mark 5:41–42. The phrase is uttered first in Aramaic.

18 A quotation from one of Pushkin’s “Little Tragedies,” The Stone Guest (1830).

19 “One in return for the other” (Lat.).

20 Cf. Matthew 16:19.

21 Matthew 4:1–11 and Luke 4:1–13.

22 Cf. Revelation 13:4 and 13:13 and the myth of Prometheus.

23 Genesis 11:1–9.

24 Cf. Revelation 7:2–9.

25 In 756 the king of the Franks, Pepin the Short, granted the Italian city of Ravenna to the pope. This was the origin of the pope’s temporal power.

26 Tamerlane (1336–1406), also known as Timur, was an undefeated Tatar military commander. Genghis Khan (1162–1227) was the founder and first great khan and emperor of the Mongol Empire.

27 Cf. Revelation 17:3–5.

28 Cf. Revelation 6:11.

29 “I have spoken” (Lat.).

30 Cf. Pushkin’s lyric “Reminiscence” (1828).

31 Cf. 1 Corinthians 6:12, “All things are lawful unto me.”

32 Cf. Genesis 13:9.

33 Cf. the final scene in act 5 of Goethe’s Faust, Part 2. Pater Seraphicus is one of three holy fathers representing saints who during their lifetimes manifested different aspects of Faust’s longing for oneness with the universe.

VI

VERY OBSCURE FOR NOW

But Ivan Fyodorovich, after parting with Alyosha, went home, back to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house. It was strange: he was suddenly overcome with unbearable dejection, and the main thing was, this feeling increased more and more with every step as he neared the house. The strange part was not the feeling itself, but the fact that Ivan was unable to determine the cause of his dejection. He’d often felt dejected before, and it wasn’t surprising that it had occurred at this moment, since tomorrow, suddenly cutting his ties with everything that had drawn him here, he was preparing to turn sharply aside and enter on a new, completely unknown path; and once again, alone, as before, he was truly hoping for he knew not what, expecting too much from life, yet unable to determine what that was, either in his expectations or even his desires. Still, at this moment, although this dejection before the new and unknown was felt deep within his soul, that wasn’t what was tormenting him. “Isn’t it disgust at my father’s house?” he wondered. “It’s as if I was so repelled, even though today I’ll be crossing its nasty threshold for the last time; still it’s disgusting . . .” But no, that wasn’t it either. Was it perhaps his farewell to Alyosha and the conversation he’d had with him? “I’ve been silent for so many years with the whole world and didn’t ever deign to speak, and all of a sudden I blurted out so much nonsense!” As a matter of fact, it might have been his youthful irritation or youthful inexperience, youthful vanity, and irritation that he himself hadn’t been able to express fully, especially with a being like Alyosha, for whom his heart had such great hopes. Of course, this was it, these hopes; it even had to be that; but no, that wasn’t it either. “Dejection to the point of sickness, yet I can’t say what it is that I want. Better not to think . . .”

Ivan Fyodorovich tried “not to think,” but that, too, was of no use. What made his dejection so annoying and irritating was the fact that it was accidental, completely external; this he felt. Somewhere there stood and overhung some being or object, just the way something imposes itself upon the eye and, because you might be occupied by some business or heated conversation for a long time, you don’t notice it; meanwhile you feel irritated, almost tormented, and you finally figure out how to remove the offending object, often very insignificant and amusing, some sort of thing left out of place, a kerchief that had fallen to the floor, a book left off the shelf, and so on and so forth. At last Ivan Fyodorovich, in the nastiest and most irritated state, reached his father’s house; suddenly some fifteen paces from the gate, he guessed what it was that was disturbing and tormenting him.

The lackey Smerdyakov was sitting on a bench by the gate, enjoying the coolness of the evening; at first glance Ivan Fyodorovich realized that the lackey Smerdyakov was also sitting in his soul and that it was precisely this man whom he couldn’t endure. Suddenly everything was illuminated and clarified. Previously, during Alyosha’s account of his meeting with Smerdyakov, something gloomy and repellent had suddenly pierced his heart and aroused his hateful response. Then, during his conversation with Alyosha, Smerdyakov was forgotten for a while; however, he remained in Ivan Fyodorovich’s heart; but as soon as he’d parted from Alyosha, and returned to the house alone, the forgotten sensation suddenly emerged in the forefront once again. “Is it possible that this worthless scoundrel can irritate me to such an extent?” he wondered with unbearable malice.

The fact was that Ivan Fyodorovich had really begun to feel a deep loathing for this man of late, especially during the last few days. He himself had begun to notice his growing antipathy to this creature. Perhaps the process of hatred had been aggravated precisely when, in the beginning after Ivan Fyodorovich had first arrived, the situation had been quite different. At that time Ivan Fyodorovich had suddenly taken a kind of special interest in Smerdyakov, even finding him very original. He taught him to converse, always astonished, however, by his incoherence, better to say, the restlessness of his mind, not understanding what was troubling “this thinker” so constantly and obsessively. They talked about philosophical matters and even how there was light on the first day of creation, although the sun, the moon, and the stars were created on the fourth day, and how one could understand this situation. But Ivan Fyodorovich soon became convinced that the point wasn’t in the sun, moon, and stars; that although the sun, the moon, and the stars were objects of curiosity, for Smerdyakov they were clearly of minor importance; he was looking for something quite different. In one way or another he began to manifest and reveal boundless vanity, a wounded vanity as well. Ivan Fyodorovich didn’t like that at all. This was the origin of his revulsion. Subsequently squabbling developed in the house; Grushenka appeared, and incidents with brother Dmitry ensued; there were troubles—they spoke about that, too; although Smerdyakov always spoke with great agitation, still in this case it was impossible to discern what his own wishes were. One could even be surprised by the illogicality and confusion of certain desires, accidentally revealed and always expressed obscurely. Smerdyakov was constantly inquiring, posing all sorts of indirect, obviously premeditated questions, but for what purpose—he didn’t explain, and usually at the most heated moment of his questions, he’d fall silent or jump to another topic.

But the main thing that annoyed Ivan Fyodorovich and confirmed his antipathy for Smerdyakov was some kind of particular repellent familiarity, which Smerdyakov had begun to manifest more and more noticeably. It wasn’t that he allowed himself to be rude; on the contrary, he always spoke with great respect; but he’d obviously begun to think—God knows why—that he shared some sort of solidarity with Ivan Fyodorovich; he always spoke in a tone that indicated that they had some kind of secret agreement between them, that at some point something had been agreed upon by both sides, known only to the two of them, and even beyond the understanding of those mere mortals gathered around them. For a long time, however, Ivan Fyodorovich didn’t understand the real reason for his growing disgust; at last, only lately, he’d managed to guess what it was all about.

With particular irritation he wanted to pass through the gate without looking at Smerdyakov, but the latter got up from the bench, and by this gesture alone, Ivan Fyodorovich realized that Smerdyakov wished to enter into special conversation with him. Ivan Fyodorovich glanced at him and paused; the fact that he’d paused and not walked past, as he’d wished to do only a few moments before, infuriated him. With anger and disgust he looked at Smerdyakov’s eunuch-like, emaciated face, with his little curls combed forward at the temples, and with a small topknot arranged above. His little squinting left eye winked and he grinned, as if to say, “Where are you going? You won’t get by. You see, we two clever people have something to talk about.” Ivan Fyodorovich began to tremble.

“Get away, you scoundrel, what sort of company am I for you, you fool!” he was just about to say, but, to his own great astonishment, something completely different came out of his mouth:

“How’s Father? Is he still asleep or awake?” he asked softly and meekly, this tone unexpected even to himself; suddenly, also unexpectedly, he sat down on the bench. For a moment he felt almost frightened; he remembered that afterward. Smerdyakov stood opposite him, his hands clasped behind his back, and looked at him with certainty, almost severely.

“He’s still slumbering, sir,” he said unhurriedly. (“You spoke first,” he seemed to say, “not me.”) “I’m surprised at you, sir,” he added, dropping his eyes in an affected manner, moving his little right foot forward, and toying with the tip of his polished boot.

“What are you surprised at?” Ivan Fyodorovich asked abruptly and sternly, restraining himself with all his might; suddenly he understood with disgust that he was feeling the strongest curiosity and that he wouldn’t leave for any reason without first satisfying it.

“Why aren’t you, sir, going to Chermashnya, sir?” Smerdyakov asked suddenly, raising his little eyes and grinning familiarly. “You yourself should understand why I’m grinning, if you’re a clever man,” his squinting left eye seemed to say.

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

Smerdyakov fell silent again.

“Even Fyodor Pavlovich himself has implored you to go,” he said at last without hurrying, as if not valuing his own answer: “I’ve put you off with a minor excuse, just so I have something to reply,” he seemed to say.

“Hey, the devil, speak more clearly, what do you want?” cried Ivan Fyodorovich, moving from meekness to anger.

Smerdyakov joined his little right foot to his left, stood up straighter, but continued looking at him with the same serenity and grin.

“Nothing important, sir, just so; making conversation . . .”

Another silence followed. They remained silent for almost a minute. Ivan Fyodorovich knew that he should stand up immediately and get angry, while Smerdyakov stood in front of him and seemed to be waiting and thinking, “I’ll watch and see if you get angry or not.” At least that’s what Ivan Fyodorovich imagined. At last he began to rock forward as if to stand up. Smerdyakov seemed to seize the moment.

“My situation, sir, is terrible, Ivan Fyodorovich; I don’t even know how to help myself,” he said all of a sudden, firmly and clearly, and sighed with his last word. Ivan Fyodorovich sat down again.

“They’re both crazy, sir; they’re both acting like little children, sir,” continued Smerdyakov. “I’m talking about your father and your brother, sir, Dmitry Fyodorovich. Fyodor Pavlovich will soon wake up and will begin to pester me: ‘Has she come? Why hasn’t she come?’ And it will be like that until midnight, even after that. And if Agrafena Aleksandrovna doesn’t come (because perhaps she’s not intending ever to come, sir), then he’ll fall upon me tomorrow morning: ‘Why hasn’t she come? When will she come,’ as if I were to blame. On the other hand, the point is, as soon as it begins to grow dark, or even earlier, your brother will appear in the neighborhood with a gun in his hands. ‘Look here,’ he’ll say, ‘you scoundrel, you soup-maker, you, if you miss her or don’t let me know she’s here, I’ll kill you first of all.’ When the night ends, the next morning, just like Fyodor Pavlovich, he, too, will begin tormenting me to death: ‘Why didn’t she come? Will she come soon?’ And once again I’m to blame because his lady hasn’t appeared. And both of them, sir, every day and every hour, get angrier and angrier; I sometimes think I’ll kill myself from terror, sir. I can’t depend on them, sir.”

“Why did you get involved? Why did you begin carrying messages to Dmitry Fyodorovich?” Ivan Fyodorovich asked angrily.

“How could I help it, sir? But I haven’t gotten involved at all, sir, if you want to know the whole truth. From the very beginning I remained silent, not daring to object; and he himself chose me to be his servant Licharda.[1] Since then he’s had only one thing to say: ‘I’ll kill you, you scoundrel, if you miss her!’ I presume for certain, sir, that I’ll have a long fit tomorrow.”

“What sort of long fit?”

“A long fit, sir, extremely long, sir. Several hours long or even lasting a day or two, sir. Once when I fell from the attic, the fit lasted three days. The convulsions stopped and then started again; I couldn’t come to my senses for three days. Fyodor Pavlovich sent for Herzenshtube, sir, the local doctor; they applied ice to my temples and tried another treatment. . . . I could’ve died, sir.”

“But they say that with the falling sickness it’s impossible to know when your next fit will occur. How can you say that it’ll happen tomorrow?” Ivan Fyodorovich inquired with irritated curiosity.

“That’s just it. You can’t tell beforehand, sir.”

“Besides, then you fell from the attic.”

“I climb up to the attic every day, sir; I could fall from there tomorrow. And if not the attic, I might fall in the cellar, sir; I go down there every day as well, as need be, sir.”

Ivan Fyodorovich took a long look at him.

“You’re talking rubbish, I see, and I don’t really understand you,” he said softly, but also somewhat ominously. “Do you plan to pretend to fall ill tomorrow for three days? Eh?”

Smerdyakov, staring down at the ground and toying with the toe of his boot again, set his right foot down and moved his left foot forward, raised his head, and, grinning, pronounced:

“If I could even do such a thing, sir, that is, pretend, since it’s not at all difficult for an experienced person to do so, I’d have the perfect right to use this as a means to save my own life; because when I’m lying there ill, even if Agrafena Aleksandrovna were to come to see your father, Dmitry Fyodorovich couldn’t ask a sick man, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ He’d be ashamed to do so.”

“Hey, the devil!” Ivan Fyodorovich cried suddenly, with a face transformed by anger. “Why are you always so afraid for your life? All these threats from brother Dmitry are merely angry words and nothing more. He won’t kill you; he will kill, but not you!”

“He’ll kill me like a fly, sir, me, first of all, sir. But worse than that, I’m afraid of being considered an accomplice if he does something stupid to his father.”

“Why would they think you’re an accomplice?”

“Because I told him the great secret, the signals, sir.”

“What signals? Told who? Devil take you; speak more clearly!”

“I should confess completely,” Smerdyakov drawled with pedantic self-control, “that I share a secret with Fyodor Pavlovich. As you yourself know (only if you do know), for several days, that is, as soon as night or even evening comes, for several days he’s locked himself up inside. Of late you’ve been returning early to your room upstairs; yesterday you didn’t come out, sir; therefore, you might not know how carefully he’s begun to lock himself up at night. And even if Grigory Vasilievich himself comes to see him, he won’t open the door until he hears his voice, sir. But Grigory Vasilievich hasn’t been coming, sir, therefore now I’m the only one who waits on him in his room, sir—that’s what he ordered since this escapade with Agrafena Aleksandrovna began; but at night, on his orders, I retire to the lodge, not to sleep until midnight, but to stand guard, to walk around the courtyard, and wait to see if Agrafena Aleksandrovna comes, sir, since for the last few days he’s been waiting for her, as if he were a madman. This is what he says, sir: she’s afraid of him, he says, that is, Dmitry Fyodorovich (he calls him Mitka), and therefore she’ll come to me along the back way; you, he says, keep watch for her until midnight, and later. If she comes, you run to my door, and knock on it or on the window to the garden, twice gently, like this, one . . . two, followed immediately by three quick knocks: tap, tap, tap. That way, he says, I’ll understand at once that she’s come, and I’ll slowly unlock the door for you. He communicated another signal in case there was something urgent: first, two quick knocks—tap, tap—and then, after a pause, one more knock, much louder. Then he would understand that something unexpected had occurred that I really needed to see him; he’d also open the door for me and I’d go in and report. All this in case Agrafena Aleksandrovna herself doesn’t come, but sends him a message; besides, Dmitry Fyodorovich might come, too, and I have to inform him if he’s approaching. He’s very afraid of Dmitry Fyodorovich, so that even if Agrafena Aleksandrovna had already arrived, and he was locked in with her, and, at the same time, Dmitry Fyodorovich comes close, I’m obligated to inform him immediately, knocking three times, so that the first signal of five knocks means, ‘Agrafena Aleksandrovna’s come,’ and the second signal, three knocks, means, ‘I really need to see you.’ He demonstrated several times and explained it all. And since, in the entire universe, only he and I know about these signals, sir, he’ll unlock the door without the slightest doubt, and without calling out (he’s very much afraid of calling aloud). Well, these same signals are now known to Dmitry Fyodorovich, too.”

“How so? Did you tell him? How dare you tell him?”

“Because I was afraid, sir. How could I keep silent with him, sir? Every day Dmitry Fyodorovich pressures me: ‘You’re deceiving me. What are you hiding from me? I’ll break both your legs!’ That was when I told him those secret signals, so that at least he’d see my servility and thus would be satisfied that I wasn’t deceiving him, but was reporting everything.”

“If you think he might use these signals and try to enter, don’t let him in.”

“But if I’m laid up in bed after a fit, sir, how can I keep him out, sir, even if I dared to, knowing how desperate he is?”

“Eh, devil take it! How come you’re so sure you’ll have a fit, devil take you. Are you making fun of me or what?”

“Why would I dare make fun of you? Do you think I feel like laughing, with this fear? I feel that I’m going to have a fit: I have a premonition. Fear alone will bring it on.”

“Eh, the devil! If you’re laid up in bed, then Grigory will stand guard. Warn him beforehand; he won’t let him in.”

“There’s no way I’d dare tell Grigory Vasilievich about the signals without permission from the master, sir. And as for the fact that Grigory Vasilievich might hear and not let him in, he’s been ill since yesterday and Marfa Ignatyevna intends to treat him tomorrow. They just made the arrangements. This cure they have is very curious, sir: Marfa Ignatyevna knows about a remedy and she always prepares it, a strong potion, sir, from some herb—she holds the secret, sir. And she treats Grigory Vasilievich with this secret remedy about three times a year, sir, when his lumbago gets worse and almost paralyzes him, sir. Then Marfa Ignatyevna takes a towel, sir, soaks it in this mixture, and she rubs his entire back with it for half an hour, sir, until it’s dry; his back even gets red and swollen; then she gives him what’s left in the glass to drink, as she says a prayer, but she doesn’t give him all of it; she keeps a little bit for herself. Since they don’t drink, I tell you, they both collapse at once and sleep a very long time, sir; and when Grigory Vasilievich wakes up, he almost always feels better afterward, sir, and when Marfa Ignatyevna wakes up, she almost always has a headache, sir. So, if tomorrow Marfa Ignatyevna plans to treat him, sir, it’s not likely they’ll hear anything and won’t let Dmitry Fyodorovich in, sir. They’ll be asleep, sir.”

“What nonsense! And it’s happening all at the same time, as if it were planned: you’ll have a fit and they’ll both be unconscious!” cried Ivan Fyodorovich. “But aren’t you trying to arrange it all so that it coincides?” he suddenly blurted out and frowned threateningly.

“How could I arrange it, sir? And for what purpose, when everything depends on Dmitry Fyodorovich alone, sir, and on his plans? If he wants to do something, he will, sir; and if not, I’m not trying to bring him here and push him into your father’s room, sir.”

“Why should he go in to see Father secretly, if, as you yourself say, Agrafena Aleksandrovna won’t come at all,” continued Ivan Fyodorovich, growing pale with rage. “You yourself said that; all the while I’ve been living here, I thought the old man was merely fantasizing and that creature wouldn’t ever come to see him. Why would Dmitry break in to see the old man, if she doesn’t come? Speak! I want to know your thoughts.”

“You yourself know why he’ll come; why do you need to hear my thoughts? He’ll come simply because he’s furious or suspicious on account of my illness; he’ll start doubting and then hastily search all the rooms as he did yesterday: had she come, he’ll ask, somehow secretly. He also knows that Fyodor Pavlovich has prepared a large envelope with three thousand rubles in it, under three seals, tied up with a ribbon, and written on it in his own hand, ‘To my angel Grushenka, if she wishes to come,’ and then, three days later, he added, ‘for my little baby chick.’ That’s what’s so doubtful, sir.”

“Rubbish!” cried Ivan Fyodorovich, almost in a frenzy. “Dmitry won’t come to steal the money and murder Father while he’s at it. Yesterday he might have killed him because of Grushenka, like a furious, spiteful fool, but he won’t come to rob!”

“He really needs money now, sir, needs it in the worst way, Ivan Fyodorovich. You don’t even know how much he needs it,” Smerdyakov replied with extreme composure and remarkable clarity. “He considers those three thousand rubles, sir, his very own, and he himself explained it to me: ‘My father,’ he says ‘still owes me exactly three thousand.’ In addition to all that, consider for yourself, Ivan Fyodorovich, there’s a certain truth to it, sir: it’s almost for sure, sir, that Agrafena Aleksandrovna, if only she wants to, will surely force him to marry her, the master, that is, Fyodor Pavlovich, sir, if only she wants, sir, and perhaps she will want that. All I say is that she won’t come, and perhaps she even wants more, sir, that is, to become the mistress here. I myself know that her merchant, Samsonov, said to her in all candor that this wouldn’t be foolish at all, and then he laughed. She’s really very smart, sir. She wouldn’t marry a pauper like Dmitry Fyodorovich. So, taking that into consideration, Ivan Fyodorovich, you should realize that there would be nothing left after your father’s death, either for Dmitry Fyodorovich, for you, or for your brother Aleksey Fyodorovich, not one ruble, sir, because that’s why Agrafena Aleksandrovna would marry him, so she’d get all the money and transfer the capital to herself. And if your father dies now, before any of this, there’d certainly be some forty thousand rubles for each of you, even for Dmitry Fyodorovich, whom he hates so much, sir, since he hasn’t written a will, sir. . . . Dmitry Fyodorovich knows all this very well . . .”

Something like a shudder crossed Ivan Fyodorovich’s face. He suddenly flushed.

“So why did you,” he interrupted Smerdyakov, “after all this, advise me to go to Chermashnya? If I leave, see what happens here,” Ivan Fyodorovich said and with difficulty took a breath.

“Precisely so, sir,” Smerdyakov said softly and sensibly, staring at Ivan Fyodorovich closely, however.

“What do you mean, ‘precisely so’?” repeated Ivan Fyodorovich, restraining himself with effort, his eyes flashing menacingly.

“I said it because I felt sorry for you. In your place, if it were me, I’d give it all up right away . . . rather than stay here, sir . . .” replied Smerdyakov, staring into Ivan Fyodorovich’s eyes with the most candid air. They both remained silent for a while.

“You seem to be a big idiot and, of course, an awful scoundrel!” said Ivan Fyodorovich, abruptly getting up from the bench. Then he started toward the gate, but suddenly stopped, and turned to face Smerdyakov. Something strange occurred: all of a sudden Ivan Fyodorovich, as if suffering a convulsion, bit his lip, clenched his fists, and, in another moment, undeniably, he’d have hurled himself at Smerdyakov. At that very moment the latter at least had noticed this, shuddered, and recoiled with his whole body. But the moment passed without incident for Smerdyakov, and Ivan Fyodorovich headed for the gate in silence, but as if in some perplexity.

“Tomorrow I shall leave for Moscow, if you want to know—early in the morning—and that’s that!” he suddenly said loudly and distinctly, with malice; later he himself was surprised that he’d felt the need to say this to Smerdyakov at that moment.

“That will be for the best, sir,” Smerdyakov replied, as if he’d expected this, “except that we can always disturb you by telegraph in Moscow from here if anything should happen, sir.”

Ivan Fyodorovich stopped again and quickly turned to face Smerdyakov. But it seemed as if something else had also happened. All the familiarity and carelessness had vanished completely; Smerdyakov’s entire face expressed extreme attention and expectation, but now looked timid and servile: “Won’t you say anything more? Do you have something to add?” could be read in his intense gaze, fastened on Ivan Fyodorovich.

“Couldn’t I be summoned from Chermashnya, too, if something happened?” shouted Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly; it wasn’t at all clear why he’d suddenly raised his voice.

“Also from Chermashnya, sir . . . you could be summoned, sir . . .” muttered Smerdyakov almost in a whisper, as if flustered, but continuing to stare right into Ivan Fyodorovich’s eyes.

“But Moscow’s farther, and Chermashnya’s closer; are you worried about the travel cost, insisting on Chermashnya, or do you feel sorry for me for having to make a large detour?”

“Precisely, so, sir,” muttered Smerdyakov, his voice breaking; he grinned hideously and was about to recoil abruptly once again. But suddenly, to Smerdyakov’s astonishment, Ivan Fyodorovich burst out laughing and quickly headed for the gate, continuing to laugh. If anyone had glanced at his face, he’d certainly have concluded that he wasn’t really laughing because he was feeling cheerful. He himself couldn’t have explained what he was feeling at that moment. He moved and walked as though he were having a spasm.

1 The name of the devoted servant in “Prince Bova,” a popular seventeenth-century folktale.

VII

“IT’S ALWAYS INTERESTING TO CHAT WITH A CLEVER MAN”

And he spoke that way, too. As soon as he entered, he met Fyodor Pavlovich in the hall and suddenly shouted to him, waving his arms: “I’m here to go upstairs to my room, not to see you. Good-bye.” He walked past him, even trying not to look at his father. It’s very possible that at this moment his father was too hateful, but such a brusque manifestation of hostility was unexpected, even by Fyodor Pavlovich. Clearly the old man really wanted to tell him something in a hurry, and that’s why he came out into the hall to meet him; having heard such a polite greeting, he stood in silence and, with a sarcastic look, watched his son go upstairs to the mezzanine until he disappeared from sight.

“What’s the matter with him?” he quickly asked Smerdyakov, who’d followed Ivan Fyodorovich into the house.

“He’s angry at something, sir, who knows what,” he muttered evasively.

“Ah, the devil! Let him be angry! Bring the samovar in and then go away quickly. Is there any news?”

There followed a series of questions, just as Smerdyakov had complained to Ivan Fyodorovich, that is, concerning the awaited visitor; we’ll omit these questions here. Half an hour later, the house was locked up and the crazy old man was wandering alone through the rooms, in anxious expectation, at any moment, of those five agreed-upon knocks. From time to time he glanced out the dark windows, but he saw nothing there except for the night.

It was already very late and Ivan Fyodorovich was still awake, sitting and reflecting. He’d gone to bed late that night, around two o’clock. But we won’t recount his entire train of thought, and this is not the time to look into his soul. The time will come for that. Even if we attempted to convey his thoughts, it would be very arduous to do so, because they really weren’t thoughts, but something vague, above all, extremely disturbed. He himself felt that he’d lost all his bearings. He was also tormented by various strange and almost completely unexpected desires, for example: well past midnight he suddenly wanted obstinately and immediately to go downstairs, unlock the door, go out to the lodge, and give Smerdyakov a beating; but if you asked him why, he himself wouldn’t have been able to supply even one good reason, except that he’d found the lackey detestable as the most unbearable reprobate in the whole world. On the other hand, his soul was seized more than once that night by some inexplicable and humiliating timidity, from which—this he felt—he even suddenly seemed to lose all his physical strength. His head was aching and spinning. Something hateful oppressed his soul, as if he were planning to take revenge on someone. He hated even Alyosha, recalling his previous conversation with him, and at times even hated himself. He almost forgot to think about Katerina Ivanovna, and afterward was very surprised by that, all the more so because he vividly recalled how the previous morning, when he’d boasted so boldly at her house that he’d leave for Moscow in the morning, in his own soul he’d whispered: “What nonsense; you won’t go and it won’t be so easy to cease this showing off that you’re doing now.”

Remembering that night long afterward, Ivan Fyodorovich, with particular revulsion, recalled how all of a sudden he’d get up from the sofa and quietly, as if terribly afraid of being seen, open the door, proceed to the staircase, and listen to the sounds coming from downstairs, in the rooms below, where Fyodor Pavlovich was stirring and pacing—he’d listen for a long time, about five minutes, with some sort of strange curiosity, holding his breath, his heart pounding; and why he would do this, why he was listening—of course, he himself didn’t know. All his life he later referred to this “action” as “loathsome,” and all his life, in the secret depths of his soul, he considered it the vilest act of his entire life. At that time he felt no hatred for Fyodor Pavlovich himself; he was simply terribly curious to know why he was pacing down there and what he must have been doing; he wondered and imagined how he must be peeking out the dark windows, suddenly stopping in the middle of the room, and waiting, waiting—to see if someone knocked. For this reason Ivan Fyodorovich went out to the staircase twice to listen.

When everything had quieted down and Fyodor Pavlovich had gone to bed, around two o’clock, Ivan Fyodorovich also went to bed with the strong desire to fall asleep, since he felt really exhausted. Indeed, he soon fell fast asleep and slept without dreams, but he awoke early, around seven o’clock, when it was already light. After opening his eyes, to his great astonishment, he suddenly felt a surge of unusual energy; he quickly jumped up, hastily got dressed, then pulled out his suitcase and, without delay, quickly began to pack. He’d received his clean linen back from the laundress yesterday morning. Ivan Fyodorovich even began smiling at the thought that everything was coming together; there’d be no delay in his rapid departure. And his departure turned out to be very rapid indeed. Although Ivan Fyodorovich had said yesterday (to Katerina Ivanovna, and to Alyosha, and then later to Smerdyakov) that he was leaving tomorrow, when he’d gone to bed the night before, he’d remembered at that moment that he wasn’t thinking at all about his departure; he also never thought that when he woke up the next morning, the first thing he’d do was pack his suitcase. At last his suitcase and bag were ready: it was already almost nine o’clock when Marfa Ignatyevna appeared with the usual question: “Where do you wish to have your tea, in your room or will you come down?” Ivan Fyodorovich went down, had an almost cheerful look on his face, even though in his words and gestures, there was something distracted and hurried. He greeted his father cordially and even inquired about his health; then however, without waiting for his father to finish his reply, he declared at once that he was leaving for Moscow in an hour, for good, and asked that the horses be summoned. His father heard his request without the least surprise, and forgot, in a very ill-mannered way, to express any regret at his son’s imminent departure; instead, he suddenly began to fuss about some pressing business of his own.

“Oh, you! What a fellow! You didn’t tell me yesterday . . . never mind, we’ll settle it now. Do me a great favor, my dear boy, make a stop in Chermashnya. All you have to do is turn left from the station at Volovya, and it’s only eight little miles, and there it is, Chermashnya.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t: it’s fifty miles to the railway station and the train leaves from there for Moscow at seven this evening—I’ll just have time to catch it.”

“You’ll catch it tomorrow or the day after, but today, call in at Chermashnya. What’ll it cost you to indulge your father? If I didn’t have affairs here, I’d have gone there myself long ago, because the business there is urgent and essential, while here it’s not the time for me to leave. You see, I own a grove there; it falls into two sections, one in Begichev, the other in Dyachkin, on wasteland. The Maslovs, father and son, merchants, will pay me only eight thousand to harvest the timber, but only last year a buyer turned up who offered me twelve thousand, but he’s not from here, that’s the trouble. Because now the locals won’t buy it: the Maslovs are tightwads—father and son, they’re worth a hundred thousand: they get whatever they want and none of the locals dare compete with them. All of a sudden the priest at Ilyinskoye wrote to me last Thursday that Gorstkin had arrived, another merchant whom I know; he’s valuable because he’s not from these parts, but from Pogrebov, and that means he’s not afraid of the Maslovs. He’ll pay me eleven thousand, he says, for the grove, you hear? But he’ll be there, the priest writes, for only one more week. So you should go at once and bargain with him.”

“Write to the priest and ask him to make the bargain.”

“He doesn’t know how, that’s the problem. That priest has no eye for business. He’s a treasure; I’d send him twenty thousand rubles to safeguard, without a receipt, but he doesn’t have an eye for business; he’s not a grown man at all; a crow could deceive him. Yet he’s an educated man, can you believe it? This Gorstkin looks like a peasant, wears a blue caftan, but as for his character, he’s a real scoundrel, and that’s the general misfortune: he lies, that’s what. Sometimes he tells such lies as you have to wonder why. The year before last he told me that his wife had died and that he’d married another woman, but it wasn’t true at all, can you imagine: his wife hadn’t died; she’s still living and gives him a beating every few days. So now you have to find out: is he lying or telling the truth that he wants to buy it and is ready to pay me eleven thousand rubles?”

“I won’t be of any use here. I don’t have an eye for business either.”

“Wait, stay a bit, you’re of use to me, because I’ll tell you all the signs by which you’ll know Gorstkin, since I’ve done business with him before. You see: you have to look at his beard; he has a nasty, flimsy, little reddish beard. If his beard is wiggling, and he’s getting angry and grinning—well, that means it’s all okay, he’s telling the truth and wants to make a deal; if he’s stroking his beard with his left hand, that means he’s cheating, deceiving. Never look him straight in the eye; you can’t tell anything from his eyes; he’s shady and he’s cheating. Watch his beard. I’ll give you a letter to take to him; you show it to him. His name is Gorstkin, but it’s not really Gorstkin; his real name is Lyagavy, but don’t call him that or he’ll be offended.[1] If you’ve come to an agreement with him, write to me: ‘He’s not lying.’ Insist on eleven; you can lower it by one thousand, but no more than that. Just think, eight thousand or eleven, that’s a difference of three thousand rubles. Those three thousand are like found money; it’s not easy to find a buyer, and I’m in desperate need of money, enough to cut someone’s throat. Let me know if it’s serious and then I’ll rush over there and seal the deal; somehow I’ll find the time. But now, what’s the use of my racing over there, if it’s only something the priest’s thought up? Well, will you go or not?”

“Ah, there’s no time, you’ll have to excuse me.”

“Hey, you should indulge your father, I’ll remember it. You’re all heartless, that’s what you are! What’s a day or two to you? Where are you going now, Venice? Your Venice won’t disappear in two days’ time. I’d send Alyoshka, but what does he know about business? I’m sending you because you’re a clever man, don’t I see that? You’re not a timber merchant, but you have a good eye. All you need to do is see whether the man’s serious or not. . . . I tell you, watch his beard: if it’s wiggling, then he’s serious.”

“You’re forcing me to go to that damned Chermashnya, eh?” cried Ivan Fyodorovich, grinning maliciously.

Fyodor Pavlovich didn’t notice the malice, or else he chose not to see it, but he caught the grin.

“So you’ll go; that means you’ll go? I’ll write the note immediately.”

“I don’t know if I’ll go, I don’t know. I’ll decide along the way.”

“What do you mean, ‘along the way.’ Decide now. Decide, my dear. If you settle the matter, write me two lines, give it to the priest, and he’ll send me your note right away. And then I won’t keep you; go to Venice. The priest will lend you horses to get back to the station at Volovya . . .”

The old man was simply in ecstasy; he composed his note, called for horses, and ordered a snack with some brandy. When the old man was happy, he always became expansive, but this time he seemed to restrain himself. For example, he didn’t utter a single word about Dmitry Fyodorovich. He was not moved at all by the imminent parting; he couldn’t even find a word to say; Ivan Fyodorovich took special note of that. “He’s fed up with me,” he thought. Only when he escorted his son out onto the porch did the old man seem to make a fuss. He would have kissed him good-bye, but Ivan Fyodorovich quickly held out his hand to shake, evidently forestalling any embrace. The old man understood at once, and checked himself in a moment.

“Well, God be with you, good luck!” he cried from the porch. “Will you come back again during your lifetime? Do come, I’ll always be glad to see you. Well, Christ be with you!”

Ivan Fyodorovich climbed into the carriage.

“Farewell, Ivan, don’t abuse me too badly!” shouted his father for the last time.

All the servants came out to see him off: Smerdyakov, Marfa, and Grigory. Ivan Fyodorovich gave each of them ten rubles. After he’d seated himself in the carriage, Smerdyakov jumped up to adjust the rug.

“You see . . . I am going to Chermashnya,” Ivan Fyodorovich somehow blurted out; and again, like yesterday, the words seemed to emerge on their own, even with some nervous laughter. He remembered this for a long time afterward.

“In other words, what people say is true: it’s always interesting to chat with a clever man,” replied Smerdyakov assuredly, with a penetrating look.

The carriage began to move and rolled away. The traveler’s soul was troubled, but he eagerly looked around at the fields, the hills, the trees, the flock of geese flying high above him in the clear sky. All of a sudden he felt very good. He tried to speak with the driver and took great interest in something the peasant was telling him, but a minute later he realized that it had all flown past his ears, and that in fact he didn’t understand what the peasant had replied. He fell silent, and that was all right; the air was pure, fresh, and cold; the sky was clear. Images of Alyosha and Katerina Ivanovna began floating through his mind; but he grinned quietly and softly blew away those nice visions and they dispersed: “Their time will come,” he thought. They reached the first station quickly, changed horses, and galloped off to Volovya. “And just why is it always interesting to chat with a clever man? What did he mean by that?” The question suddenly took away his breath. “And why did I tell him that I was going to Chermashnya?” They reached the Volovya station. Ivan Fyodorovich got out of the carriage, and the drivers surrounded him. They bargained over the trip to Chermashnya, a distance of some eight miles. He told them to harness their horses. He was about to enter the station house, looked around, glanced at the stationmaster, and suddenly walked back out onto the porch.

“There’s no need to go to Chermashnya. Will I be late, brothers, for the train at seven o’clock this evening?”

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

“Do it right away. Will one of you be in town tomorrow?”

“Of course, Mitry will be.”

“Would you, Mitry, be able to do me a favor? Stop by my father’s house, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, and tell him I didn’t go to Chermashnya. Can you do that or not?”

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

“Here’s something for your trouble, because he probably won’t give you anything,” Ivan Fyodorovich said merrily with a chuckle.

“He certainly won’t,” Mitry replied with a laugh. “Thank you, sir, I’ll certainly do it.”

At seven o’clock in the evening Ivan Fyodorovich entered the train car and took off for Moscow. “Away with all the past; I’m done with the old world forever, and may I get no news and no word of it; off to a new world, new places, without looking back!” But instead of ecstasy, such dark gloom invaded his soul and his heart ached with such grief as he’d never experienced before in his entire life. He thought all night; the train raced along and only at dawn, already approaching Moscow, did he suddenly return to his senses.

“I’m a scoundrel!” he whispered to himself.

Meanwhile, Fyodor Pavlovich, after seeing his son off, felt very satisfied. For two whole hours he was feeling almost happy and drinking brandy; but suddenly there occurred a very annoying and unpleasant event, at once casting Fyodor Pavlovich into great consternation: Smerdyakov went to fetch something from the cellar and fell down from the highest step. It was a good thing that Marfa Ignatyevna happened to be in the courtyard at the time and heard him at once. Although she didn’t witness the fall, she heard his scream; it was a peculiar, strange scream, but one she knew well—it was the scream of an epileptic, falling into a fit. It was impossible to determine whether the fit began at the moment he started down the stairs, and, of course, then had to tumble down the whole flight unconscious, or, on the contrary, if the fit occurred as a result of Smerdyakov’s fall and shock; but they found him on the cellar floor, writhing, having convulsions, foaming at the mouth. At first they thought that perhaps he’d broken something, an arm or a leg, and had hurt himself, but “God had saved him,” as Marfa Ignatyevna expressed it: nothing like that had happened, though it was difficult to carry him out of the cellar into God’s bright world. They requested help from their neighbor and somehow managed to do it. Fyodor Pavlovich was present during all this process and he helped, too, although he was alarmed and distraught. The patient didn’t recover consciousness; although the fit had temporarily eased, it resumed again and everyone concluded that the same thing would happen as had occurred last year when he’d fallen accidentally from the attic. They recalled that at that time they’d applied ice to his temples. They fetched some ice from the cellar, and Marfa Ignatyevna handled it. Toward evening Fyodor Pavlovich sent for Dr. Herzenshtube, who arrived at once. After examining the patient carefully (he was the most thorough and attentive doctor in the entire province, an elderly and most venerable old man), he concluded that the fit was severe and that “it could prove dangerous”; meanwhile, he, Herzenshtube, didn’t understand everything about it, but said that tomorrow morning he’d prescribe other measures, if these didn’t help. The patient was installed in the lodge outside the house, in a small room next to Grigory and Marfa Ignatyevna. Then all that day Fyodor Pavlovich suffered one misfortune after another: Marfa Ignatyevna prepared his dinner, and the soup, compared to Smerdyakov’s, turned out to taste “like dishwater.” The chicken was so dried out, there was no possibility of chewing it. Marfa Ignatyevna, in response to the master’s bitter, though justified reproaches, replied that in fact the chicken was very old, and that she herself had never been trained as a cook. Toward evening there arose another worry: Fyodor Pavlovich was informed that Grigory, who’d been ailing for the last few days, had taken to his bed with lumbago. Fyodor Pavlovich finished his tea as early as possible and locked himself up all alone in his house. He was in terrible and agitated anticipation. The thing was that he was expecting Grushenka to come that evening almost for sure; at least he’d received assurance from Smerdyakov early that morning that “she’d promised to come without fail.” The indefatigable old man’s heart was throbbing with excitement; he paced through all his empty rooms and listened attentively. He had to keep on his toes: Dmitry Fyodorovich might be on guard for her, and as soon as she knocked on the window (Smerdyakov had assured Fyodor Pavlovich two days ago that he’d told her where and how to knock), he had to open the door for her at once and not keep her waiting even a second in the entrance, in case, God forbid, she’d get frightened and run away. Fyodor Pavlovich was fussing, but never before had his heart been so immersed in sweet hopes: after all, it was almost possible to say that this time she’d come for certain!

1 Lyagavy means “bird dog” in Russian.

BOOK SIX

THE RUSSIAN MONK

I

FATHER ZOSIMA AND HIS VISITORS

When Alyosha entered the elder’s cell anxiously and with pain in his heart, he stopped in near astonishment: instead of a sick man on the verge of death, perhaps already unconscious, as he’d expected to find him, he suddenly saw the elder sitting in his chair, although exhausted by weakness, but he had a vigorous and cheerful face; he was surrounded by visitors, leading them in a quiet and joyful conversation. However, he’d gotten out of bed no more than a quarter of an hour before Alyosha’s arrival; the visitors had gathered in his cell earlier and had waited for him to wake up, having been assured by Father Paisy that “the teacher would undoubtedly speak once more with his nearest and dearest, as he himself had indicated and promised that morning.” Father Paisy believed firmly in the dying elder’s every utterance, to such an extent that even if he’d seen him completely unconscious and not even breathing, but had heard him promise that he’d get up again to bid them all farewell, he might cease believing in death itself, expecting that the departing soul would come to keep his promise. That morning Father Zosima had definitely said, before taking a nap: “I won’t die before conversing with you, beloved of my soul; I shall gaze once more on your dear countenance, and will pour forth my heart to you once again.” The monks who’d gathered for what would probably be a final conversation with the elder were his most devoted friends from previous years. There were four of them: Father Iosif, Father Paisy, Father Mikhail, the father superior of the hermitage, a man not yet old and not at all learned; he was descended from simple folk, yet firm in spirit, of inviolable and simple faith, with a stern countenance, but with deep, tender emotion in his heart, which he evidently concealed, as if he were ashamed of it. The fourth guest was a very old, humble little monk from the poor peasant class, Brother Anfim, almost illiterate, taciturn, and quiet, rarely speaking with anyone, the humblest of the humble; he had the look of a man who’d once and for all been frightened by something great and terrible, well beyond his grasp. Father Zosima had a special love for this diffident man and all his life had treated him with unusual respect, although, perhaps, there was no one with whom he’d exchanged fewer words during his life, in spite of the fact that he’d spent many years wandering around holy Russia with him. This was a long time ago, some forty years earlier, when Father Zosima had just begun his life as a monk in a poor, little-known monastery in Kostroma, and when, soon afterward, he went to join Father Anfim in his wanderings to collect alms for their needy monastery. Everyone, both the host and his visitors, was in the elder’s second room, his bedroom, which, as has been said before, was very small, so that all four of them (except the novice Porfiry, who was standing) could hardly fit around the elder’s armchair, on chairs brought in from the elder’s larger room. It had begun to grow dark; the room was lit by oil lamps and candles placed before the icons. Noticing Alyosha looking embarrassed, standing in the doorway, the elder smiled joyfully and held out his hand to him:

“Welcome, my quiet one, greetings, dear one, you’re here, too. I knew you’d come.”

Alyosha went up to him, bowed down to the floor before him, and began crying. Something burst forth from his heart, his soul trembled, and he felt like sobbing.

“Now, now; don’t weep over me yet,” the elder said with a smile, placing his right hand on Alyosha’s head. “See, I’m sitting here, talking; perhaps I’ll live another twenty years, as that good, kind lady from Vyshegorye, with her little daughter Lizaveta in her arms, wished me yesterday. Remember, oh Lord, the mother and her little girl Lizaveta!” (He crossed himself.) “Porfiry, did you take her the offering, where I told you?”

He meant the sixty kopecks brought yesterday by the cheerful follower to be given “to someone poorer than me.” Such offerings of money earned by personal toil are made as penance, imposed voluntarily for some reason on oneself. The evening before the elder had sent Porfiry to a tradesman’s widow with children whose house had recently burned down, and who’d gone out with her children to beg alms. Porfiry hastened to report that this request had been fulfilled, and that he’d turned over the money as he’d been instructed, and had said it was from “an anonymous benefactress.”

“Get up, my dear,” the elder said to Alyosha, “let me look at you. Did you go to your family and see your brother?”

It seemed strange to Alyosha that he was asking so definitively and precisely about only one of his brothers—but which one? That means he’d sent him away both yesterday and today to see that very brother.

“I saw one of my brothers,” replied Alyosha.

“I’m talking about your elder brother, the one to whom I bowed yesterday.”

“I saw that one only yesterday, but couldn’t find him today,” said Alyosha.

“Hasten to find him; and make haste again tomorrow; leave everything and hasten to him. You may be able to prevent something terrible from happening. I bowed yesterday to the great future suffering that awaits him.”

He suddenly fell silent and seemed to lapse into thought. His words were strange. Father Iosif, witness to the elder’s bow yesterday, exchanged a glance with Father Paisy. Alyosha could not restrain himself.

“Father and teacher,” he said in extreme agitation, “your words are too vague. . . . What sort of suffering awaits him?”

“Don’t be so curious. Yesterday I seemed to see something terrible . . . as if his look expressed his entire fate. He had a certain look . . . and in my heart I was instantly horrified at what this man is preparing to do. Once or twice in my life I have seen such looks on the faces of some men . . . as if expressing their entire fate, and, alas, it really came to pass. I sent you to him, Aleksey, because I thought that your brotherly countenance might help him. But everything and all our fates come from the Lord. ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’[1] Remember that. And you, Aleksey, I have silently blessed many times in my life for your countenance, you should know that,” said the elder with a quiet smile. “I think of you like this: you will go forth from these walls and live like a monk in the world. You will have many opponents, but even your enemies will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but it will be exactly with them that you will be happy; you will bless life and make others bless it, too—which is most important of all. That is who you are. My fathers and teachers,” he said, smiling tenderly and turning to his visitors, “never before this day have I told even him why the visage of this young man is so dear to me. Now I will tell you: his face has been like a reminder and a prophecy for me. At the dawn of my days, while still a young child, I had an older brother, who died young, before my very eyes; he was all of seventeen years old. And then, in the course of my life, I gradually became convinced that this brother of mine was an indication and preordination of my fate from above, because had he never appeared in my life, if he had never even existed, I now think, I might not have taken up the monastic life and might never have entered upon this precious path. He first appeared to me in my childhood; and now, at the end of my journey, it is as if he has appeared as a repetition before my eyes once again. This is miraculous, fathers and teachers, that although Aleksey does not really resemble my brother in his features, or only slightly, Aleksey seems so like him spiritually that many times I have taken him for that very same young man, my brother, appearing to me mysteriously at the end of my journey, as some sort of remembrance and inspiration, even making me wonder myself at my strange dream. Do you hear, Porfiry,” he said, turning to the novice, who was serving him. “Many times I have seen on your face a certain bitterness, because I love Aleksey more than you. Now you know why this was so; but I do love you, too, and many times I have lamented your bitterness. Now, dear visitors, I would like to tell you about this young man, my brother, because there was no manifestation more precious, more poignant, or more prophetic. My heart is full of tender emotion, and I am contemplating my whole life at this moment as if I were living it all over again.”

Here I must note that this last conversation of the elder’s with his visitors on the last day of his life was only partly preserved in writing. Aleksey Fyodorovich Karamazov recorded it from memory not long after the elder’s death. But whether this was entirely the conversation that took place at the time, or he added to it using his notes from previous conversations with his teacher, I can’t determine; besides, the elder’s entire speech in his notes is conveyed continuously, as if he were telling it to his friends in the form of a narrative, when without doubt, from other divergent accounts, I know that the conversation that evening was general, and although the visitors rarely interrupted their host, still they spoke somewhat, and possibly even told him things of their own. Besides, such continuity in the elder’s story could not actually have occurred, since he was sometimes gasping for breath, or lost his voice, and even lay down on his bed to rest, although he didn’t fall asleep, and the visitors never stirred from their places. Once or twice the conversation was interrupted by a reading from the Gospel by Father Paisy. It’s also remarkable that none of them thought that the elder would die that very night, all the more so since on this last evening of his life, after a deep sleep during the day, he suddenly seemed to have found new strength, which supported him all during this long conversation with his visitors. It was something like a final surge of tender emotion, which sustained boundless animation in him, but only for a short time, because his life was soon cut short. . . . But more about that later. For the moment I will only add that I’ve preferred to limit myself to the elder’s account corresponding to the manuscript of Aleksey Fyodorovich Karamazov. It will be shorter, and not so exhaustive, although, of course, I repeat, Alyosha borrowed a great deal from previous conversations and combined it all together.

1 John 12:24. The epigraph to the entire novel.

II

NOTES FROM THE HOLY LIFE OF THE LATE PRIEST AND MONK THE ELDER ZOSIMA, COMPILED FROM HIS OWN WORDS BY ALEKSEY FYODOROVICH KARAMAZOV

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

(a) Of the Elder Zosima’s Brother

Beloved fathers and teachers, I was born in a distant northern province, in the town of V.; my father was a nobleman, but not distinguished or high-ranking. He died when I was only two, and I don’t remember him at all. He left my mother a small wooden house and some capital, not much, but enough to live on with her children without fear of need. My mother had only two children: my older brother, Markel, and me, Zinovii. He was about eight years older, with a quick temper and an irritable character, but he had a good heart and he wasn’t sarcastic; he was strangely taciturn, especially at home, with me, Mother, and the servants. He was a good student in the gymnasium, but didn’t get close to his comrades, even though he didn’t quarrel with them; in any case, that’s how my mother remembered him. Six months before his death, at the age of seventeen, he made friends with a lonely man in our town, a political exile who’d been banished for freethinking. This exile was a well-known scholar and an eminent philosopher in the university. For some reason he came to like Markel and began hosting visits from him. The young man spent entire evenings with him, and that continued all winter, until the exile was summoned back to Petersburg to enter government service again, by his own request, since he had powerful patrons.

It was the beginning of the Lenten fast, but Markel refused to participate; he was rude and made fun of it. “It’s all nonsense,” he would say, “and there is no God.” My mother and the servants were horrified, as was I, because even though I was only nine, when I heard those words, I became very frightened. Our servants were all serfs, four of them, all purchased in the name of a landowner who was a friend of ours. I still recall how my mother sold one of them, Afimya, who was old and lame, for sixty rubles in banknotes, and how she hired a free servant to replace her.

In the sixth week of Lent my brother fell ill; he’d always been sickly, with weak lungs, a frail constitution, and tending toward consumption; he was tall, but thin and delicate, and his countenance was rather pleasing. It seems he caught a cold, but the doctor arrived and whispered to Mother that it was galloping consumption and that he wouldn’t last through the spring. Mother began to weep, and began to ask my brother cautiously (more so as not to frighten him) to fast and take Communion, because at that time he was still able to walk. After hearing her request, he got angry, abused the church, but got to thinking: he guessed at once that he was dangerously ill, and that Mother was urging him to fast and take the sacraments while he still had the strength. Moreover, he’d known for a long time that he was not well, and once, about a year before, sitting at the table, he’d said coolly to Mother and me, “I’m not long for this world. I may not live another year.” It was as if he were prophesying. Three days later it was the start of Holy Week. On Tuesday morning my brother started going to church. “I’m doing this for you, Mother, to make you happy and comfort you,” he said to her. Mother wept from joy, but from grief as well: “His end must be near, if there’s suddenly such a great change in him.” But he didn’t attend church for very long; soon he took to his bed and agreed to confession and Communion at home.

The days became bright, fine, and fragrant; Easter came late. I remember that he would cough all night, sleep badly, but in the morning he would get dressed and try sitting in an armchair. That’s how I remember him: sitting quietly, meekly, and smiling; he himself was ill, but his countenance was full of good cheer and joy. An astounding spiritual change had occurred in him! His old nanny would come to see him in his room: “Let me light the lamp before the icon, my dear.” Previously he wouldn’t allow it; he’d even blow it out. “Light it, my dear, light it; I was a beast for not allowing you to do so before. You’re praying to God in lighting the lamp, and I’m praying, as I rejoice watching you. In other words, we’re both praying to the same God.”

These words seemed strange to us; Mother would go to her room and start weeping, but when she went in to see him, she wiped her eyes and assumed a cheerful look. “Mama, don’t cry, my dear,” he used to say, “I’ll live a long time; I’ll rejoice with you; and life, life itself is full of good cheer and joy!”

“Ah, my dear, what sort of joy is it when you lie in a fever all night and cough so hard that it seems as if your chest will burst?”

“Mama,” he replies, “don’t cry. Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, yet we don’t want to know it: if we did, we’d have heaven on earth tomorrow.” And everyone was surprised by his words, since he kept speaking so strangely and definitively; we were all moved by tender emotion and we wept.

Some acquaintances would come to see us: “Dear ones,” he says, “what have I done that you should love me? And why didn’t I know that before? How was it that I didn’t appreciate it?”

When the servants came in, he would constantly say to them, “My dears, why do you serve me? Do I deserve to be waited on? If God were merciful and let me live, I would be serving you, since everyone should serve each other.”

Mother listened and shook her head: “You’re talking like that because of your illness.”

“Mama, my darling,” he says, “there have to be servants and masters, but let me be the servant to our servants, just as they are serving me now. And I’ll also tell you, Mama, that each one of us is guilty before the others for everything, and I am more guilty than the others.”

Mama even smiled at that, she wept and smiled at the same time. “How can it be,” she asked, “that you’re more guilty than all the other people? There are murderers and robbers, but how have you managed to sin such that you accuse yourself more than others?”

“Mama, my own flesh and blood,” he says (he’d started using such affectionate phrases, unexpectedly), “my own flesh and blood, my beloved, you should know that in truth everyone is guilty before everyone else and for everything. I don’t know how to explain it to you, but I feel this is so, painfully so. How could we have kept on living and being angry, not knowing this then?” He would wake up every day like that, each day more and more filled with tender emotion, and rejoicing, trembling with love.

The doctor would come, the old man Eisenschmidt. “Well, Doctor, will I live another day?” he would ask jokingly.

“Not only one day: you’ll live for many days,” the doctor would reply. “You’ll live for months and years.”

“Months and years!” he would cry. “Why count the days when one day is sufficient for man to come to know all happiness. My dears, why do we quarrel, boast to each other, hold grudges? It’s better to go out to the garden to frolic and play, to love and extol one another, to kiss and bless our life.”

“He’s not long for this world, your son,” the doctor said to his mother, as she was seeing him off on the porch. “He’s going mad as a result of his illness.”

His windows looked out on the garden, which was shaded, with old trees just coming into spring bud; the first birds were darting through branches, chirping and singing at his windows. Looking at them and rejoicing, he suddenly began to ask their forgiveness: “God’s little birds, joyful birds, forgive me, too, because I have also sinned before you.” None of us could understand that at the time, but he began weeping from joy: “Yes,” he says, “there was such glory of God all around me: the little birds, trees, meadows, and sky; and only I lived in shame, only I defiled it all, and didn’t notice the beauty and glory.”

“You’re taking many sins upon yourself,” his mother would say, weeping.

“Mama, my darling, I’m weeping from joy, not from grief; I want to acknowledge my guilt before them; I can’t explain it to you, because I don’t know how to love them. If I have sinned before all of them, and if everyone forgives me, that will be paradise. Am I not in paradise now?”

There was much more that I don’t recall and didn’t write down. I remember how I went into his room once, alone, when no one else was there. It was evening; the sky was clear and the sun was setting; the whole room was illuminated by the slanting rays of the sun. He beckoned to me; I went up to him and he placed his two hands on my shoulders, looked into my face tenderly, lovingly; he didn’t say anything, merely stared at me for a minute or so. “Well,” he says, “now you go out and play; live for me!” Then I left and went outside.

I remembered this scene many times with tears, how he told me to live for him. He said many more wonderful, splendid words, although we didn’t understand them at the time. He died during the third week after Easter; he was fully aware, although he’d ceased talking; but he didn’t change until his very last hour: he looked joyful, his eyes were cheerful, he kept searching for us, smiling at us, beckoning. Even in town many people talked about his death. I was shaken by all of this at the time, but not too much, although I wept a great deal when they buried him. I was only a young child, but a lasting memory remained indelibly, and the warm feeling was hidden away in my heart. It was ready to rise up and respond when the time came. And so it happened.

(b) Of the Holy Scriptures in the Life of Father Zosima

Then I remained alone with Mama. Soon her good friends advised her, saying that she had only one son left, that she wasn’t poor, had some capital, and so, following the example of others, why not send her son to Petersburg; if he remained here, she might deprive him of a distinguished career. They urged my mother to send me to the Cadet Corps, so I could subsequently enter the Imperial Guard. My mother hesitated for a long time: how could she part with her last son? However, she decided to send me; after many tears, she thought she was acting for my happiness. She took me to Petersburg, and it turned out that I never saw her again after that; she died three years later, and had spent those three years trembling and grieving for both of us.

From my childhood home I carried nothing but precious memories, because there’s nothing more precious to a man than the first years spent in his parents’ house; this is almost always the case, even if there’s only a little bit of love and accord in the home. Precious memories may be kept even from the worst family, if your soul is capable of finding something precious. To my memories of home, I added memories of biblical history, which, as a child, I was very eager to read. At the time I had a certain book of biblical history, with splendid illustrations, under the title of One Hundred and Four Stories from the Old and New Testament, and I learned to read from it.[1] Even now the book is lying here on my shelf; I keep it as a precious relic. But even before I learned to read, I remember the first time I was moved by devotional feeling when only eight years old. My mother took me alone (I don’t recall where my brother was then) to the house of the Lord for a service on the Monday of Holy Week. The day was clear, and I recall today, as if I were seeing it now, how the incense rose from the censer and floated slowly upward into the cupola to the narrow window, mixing with God’s rays of sunlight that were streaming in from above, the smoke rising in waves and dissolving in them. I watched it all with tenderness and for the first time accepted with understanding in my soul the first seeds of God’s word. A youth came out to the center of the church carrying a large book, so large that it seemed he could hardly lift it; he placed it on the lectern, opened it, and began to read; suddenly for the first time I understood something, for the first time in my life I understood what was being read in the house of the Lord. There was a man in the land of Uz, perfect and upright, and he had a certain amount of wealth, so many camels, so many sheep and she-asses; his children feasted and he loved them very much and prayed for them:[2] perhaps they were sinning in their feasting. And the devil comes to God, together with the sons of God, and says that he has been walking to and fro on the earth and walking up and down on it. And God asks him, “Hast thou considered my servant Job?” And then God boasts to the devil, citing his great and holy servant. And the devil mocks God’s words, saying: “Give him to me and you will see that your servant will complain and curse your name.” And God turns over his beloved, righteous man to him, and the devil destroys his children, his livestock, and disperses his wealth, all very suddenly, like a thunderbolt from heaven, and Job tears his clothing, throws himself down onto the ground, and cries: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither; the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord today and forever!”

Fathers and teachers, forgive my tears now—for now my childhood rises up before me; I breathe now as I breathed then with the breast of an eight-year-old child, and I feel, as I did then, the astonishment, the confusion, and the joy. At the time my imagination was captivated by the camels, and by Satan, who spoke to God that way, and by God, who sent his servant to his ruin, and his servant Job, who cries, “Blessed be the name of the Lord, in spite of the fact that Thou art punishing me.” And then the soft and sweet singing in the church: “Let my prayer rise up before Thee,” and once again the incense from the priest’s censer, and the prostrations and prayers! Since then—even yesterday, I picked up that book—I can’t read that sacred tale without tears. There’s so much that’s great, mysterious, and unimaginable there! Afterward I heard the voices of the mockers and blasphemers, proud words: “How could the Lord give away His favorite among His saints to amuse the devil, take away his children, afflict him with illness and boils, so that he took a potsherd to scrub the pus from his wounds, and for what? Merely to boast before Satan: ‘That’s what my saint can suffer for my sake!’ ” But there’s something great about it, some mystery—the earth’s ephemeral countenance and eternal truth come into contact with each other. In the face of earthly truth an act of eternal truth is realized. Here the Creator, as in the early days of creation, ended each day with praise: “That which I have created is good.” He looks at Job and once again boasts of His creation. And Job, praising the Lord, serves not only Him, but his entire creation, for generations and generations, forever and ever, because that’s what he was foreordained to do. Oh, Lord, what a book it is and what lessons it contains! What a book the Holy Scriptures is, what a miracle, and what strength it gives mankind! As though a graven image of the world, of man, and of human character, and all of it has been named and explained forever. How many mysteries are revealed and solved: God elevates Job once again, gives him new riches, many years pass again, he has new children, different ones, and he loves them—oh, Lord: “How could he come to love these new children when his previous children were no more, when he was deprived of them? Remembering them, was it really possible to be as completely happy as he was before, with his new children, however dear they are to him?” But it is possible: the old grief of the great mystery of human life passes gradually into quiet, tender joy; instead of youthful, seething blood, there is now mild, serene old age; I bless the sunrise every day and my heart sings to it as it did in days gone by; but now I love the sunset even more, the long, slanting rays of the sun, and, with them, quiet, gentle, tender memories, dear images from my long and blessed life—and above it all is the truth of God, tenderly touching, reconciling, all-forgiving! My life is ending, I know that and I hear that, but I feel on every day left to me how my earthly life is coming into contact with a new, infinite, unknown, but imminent life, a premonition of which makes my soul tremble with ecstasy, my mind blaze, and my heart weep from joy . . .

Friends and teachers, I have heard it said more than once, and, of late, one hears it more often, that priests, most frequently those living in villages, complain tearfully and constantly of their poor wages and humiliating conditions; they openly state, even in print—I’ve read it myself—that they can no longer explain the Holy Scriptures to the people because they’re so poorly paid; and if Lutherans and heretics arrive and begin to lead the flock astray, let them do so, because they have so little income to live on. Oh, Lord! May God grant them more income if that is so important to them (for their complaint is justified), but I say that if someone is to blame for this, half the fault is our own! For it may be true that such a priest has no time; that he’s oppressed by work and demands; nevertheless, there is always time, some one hour a week, to remember God. And his work doesn’t continue all year. At least let him gather the children in his house once a week in the evening; the fathers will learn of it and they, too, will start to come. There’s no need to build a mansion for this; it can occur in his own simple hut. Don’t be afraid: they won’t spoil his hut. They will stay there for only an hour. Open this book and begin to read without fancy words, without arrogance, and without condescension, but tenderly and gently, rejoicing that you are reading to them, and that they’re listening and understanding you, who love those words; pause occasionally to explain some unfamiliar word to the simple folk, and don’t be afraid, they’ll understand everything; the Orthodox heart understands everything.

Read to them about Abraham and Sarah, about Isaac and Rebecca, and about how Jacob went to see Laban and struggled with the Lord in his dream and said, “How dreadful is this place!”[3]—and you will impress the devout mind of the common folk. Read to them, especially to the children, about how his brothers sold their own brother Joseph, a nice young man, into slavery; he was a dreamer and a great prophet; they told their father that a wild beast had devoured him, and they showed their father his bloody robe. Then read how afterward the brothers went to Egypt for grain, and Joseph, already a great ruler and unrecognized by them, tormented them, accused them, and kept his brother Benjamin behind, and all from love. “I love you, and loving you, I torment you.” Because all his life he constantly recalled how they had sold him to the merchants somewhere in the scorching desert near a well, and how he, wringing his hands, wept and implored his brothers not to sell him as a slave into a foreign land; and then, seeing them many years later, he came to love them again immensely, but taunted and tormented them, still loving them. At last he left them, unable to bear the suffering in his heart; he threw himself down on his bed and wept; then he wiped his face and went out with a shining, joyful face: “Brothers, I am Joseph, your brother!” Let him read further how happy the old man Jacob was when he learned that his sweet boy was still alive and had gone to Egypt, having abandoned his own country, and had died there in a foreign land, having uttered his great pronouncement that had been mysteriously hidden in his meek and timid heart all his life, that from his tribe, the tribe of Judah, will issue forth the great hope of the world, its peacemaker and savior![4]

Fathers and teachers, forgive me and do not be angry that I am babbling like a young child and telling you what you already know and what you can teach me a hundred times more skillfully and splendidly. I am speaking from ecstasy, and forgive my tears, because I so love this book! Let him also weep, a priest of God, let him see that the hearts of his listeners will tremble as a result. You need only a tiny little seed: toss it into the heart of a simple man, and it will not die; it will live in his soul and all his life it will hide there amid the darkness, in the stench of his sins, like a bright spot, like a great reminder. And it’s unnecessary, unnecessary to interpret and teach; he will understand it all simply. Do you think the simple folk will not understand? Try reading to them the touching and tender tale of the lovely Esther and the arrogant Vashti; or the marvelous tale of the prophet Jonah in the belly of the whale. And don’t forget Christ’s parables, especially from the Gospel of Luke (as I did), and then from the Acts of the Apostles, the conversion of Saul (you absolutely must read that!),[5] and finally, from The Lives of the Saints, at least the Life of Aleksey, the Man of God, and of the greatest of the great, the joyous martyr and seer of God, and Christ-bearer, mother Mary of Egypt[6]—and you will pierce his heart with these simple tales, only one hour a week, regardless of your small income, one hour a week. And you’ll see that our people are kind and grateful and will repay a hundred times over; remembering the priest’s kindness and his tender words, they will help in his fields voluntarily and in his house; they will show him even greater respect than before—and that will increase his income, too. The matter is so simple that one is sometimes afraid to say it, for others will laugh at you; meanwhile, how true it is! He who doesn’t believe in God doesn’t believe in God’s people either. He who believes in God’s people will behold His holiness, even though before he didn’t believe at all. Only the people and its future spiritual strength will convert our atheists, who have uprooted themselves from our native soil.

And what use are Christ’s words without an example? The people are lost without the word of God, because they thirst for His word and for everything that is beautiful. In my youth, a long time ago, almost forty years, I traveled throughout Holy Russia with Father Anfim, collecting money for our monastery; one time we spent the night near a large navigable river, on the shore with the fishermen; a handsome peasant lad, about eighteen, sat down with us; he was hastening to return home the next morning so he could tow a merchant’s barge along the bank. And I saw that he was looking straight ahead clearly and tenderly. The July night was bright, quiet, and warm; the river was wide and mist was rising from it, refreshing us; fish were splashing in the water and the birds were still; everything was calm, splendid; everything was praying to God. Neither of us could sleep, this lad and I; we began speaking about the beauties of God’s world and its great mystery. Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, golden bee, to an amazing extent they all know the paths they must follow; without possessing intellect, they bear witness to God’s mystery and fulfill it themselves. And I saw how the nice lad’s heart was touched. He told me that he loved the forest and its birds; he was a bird catcher; he recognized every bird’s song and knew how to lure every kind of bird; “I like nothing better than to be in the forest,” he says, “and everything is good.”

“Indeed,” I reply, “everything is good and majestic, because everything is true. Look,” I say, “at the horse, a great beast that’s so close to man, or the ox, nourishing and serving him, with lowered head and pensive look; observe their faces: such meekness, such attachment to men, who often beat them mercilessly; what forgiveness, what acceptance, and what beauty in their countenance. It’s even poignant to know they haven’t sinned at all, and that everything is without sin, except for man, and Christ was with them before He was with us.”

“Is Christ also with them?” asks the lad.

“How can it be any other way?” I reply. “For the Word is for all creation and all creatures; every little leaf is striving for the Word, singing God’s praise, weeping to Christ, unbeknownst to itself, accomplishing this by the mystery of its sinless life. There,” I say, “a terrible bear is wandering through the forest, dreadful and fierce, and in no way guilty.” And I told him how a bear came once upon a great saint who was living in a small cell in the forest to save his soul,[7] and the great saint took pity on him and met him without fear and offered him some bread. “Off you go,” he says to the bear. “Christ be with you!” And the fierce beast went away obediently and meekly, without doing him any harm. The youth was moved by the fact that the beast had gone away, and that Christ was also with him. “Ah,” he says, “how good this is, how all of God’s work is good and marvelous!” He sits there and becomes thoughtful, quietly and sweetly. I see that he understands. And he fell asleep next to me with his light and sinless sleep. God bless youth! And I prayed for him as I fell asleep. “Oh, Lord, send peace and light to Thy people!”

(c) Recollections of Father Zosima’s Boyhood and Youth While Still in the World. The Duel.

I spent eight years in the Cadet Corps in Petersburg and, with my new education, suppressed many childhood memories, although I didn’t forget a thing. In exchange, I adopted so many new habits and opinions that I was almost transformed into a brutal, cruel, and bizarre creature. I acquired a veneer of politeness and society manners, together with some knowledge of French; but we considered the soldiers who served with us in the corps as beasts, and I did, too. Perhaps I did most of all, because I was the most impressionable of all the comrades. When we graduated as officers we were prepared to shed our blood for any insults to the honor of the regiment, but almost none of us knew the first thing about real honor, and if anyone had known, I would have been the first to make fun of it. We were almost proud of our drunkenness, debauchery, and bravado. I won’t say that we were despicable; all these young people were good men, but they behaved despicably, and I was the worst of all. The point was that I’d acquired some capital and therefore had thrown myself into living for pleasure, with all my youthful aspirations, without restraint, full steam ahead. But here’s what’s surprising: at the time I was reading books, even with great pleasure; however, I hardly ever opened my Bible, although I never parted with it; I carried it with me everywhere I went; indeed, I guarded that book, not knowing myself “for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year.”[8]

After four years of this life I wound up at last in the little town of K., where our regiment had been stationed. Society there was diverse, large, jolly, hospitable, and wealthy; I was well received because I had a cheerful temperament; besides, I was reputed to have independent means, and that is very important in society. Then a circumstance occurred that was the beginning of it all. I became involved with a beautiful young woman, clever and worthy, with a bright, dignified character, the daughter of respected parents. They were substantial, possessing wealth, influence, and power; they received me politely and willingly. And it seemed that the young lady was favorably disposed to me—my heart was aflame with such a dream. Later I came to the realization that perhaps I didn’t love her at all with such intensity, and merely valued her intelligence and lofty character, which I couldn’t fail to do. Egoism, however, prevented me at the time from asking for her hand in marriage: it seemed difficult and frightening to have to part with the temptations of my free, depraved bachelor life at such a young age, in addition to which, I had independent means. I did drop hints as to my feelings, however. In any case, I delayed taking any decisive step for a short time. Then, all of a sudden, we were dispatched to another district for two months.

When I returned two months later, I suddenly found out that the young woman was already married to a wealthy neighboring landowner, a few years older than I was, but he was still young, with connections in the best society in the capital, which I lacked completely; he was a very nice man; in addition, he was educated, while I had no education whatsoever. I was so struck by this unexpected circumstance that even my mind grew clouded. Worst of all, as I learned later, was that this young landowner had been her fiancé for some time and I had met him several times in her house, but hadn’t noticed a thing, blinded by my own good qualities. That was what offended me most: how could it be that almost everyone knew, while only I had no idea whatsoever. Then I suddenly felt unbearable malice. With a flushed face I began to recall how often I’d been just about to declare my love for her, and how she hadn’t stopped me or warned me; therefore, I thought, she must have been laughing at me. Later, of course, I realized and recalled, that she hadn’t been laughing at me at all; rather, she herself had interrupted such conversations with humor, and initiated others in their place—but I was unable to see that and was burning with vengefulness. I recall with surprise that I found this vengefulness and rage extremely oppressive and repulsive, because I really had a very easy temperament, and I couldn’t remain angry with anyone for very long; therefore I had to provoke myself artificially, and in the end, I became hideous and absurd. I waited for a chance and once, in high society, I suddenly managed to insult my “rival,” on what was the most peripheral pretext; I made fun of his opinion about a very significant event of the time—one that had occurred in 1826[9]—and my remarks, people said, were witty and clever. Then I forced him to demand clarification and behaved so rudely that he accepted my challenge, in spite of the enormous difference between us, because I was younger, insignificant, and of lower rank. I learned afterward that he had accepted my challenge out of a feeling of jealousy: even before their marriage he had been somewhat jealous of me on his wife’s account, though she was still his fiancée; now he thought that if she were to find out that he’d been insulted by me and had failed to accept my challenge, she might begin to despise him and even stop loving him.

Soon I located a second, a comrade, an ensign from our regiment. At the time, although duels were severely punished, they were still in fashion among the officers; prejudices sometimes grow and flourish to such an extent. It was toward the end of June, and our meeting was set for the next day, at seven o’clock in the morning, just outside town—and then, indeed, something fateful happened to me. Returning home the evening before, in a hideous and vicious mood, I became furious with my orderly Afanasy and struck him twice across the face with all my might, and left him bleeding. He had only recently begun serving me; I’d had occasion to strike him before, but never with such bestial cruelty. Believe me, my dear ones: forty years have passed since that time, and I still remember that incident with shame and torment. I went to bed, slept for about three hours, woke up, and the day was dawning. I got up suddenly, not wanting to sleep anymore; I went to the window, opened it—it looked out on the garden—and I saw that the sun was rising; it was a warm, splendid day, and the birds had started to sing. What was it, I asked, that I felt in my heart, as if it were something vile and shameful? Was it because I was going out to shed someone’s blood? No, I thought, it wasn’t that. Was it because I was afraid of death, afraid to be killed? No, it wasn’t that at all, not even that. . . . And all of a sudden I guessed what it was about: it was that the evening before I had stuck Afanasy! It all arose again in my mind, as if it were being repeated exactly: he is standing before me, and I am striking him on the face with all my might, while he’s holding his arms at his sides, his head high, his eyes fixed on me as though on parade, shuddering with each blow, not even daring to raise his arms to shield his face—and this is what man has been reduced to, that he beats another! What a crime! It was as if a sharp needle had pierced my soul. I’m standing there like a madman: the sun was shining, the little leaves were rejoicing, sparkling, and the birds, the little birds, were singing God’s praises. . . . I covered my face with both hands, threw myself down on my bed, and burst into tears. And then I recalled my brother, Markel, and the words he had uttered to the servants before dying: “My dear ones, why are you serving me? Why do you love me? Am I worthy of being served?” “Well, am I worthy?” flashed through my mind suddenly. After all, what am I worth that another man, one just like me, made in the image and likeness of God, should serve me? That was the first time in my life such a question arose in my mind. “Mother, dearest, my own blood, indeed, everyone is responsible for all; but people don’t know this; if they did—we would be living in paradise immediately!” “Oh, Lord, can that also be untrue?” I thought, weeping. “Am I, perhaps, really more responsible than others and the worst of all people on earth?” And all of a sudden the truth dawned on me in all its full radiance: what was I going out to do? I was going out to kill a good, clever, noble, innocent man, and in depriving his wife of happiness forever, I’d be tormenting and killing her, too. I was lying on my bed, my face buried in my pillow, and didn’t notice at all how time was passing.

Suddenly my comrade, the ensign, arrived with the pistols. “Ah,” he said, “it’s good that you’re already up. It’s time: let’s go.” I rushed about, unsure of what to do; we left, however, to get into the carriage. “Wait here for a bit,” I said to him. “I forgot my wallet; I’ll be right back.” I ran back into my apartment, into Afanasy’s little room. “Afanasy,” I said, “I struck you twice yesterday. Forgive me.” He shuddered as if he was scared; the way he looked—I could see that it was not enough; so all of a sudden, just as I was, in my uniform and epaulettes, I dropped to his feet and touched my head to the floor. “Forgive me!” I said. Then he was completely overwhelmed. “Your honor, sir, what are you doing? Am I really worth it?” And then he suddenly began crying, just as I had before; he covered his face with his hands, turned toward the window, and trembled with tears.

As for me, I ran out to my comrade, jumped into the carriage, and shouted, “Let’s go. Have you ever seen a victor? Now there’s one before you!” I felt ecstatic; I laughed, talked the whole way, and don’t even recall what I said. He looked at me and said, “Well, brother, you’re quite a fellow, I see, keeping up the honor of the uniform.”

When we arrived at the appointed place, they were already there waiting. We were placed twelve paces apart; he had the first shot—I stood there in front of him, cheerful, looking straight at him, not batting an eye, regarding him fondly, knowing just what I would do. He fired, and the bullet just grazed my cheek and ear. “Thank God,” I cried, “no one’s been killed.” I grabbed my pistol, turned around, flung it deep into the woods, and shouted, “Good riddance to you!”

I turned back to my opponent. “Kind sir,” I said, “forgive me, a foolish young man, for having given you offense and forcing you to shoot at me. I’m a dozen times worse than you, even more, perhaps. Tell that to the person whom you honor more than anyone else on earth.”

Right after I said this, all three of them started shouting at me. “For pity’s sake,” said my opponent, even growing angry, “if you didn’t want to fight, why did you trouble me?”

“Yesterday, I was still foolish, but today I’ve become smarter,” I replied merrily.

“I believe what you said about yesterday,” he said, “but it’s difficult for me to agree with your opinion about today.”

“Bravo,” I cried to him, clapping my hands. “I agree with you, too. I deserved that!”

“Do you, kind sir, intend to fire your pistol, or not?”

“I do not,” I replied, “and you, if you like, may fire a second time, but it would be better if you didn’t shoot.”

The seconds, especially mine, started shouting: “How can you disgrace our regiment; you’re standing at the firing line and asking his forgiveness; if I had only known!”

I stood before all of them, now not laughing. “Gentlemen,” I said, “is it really so astonishing to find a man nowadays who has repented of his foolishness and admits his offense publicly?”

“But not on the firing line,” cried my second once again.

“That’s just the point,” I replied. “That’s what’s so astonishing; I should have admitted my fault as soon as I got here, even before his shot, and not led him into great and mortal sin; but we have made our life so monstrous,” I said, “that to do so would have been almost impossible, because only after I’d survived his shot at twelve paces could my words mean anything; if I had done it before, as soon as we’d arrived here, they’d simply have said: ‘Coward, he was afraid of the pistol; there’s no need to listen to him.’

“Gentlemen,” I cried suddenly from the bottom of my heart. “Look at God’s gifts all around you: the clear sky, the pure air, the tender grass, the little birds, at magnificent and blameless nature, while only we are godless and foolish; we don’t understand that life is paradise, because all we have to do is to understand that, and life will be revealed in all its beauty; we will embrace each other and weep . . .” I wanted to go on, but I couldn’t; I was out of breath, sweetly, and youthfully, and there was such happiness in my heart that I’d never felt before.

“All this is reasonable and devout,” my opponent said to me. “And in any case, you are a real original.”

“Go ahead and laugh,” I said to him, also with a laugh, “but later you’ll come to praise me.”

“I’m prepared to praise you even now,” he said, “and extend my hand to you, if you will, because you seem to be genuinely sincere.”

“No,” I said, “that’s not necessary now; but later, when I’ve become more worthy and more deserving of your respect, then you can extend your hand and you’ll do well to do so.”

We returned home; my second was reprimanding me all along the way, while I was trying to kiss him. All my comrades heard immediately about the incident; they gathered to heap abuse on me that same day: “He’s disgraced the uniform; he should resign his commission.”

There were also some who defended me. “He stood up to the shot,” they said.

“Yes, but he was afraid to face more shots and then asked for forgiveness at the firing line.”

“But if he was afraid of more shots,” argued the defenders, “he would have fired his own pistol before asking forgiveness; he threw his loaded gun into the woods. No, this is something else, something original.”

I listened and enjoyed looking at them. “My dearest friends and comrades,” I said. “Don’t worry about my resigning my commission; I’ve already done so; this morning I went to the office and resigned; when I receive my discharge, I shall immediately enter a monastery, which is why I’ve resigned my commission.”

As soon as I said that, they all burst out laughing. “Well, you should have said that from the beginning; now it’s all clear; we can’t condemn a monk,” they said, unable to stop laughing; they were laughing not mockingly, but affectionately, merrily; suddenly they all loved me, even those who had been the most severe in their condemnation. Then, all during the next month, until the discharge arrived, they made a big fuss over me. “Ah, you monk,” they said. And they all said nice things to me, trying hard to dissuade me, even feeling sorry for me: “What are you doing to yourself?” “No,” they said, “he’s brave; he stood up to the shot and wouldn’t fire his own pistol, but he had a dream the night before that he should become a monk, that’s what happened.”

Almost the same happened in town society. Previously they’d hardly taken any notice of me, but had received me cordially; now, all of a sudden, vying with one another, they heard the news and invited me to their homes: they were all laughing at me, but coming to love me. I’ll mention here that although everyone was talking openly about our duel, the authorities covered it up it because my opponent was a close relative of our general’s, and since no blood had been shed—plus, after all, I’d requested a discharge—they turned it all into a big joke. Then I began to speak up, openly and fearlessly, in spite of their laughter, because the laughter wasn’t malicious, but good-natured. All these conversations took place primarily in the presence of ladies, in the evenings; the women, in particular, liked listening to it, and they made the men listen, too.

“How can I possibly be responsible for all?” they asked, laughing in my face. “Can I, for example, really be responsible for you?”

“Oh,” I replied, “how can you hope to understand that when the whole world has gone in a different direction, and when we consider downright lies as truth, and demand such lies from others? Now, for once in my life, I’ve acted sincerely, and I’ve become like a holy fool to all of you: although you’ve come to love me,” I said, “you still laugh at me.”

“How can we not love someone like you?” said my hostess with a laugh; there was a crowd of people in the room. Suddenly, I looked and there stood the young woman over whom the duel had been fought, and whom I had recently intended to make my wife. I hadn’t seen her enter the room. She rose, came over to me, and held out her hand.

“Allow me,” she said, “to tell you that I’m the first person not to laugh at you; on the contrary, I thank you with tears in my eyes and express my deep respect for your action.”

Then her husband also came up to me, and soon everyone crowded around me and almost kissed me. I felt so happy, but then I suddenly noticed, in particular, a certain gentleman, no longer young, who also came up to me, whom I knew only by name, but with whom I’d never become acquainted, and with whom, up until that evening, I’d never exchanged a word.

(d) The Mysterious Visitor

That gentleman had been an official in our town for a long time; he occupied an important position and was widely respected; he was wealthy and known for his philanthropy; he donated considerable sums to the poorhouse and the orphanage; in addition, he performed many charitable deeds in secret, without publicity; this became known only after his death. He was around fifty years old, had an almost austere appearance, and was not very talkative. He’d been married no more than ten years to a younger woman and had three little children. The next evening I was sitting at home when suddenly my door opened and this very gentleman came in.

I must mention that at that time I was no longer living in my previous apartment; as soon as I’d resigned my commission, I’d moved to another place, one rented from an elderly woman, an official’s widow. The landlady’s servant waited on me; I’d transferred to my new quarters solely because, after I’d returned from the duel, I had sent Afanasy back to the regiment, being ashamed to look him in the eye following my previous behavior—so inclined is an unprepared man of the world to be ashamed of even his most righteous action.

“I’ve been listening to you with great interest for several days in various settings,” said the gentleman who’d entered my room, “and I finally wished to make your acquaintance and to talk with you in more detail. Can you, kind sir, do me that great favor?”

“I can,” I said, “with the greatest pleasure and would consider it a high honor.” As I spoke to him, I was almost frightened, since he’d made such a strong impression on me right away. Although other people had listened to me and were curious, no one had ever approached me with such a serious, stern, resolute expression. And this man had come right into my apartment. He sat down.

“I see you have a very strong character,” he continued, “because you weren’t afraid to serve the truth in this affair in which you risked incurring everyone’s contempt.”

“You may be exaggerating,” I said to him.

“No, I’m not exaggerating,” he replied. “Believe me, it’s much more difficult to carry out such an action than you think. To tell the truth,” he continued, “I was most impressed by what you did, and that’s why I’ve come to see you. Describe for me, if you, perhaps, don’t find such curiosity indecent, exactly what you were feeling at that moment at the duel when you decided to ask his forgiveness, if you can only recall. Don’t regard my question as frivolous; on the contrary, in posing such a question, I have a secret aim of my own, which I’ll probably disclose to you later, if it’s God’s will that we become better acquainted.”

All the while he was saying this, I was looking directly at his face, and I suddenly felt complete trust in him; in addition, I felt an unusually great curiosity on my part, because I sensed that he harbored some particular secret in his soul.

“You want to know what I was feeling when I asked forgiveness of my opponent,” I replied, “but it’d be better if I told you the entire story from the beginning, that part which I haven’t told other people yet.” And I recounted everything that had transpired between me and Afanasy, how I’d bowed down to the ground before him. “From this you can conclude,” I finished, “that at the time of the duel I felt better, since I’d begun to act correctly back home, and once I’d set out on this path, then the rest wasn’t at all difficult, but even joyful and positive.”

He heard me out and regarded me in a pleasant way. “All this,” he said, “is extremely interesting, and I’ll come back to see you again and again.”

He began coming to visit me almost every evening. We would’ve become very good friends, if only he’d talked more about himself. But he said almost nothing about himself and merely asked questions about me. In spite of that, I came to like him very much and trusted him with all my heart, because I thought: what need have I to know his secret? Even without that I can see that he’s a righteous man. Moreover, he’s such a serious person, and older than I am, yet he visits me, just a youngster, and isn’t fastidious. And I learned a great deal from him that was useful, because he was a man of lofty intellect.

“I’ve long been thinking,” he said suddenly, “that life is paradise.” He suddenly added, “That’s all I think about.” He looked at me and smiled. “I’m more convinced of that than you are; you’ll find out why later.”

I listened to him and thought to myself, “He probably wants to reveal something to me.”

“Paradise,” he said, “is hidden within each one of us; even now it’s concealed within me, and if I suddenly desired it, it would really begin tomorrow and last for the rest of my life.” I saw that he was speaking with tender emotion and regarding me mysteriously, as if interrogating me. “And,” he continued, “you were absolutely correct when you stated that we’re all responsible for everyone and for everything, besides our own sins, and it’s astonishing how you were suddenly able to grasp this idea in all its fullness. Indeed, it’s true that when people come to understand this, the heavenly kingdom will become not merely a dream, but a reality.”

“Just when,” I exclaimed with bitterness, “will this come to pass? Will it ever come to pass? Isn’t it merely a dream of ours?”

“What?” he asked. “You don’t believe it? You preach it, yet you yourself don’t believe it? You should know that this dream, as you call it, will come to pass indeed; you must believe that, but not now, because every process has its own law. This is a spiritual, psychological matter. In order to remake the world, it’s essential for men to proceed along a different psychological path. Until they really become each man’s brother, true brotherhood will not occur. Never, prompted by science or self-interest, never will people be able to share their property and privileges without offending each other. Each man will think that his own share is too small, and they will grumble, envy, and destroy one another. You ask when this will come to pass. It will, but first we have to experience a period of human isolation.”

“What sort of isolation?” I asked him.

“The kind that prevails everywhere now, especially in our age, but that still hasn’t ended or its time has not yet come. Because now each man tries to isolate himself more, wishing to experience life to the fullest; meanwhile, all his efforts result in achieving not the fullness of life, but complete suicide, because instead of fullness, he falls into total self-isolation. Because in our age all men have split up into units, each retreating into his own burrow, each one separating himself from others; he hides, conceals what he possesses, and ends up alienating himself from people and alienating others. He accumulates wealth in isolation and thinks: I’m so strong now and so secure; but the fool doesn’t realize that the more he acquires, the more he sinks into suicidal impotence. Because he has become accustomed to relying on himself alone, and cutting himself off from the whole, he’s taught his soul not to believe in help from others, in people, or in mankind; he merely trembles at the thought that he might lose his wealth and acquired privileges. Everywhere now human intellect is, ironically, beginning to ignore the fact that a person’s genuine security lies not in his individual, solitary efforts, but in the common solidarity of the people. This terrible individualism absolutely must end, and men will understand at once that they have separated themselves from one another unnaturally. It will be the spirit of the time, and they will be surprised that for so long they sat in darkness, without seeing the light. Then the sign of the Son of man in heaven will appear. . . .[10] But until then, one must watch over the sign, and from time to time, even if he does it alone, one must suddenly set an example and lead one’s soul out of solitude, and inspire oneself to commit some sort of heroic deed of brotherly love, even though it seems as if one’s acting like a holy fool. . . . This is so that the great idea will not perish.”

This is how our evenings, one after another, were spent, in such inspired and ecstatic conversation. I even abandoned society and began to appear as a guest less often; besides, my popularity had begun to wane. I say this not in condemnation, because people continued to love me and gladly relate to me; but one must admit that fashion in society is really a very powerful force. Finally I began to regard this mysterious visitor of mine with admiration, because, besides the intellectual enjoyment, I began to sense that he was nourishing some sort of plan, and might be preparing to undertake some great feat. Perhaps he liked the fact that I wasn’t curious about his secret, and didn’t interrogate him, either openly or by any allusions to it. Finally I noticed that he himself somehow burned with a desire to confide something in me. At least that began to be very obvious about a month after he started visiting me.

“Do you know,” he asked me once, “that in town people are very curious and surprised that I come to see you so often; but let them wonder, because soon it will all become clear.” Sometimes he was suddenly overcome by extreme agitation, and on such occasions, he would get up and leave. Sometimes he’d fix a penetrating gaze on me—and I’d think, “He’ll say something soon.” But he would suddenly interrupt himself and begin talking about something familiar and ordinary. He also began complaining of frequent headaches. Then one time, completely unexpectedly, after he’d spoken for a long time in inspired words, I saw that he’d suddenly grown pale; his face was completely distorted, and he began staring straight at me.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Are you feeling ill?”

He’d been complaining of a headache.

“I . . . do you know . . . I . . . killed someone.”

He said this, smiled, and turned white as a sheet. “What is he smiling for?” This thought flashed through my mind, before I could think of anything. I myself grew pale.

“What are you saying?” I cried.

“You see,” he answered me with a pale grin, “how much it cost me to say the first word. Now that I’ve said it, it seems that I’m on the right path. I’ll proceed.”

For a long time I didn’t believe him, and I certainly didn’t believe him immediately, but came to believe him only after he’d visited me three times and related the tale to me in great detail. I thought him insane, but ended up believing him, obviously, with great sadness and bewilderment. He’d committed a great and terrible crime: fourteen years before, he’d killed a landowner’s young, beautiful widow; she’d owned her own home in our town and stayed there when she visited. Having conceived a great love for her, he confessed his love to her, and tried to persuade her to marry him. But she’d given her heart away to another, an aristocratic high-ranking man who was on a military campaign, and who was expected to return soon. She rejected his proposal and asked him to cease his visits. After he’d stopped visiting her, since he knew the layout of her house, he stole into the house one night from the garden and made his way along the roof with great audacity, risking discovery. But, as very often happens, those crimes committed with unusual audacity are likely to succeed. After entering the attic of the house through a dormer, he climbed down a ladder from the attic into the living space, knowing that the door at the bottom of the ladder was not always locked, due to the servants’ carelessness. He hoped to find it open, and this time it was. He made his way through the darkness to her bedroom, in which a votive lamp was lit. As if intentionally, both her maids had gone off without asking permission to a name-day party at the neighbor’s house just down the street. The remaining servants, both men and women, were asleep in the servants’ quarters and in the kitchen, on the lower floor. At the sight of the sleeping woman his passion was rekindled, but then vengeful, jealous malice seized hold of his heart; beside himself, like a drunk, he approached her and stabbed her right through the heart; she didn’t even scream. With diabolical, criminal cunning, he arranged it so that suspicion fell on her servants: he didn’t disdain from taking her purse, opening her wardrobe with the keys that were sticking out from under her pillow, and taking several things from it, just as an ignorant servant would have done—that is, he left the valuable papers, but took only money and several larger gold items, but left smaller items that were worth ten times as much. He also took some things as remembrances, but more about that later. After having committed this terrible deed, he left the same way he’d entered.

The next day, when the alarm was raised, and afterward, never in his whole life did it ever occur to anyone to suspect him of being the real culprit! No one even knew about his love, because he had a reserved and taciturn character, and he lacked a friend to whom he’d have opened his heart. People considered him simply a friend of the deceased, and not even that close, because in the last two weeks he hadn’t visited her. Suspicion fell on a servant named Pyotr; all of the circumstances came together to confirm these suspicions, because the servant knew, and the deceased hadn’t concealed, the fact that she’d intended to send him off to the army, as part of her legal obligation, since he was unattached, and besides, he’d behaved badly. When he was drunk in the tavern, he’d been heard angrily threatening to kill her. Two days before her death he’d run off; he was living somewhere in an undisclosed location. One day after the murder they found him, just as he was leaving town; he was dead drunk, with a knife in his pocket, his right hand stained with blood for some reason. He swore that the blood had come from his own nose, but people didn’t believe him. The maids confessed that they’d gone to a name-day party and had left the door to the staircase unlocked until their return. And there were many other circumstances that threw suspicion on the innocent servant, and he was detained. They arrested him and tried him, but as it happened, a week later he fell ill with a fever and died in the hospital without ever regaining consciousness. That was the end of the affair, left to the will of God, and everyone—judges, authorities, and all of society—remained convinced that no one other than the departed servant had committed the crime. After that, the real punishment began.

The mysterious visitor, now my friend, informed me that at first he was not tormented by pangs of conscience. He was tormented, but not by that; it was merely with regret that he’d killed the woman he loved, that she was no longer alive, that, having killed her, he’d killed his own love, while the flame of passion still lived in his blood. But he didn’t think at all about the shedding of innocent blood or the murder of a human being. The idea that his victim might have become another man’s wife seemed impossible to him; therefore, his conscience was convinced for a long time that he couldn’t have acted in any other way. At first he was somewhat troubled by the arrest of the servant, but the rapid illness followed by his death comforted him, because the man had died (or so he reasoned at the time) not as a result of the arrest or the fright, but from the sudden onset of illness, contracted during his days of flight when he, dead drunk, lay on the damp ground for the entire night. The stolen items and the money didn’t trouble him much (as he reasoned), because the theft had not been committed for profit, but so as to cast suspicion on another person. The sum was insignificant, and soon he donated the entire amount, plus even considerably more, to a poorhouse that had been established in our town. He had done this intentionally, to soothe his conscience as a result of the theft; and it’s noteworthy that for some time, even a long time, he really did feel at peace—he himself told me that. He was quite involved then with intense governmental activity; he volunteered for an exacting and difficult assignment, which kept him busy for two years; being of strong character, he almost forgot about what had transpired; when he did remember, he tried not to think about it at all. He also became involved with philanthropy; he established and contributed to many institutions in our town; he also distinguished himself in the two capitals, and was elected as a member of local philanthropic societies in both Moscow and Petersburg.

At last, however, he began reflecting and feeling tormented, more than he could bear. Then he came to like a lovely, intelligent young woman, whom he soon married, dreaming that his marriage might banish his lonely anguish, and that having embarked on a new life, and now zealously fulfilling his obligations to his wife and children, he would cast off his old memories once and for all. But the exact opposite of his expectations occurred. Even during the first month of married life he was troubled by a constant thought: “My wife loves me, but what if she knew?” When she became pregnant with their first child and told him the news, he was suddenly confused: “I’m giving life, but I’ve taken a life.” His children were born. “How do I dare love them, teach them, raise them? How will I tell them about virtue? I have shed blood.” His children were splendid, and he longed to caress them: “I can’t look at their innocent, bright faces: I’m not worthy.”

At last he came to be bitterly and menacingly haunted by the blood of his murdered victim, by the young life he’d destroyed, by how her blood cried out for vengeance. He began being tormented by horrible dreams. But, having a hard heart, he tolerated his pain for a long time: “I will expiate everything by my terrible secret suffering.” But this hope of his was to no avail: the longer he lived, the stronger his suffering became. People in society began to respect him for his philanthropic activity, though they were still afraid of his stern and gloomy character. But the more he was respected, the more intolerable it became for him. He confessed to me that he even thought about killing himself. Instead of that, he began to imagine a different sort of dream—one that he’d considered impossible and absurd at first, but that latched onto his heart like a leech, and that he was unable to pull off. This is what he dreamed: he would rise up, go before the people, and declare to everyone that he’d committed murder. For about three years he nursed this dream; it appeared to him in various forms. At last he came to believe with his entire heart that if he confessed his crime, he would undoubtedly heal his soul and be at peace forever. But, once having come to this conclusion, he was terrified. How could he carry it out? Suddenly there occurred the incident of my duel. “Looking at you, I resolved on a course of action.”

I looked at him. “Is it possible,” I cried, clasping my hands, “that such a small event could give birth to such a decision?”

“My determination has been growing for the last three years,” he replied. “Your account merely provided the final impetus. Looking at you, I reproached myself and started to envy you,” he stated, even with some gravity.

“People won’t believe you,” I remarked. “Fourteen years have passed.”

“I have proof, convincing proof. I’ll present it.”

I started crying and gave him a kiss.

“Tell me one thing, just one!” he said to me (as if everything now depended on me). “My wife, my children! My wife may die from grief, and although my children will not lose their noble status or my estate, they will become a convict’s children, forever. And what a memory, what a memory of me I will bequeath to their hearts!”

I was silent.

“And to have to part with them, to leave them forever? Forever and ever!”

I sat there and whispered a silent prayer. At last I stood up; I was frightened.

“So, what do you say?” he asked, looking at me.

“Go out,” I said, “and proclaim it to the people. Everything will pass; only the truth will remain. When your children grow up, they will understand how much nobility there was in your great resolution.”

He left me then as if he’d really made the decision. For the next two weeks he came to visit me every evening, still preparing himself, unable to make the decision final. He tormented my heart. One day he’d come feeling determined and would say with tender emotion:

“I know that paradise will begin for me as soon as I’ve confessed. I’ve been in hell for the last fourteen years. I want to suffer. I’ll accept my suffering and begin to live. You can get by with lies, but there’s no going back. Now not only can’t I love my neighbor, but I dare not even love my children. Oh, Lord, in the end my children will understand what this suffering has cost me, and not condemn me! God is not in strength, but in truth.”

“Everyone will understand your heroic feat,” I said to him, “if not immediately, then they will subsequently, because you’ve served the truth, not the earthly truth, but a higher truth.”

He’d leave feeling consoled; but then he’d suddenly come again the next day, all pale and spiteful, and would say sarcastically:

“Every day I come to see you, and you regard me with such curiosity. ‘Once again,’ you seem to say, ‘he hasn’t confessed?’ Wait a bit; don’t despise me. It’s not as easy as you think. Perhaps I won’t confess at all. You won’t go and inform on me, will you?”

Not only was I too afraid to look at him with unwise curiosity, but I was afraid to look at him at all. I was tormented to the point of illness, and my soul was full of tears. I’d even begun losing sleep.

“I’ve just come from my wife,” he continued. “Do you know what it means to have a wife? As I was leaving, my little children shouted, ‘Good-bye, Papa, come back soon to read The Children’s Reader with us.’ No, you don’t understand! No one grows wiser from another man’s woe.”

His eyes were sparkling, his lips were twitching. All of a sudden he banged his first on the table so hard that the items on it jumped—such a gentle man, he’d never done something like that.

“But do I have to?” he cried. “Is it really necessary? No one was condemned, no one was exiled in my place; the servant died from illness. And I’ve been punished with torments for the blood I’ve shed. They won’t believe me at all, won’t believe any of my evidence. Do I have to confess? Is it really necessary? I’m prepared to suffer for the rest of my life for the blood I shed, just so I can spare my wife and children. Is it fair to destroy them along with me? Aren’t we making a mistake? Where is the truth? And will people recognize this truth? Will they appreciate it? Respect it?”

“Good Lord!” I thought to myself. “He’s thinking about people’s respect at a time like this!” I experienced so much pity for him then that I felt I’d even share his lot, if it would’ve comforted him. I saw that he was in a frenzy. I was horrified, seeing not only with my mind, but also with my heart, what such determination was costing him.

“Decide my fate!” he cried again.

“Go and confess,” I whispered to him. My voice was failing me, but I whispered decisively. I picked up the Gospel from the table, a Russian translation, and showed him the Gospel of Saint John, chapter 12, verse 24:

Verily, verily, I say until you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

I had read that verse just before he’d arrived.

He read it.

“It’s true,” he said with a bitter grin. “It’s terrible,” he added after a pause, “what you find in these books. It’s easy to shove it under someone’s nose. But who wrote them? Was it really human beings?”

“The Holy Spirit wrote them,” I said.

“That’s easy for you to say,” he said, grinning once again, but now almost with hatred. I picked up the book again, turned to another page, and showed it to him: Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 31:

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

He read it and tossed the book aside. He was even trembling.

“You’ve chosen a terrible verse,” he said. “No doubt about it.” He stood up from his chair. “Well,” he said, “good-bye. I may never come again. . . . We’ll see each other in paradise. So I’ve been ‘in the hands of the living God’ for the last fourteen years—that’s how those fourteen years should be described. Tomorrow I’ll ask those hands to release me . . .”

I was about to embrace and kiss him, but dared not—his face was so distorted and his look so severe. He left. “Good Lord,” I thought. “Where is he going?” I threw myself down on my knees before the icon and wept over him to the most holy Mother of God, our swift intercessor and defender. Half an hour passed since I had begun praying in tears; it was already late at night, around midnight. All of a sudden I looked up, the door opened, and in he came once again. I was astonished.

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“I,” he said, “seem to have forgotten something . . . my handkerchief, I think. . . . But even if I didn’t forget anything, let me sit down for a while . . .”

He sat down on a chair. I stood in front of him. “You sit, too,” he said. I sat down. We sat there for about two minutes; he was glaring at me and grinned suddenly; I recall this well; then he stood up, embraced me warmly, and kissed me.

“Remember,” he said, “that I came back to see you a second time.[11] Do you hear? Remember this!”

It was the first time he had used the informal address. And he left. “Tomorrow,” I thought.

That’s what happened. I didn’t know that evening that the next day would be his birthday. The last few days I’d gone nowhere and, therefore, couldn’t hear news from anyone. Each year on that day he hosted a large gathering; the whole town would come out. And they did then. And so, after a sumptuous feast, he proceeded to the middle of the room with a piece of paper in his hands—a formal declaration to the authorities. Since the authorities were present, he read the declaration aloud to all those gathered; it contained a complete description, with all its details, of his crime. “As an outcast, I cast myself out. God has visited me,” the paper concluded. “I want to suffer.”

Then he brought out all the evidence he’d been saving for fourteen years and placed it on the table: the deceased’s gold items that he’d stolen, thinking he’d divert suspicion from himself; her pendant and cross, taken from around her neck—with a portrait of her betrothed; her notebook. And finally, two letters: one from her fiancé, with an announcement of his impending arrival, the other her unfinished reply, which she’d begun but left unfinished, on the table, so that she could send it the next day. He’d grabbed both letters—what for? Why had he kept them for fourteen years, instead of destroying all the clues?

This is what happened: everyone was astonished and horrified; no one wanted to believe him, although they’d all listened to him with tremendous interest, but as if he were a madman. Several days later it was decided and agreed in all the houses in town that the unfortunate man was insane. The legal authorities and the court couldn’t refuse to investigate, but soon they dropped the case: although the items presented and the letters caused them to reflect, it was decided that even if these documents turned out to be genuine, no charge could be brought based on them alone. As for the items, he could have received them from her as a friend, or she might have asked him to look after them for her. I heard afterward that the authenticity of the items was substantiated by the testimony of friends and relatives of the deceased and there was no doubt about them. But nothing was fated to come of it after all.

Some five days later everyone learned that the sufferer had fallen ill and his life was in danger. I can’t say from what illness he was suffering; they said it was a problem with his heart, but it soon became known that the testimony of the doctors and his wife’s insistence indicated mental illness; they concluded that he was indeed insane. I revealed nothing, even when people came to question me, but when I expressed a wish to visit him, I was prevented from doing so, especially by his wife. “It’s you,” she said to me, “who tormented him; he was gloomy before, but during the last year everyone had noticed unusual agitation and strange actions, and now you’ve destroyed him; it’s you who preached to him; he spent the last month with you.” And sure enough, not only his wife but all the townspeople fell upon me with accusations: “It’s all your fault,” they said. I was silent and feeling glad in my soul, because I undoubtedly saw God’s mercy to a man who’d turned against himself and punished himself. I couldn’t accept that he was insane. They finally allowed me in to see him; he himself had insisted on wanting to say good-bye to me. I entered and saw at once that not only his days, but even his hours were numbered. He was weak, his face was sallow, and his hands were trembling; he was gasping for breath, but his face was joyful and filled with tender emotion.

“It is done!” he said to me. “I’ve been longing to see you for a long time. Why didn’t you come?”

I didn’t reveal to him that they wouldn’t admit me to see him.

“God has taken pity on me and is summoning me to Him. I know that I’m dying, but for the first time I feel joy and peace after so many years. As soon as I had done what had to be done, I immediately felt paradise in my soul. Now I dare love and kiss my children. No one believes me, and no one did, neither my wife nor the judges; and my children will never believe me either. I see in this God’s mercy for my children. I’ll die and my name will be unsullied for them. And now I sense the presence of God and my heart rejoices as if I were in paradise. . . . I have fulfilled my duty . . .”

He couldn’t speak, was gasping for breath, squeezed my hand warmly, and stared at me acutely. We didn’t talk for long; his wife kept looking in on us. But he managed to whisper to me:

“Do you remember when I came to see you again at midnight? I told you to remember that moment well. Do you know why I came back? I came back to kill you!”

I shuddered.

“I left you then and walked out into the darkness, wandered through the streets, and struggled with myself. All of a sudden I began to hate you so much that my heart could scarcely stand it. ‘Now,’ I thought, ‘he’s all that binds me; he’s my judge. I can’t refuse my punishment tomorrow, because he knows everything.’ It wasn’t that I was afraid that you’d inform on me (there was no thought of that), but I thought: ‘How will I look at him if I don’t confess?’ And although you might be at the other end of the world, but still alive, the idea that you were alive, knew everything, and judged me was intolerable. I hated you, as if you were the reason for everything and were to blame for everything. When I went back to see you, I recall that a dagger was lying on the table. I sat down and asked you to sit, and I thought about it for a whole minute. If I killed you, then I’d have been destroyed by that murder, even if I hadn’t confessed the previous crime. But I didn’t think about that at all and didn’t want to think about it at that moment. I merely hated you and wanted to take my revenge on you for everything with all my might. But the Lord defeated the devil in my heart. Know, however, that you’ve never been closer to death.”

A week later, he died. The entire town accompanied his coffin to the grave. The archpriest delivered a heartfelt eulogy. Everyone lamented the terrible illness that had cut short his days. But the whole town rose up against me after he was buried, and even stopped receiving me in their houses. True, several of them, very few at first, but then more and more, began to believe in the truth of his tale and began visiting me and inquiring with great interest and joy: because man loves to hear about the downfall and disgrace of a righteous man. But I kept my silence and soon afterward moved out of town altogether; five months later the Lord God saw fit to set me on a secure and blessed path, and I blessed the invisible finger that pointed the way so clearly. And to this day, every day I remember Mikhail, the long-suffering servant of God, in my prayers.

1 A Russian translation of Johannes Hübner’s Hundertundvier heilige Geschichten aus dem Alten und Neuen Testament (1714).

2 Cf. Job 1:1–22.

3 Genesis 28:17. And cf. Genesis 32:24.

4 Cf. Genesis 49:10.

5 Cf. Acts 13:9–41.

6 An Orthodox saint, a former prostitute who converted in Jerusalem.

7 This episode comes from the life of Sergius of Radonezh (1314–1392), a spiritual leader and monastic reformer of medieval Russia.

8 Revelation 9:15.

9 Most likely a reference to the Decembrist Rebellion of December 14, 1825, and its aftermath.

10 Matthew 24:30.

11 The mysterious stranger switches from the formal “you” (vy) to the informal “you” (ty) at this crucial moment.

III

FROM FATHER ZOSIMA’S CONVERSATIONS AND TEACHINGS

(e) The Russian Monk and His Possible Significance

Fathers and teachers, what is a monk? In the enlightened world this word is uttered these days with some mockery, and among some people, it is even a term of abuse. The more time passes, the more this is the case. It is true, oh, too true, that among monks there are also many parasites, lechers, voluptuaries, and insolent vagrants. Educated people point this out. “You are,” they say, “sluggards and worthless members of society; you live by the work of other people; you are shameless beggars.” Meanwhile, there are many meek and humble monks, seeking solitude and praying zealously in silence. These monks are less noticed and they are even passed over altogether without comment; how astonished people would be if I were to say that from these meek monks seeking silent prayer may perhaps emerge once more the salvation of the Russian land! Because they are ready in their silence “for the day and the hour, and the month and the year.”[1] In their solitude they preserve the image of Christ—beautiful and unblemished, in the purity of God’s truth, from the ancient fathers, apostles, and martyrs, and when it becomes necessary, they will display it to the wavering truth of the world. This is a great idea. The star will rise from the East.[2]

That is my view of the monk. Is it false? Is it arrogant? Just look at the worldly men and all those who regard themselves as above God’s people; haven’t God’s image and the truth been distorted in them? They have science, but in that science they have only what is subject to the senses. The spiritual world, the loftier half of human nature, is rejected altogether, cast out with a sort of triumph, even with hatred. The world has proclaimed freedom, especially during the last few years, and what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Only servitude and suicide! Because the world says: “You have needs, so satisfy them, because you have the same rights as the exalted and wealthiest people. Don’t be afraid to satisfy them, even multiply them.” That is the teaching of today’s world. That is where they see their freedom. And what is the result of this right to multiply one’s needs? The wealthy people feel isolation and spiritual suicide; and the poor experience envy and murder, because while they have been given rights, they have yet to be shown the means to satisfy their needs. They maintain that the world is getting more and more unified, that it’s united into brotherly community by shortening the distance, and that it transmits its thoughts through the air. Alas, don’t believe in such a union of people. By understanding freedom as the multiplication and the rapid satisfaction of needs, men distort their own nature, because it produces many senseless and foolish desires, habits, and absurd notions. They live merely to envy each other, for gluttony and conceit. To hold dinners, take excursions, buy carriages, to achieve high ranks and keep slaves as servants—all are considered such necessities, for which they’re willing to sacrifice even their lives, their honor, and their humanity to quench this need; they will even resort to killing themselves, if they can’t satisfy it.

We see the same thing among those who are not wealthy; among the poor, for now envy and the insatiability of needs are drowned in drunkenness. But soon instead of wine, they will drink blood; they are being brought to that. I ask you: is such a man free? I knew one such “champion of an idea” who told me that when he was deprived of tobacco in prison, he felt so tormented by this deprivation that he almost went and betrayed his “idea,” merely so they would give him back his tobacco. Yet such a man says, “I’m fighting for the idea of humanity.” But where will such a man go and what is he capable of? He is capable of some swift action, but he can’t hold out for very long. It’s not surprising that instead of freedom, they’ve fallen into slavery, and instead of serving brotherly love and the union of humanity, on the contrary, they have fallen into separation and isolation, as my mysterious visitor and teacher told me in my youth. Therefore the idea of serving humanity, of brotherhood, and the harmony of mankind continues to die out more and more, and is even met with mockery. How is it possible for man to desist from these habits, where can this slave go, if he is so accustomed to quenching his innumerable needs, which he himself has conceived? He’s isolated; what does he care about the rest of humanity? And such men have succeeded in acquiring more material things, but the amount of joy is less.

The monk’s path is another matter. People even laugh at their obedience, fasting, and prayer, but the only way to genuine, true freedom lies in them: I cut superfluous and unnecessary needs off from myself, I subdue my vain, proud will, castigate it with obedience, and with God’s help, I achieve freedom of the spirit, and with it, spiritual joy! Which one of them is more capable of conceiving a great idea and going on to serve it—the isolated rich man or the man who has been emancipated from the tyranny of material things and habits?

The monk is reproached for his solitude: “You have isolated yourself within the monastic walls to achieve salvation, but you have forgotten about the brotherly service of humanity.” But let us see which one of them has been more diligent in the brotherly service of humanity. Because we are not the ones in isolation—they are, though they don’t see it. From the earliest times leaders of the people came from us; why can’t they emerge once again? The same humble and meek monks who keep fasts and observe a vow of silence will arise and work for the great cause. The salvation of Rus will come from the people. From time immemorial the Russian monastery has been with the people. If the people are isolated, then we, too, are isolated. The people believe as we do; an unbeliever will never accomplish anything, even if his heart is sincere and his intellect is brilliant. Remember this. The people will meet an atheist and vanquish him, and Rus will be united and Orthodox. So take care of the people and guard their hearts. Educate them in secret. That is your task as monks, because this nation is God-bearing.

(f) Of Masters and Servants and Whether It Is Possible for Them to Become Brothers in Spirit

God knows there is sin among the people, too. And the flame of corruption is spreading even visibly, hour by hour, coming from above. Isolation is coming upon the people, too: kulaks and bloodsuckers increase;[3] the merchants expect more and more honors, striving to show themselves as educated, although they have no education at all; to do so, they disdain ancient customs and are even ashamed of the faith of their fathers. They go to visit princes, but they are no more than corrupted peasants. The people are rotting in their drunkenness, and unable to abstain. And they exhibit so much cruelty to their families, their wives, and even to their children; it’s all from drunkenness. I even saw ten-year-old children working: frail, sickly, stunted, and already depraved. A stuffy workshop, the racket of the machines, a full day’s work, depraved words, and drink; drink—is that what a young child’s soul really needs? He needs the sun, children’s games, and everywhere a radiant example, and at least a drop of love for him. This shall not be, oh monks: no more torturing children; rise up and preach, quickly, quickly. But God will save Russia, because even though the common folk are depraved and can’t forsake filthy sin, they still know that these filthy sins are condemned by God, and that they are behaving badly, sinfully. Our people still believe unstintingly in the truth, maintain their faith in God, and weep tears of tender emotion.

It’s not the same with our upper class. They follow science and want to establish justice based solely on their intellect, but without Christ, as previously, and they have already proclaimed that there is no such thing as crime or sin. And this is correct from their point of view: for if you don’t have God, what sort of crime can there be? In Europe people are rising up against the wealthy by force, and everywhere the people’s leaders steer them toward bloodshed, and teach them that their wrath is warranted. But “cursed be their wrath because it was cruel.”[4] But the Lord will save Russia as He has done many times. Salvation will come from the people, from its faith humility.

Fathers and teachers, guard the people’s faith and this will not be a dream: all my life I have been struck by our great people’s true and fitting dignity; I have seen, could witness myself, I have seen and been astonished, seen, even in spite of the filth of sin and the destitute appearance of our people. They are not servile, even after two centuries of servitude. They are free in manner and bearing, but without resentment. And they are neither vengeful nor envious. “You are noble, you are rich, you are clever and talented—may God bless you. I honor you, but know that I, too, am a man. The fact is that I honor you without envy, and in doing so, I prove my human worth to you.” In truth, if they don’t say this (because they still don’t know how), that’s how they act; I have seen it myself, experienced it, and would you believe it? The poorer and meeker our Russian man is, the more noticeable is that godly righteousness, because the rich kulaks and bloodsuckers among them are for the most part already depraved, and much of that is a result of our negligence and indifference! But God will save His people because Russia is great in its humility. I dream of seeing, and already seem to see clearly, our future: because even the most corrupt of wealthy men will end up being ashamed of their wealth before the poor, and the poor, seeing their humility, will understand and yield to them joyfully, and respond to their fitting shame. Believe me, this is how it will end: things are moving in that direction. There is equality only in the spiritual dignity of man, and that will be understood only among us. If we were brothers, there would be brotherhood, but before that, they will never share the wealth. We will preserve the image of Christ, and it will shine forth like a precious diamond to the whole world. . . . So be it! May it come to pass!

Fathers and teachers, a poignant episode occurred to me once. During my wanderings, I met Afanasy, my former orderly, in the town of K.; eight years had passed since we had parted. He happened to see me at the market; he recognized me and came running over. Good Lord, he was so delighted that he rushed to me: “Father, sir, is it really you? Is it really you I see?” He led me to his house. He had already retired from the army, married, and had two small children. He and his wife earned their living as peddlers at the market. Their little room was poor, but clean and full of joy. He sat me down, heated the samovar, and sent for his wife, as if celebrating my arrival. He brought his children in to see me: “Bless them, Father.” “Is it for me to bless them?” I replied. “I am a simple, humble monk; I will pray for them as I have for you, Afanasy Pavlovich, and always, every day since that day, because it all began with you.” And I explained to him as best I could. So what did he do? He stared at me and was unable to believe that I, his former master, an officer, was now standing before him with such an appearance and wearing such garments: he even began crying. “Why are you crying?” I asked him. “You unforgettable man. You ought to be rejoicing in your soul, my dear, because my path is bright and full of joy.”

He didn’t say a great deal; mostly he sighed and kept nodding his head with tender emotion. “What became of your wealth?”

I replied: “I gave it all to the monastery; we live together in a single community.” After tea, I began to bid them good-bye, and he suddenly gave me a fifty-kopeck piece, an offering for the monastery; I looked, and he hastened to put a second one in my hand. “This is for you,” he said, “a wanderer and traveler; may it be of use to you, Father.”

I accepted his fifty-kopeck piece, bowed to him and his wife, and left feeling overjoyed; along the road I thought to myself: “Now the two of us, he in his house, and I as I walk, must both be sighing, smiling gladly, with joy in our hearts, nodding our heads, and recalling how God brought us to this meeting.”

After that time I never saw him again. I was his master, and he was my servant; and now, as we exchanged kisses merrily and with tender spiritual emotion, a great human bond was established between us. I pondered this for a long time and this is what I think now: is it so far beyond one’s intellect to imagine that this great, simple-hearted union might occur in its own time among our Russian people? I believe that it will, in the not too distant future.

I’ll add the following about my former servants: as a young man, I used to get angry at them: “The cook served the food too hot; the orderly hasn’t cleaned my clothes.” But the memory of my dear brother suddenly occurred to me, and something I had heard him say during my childhood: “Am I really worth having another person serve me? And do I have the right to give him orders because he’s poor and ignorant?” At the time I was surprised by how such simple thoughts, plainly obvious, occur so late in our minds. It’s impossible to live without servants, but you should act in such a way that your servant would be freer in his spirit than if he were not a servant.[5] And why can’t I be a servant to my servant, so that even he recognizes it, without any pride on my part, or disbelief on his? Why can’t my servant be like a member of my own family, so that I can rejoice? Even now this can be done, and it will serve to bring about the magnificent union of all men, when a man will not seek servants for himself and won’t wish to turn his fellow creatures into servants, as he does today; on the contrary, with all his might he will strive to become a servant to all men, as it is taught in the Gospel.

And can it really be only a dream that in the end man will find his joy only in feats of enlightenment and charity, and not in cruel pleasures, such as he does now—lechery, brazenness, and envious rivalry with one another. I firmly believe that it is not merely a dream and that the time is near. People laugh and ask: can this ever happen and when will it be possible? I think we will resolve this important matter with Christ’s help. After all, how many ideas were there on earth in the history of mankind, ideas that were unthinkable even ten years before they were actually realized, and when their mysterious hour had arrived, they spread over all the earth. The same thing will happen with us, and our nation will shine forth in the world and everyone will say, “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.”[6] And we may ask those who scorn us: if it is only a dream, when will you build your building, arranging it with only your own intellect, without Christ? If they themselves declare that, on the contrary, they are progressing toward unity, only the most simple-hearted of them believe it, so that one can even marvel at their simplicity. In fact, they have more dreamlike fantasy than we do. They want to build it fairly, but, in rejecting Christ, they end up by drenching the world in blood, because blood cries out for blood, and he that lives by the sword shall die by the sword.[7] And if it were not for Christ’s covenant, they would destroy each other to the last two men on earth. And in their pride these last two men would not be able to restrain each other, so that the last would destroy the next to last, and then he would destroy himself as well. That would come to pass, if it were not for the promise of Christ, that for the sake of the humble and meek, the days shall be shortened.[8]

At the time of my duel, when I was still wearing an officer’s uniform, when I began to talk about servants in society, I remember that everyone was surprised at me. “What?” they asked. “Are we supposed to sit our servants down on the sofa and serve them tea?” And then I replied, “Why not, at least sometimes.” Then everyone started laughing. Their question was frivolous, and my reply was imprecise, but the idea behind it was to some extent correct.

(g) About Prayer, Love, and Contact with Other Worlds

Young man, do not forget to say your prayers. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, a new feeling will shine forth, and in it, a new idea, which you haven’t had before and which will hearten you; and you will understand that prayer is an education. Also remember: every day and whenever you can, affirm to yourself: “Oh, Lord, have mercy on all those who appear before You today.” Because every hour and every minute thousands of people leave their lives on earth and their souls present themselves before God—and how many of them depart in solitude, in grief and anguish, and no one regrets their passing, or even knows who they are: did they live or not? And perhaps from the other side of the world your prayer for their repose will rise up to God, even though you didn’t know them and they didn’t know you. How poignant it must be to a soul standing in fear before the Lord to feel that someone is praying for him at that moment, that a human being is left on earth who loves him. God will look at you both more mercifully, because if you felt so much pity for him, how much more pity He will have, He who is infinitely more merciful and loving than you are. And He will forgive him for your sake.

Brothers, do not fear the sins of men; love man also in his sin, because that is the likeness of God’s love and it is the highest love on earth. Love God’s entire creation, as a whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every little leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will understand the divine mystery in all things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to understand it better and deeper every day. And at last you will come to love the whole world with an all-embracing, universal love. Love the animals: God gave them the beginnings of thought and serene joy. Do not disturb it, do not torment them, do not take away their joy, do not oppose God’s purpose. Man, do not feel superior to the animals; they are sinless, while you, with your pride, defile the earth with your presence and leave your filthy traces everywhere—alas, almost every one of us! Love children especially, because they are also sinless, like the angels, and they live to touch us with tender emotion, to soften our hearts, and as a guide for us. Woe to him who offends a child. Father Anfim taught me to love children: he was a kind and reticent man who during our wanderings together would spend his last kopecks on sweets and cakes for children. He would buy them and give them away; he couldn’t go past children without feeling a trembling in his soul: such a man was he.

One stands puzzled by some thoughts, especially seeing men’s sins, and one asks: “Take them by force or use humble love?” Always decide: “Use humble love.” If you decide that once and for all, you will be able to win the whole world. Loving humility is a terrible force, the strongest of all, unlike anything else. Every day and every hour, every minute, walk about and watch yourself, so that your image is grand. For instance, you walked past a little child, you passed him feeling spiteful, with a nasty word, or an angry heart; perhaps you didn’t even notice that child, but he saw you, and your unattractive and disrespectful image may have remained in his defenseless little heart. You didn’t know this, but perhaps you may have sown a bad seed in him, and it may grow, and it was all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not nourish within you an active and benevolent heart. Brothers, love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, because it is difficult to do; it costs a great deal and is acquired by long, hard work. We must love not only for a moment, but forever. Everyone can occasionally experience love, even the wicked.

My young brother asked the birds to forgive him: that sounds foolish, but it is right, because everything is like an ocean, flowing and mixing; you touch it in one place and it shifts at the other end of the earth. It may be foolish to beg forgiveness of the birds, but birds would be better off, as would a child, and all animals around you, if you yourself were even a little more righteous than you are now. I tell you, everything is like an ocean. Then you would pray to the birds, too, tormented by an all-inclusive love, as if in some sort of ecstasy, and would implore them, too, to forgive your sin. Treasure that ecstasy no matter how foolish it seems to other people.

My friends, ask God for joy. Be joyful as children, as the birds of heaven. Don’t allow the sins of man to trouble you in your doings; don’t be afraid that it will hamper your work and prevent its completion. Don’t say: “Sin is powerful, ungodliness is powerful, a bad environment is powerful, and we are alone and helpless; the bad environment will stifle us and prevent us from completing our good works.” Avoid this dejection, my children! There is only one route to salvation: take yourself in hand and make yourself responsible for all human sin. My friend, that is the truth, because as soon as you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really the case, and that you really are responsible for everything and everyone. Casting off your lethargy and impotence onto others will end by your partaking of Satan’s pride and grumbling against God. This is what I think about Satan’s pride: it is difficult for us on earth to understand it, and therefore it is easy to fall into error and partake of it, even imagining that you are doing something grand and beautiful. While we are on the earth, we can’t understand many of the strongest feelings and actions of our nature; do not be tempted by that and do not think that this can in any way serve as a justification of anything for you, because the Eternal Judge will ask what you have been able to understand, and not what you haven’t; you will be convinced of that yourself, because then you will see everything correctly and you won’t argue. Indeed, on earth it is as if we are wandering, and if it were not for the most precious image of Christ before us, we would perish and be completely lost, like the human race before the great flood. Much is hidden from us on earth, but in exchange we are given a secret, treasured sense of our living contact with the other world, with the lofty and higher world; the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here, but in other worlds. That is why even philosophers say that it is not possible to grasp the essence of things in this world. God took the seeds from other worlds, sowed them on this earth, and cultivated His garden; all that could come up, did so, but what grows there lives only as a result of its contact with mysterious other worlds.[9] If this feeling weakens or is destroyed in you, then what has grown in you will die. Then you will become indifferent to life and even grow to hate it. That is what I think.

(h) Can Man Judge His Fellow Creatures? Of Faith Until the End.

Remember especially that you cannot be the judge of any man.[10] Because no one can judge a criminal until the judge recognizes that he is just the same kind of criminal as the man standing before him, and that he is just as responsible for the crime, perhaps even more so. When he grasps this, then he can become a judge. No matter how insane this sounds, it is the truth. Because if I myself had been righteous, perhaps there would be no criminal standing before me. If you are capable of taking upon yourself responsibility for the crime of the man standing before you whom you are judging in your heart, do so at once and suffer for him; release him without any reproach. And even if the law itself sets you up as his judge, act in the same spirit as much as possible, because he will leave and condemn himself more bitterly than you have. If he departs after your kiss unfeeling and mocking you, do not be discouraged: it means that his time has not yet come, but it will in its own time; and if it doesn’t come, then it doesn’t matter: if not he, then another will understand, suffer, judge, and condemn himself, and the truth will be fulfilled. Believe in this, unquestionably, because in it lies all the faith and hope of the saints.

Work without ceasing. If you recall during the night as you go to sleep, “I did not do what I could have done,” then get up at once and do it. If people around you are malicious and unfeeling and do not want to listen to you, then bow down before them and ask their forgiveness, because in truth you are responsible for their not wanting to listen to you. And if you can’t speak to them in their bitterness, then serve them in silence and in humility, never losing hope. If they all leave you and drive you away with force, then, left all alone, fall down on the earth and kiss it, soak it with your tears; the earth will bring forth fruit from your tears, even though no one heard you or saw you in your solitude. Believe until the end, even though all men go astray, and you are the only one who kept the faith: bring forth your offering and praise God, even if you are left alone. And if there should be two of you, that is already a whole world, a world of living love; embrace each other in tender emotion and praise the Lord: for although there are only two of you, His truth has still been fulfilled.

If you yourself sin and are sorrowful, even unto death[11] for your sins or your inadvertent sin, then rejoice for another, rejoice for the righteous man, rejoice for the man who is righteous and has not sinned.

If the evildoing of men fills you with indignation and boundless grief, even with the desire to take revenge on the miscreants, then you must shun that feeling above all others: you must go at once and seek suffering as if you yourself were guilty of that evildoing of the people. Accept that suffering and your heart will take comfort and you will understand that you yourself are responsible because you could have been a beacon to the sinners as the one without sin, but that you didn’t shine. If you had, then you would have illuminated a different path with your light, and the evildoer might have been saved from sinning by your light.[12] And even if you had shone, but you see that people are still not saved even with your light, be firm and do not doubt the strength of the heavenly light: believe that even if they are not saved now, they will be saved later. And if they are not saved later, then their sons will be saved, because your light will not be extinguished, even after you have died. The righteous man passes away, but his light remains. People are always saved after the death of the redeemer. Men may reject their prophets and even kill them, but they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have tortured to death. You are working for the whole; you are acting for the future. Do not ever seek rewards, because even without them, your reward on this earth is great: spiritual joy, which is granted only to the righteous man. Do not be afraid of the high and mighty, but be wise and always kind. Know measure, know the right time, and learn those things. When you are left alone, pray. Love throwing yourself down on the earth and kissing it. Kiss the earth, and love it unceasingly, insatiably, love everyone and love everything, seek ecstasy and rapture. Drench the earth with tears of joy and love your tears. Don’t be ashamed of this rapture; treasure it, for it is a gift from God, a great gift, and it is not given to many, but only to the chosen ones.

(i) Of Hell and Hellfire, Mystical Reflections

Fathers and teachers, I am pondering: “What is hell?” I think: “Hell is the suffering of no longer being able to love.” Once in infinite existence, immeasurable in time and space, a certain spiritual creature, on the occasion of his arrival on earth, was granted the ability to say, “I am, and I love.” Once, only once, there was granted to him a moment of active, living love; and for that he was granted earthly life and, with it, the seasons and its times. And what happened then? This fortunate creature rejected this priceless gift, didn’t appreciate it, did not come to love it, regarded it mockingly and remained insensible. Such a creature, after leaving the earth, also sees the bosom of Abraham, and speaks with him, as it is told in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus,[13] and he beholds paradise, and can approach God; but that is exactly why he is tormented—that he can approach God, but he who has never loved can approach God and will connect with those who have loved, having scorned their love. For he sees clearly and says to himself: “Today I already have the knowledge, and though I thirst for love, there will be no great feat in my love, no sacrifice, because earthly life has ended, and Abraham will not bring me even a drop of living water[14] (that is, the gift of former, active earthly life) to cool the fiery thirst for spiritual love that now burns within me; there is no more life and there won’t be any! Even though I would gladly give my life for others, it is no longer possible, because that life, which could be sacrificed for love, has passed, and now there is a gulf between that life and this existence.”

They speak of hellfire in the material sense: I don’t explore that secret and am afraid to, but I think that if there were fire in the material sense, they would really be glad of it, because, I imagine, in material torments, they would even for a moment forget their most terrible spiritual agony. It is impossible to remove this spiritual suffering from them because it is not external but, rather, comes from within. And if it were possible to remove it, then I imagine it would become even nastier for those unfortunate creatures. Even if the righteous in paradise forgave them, recognizing their torment, and summoned them up to paradise in their infinite love, that very act would multiply their torments, because it would arouse in them more acutely the thirst for responsive, active, and grateful love, which is no longer possible. In the timidity of my heart, however, I think that the very awareness of this impossibility would at last console them, because, having accepted the love of the righteous without being able to return it, by this submissiveness and in the action of this humility, they would attain at last a certain semblance of that active love, which they scorned on earth, and an action that somehow resembled it . . .

I regret, my brothers and friends, that I can’t explain it all more clearly. But woe to those who have destroyed themselves on this earth, woe to those who died by suicide! I think that there can be no one more miserable than they are. They say that it is a sin to pray for them, and the church outwardly seems to reject them, but I think, in the hidden recess of my soul, that it should be possible to pray for them, too. After all, Christ doesn’t take offense at love. All my life I have prayed internally for them; I confess to you, fathers and teachers, and even now I pray for them every day.

Oh, even in hell there are some people who remain proud and fierce, in spite of their irrefutable knowledge and their contemplation of the incontrovertible truth; there are those frightening people completely in communion with Satan and his proud spirit. For them hell is voluntary and insatiable; but they are already willing martyrs. Because they have cursed themselves, having cursed God and life. They are nourished by their malicious pride, like a starving man in the desert who has begun to drink blood from his own body. But they cannot ever be satisfied; they reject forgiveness, and they curse God, who keeps summoning them. They cannot behold the living God without hatred, and they demand that there shouldn’t be a God of life and that He should destroy Himself and all His creation. And they will burn in the fire of their own wrath forever and ever, yearn for death and nonexistence. But they won’t be granted death.

Aleksey Fyodorovich Karamazov’s manuscript ends here; I repeat, it’s not complete and is fragmented. The biographical information, for example, encompasses only the elder’s early youth. His teachings and opinions have been combined, as if into a unified whole, though they were obviously spoken at different times and as a result of various circumstances. His pronouncements during his last few hours of life have not been kept separate from the rest, and provide a general idea of the spirit and character of this discourse if you juxtapose them with what we have in Aleksey Fyodorovich’s manuscript.

The elder’s death occurred truly quite unexpectedly. Even though those gathered around him that last evening understood completely that his death was approaching, it was still impossible to imagine that it would occur so suddenly; on the contrary, his friends, as I mentioned above, seeing him that night so lively, as it were, and so talkative, were even convinced that a noticeable improvement in his health had taken place, at least for a short time. Even five minutes before his death, as they conveyed later with astonishment, it was still impossible to see it coming. All of a sudden he seemed to feel a sharp pain in his chest; he turned pale and pressed his hand firmly against his heart. Then everyone stood up and moved toward him; even though he was suffering, he still regarded them all with a smile; he sank quietly from his chair to the floor and kneeled, then lowered his face to the ground, extended his arms, and, as if in joyful ecstasy, kissed the earth, prayed (as he himself had taught), and quietly and joyfully gave up his soul to God.

News of his death spread quickly through the hermitage and reached the monastery. Those closest to the deceased, and those whose task it was to lay out the body according to the ancient rites, and all the other brothers gathered in the church. Even before dawn, as it was later rumored, news of the recently deceased reached the town. Toward morning almost the entire town was talking about the event, and many people were making their way to the monastery. But I will describe all that in the next book; for now let us add only that not even one day passed when something so unexpected occurred, something, in its effect on the monastery and the town, so strange, disturbing, and unpredictable, that even up to now, so many years later, that day of alarming events survives for so many in the memory of our town.

1 Revelation 9:15.

2 Cf. Matthew 2:2.

3 A “kulak” in this context is a peasant who lends money at usurious rates of interest; a “bloodsucker” (literally “commune-eater”) takes over the land of a peasant commune.

4 Genesis 49:7.

5 Cf. Matthew 20:25–27.

6 Psalms 118:22 and Matthew 21:42.

7 Matthew 26:52.

8 Matthew 24:22.

9 Cf. Matthew 13:3–8.

10 Cf. Matthew 7:1–5.

11 Cf. Matthew 26:38.

12 Cf. John 1:5.

13 Luke 16:19–31.

14 John 4:10.

PART THREE

BOOK SEVEN

ALYOSHA

I

THE ODOR OF PUTREFACTION

The body of the late monk Father Zosima was prepared for burial according to the established ritual. As is well known, the bodies of deceased monks and hermits are not washed. “When any of the monks departs in the Lord,” it is written in the Great Book of Prayer, “the designated monk [the one to whom this task has been assigned] wipes the body with warm water, making the sign of the cross with a sponge (a Greek sponge) on the forehead of the deceased, on his fingers, arms, feet, and knees, but only that.”

Father Paisy himself performed all these rites over the departed. After this sponging, he dressed the deceased in his monk’s attire and wrapped him in his cloak, which was, according to custom, slightly slit to allow it to be wound like a cross. He placed a cowl with an eight-cornered cross on his head. The cowl was left open and the deceased’s face was covered with a black veil. An icon of the Savior was placed in his hands. In the morning, he was transferred to his coffin (which had been prepared a long time before). It was decided to leave the coffin in the first large room (where the elder had received the brothers and secular visitors) for the whole day. Since the deceased was a priest, it was the custom to have the Gospel, rather than the Psalter, read over his body by priests and monks. Father Iosif began the reading immediately after the funeral service; Father Paisy, wishing to follow him in reading for the whole day and night, was in the meantime very busy and preoccupied, along with the father superior of the monastery, because suddenly some unusual, unheard-of, even “improper” excitement and expectation had begun to manifest itself among the monastic visitors and the crowds of secular visitors who came from the town, and it grew as time passed. Both the father superior and Father Paisy made every effort to calm the general commotion and agitation.

When it was light enough, there began to arrive from town some people who brought their sick, especially children—as if they’d been waiting for just such a moment to do so, obviously hoping for an immediate power of healing for their ailments, which, in their belief, would soon reveal itself. It was only then that it became apparent that everyone in town had regarded the deceased as an undeniably great saint even during his life. Those who came were by no means only from the common folk. This great anticipation of the believers, manifested with such haste, openness, even with impatience, almost insistence, Father Paisy considered a blatant temptation, foreseen by him for a long time, yet, in fact, exceeding even his expectations. Meeting with those monks who were most excited, Father Paisy even began to reprimand them: “Such immediate expectation of something great,” he said, “is shallow, possible only among laymen, but unbefitting among us.” But they barely listened to him. He observed with discomfort that in spite of it all, he himself (if the entire truth be told), although he was indignant at the extremely impatient expectation and finding it to be frivolous and futile, secretly to himself, in the depths of his soul, was waiting for almost the same thing as the others; this he had to admit to himself. Still he found these encounters particularly unpleasant; they aroused in him, by virtue of a presentiment, great doubts. In the crowd gathered in the elder’s cell, he noticed with indignation (for which he immediately reproached himself) Rakitin’s presence, for example, or that of the monk from Obdorsk (who was still a guest in the monastery); for some reason Father Paisy suddenly considered the presence of both men suspicious—although, indeed, he might have felt the same way about others there.

The monk from Obdorsk stood out from the excited crowd as the most fastidious; he could be seen everywhere, in all places: he asked questions everywhere, listened everywhere, and whispered everywhere with a particularly mysterious air. The expression on his face was especially impatient, and even showed irritation that the expected event was taking so long to occur.

As for Rakitin, as it turned out later, he’d arrived at the hermitage especially early, on special instructions from Madame Khokhlakova. This good but weak-willed woman, who herself couldn’t be admitted, awoke and heard about Father Zosima’s death; she was suddenly overcome with such impetuous curiosity that she immediately sent Rakitin off to the hermitage, hoping that he would observe everything and would report to her in writing every half hour about everything that was taking place. She considered Rakitin a most pious and devout young man—one who was particularly clever in dealing with others and presenting himself as matching their desires, if he perceived in them the slightest advantage for himself.

The day was clear and bright; the multitude of pilgrims were crowding around the tombs scattered around the cathedral, just as they were around the hermitage. Father Paisy, as he walked around the hermitage, suddenly remembered Alyosha, and the fact that he hadn’t seen him for some time, almost since last night. As soon as he thought about him, he noticed him in the most remote corner of the hermitage, near the fence, sitting on the gravestone of a monk who had died long ago and who’d been celebrated for his saintliness. His back was to the hermitage, his face to the fence, and he seemed to be hiding behind the tombstone. As he approached, Father Paisy noticed that he was weeping quietly, but bitterly, having covered his face with both hands, his entire body was shaking from his sobs. Father Paisy stood over him for some time.

“Enough, dear son, enough, my friend,” he said at last with deep emotion. “Why are you weeping? Rejoice: do not weep. Don’t you know that this day is his greatest day? Just remember where he is now, at this very moment!”

Alyosha glanced up at him, opening his eyes, swollen with tears like those of a little child, but immediately turned away again, covering his face with his hands, not saying a word.

“Perhaps it is to the good,” said Father Paisy thoughtfully. “Perhaps you should weep; Christ sent you those tears. Your poignant little tears will provide relief to your spirit and will serve to cheer your dear heart,” he added to himself, as he left Alyosha and thought lovingly about him.

He walked away quickly, feeling that, while looking at him, he might soon begin weeping, too. Meanwhile, time was passing; the monastic services and the office for the dead followed in order. Father Paisy once again replaced Father Iosif at the coffin and once again resumed reading the Gospel. But even before three o’clock in the afternoon, something occurred that I mentioned at the end of the last book, something so unexpected by any of us, and so contrary to the general hope, that, I repeat, a detailed and specific account of this event is remembered with extraordinary lucidity in our town and in the surrounding neighborhood to this very day. Here I will add something personal of my own again: it’s almost repulsive for me to recall that trivial, seductive event, essentially the most inconsequential and natural; of course, I’d leave it out of my account without any mention, if it hadn’t produced such a powerful and well-known effect on the heart and soul of the principal, although future, hero of my tale, Alyosha, conscious in his soul of a watershed and turning point, shaking, but at the same time also ultimately strengthening his intellect, and providing it with a definite goal for the rest of his life.

And so, back to the story. When, before daybreak, after the preparation of Father Zosima’s body, its placement in the coffin, and its positioning out in the front room, where he used to receive his visitors, the question arose among those present at his coffin: whether it was necessary to open the windows in that room? But this question, posed by someone cursorily and in passing, remained without an answer and went almost unnoticed—indeed, the only ones who noticed it, and they, only to themselves, were several of those present and only in the sense that to expect decay and the odor of putrefaction from the body of such a man was an actual absurdity, worthy of pity (if not a smile), for the lack of faith and frivolousness of someone proposing such a question. For they expected something totally opposite.

Then, soon after midday, there began something unexpected, noticed at first by those who were entering and leaving, silently, to themselves, and even with evident fear on everyone’s part to mention their emerging thought; but by three o’clock in the afternoon, it had become so clear and unmistakable that this news soon reached all the monks and pilgrims, the visitors to the hermitage, and soon it also reached the monastery and threw all the monks into a quandary; soon, after a very short time, it also reached the town and distressed everyone there, believers and nonbelievers alike. The nonbelievers rejoiced; as for the believers, some of them rejoiced even more than the nonbelievers, because “people love the downfall of a righteous man and his disgrace,” as the late elder himself had said in one of his lessons.

The fact was that a noxious odor had gradually begun to emanate from the coffin, growing stronger with the passage of time, and by three o’clock in the afternoon, it had become all too noticeable and was still becoming gradually stronger. In all the past history of our monastery there had not occurred, nor was it possible to recall, a similar temptation, crudely licentious (and to a certain degree even impossible), as came to light even among the monks right after this event. Afterward, even many years later, some of our more intelligent monks, recalling this day in all its detail, were astonished and horrified that this temptation could reach such a high degree. Because even previously, it had happened that monks who led righteous lives had died, God-fearing old men whose righteousness was known to all; meanwhile, the odor of corruption had come from their humble coffins, naturally, just as it does from all dead bodies, and it had caused no scandal, nor even the least upset. Of course, in former times, there had been some in our monastery, whose memories had been preserved, whose remains, according to legend, had not been subject to decay. This fact was regarded by the monks as poignant and mysterious, and was stored away in their memory as something beautiful and miraculous, and as a promise of even greater glory in the future to come from their tombs, should God will it to be so.

One such monk whose memory was particularly cherished was the elder Job who had lived to the age of one hundred and five, a well-known hermit, a great ascetic, and a devoted observer of a vow of silence; he’d lived a long time ago, sometime during the second decade of the present century, and his grave was pointed out to all pilgrims upon their arrival with particular and extreme respect and with mysterious allusions made to the great hopes connected to it. (It was that same grave where Father Paisy had found Alyosha sitting alone that very morning.)

In addition to this long-deceased elder, there was the memory of a relatively recently deceased monk, Father Varsonofy, who had preceded Father Zosima as the elder; he’d been revered all his life as a holy fool by those pilgrims who visited the monastery. There was a legend preserved that both of these monks had rested in their coffins as if they were still alive, and had been buried with no indication of decay, and that their countenances had even brightened up as they were lying in their coffins. Some even insisted that a sweet fragrance emanated from their bodies.

Yet, in spite of all these impressive reminiscences, it was still difficult to explain the real reason why, at the elder Zosima’s coffin, there occurred so much frivolity, absurdity, and malice. As for me, it’s my personal opinion that several different reasons were at work simultaneously. One of them, for example, was even a deeply rooted hostility to the institution of the elders, a view of this institution as a wicked innovation—a hostility that was deeply hidden in the hearts of so many monks in the monastery. Then, of course, the main reason was envy of the deceased’s saintliness, so firmly established during his lifetime that it seemed impossible to question. Because even though the late elder had attracted many to his side, not so much by his miracles, but by his love, and had gathered around him a whole world, as it were, of devoted admirers, nevertheless, and even more so as a result, he had aroused envy among others, and had even made some bitter enemies, both open and secret, not only among the monks, but even among the town’s laymen.

He did no one any harm, for example, but “Why do they consider him such a saint?” This question alone, repeated constantly, produced a massive amount of insatiable malice. That’s why, I think, many people, having smelled the putrid odor from the body, and coming so soon, were immensely pleased—for not even a day had passed since his death; at the same time there were some people who’d been devoted to the elder and who’d honored him who were personally insulted and offended by this event. The gradual development of this affair proceeded in the following way:

As soon as there were indications of putrefaction, just by the look on the faces of the monks entering the elder’s cell, one could tell why they’d come. They came in, stood for a little while, and went out to confirm the news to others who were waiting in a crowd outside. Some of them shook their heads sadly, but others didn’t even attempt to conceal their delight, their malevolent eyes gleaming unmistakably. No one reproached them; no one raised a voice in protest, which was even more surprising, because a majority of monks had been devoted to the elder; but it was evident that this time the Lord Himself had allowed the minority to gain the upper hand.

Soon visitors from outside the monastery, mostly from the educated class, began to enter the elder’s cell as spies. Very few of the common people came in, although many gathered outside the monastery gates. Without doubt, after three o’clock the stream of secular visitors began to increase markedly, precisely as a result of this scandalous news. People who perhaps had no intention of coming now arrived on purpose; among them were certain individuals of high standing. However, external decorum was still not disturbed; Father Paisy continued reading the Gospel steadily and distinctly, with a stern face, as if not noticing what was occurring, although in fact he’d observed something unusual happening a while ago. But then voices began to reach him, at first very softly, but gradually gaining in strength and courage. “God’s judgment is not the same as man’s!” Father Paisy heard suddenly. It was a layman who uttered these words first, a town official, an older man, known to be very devout. But he said it aloud, merely repeating what some of the monks had been whispering among themselves. For some time they’d been uttering these disparaging words; worst of all, with every passing minute some sort of feeling of triumph became apparent and increased in strength. Soon, however, even decorum itself started to break down; now it was as if everyone seemed to feel that they had a right to discard it.

“How could this have happened?” asked several of the monks, at first seeming to feel regret. “He had a small body, dry and bony. Where could the smell be coming from?”

“It must be a sign from God,” others added hastily, and their opinion was shared at once without any protest, because it was pointed out that if the odor were natural, as in the case of every dead sinner, it would have arisen later, not with such obvious speed, at least a day and a night later, but “this one preceded nature”; therefore the finger of God was evident. It was a sign from Him. This judgment seemed irrefutable.

Meek Father Iosif, the librarian, the elder’s favorite, tried to object to some of the disparagers, saying that “it’s not true everywhere,” and that the incorruptibility of the body of the righteous was not a dogma of the Orthodox Church, but merely an opinion, and that even in other Orthodox countries, on Mount Athos, for example, they were not terribly upset by the odor of corruption; the principal indication of Orthodox salvation wasn’t the incorruptibility of the body but, rather, the color of the bones, after the body has lain in the earth for many years and had begun to decay.

“If the bones turn out to be yellow as wax, then that is the clearest sign that the Lord has glorified the righteous deceased; but if they turn out to be black, it means that God has not deemed him worthy of glory—that’s how it is on Mount Athos, a great place, where Orthodox doctrine has been preserved unbroken and in its purest form since ancient times,” Father Iosif concluded.

But the words of the humble monk had little effect and even elicited a mocking rejoinder. “That’s erudition and innovation; there’s no need to listen,” the monks decided among themselves. “We adhere to the old doctrine; there are so many innovations these days, must we imitate all of them?” others added. “We’ve had just as many holy fathers. There they are living among the Turks and have forgotten everything. They have muddled Orthodox practice; they don’t even have any church bells,” added the most scornful.

Father Paisy walked away in sorrow, all the more so since he’d expressed his own opinion not very confidently, as if he himself didn’t believe it. But he perceived with distress that something very unsightly was beginning and that even disobedience was rearing its ugly head. Gradually, following Father Iosif, all reasonable voices fell silent. It happened somehow that all those who loved the late elder and who’d accepted the institution of elders with emotional obedience were suddenly terribly frightened of something, and when they passed merely glanced timidly at one another’s faces. The enemies of the institution as some sort of innovation proudly raised their heads. “There was no odor of corruption from the elder Varsonofy; on the contrary, there was a sweet fragrance,” they remarked maliciously. “And he earned it not because he was an elder, but because he was a righteous man.” After this came a shower of criticism of the newly deceased elder and even accusations: “He taught unfairly; he taught that life was a great joy and not a vale of tears,” some of the most obtuse said. “He followed the latest fashion and refused to recognize material fire in hell,” added some others, even less intelligent. “He was not strict in his fasting; he allowed himself to eat sweets; with his tea he loved cherry preserves, which the ladies would send him. Can an ascetic drink tea?” asked some of the more envious. “He had a head swollen with pride,” the most spiteful recalled cruelly. “He considered himself to be a saint; when people kneeled before him, he accepted it as his due.” “He abused the sacrament of confession,” the most vicious opponents of the institution of elders added in a malicious whisper, and this was voiced by some of the oldest and strictest monks, the genuine ascetics and observers of a vow of silence, who had remained silent during the elder’s life, but who now suddenly opened their mouths; this was terrible because their words had great influence on the young and those whose ideas were not yet fully formed. The visitor from Obdorsk, the monk from St. Sylvester’s, was listening carefully to all this; he sighed and hung his head. “No, it’s obvious that Father Ferapont was right in his judgment yesterday,” he thought to himself. Just then Father Ferapont appeared; he came as if on purpose to add to the confusion.

I’ve already mentioned that he rarely emerged from his wooden cell near the apiary; he was even seldom seen in church, where he was tolerated as if he were a holy fool; they didn’t hold him to the rules that others observed. But if truth be told, they scarcely had a choice in this matter. For it was inconceivable and disgraceful to insist on burdening such a great ascetic and observer of the vow of silence, who prayed day and night (he would even fall asleep on his knees) with common regulations, if he himself did not wish to submit to them. “He is holier than all of us and follows rules that are stricter than ours,” the monks would say at that time. “If he doesn’t attend church, it’s because he himself knows when to go. He has his own rules.” In order to avoid the inevitable complaints and temptations, Father Ferapont was left in peace. As everyone knew, Father Ferapont deeply disliked the elder Zosima; and now the news suddenly reached him in his hut that “God’s judgment was not the same as man’s,” and that “it had gotten ahead of nature.” One must assume that the first to run to tell him the news was the monk from Obdorsk; he’d been visiting him the day before and had left him feeling terrified.

I’ve also mentioned above that although Father Paisy was standing solidly and unshakably reading the Gospel over the coffin, and although he couldn’t see or hear what was happening outside the cell, in his heart he guessed most of it undeniably, because he knew his surroundings thoroughly. He was not distressed by it and had expected everything that could occur without fear, having observed with a piercing glance the future outcome of the general consternation as it was presenting itself to his imagination.

All of a sudden an extraordinary commotion in the hall, which destroyed all decorum, reached his ear. The door flew open and Father Ferapont appeared on the threshold. Behind him, there could even be glimpsed a crowd of monks accompanying him, among them also some laymen. They didn’t enter the elder’s cell but stood at the bottom of the stairs, waiting to see what Father Ferapont would say and do, because they felt, even with some fear, in spite of all their daring, that he’d come for some reason. Pausing on the threshold, Father Ferapont raised his arms; under his right arm peered out the sharp and curious little eyes of the monk from Obdorsk, the only one who, in his intense curiosity, couldn’t resist running up the steps after Father Ferapont. The others, as soon as the door flew open with a crash, moved farther back, feeling sudden dread. Raising his hands heavenward, Father Ferapont suddenly roared:

“Casting out, I will cast out!” he began at once, facing in all four directions, making the sign of the cross over the walls and the corners of the cell in succession. Those following Father Ferapont understood this action at once; they knew that he always did the same thing wherever he went, and that he wouldn’t sit down or say a word before expelling the evil spirits.

“Satan, get thee hence, Satan, get thee hence!” he repeated with each sign of the cross. “Casting out, I will cast out!” he roared again. He was wearing his coarse gown, fastened with a rope. From under his hempen shirt could be glimpsed his bare chest covered with gray hair. His feet were bare. As soon as he began waving his arms, his cruel chains, which he wore under his robe, began to shake and clank.

Father Paisy interrupted his reading, stepped forward, and stood in front of him, waiting. “Why have you come, worthy Father? And why do you disturb propriety? Why do you stir up the peaceful flock?” he asked finally, looking at him sternly.

“Wherefore have you come? What are you asking for? How do you believe?” shouted Father Ferapont, acting the holy fool. “I’ve come here to expel your visitors, the unclean spirits. I’ve come to see how many you’ve gathered here without me. I want to sweep them away with a birch besom.”

“You’re expelling the evil spirit, but perhaps you are serving him yourself,” Father Paisy continued fearlessly. “And who can say of himself, ‘I am holy’? Not you, Father?”

“I am unclean, not holy. I wouldn’t sit in an armchair and wouldn’t have people bow down to me, as if I were an idol!” thundered Father Ferapont. “These days people are destroying the holy faith. The deceased, your saint,” he said, turning to the crowd, pointing at the coffin, “rejected devils. He gave purgatives to keep them away. But they’ve multiplied like spiders in the corners. And now he himself has begun to stink. We see a great sign from God in that.”

The following incident had really once occurred during the life of Father Zosima: one of the monks began to have dreams; toward the end, he even began seeing the evil spirit when awake. When, in the greatest fear, he revealed this to the elder, Father Zosima advised him to pray unceasingly and to strengthen his fasting. But when this didn’t help, he advised him to continue to pray without ceasing, to fast, and to take a certain medicine. Many people at the time were tempted by this and wagged their heads, talking about it among themselves—most of all, Father Ferapont, to whom some of the detractors had hastened to report this “extraordinary” piece of advice on the part of the elder in this special case.

“Go away from here, Father!” Father Paisy said in an authoritative voice. “It is not for man to judge, but for God. Perhaps we can see here a ‘sign’ that neither you, nor me, nor anyone can understand. Go away, Father, and do not disturb the flock,” he repeated insistently.

“He didn’t keep the fasts according to the rules and that’s why now there’s a sign. This much is clear and it’s a sin to conceal it!” persisted the fanatic, who was carried away by his zeal, which had overpowered his reason. “He was tempted by treats, which ladies brought for him in their pockets; he relished his tea, he sacrificed to his belly, filling it with sweets, and his mind with arrogant thoughts. . . . And for this, he is suffering shame . . .”

“Your words are ridiculous, Father!” Father Paisy said, also raising his voice. “I admire your fasting and your asceticism, but your words are ridiculous, spoken as if you’re some secular youth, inconstant and unintelligent. Go away, Father, I order you,” Father Paisy thundered in conclusion.

“I will go away!” said Father Ferapont, as if somewhat embarrassed, but not forsaking his bitterness. “You learned men! Because you’re so clever, you elevate yourselves above my insignificance. I came here illiterate, and here I forgot all that I did know; the Lord God has defended me, His little one, from your subtleties . . .”

Father Paisy stood over him and waited decisively. Father Ferapont fell silent and suddenly, growing sad, placing his right hand on his cheek, spoke in a low voice, staring at the deceased’s coffin:

“Tomorrow they will sing ‘Our Helper and Protector’ over his body—a magnificent canon, and over me, when I expire, all they’ll sing is ‘What Earthly Joy’—a little hymn,” he said tearfully and sorrowfully.[1] “You’ve all become proud and conceited; barren is this place!” he cried suddenly like a madman, and, waving his arm contemptuously, he turned hurriedly and went down the porch steps. The crowd below hesitated; some followed him immediately; others delayed because the cell was still open, and Father Paisy, coming out onto the porch just after Father Ferapont had left, stood there watching. But the old man, who’d lost his self-control, still hadn’t finished: after walking away some twenty paces, he suddenly turned in the direction of the setting sun, raised both hands above his head, and—as if someone had mowed him down—fell to the ground and uttered a loud scream.

“My God is victorious! Christ is victorious over the setting sun!” he shrieked hysterically, raising his arms to the sun and falling onto the ground face-first, sobbing like a little child, quivering from tears, and stretching his arms out on the dirt. Then people rushed up to him, cries broke out, and there was general sobbing. . . . Frenzy seemed to have overtaken everyone.

“He’s the one who’s a saint! He’s the righteous man!” some cried aloud, losing their fear. “He should be the elder,” others added bitterly.

“He won’t agree to serve as elder. . . . He’ll turn it down. . . . He won’t follow a cursed innovation. . . . He won’t imitate their foolishness,” various voices chimed in at once; it’s hard to imagine the point it would have reached, but just at that moment the bell rang, summoning the monks to prayer. Suddenly they all began crossing themselves. Father Ferapont stood up, too; shielding himself with the sign of the cross, he headed for his cell without looking back, continuing to exclaim as he went, but now with totally incoherent words. Several people were about to follow him, a small number, but the majority began to disperse, hastening to the service. Father Paisy handed over the reading to Father Iosif and went down the steps. The frenzied cries of the fanatics didn’t shake him, but his heart was suddenly saddened and grieving about something in particular, and he felt it. He stopped and suddenly asked himself: “Why do I feel this sadness even to the point of depression?” And to his surprise he understood immediately that this sudden onset of sadness originated, evidently, from a very minor, specific cause: the fact was that there in the crowd gathered at the entrance to the elder’s cell, among the other agitated brothers, he had noticed Alyosha; he remembered that after having seen him, he’d immediately felt a certain pain in his heart. “Could that young man mean so much to my heart today?” he asked himself in astonishment. At this moment Alyosha just happened to walk past him, as if hastening somewhere, but not in the direction of the church. Theirs eyes met. Alyosha glanced away and lowered his eyes to the ground, but from his look alone Father Paisy guessed that at that moment a very great change was taking place in the young man.

“Have you, too, fallen into temptation?” Father Paisy cried suddenly. “Are you, too, really with those of little faith?” he asked sadly.

Alyosha stopped and looked vaguely at Father Paisy, but he quickly looked away and lowered his eyes to the ground again. He stood sideways, not turning to face his questioner. Father Paisy observed him carefully.

“Where are you hurrying? The bell is summoning us to a service,” he said again, but again Alyosha didn’t answer him.

“Or are you leaving the hermitage? Without asking permission or receiving a blessing?”

Alyosha suddenly grinned ironically and strangely, very strangely, glanced at Father Paisy, the one to whom he’d been entrusted by his former mentor, as he lay dying, the former sovereign of his heart and mind, his beloved elder, and all of a sudden, still without saying anything, as before, he waved his arm dismissively, as if not even trying to show respect, and headed for the gates of the hermitage with rapid steps.

“You’ll come back again!” whispered Father Paisy, watching him with mournful astonishment.

1 Dostoevsky’s note: During the carrying out of the body of a monk or a schema monk (from the cell to the church and, after the service, from the church to the cemetery), they sing “What Earthly Joy.” If the deceased was also a priest, they sing the canon “Our Helper and Protector.”

II

A CRITICAL MOMENT

Father Paisy, of course, was not mistaken when he’d decided that his “nice lad” would come back again, and even, perhaps (if not entirely, then with a certain perspicacity), he had penetrated the true meaning of Alyosha’s spiritual state. Nevertheless, I confess candidly that it’s very difficult for me to convey now the true meaning of this strange and uncertain moment in the life of a young man whom I love so much, and who’s also the very young hero of my tale. In reply to Father Paisy’s bitter question directed to Alyosha, “Or are you also with those of little faith?,” I could, of course, reply with certainty for Alyosha: “No, he’s not with those of little faith.” Not only that, but quite the contrary: all his consternation arose exactly from the fact that he believed so deeply. But there was consternation, and it was so tormenting that even afterward, many years later, Alyosha considered this sad day one of the most painful and fateful of his entire life. If one were to ask me directly, “Could all this grief and anxiety result merely from the fact that the elder’s body, instead of immediately starting to heal people, on the contrary, was subject to early decomposition?,” I would reply without beating around the bush: “Yes, it really was so.” I would ask only that the reader not hurry to laugh too much at the pure heart of my young man. I myself do not intend to beg forgiveness for him or to excuse and justify his simple-hearted faith by his youth, for example, or the little progress he’d achieved in his previous studies, and so on and so forth; I will even do the opposite and declare decisively that I feel sincere respect for the nature of his heart. Without doubt, another young man, one who accepts heartfelt impressions guardedly, and who already knows how to love not passionately but warmly, although with a true intelligence that is faithful but too sensible for his young age (and, therefore, easy), such a young man, I say, would avoid what had happened to my young man; but in some cases, it would be more honorable to be influenced by emotion, even if it were irrational, but still occurring as a result of great love, rather than to remain utterly indifferent. But in youth this is even more accurate, because a young man who is constantly sensible is unreliable and of little value—that’s my opinion! “But,” reasonable people may perhaps exclaim here, “not every young man can possibly believe in such superstition and therefore your young man is no model for others.” To this I reply once again: yes, my youth believed, sacredly and inviolably, but I still won’t ask forgiveness for him.

Don’t you see: even though I declared above (perhaps too quickly) that I wouldn’t be explaining, excusing, or justifying my hero, I see that some clarification is necessary for understanding the remainder of my tale. Here’s what I’ll say: it wasn’t a matter of miracles. There was no frivolous or impatient expectation of miracles here. And it wasn’t that Alyosha needed miracles at the time for the triumph of some conviction (there was none of that at all), or for some prior, preconceived idea, which would quickly triumph over another—oh, no, not at all: what he saw in all this and before all was the figure of one man and only one—the face of his beloved elder, the face of that righteous man, whom he revered to the point of adoration. The fact is that all the love hidden in his young and pure heart for “everyone and everything,” both at that time and during the entire previous year, had been concentrated, perhaps even wrongly, primarily on one person, at least in the strongest impulses of his heart—on his beloved elder, now deceased. It’s true that this being had for so long stood before him as an indisputable ideal, that all his youthful powers and all his striving couldn’t help but be directed to that ideal exclusively, at certain moments even causing him to forget all about “everyone and everything.” (He himself recalled afterward that on this difficult day he’d forgotten all about his brother Dmitry, about whom he’d been so worried and distressed the evening before; he’d also forgotten to take Ilyushechka’s father the two hundred rubles, which he’d also intended to do the evening before.) Yet once again it wasn’t miracles that he needed, but only “higher justice,” which, according to his belief, had been destroyed, and that was what had wounded his heart so cruelly and unexpectedly. And what of it if this “justice” in Alyosha’s expectations, by the very course of events, had taken on the form of miracles, expected from the remains of his former adored mentor? After all, everyone in the monastery thought similarly and expected the same, even those whose intellects Alyosha esteemed, Father Paisy, for example; and thus Alyosha, untroubled by any doubts, wrapped his dreams in the same form as did the others. In any case, this belief had been established in his heart a long time ago, due to a whole year of living in the monastery; his heart had formed a habit of this expectation. But it was justice he craved, justice, not miracles alone! And now he who should have been exalted, according to Alyosha’s hopes, above everyone else in the world—that very man, instead of well-deserved praise, was subject to degradation and humiliation! What for? Who was judging? Who could have decided that? Those were the questions that tormented his inexperienced and innocent heart. He could not endure without chagrin, even without spiritual bitterness, the fact that the most righteous of the righteous was exposed to the mocking and malicious desecration of such a frivolous crowd who stood so far beneath him. Well, even if there had been no miracles, even if nothing miraculous transpired and the expectations were not fulfilled immediately, why this infamy, this disgrace, why this rapid decay, “preceding nature,” as the spiteful monks kept saying? Why this “sign,” which now they acclaimed so triumphantly together with Father Ferapont; and why do they believe that they have the right to proclaim it? Where is Providence and its finger? Why has it concealed itself “at this most crucial moment” (so wondered Alyosha), as though submitting voluntarily to the blind, dumb, and pitiless law of nature?

That’s why Alyosha’s heart was bleeding, and of course, as I said before, the man whom he loved above everyone else in the world had been “shamed” and “disgraced”! Let’s say my young man’s grumbling was frivolous and thoughtless; once again, I repeat for the third time (and I agree beforehand that this might be thoughtless): I’m glad that my young man turned out to be less than rational at this critical moment, because a clever man will always return in time to reason, but if love doesn’t appear in a young man’s heart at such an exceptional moment, then when will it occur? However, I don’t wish to remain silent in this case about the strange thing that transpired in Alyosha’s mind, although fleetingly, at this fateful and confusing moment. This new and momentary thing was the disquieting impression left by yesterday’s conversation with his brother Ivan, which constantly haunted him. Precisely now. Oh, it wasn’t that any of his fundamental, so to speak, elemental beliefs were shaken in his soul. He loved his God and believed in Him unwaveringly, though he was suddenly grumbling against Him. Still some vague, but tormenting, evil impression from the recollection of his conversation with his brother Ivan was suddenly stirring again in his soul and seemed to be forcing its way to the surface.

It had started to get dark when Rakitin, who was crossing the pine grove from the hermitage to the monastery, suddenly spotted Alyosha lying facedown under a tree, motionless as if asleep. He approached and called out to him.

“You’re here, Aleksey? Have you really . . .” he started to say, but he was so astonished that he didn’t finish his question. He wanted to say: “Have you really come to this?” Alyosha didn’t look at him, but from his slight movement, Rakitin guessed right away that he’d heard and understood what he was saying.

“What’s the matter with you?” he continued in surprise, but the astonishment began to be replaced by an expression more and more like mockery.

“Listen, I’ve been looking for you for more than two hours. You suddenly disappeared from there. What are you doing here? What sort of holy foolishness is this? Look at me, will you?”

Alyosha raised his head, sat up, and leaned his back against the tree. He wasn’t crying, but his face expressed suffering, and his appearance was one of irritation. However, he was looking not at Rakitin, but somewhere to the side.

“You know, your face has changed completely. There’s none of your previous celebrated mildness in it. Are you angry with someone? Offended?”

“Leave me alone!” Alyosha said all of sudden, continuing to look away and giving a contemptuous wave of his hand.

“Oho, that’s how you’re feeling! You’ve started shouting at people just as other mortals do! So much for the angels! Well, Alyoshka, you’ve surprised me. Do you know that? I’m being sincere. For a long time, nothing here surprised me. I always considered you a progressive, educated man . . .”

At last Alyosha looked at him, but somewhat distractedly, as if not quite understanding.

“Is all this really only because your elder’s begun to stink? Did you seriously believe that he’d start to pull off all sorts of miracles?” cried Rakitin, genuinely surprised again.

“I did believe, I do believe, I want to believe, and I will believe! What more do you want?” Alyosha cried angrily.

“Absolutely nothing, my dear. May the devil take you: no thirteen-year-old schoolboy believes this now. But, what the devil. . . . So now you’ve grown angry with your God: you’ve rebelled. He passed over your elder’s promotion; he didn’t award the righteous man a medal! Oh, you poor thing!”

Alyosha regarded Rakitin for a long time, sort of squinting at him. And a gleam suddenly flashed in his eyes . . . but it wasn’t anger at Rakitin.

“I’m not rebelling against my God; it’s just that I don’t accept His world,” Alyosha said with a wry smile.

“What do you mean, you ‘don’t accept His world’?” Rakitin asked after a brief moment of thought. “What kind of nonsense is that?”

Alyosha didn’t reply.

“Well, enough of this nonsense. Now, on to business: have you eaten today?”

“I don’t recall. . . . I think I have.”

“Judging by your face, you need to eat something. I feel sorry just looking at you. And you didn’t sleep last night; I heard you had a meeting in there. Besides, there’s all this commotion and confusion. . . . You’ve probably had nothing to eat except a mouthful of consecrated bread. In my pocket I’ve got some sausage—I brought it from town just in case—but you don’t eat sausage.”

“Give me some sausage.”

“Hey! So that’s how it is! In other words, it’s a real rebellion. To the barricades! Well, brother, we can’t let this opportunity pass us by. Let’s go to my place. . . . I wouldn’t mind a drop or two of vodka myself; I’m dead tired. But you’re not allowed vodka, are you?”

“Give me some vodka, too.”

“What’s this? Wonderful, brother!” Rakitin said, regarding him in amazement. “Well, one way or another, this is a fine, bold move, an opportunity not to be missed. Let’s go.”

Without a word, Alyosha got up off the ground and followed Rakitin.

“If only your brother Vanechka could see this, he’d be very surprised! By the way, this morning your brother Ivan Fyodorovich set off for Moscow, do you know that?”

“I do,” Alyosha said unconcernedly; suddenly there flashed through his mind the image of his brother Dmitry, but it only flashed, and though he remembered something, some urgent matter, which couldn’t be put off even for a minute, some duty, some terrible obligation, this recollection made no impression on him and never reached his heart; at that very moment it disappeared from his memory and was forgotten. But afterward Alyosha remembered this moment for a long time.

“Once your brother Vanechka declared that I was an ‘untalented liberal windbag.’ And one time you couldn’t resist and said I was ‘dishonorable.’ Well, so be it! Now let’s have a look at your talent and your sense of honor.” (Rakitin finished this phrase in a whisper to himself.) “Damn it. Listen!” he said, speaking aloud again. “Let’s go past the monastery and take the path directly into town. . . . Hmm. By the way, I have to stop by to see Madame Khokhlakova. Just imagine: I wrote to her describing all the events, and she answered me at once with a note written in pencil (that lady really loves to write notes), saying that never had she ‘expected such behavior from such a venerable elder as Father Zosima!’ That’s exactly what she wrote, ‘behavior’! She also became furious; hey, all of you! Wait!” he cried unexpectedly once again and suddenly paused; grabbing Alyosha by the shoulder, he stopped him, too.

“You know what, Alyosha.” He looked him in the eye with curiosity, completely under the impression of some new, unexpected idea suddenly occurring to him; and though he was laughing outwardly, he was evidently afraid to state aloud his surprising new idea, given how difficult it still was for him to accept Alyosha’s new, astonishing, completely unexpected mood.

“Alyoshka, do you know where we should go now?” he finally said, timidly and ingratiatingly.

“It doesn’t matter. Wherever you like.”

“Let’s go to Grushenka’s, eh? Will you come?” Rakitin said at last, trembling all over from expectation.

“Let’s go to Grushenka’s,” Alyosha replied at once calmly; this answer was so unexpected for Rakitin, that is, such a rapid and placid agreement, that he nearly recoiled.

“Well, well! Really!” Rakitin exclaimed in amazement, but taking firm hold of Alyosha’s arm, he led him speedily down the path, still worried that he might change his mind. They walked in silence; Rakitin was even afraid to speak.

“She’ll be so pleased, so glad . . .” he began muttering, but once again he fell silent. And it really wasn’t for Grushenka’s pleasure that he was bringing Alyosha; he was a practical man and he wouldn’t undertake any endeavor unless there was some gain in it for himself. His objective in this case was twofold: in the first place, it was revenge—to see the probable downfall of the “virtuous man” Alyosha from “saint to sinner,” something he’d been hoping for in his imagination; in the second place, he had in mind a certain material reward for himself, something especially valuable, about which more later.

“So, the moment’s arrived,” he thought to himself cheerfully and spitefully. “Here we are; therefore we’ll seize it, because the time’s just perfect.”

III

A LITTLE ONION

Grushenka lived in the busiest part of town, near Cathedral Square, on the property of the widow of the merchant Morozov, where she rented a small wooden lodge in the courtyard. The house itself was large, stone, two stories, old, and very unattractive. Morozov’s widow, an old woman, lived in it alone, secluded, with her two nieces, also elderly spinsters. She didn’t need to rent her lodge in the courtyard, but everyone knew that she’d taken in Grushenka as a lodger (some four years ago) simply to please the merchant Samsonov, Grushenka’s acknowledged protector. They said that the jealous old man, placing his “favorite” with the widow Morozova, had in mind the old woman’s sharp eye to keep watch over her new lodger’s behavior. But the sharp eye very soon turned out to be unnecessary; in the end Morozova rarely encountered Grushenka, and after a while didn’t pester her with any sort of supervision. It’s true that four years had passed since the old man had settled the timid, bashful, dainty, thin, wistful, sad eighteen-year-old girl from a provincial town in this house, and since that time, much water had flowed under the bridge. Very little was known in town about the girl’s biography, and what was known was inconsistent; lately no more had been discovered about her, even at a time when many people started to take an interest in this “raving beauty,” which Agrafena Aleksandrovna had become after these four years. There were only rumors that as a seventeen-year-old girl, she had been deceived by someone, an officer, who’d abandoned her subsequently. The officer went off and got married somewhere afterward, leaving Grushenka in disgrace and poverty. It was also said that although she really had been rescued from destitution by her old man, Grushenka had come from a decent family and was descended from the priestly class: her father was a deacon or something of the sort. And so, after four years, there emerged from a sensitive, insulted, and pitiful orphan girl, a shapely, rosy Russian beauty, a woman with an audacious and decisive character, proud and impudent, with a good understanding of money, a stingy and cautious person who knew how to acquire it by legal means or not, who, it was said, had already managed to accumulate her own stash of capital. In one thing only was everyone in agreement: that access to Grushenka was difficult, and that except for her elderly protector, there was not one person, all during those four years, who could boast of having gained her favor. This was an established fact because there had been many willing men, especially during the last two years, who’d aspired to win her affection. But all attempts had turned out to be in vain, and some of the pursuers had been forced to beat even a shameful and comic retreat, thanks to the steadfast and sarcastic resistance of this strong-willed young woman. It was also known that, especially during the last year, this young woman had engaged in what is called “wheeling and dealing,” and that she had demonstrated remarkable skill in that regard, and in the end, many people said that she was becoming a real Yid. It wasn’t that she lent money on interest; but it was known, for example, that together with Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, she actually invested in the purchase of bad debts for next to nothing, ten kopecks to the ruble, and then acquired promissory notes on some of these at the rate of a ruble to ten kopecks.

The ailing Samsonov, who had of late lost the use of his swollen legs, was a widower, a tyrant to his own grown sons, a man of great wealth, an implacable miser who fell under the powerful influence of his protégée; at first he maintained an iron grip on her, kept her on a short leash, or “on Lenten fare,” as some of our local wits used to say. But Grushenka managed to emancipate herself, having established in him a limitless belief in her fidelity. This old man, a smart operator (now long gone) in his own time, was a noteworthy character, stingy and hard as flint, and although Grushenka had shaken him so intensely that he couldn’t possibly live without her (during the last two years this was certainly the case), he still didn’t grant her his large, significant capital, and even if she’d threatened to leave him, even then he would’ve remained unbending. On the other hand, he did present her with a small sum of money, and when this became known, everyone was surprised. “You’re a wench who’s nobody’s fool,” he said to her, giving her some eight thousand rubles, “and you must take care of yourself; but you should know that in addition to your annual allowance, you won’t receive another kopeck while I’m still alive, and I won’t leave you anything in my will.” And he kept his word; he died and left it all to his sons, whom he treated as his servants all during his life, along with their wives and children; there wasn’t even a mention of Grushenka in his will. All of this became known afterward. However, he also helped her with advice on how to handle “her own capital,” and sent “business” her way.

When Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov first encountered Grushenka, over a certain shady “business deal,” it concluded in an unexpected manner: he fell head over heels in love with her. Old Samsonov, who at the time already had one foot in the grave, was greatly amused. It’s remarkable that all during their acquaintance, Grushenka was completely and, as it were, sincerely candid with her old man; he was the only person in the world with whom she was so. Lately, when Dmitry Fyodorovich appeared with his love, the old man ceased laughing. On the contrary, one time he earnestly and harshly advised Grushenka: “If you have to choose between them, the father and the son, then choose the old man, but only if that old scoundrel will marry you immediately and if he’ll settle some capital on you beforehand. But don’t consort with the lieutenant, there’s no point in it.” Those were the exact words of the old lecher, who felt that his death was imminent, and who actually died some five months after giving her this bit of advice.

I’ll note in passing that although many people in town knew about the ridiculous and monstrous rivalry over Grushenka between the Karamazovs, father and son, hardly anyone then understood the real nature of her attitude to both, the old man and his son. Even Grushenka’s two servants (after the terrible catastrophe, which we’ll speak about later) testified in court that Agrafena Aleksandrovna received Dmitry Fyodorovich simply out of the fear that he had “threatened to kill her.” Grushenka had two servants, one a very elderly cook, who came from her parents’ home, an ailing and nearly deaf old woman, and her granddaughter, a young, audacious young woman, about twenty years old, who served as her maid. Grushenka lived very modestly in an extremely unpretentious setting. In her lodge she had three rooms in all, furnished by her landlady with old mahogany pieces in the style of the 1820s.

When Rakitin and Alyosha arrived, it was quite dark, but the rooms were not yet illuminated. Grushenka herself was reclining in the living room, on a large, uncomfortable sofa with a hard mahogany back, covered in worn-out, shabby leather. Under her head she had two white feather pillows from her bed. She lay on her back, stretched out motionless, her two hands under her head. She was dressed as if she was expecting someone, in a black silk dress and a light lace headdress, which suited her very well; a lace shawl was draped over her shoulders, fastened by a massive gold brooch. She was definitely expecting someone, seemed to be waiting anxiously and impatiently, with a slightly pale face, glowing eyes and lips; the tip of her right foot was tapping irritably on the arm of the sofa. As soon as Rakitin and Alyosha arrived, a small commotion ensued: from the entrance Grushenka could be heard jumping up quickly from the sofa and crying out suddenly in a frightened voice: “Who’s there?” But the young maid met the guests and immediately replied to the mistress:

“It’s not him, ma’am, it’s some others; it’s all right.”

“What’s the matter with her?” muttered Rakitin, leading Alyosha by the arm into the living room. Grushenka stood by the sofa, as if still frightened. A thick strand of her dark brown hair suddenly escaped from her headdress and fell onto her right shoulder, but she didn’t notice it and didn’t fix it until she’d surveyed her visitors and recognized them.

“Ah, so it’s you, Rakitka?[1] You scared me so much. Who’s that with you? Who’ve you come with? Lord, look at whom you brought!” she cried, recognizing Alyosha.

“Do send for some candles!” Rakitin said with the informal manner of a close acquaintance and a good friend, having the right to give orders in this house.

“Some candles . . . of course, some candles. . . . Fenya, bring him a candle. . . . Well, you chose quite a time to bring him!” she cried once again, indicating Alyosha, and, turning to a mirror, quickly began to adjust her hair with both hands. She didn’t seem at all pleased.

“Aren’t you pleased?” asked Rakitin, for a moment almost offended.

“You frightened me, Rakitka, that’s what,” Grushenka said, turning to Alyosha with a smile. “Don’t be afraid of me, dear Alyosha, you can’t imagine how glad I am to see you, my dear unexpected guest. But you frightened me, Rakitka; I thought Mitya was bursting in. You see, I deceived him before, made him promise to believe me, but I lied to him. I told him I was going to my old man, Kuzma Kuzmich, would be there the whole evening, and would be counting his money with him until late at night. I always spend one entire evening a week with him, doing his accounts. We lock ourselves in: he counts on his abacus, while I sit there and write it all down in the books—he trusts only me. Mitya thinks I’m over there, but I locked myself in here, sitting and waiting for news. How did Fenya let you in? Fenya, Fenya! Run to the gates, open them, and look around to see if the captain’s out there. Perhaps he’s hiding and spying on me; I’m scared to death.”

“No one’s there, Agrafena Aleksandrovna, I just looked around, and I keep checking through the crack; I myself am shaking with fear.”

“Are the shutters closed, Fenya? We must lower the curtain—that’s it!” She herself lowered the heavy drapes. “Otherwise, if he sees a light, he’ll break in at once. Alyosha, today I’m afraid of your brother Mitya,” Grushenka said loudly, although with some alarm, but still almost in a frenzy.

“Why are you so afraid of Mityenka today?” inquired Rakitin. “It seems that you weren’t afraid of him and that he dances to your tune.”

“I tell you, I’m waiting for news, a priceless bit of news that will make Mityenka completely unnecessary now. And he didn’t believe me, I feel, when I said I was going to Kuzma Kuzmich’s. He must be at home now, at Fyodor Pavlovich’s, waiting in the garden, on the lookout for me. And if he’s staying there, he won’t come here, so much the better! But I really did go to see Kuzma Kuzmich; Mitya escorted me there. I told him I’d be there until midnight and asked him to come back to conduct me home. He left and I stayed at the old man’s for ten minutes, and then returned home; I was so afraid—I ran back, so I wouldn’t have to meet him.”

“Why are you so dressed up? What a curious cap you’re wearing!”

“You’re an inquisitive one, Rakitin! I tell you, I’m waiting for one bit of news. When it comes, I’ll jump up and fly away, and you won’t see me here ever again. That’s why I’m so dressed up, to be ready.”

“Where will you go?”

“If you know too much, you’ll get old too soon.”

“Just look at you! You’re so happy. . . . I’ve never seen you like this. You’re dressed as if for a ball,” Rakitin said, looking her over.

“Much you know about balls.”

“What about you?”

“I have seen a ball. The year before last, Kuzma Kuzmich’s son was married, and I looked on from the gallery. Why have I been talking to you, Rakitin, when such a fairy-tale prince is standing right here? What a guest! Alyosha, my dear, I’m looking at you and don’t believe it: good Lord, did you come here to see me? To tell the truth, I never guessed, never expected, and never would have thought you’d come to see me. Although this isn’t really a good time, I’m still very glad to see you! Sit down on the sofa, right here, my bright new moon. True, I can’t even imagine it. . . . Hey, Rakitka, if only you’d brought him yesterday or the day before! Well, still I’m so glad. Perhaps it’s better now, at such a moment, and not the day before yesterday . . .”

She sat down playfully on the sofa next to Alyosha, and looked at him with genuine exaltation. She really was very glad; she wasn’t lying when she said it. Her eyes were shining, her lips were smiling, but in a kindhearted, cheerful manner. Alyosha had never even expected such a kind expression on her face. . . . He’d encountered her infrequently, had formed an unsettling image of her, and yesterday had been very shaken by the malicious and insidious trick she’d played on Katerina Ivanovna; now he was suddenly very surprised to behold a completely different and unexpected being. And in spite of the fact that he was oppressed by his own grief, his eyes remained fixed on her of their own accord. Her entire comportment had changed since yesterday, all for the better: there was none of that saccharine quality in her way of speaking, no genteel and simpering gestures. . . . Everything was simple and openhearted; her gestures were quick, direct, and trusting, but she was very excited.

“Good Lord, the things taking place today,” she said, babbling again. “And why I’m so glad to see you, Alyosha, I myself don’t know. Just ask me, I still don’t know.”

“Well, what do you mean you don’t know why you’re so glad?” Rakitin asked with a grin. “Earlier you were always pestering me to bring him: you must have had some reason.”

“Earlier I had a reason, but that’s over, it’s not the right time. I’ll indulge you, that’s what. Now I’ve become nicer, Rakitin. Have a seat, Rakitka, why are you standing? Or did you sit down already? Rakitushka always takes good care of himself. There he is now, Alyosha, sitting opposite us, and he’s taking offense: why didn’t I ask him to sit down before I asked you? Rakitka takes offense easily, very much so!” Grushenka said with a laugh. “Don’t be mad, Rakitka. Today I’m being very kind. Why are you sitting there looking so sad, Alyoshechka, or are you afraid of me?” she asked, looking him in the eye with merry mockery.

“He’s sad. There was no promotion,” Rakitin said in a deep voice.

“What promotion?”

“His elder smells.”

“What do you mean he ‘smells’? You’re talking some sort of nonsense; you want to say something nasty. Shut up, you fool. Alyosha, let me sit in your lap, like this!” And all of a sudden she jumped up and with a laugh settled on his lap, like an affectionate kitten, tenderly embracing his neck with her right arm. “I’ll cheer you up, my devout little boy! No, you will really allow me to sit in your lap? You won’t get upset? If you say so, I’ll get off.”

Alyosha was silent. He sat there, fearing to stir, and heard her words “If you say so, I’ll get off,” but he didn’t reply; it was as if he were frozen in place. But what was happening in him was not what might have been expected, or what even Rakitin, for example, might have expected or imagined now, as he watched him greedily from his corner. The great grief in his soul had absorbed all sensations that might have arisen in his heart, and if he could have thought clearly at that moment, he would have realized that he possessed the strongest armor to protect himself against any lust and temptation. Nevertheless, in spite of all the elusive absence of control over the state of his soul, and all his overwhelming grief, he was still involuntarily surprised at the new and strange feelings arising in his heart: this woman, this “terrible” woman, not only didn’t arouse in him his previous terror, a terror that had been conceived previously in him at the mere thought of a woman, if such thoughts occurred to him at all; on the contrary, this woman, whom he feared more than anyone, now sitting on his lap and embracing him, suddenly aroused in him some completely different, unexpected, and special feeling, one of the most intense, purest curiosity, and all of this without the least bit of fear—that’s what astonished him so reluctantly.

“Enough of talking nonsense,” cried Rakitin. “You’d better serve us some champagne. You owe me, you know that!”

“I really do owe you. You know, Alyosha, I promised him champagne on top of everything if he’d bring you here. Roll out the champagne, and I’ll have some, too! Fenya, Fenya, bring us some champagne, the bottle that Mitya left here; hurry up. Although I’m stingy, I’ll dole out a bottle, but not to you, Rakitka. You’re a mushroom, but he’s a prince! And even though my soul is filled with something else, nevertheless, I’ll drink with you; I feel like having some fun!”

“What’s this moment you keep mentioning and what’s the ‘piece of news,’ may I ask, or is it a secret?” Rakitin inserted again with curiosity, trying with all his might to show that he didn’t notice the slights constantly directed at him.

“Hey, it’s no secret, and you yourself know,” Grushenka said suddenly with an anxious look, turning a little bit away from Alyosha, although still sitting on his lap, one arm draped around his neck. “My officer’s coming, Rakitin, my officer!”

“I heard that he was, but is he already so close?”

“He’s in Mokroye now; he’ll send a courier from there, as he himself wrote; I received a letter from him just before. I’m sitting here now waiting for the courier.”

“So that’s it! Why is he in Mokroye?”

“It’s a long story, but that’s enough for you.”

“So much for Mityenka now—oh, oh! Does he know or not?”

“Know what? He doesn’t know anything. If he did, he’d kill me. But I’m not afraid of that now, I’m not afraid of his knife at all. Be quiet, Rakitka, don’t remind me of Dmitry Fyodorovich: he crushed my heart. I don’t want to think about any of that now. I can think about Alyoshechka; I’m looking at him. . . . Give me a smile, my dearest, cheer up, and laugh at my foolishness, at my joy. . . . Ah, there’s a smile, look, he’s smiling! He looks at me so kindheartedly. You know, Alyosha, I kept thinking that you were angry with me for what happened the day before yesterday, concerning that young lady. I was a beast, that’s what. . . . But it’s a good thing that it happened. It was a bad thing and a good thing,” Grushenka said suddenly with a thoughtful grin, and some sort of cruel line flickered in her smile. “Mitya told me she’d shouted, ‘She should be whipped!’ I really offended her then. She invited me, wanting to win me over, to seduce me with some chocolate. . . . No, it’s a good thing that it happened that way,” she said, laughing once again. “But I’m still afraid you’re angry with me . . .”

“That’s really true,” Rakitin inserted suddenly with earnest astonishment. “She’s afraid of you, Alyosha, she really is, afraid of such a little chicken.”

“To you, Rakitka, he’s a little chicken, that’s what . . . because you lack a conscience, that’s what! You see, I love him with all my soul, that’s what! Do you believe me, Alyosha, that I love you with all my soul?”

“Oh, you shameless hussy! She’s confessing her love for you, Aleksey.”

“Well, so what? I do love him.”

“And your officer? And the golden piece of news from Mokroye?”

“That’s one thing, and this is another.”

“That’s how a woman thinks!”

“Don’t make me angry, Rakitka,” Grushenka stated forcefully. “That’s one thing, and this is another. I love Alyosha in a different way. True, Alyosha, previously I entertained a cunning scheme concerning you. I’m a base creature, I’m vicious; at another time, Alyosha, I looked upon you as if on my own conscience. I kept thinking, ‘Someone like that must despise a nasty creature like me.’ And I thought this the day before yesterday, Alyosha, and Mitya knows; I said it to him. Mitya understands this. Would you believe, Alyosha, sometimes I look at you and feel ashamed, completely ashamed of myself. . . . And how or when I began to think about you like that, I don’t even know and can’t recall . . .”

Fenya came in and placed a tray on the table with an open bottle of champagne and three glasses.

“Here’s the champagne!” cried Rakitin. “You’re excited, Agrafena Aleksandrovna, and beside yourself. If you drink a glass, you can stand up and dance. Hey, they don’t know how to do it,” he added, examining the champagne. “The old woman poured it in the kitchen, she’s brought the bottle in without a cork, and it’s warm. Well, let’s have some anyway.”

He went up to the table, took a goblet, drank it down in one gulp, and poured himself another.

“You don’t often stumble across champagne,” he said, licking his lips. “Well, Alyosha, take a glass, show us how. What shall we drink to? To the gates of paradise? Take a glass, Grusha, and drink to the heavenly gates.”

“Why the heavenly gates?”

She took a glass. Alyosha took his glass, tasted it, and put it down.

“No, better not to!” he said, smiling gently.

“But you boasted!” shouted Rakitin.

“Well, then, I won’t drink either,” Grushenka said. “I just don’t feel like it. Drink the whole bottle alone, Rakitin. If Alyosha has some, I will, too.”

“What sloppy sentimentality!” Rakitin teased. “And she’s sitting on his lap, too! Let’s say he’s got something to grieve over, but what about you? He’s rebelling against his God; he was planning to stuff his face with sausage.”

“How so?”

“His elder died today, Father Zosima, the saint.”

“So the elder Zosima died!” cried Grushenka; “Good Lord, I didn’t even know that!” She crossed herself devoutly. “Lord, what am I doing? I’m sitting on his lap now!” she cried suddenly and, as if frightened, instantly jumped off his lap and sat down on the sofa. Alyosha cast her a long and astonished look; something in his face seemed to light up.

“Rakitin,” he said suddenly, loudly and forcefully, “don’t tease me by saying that I’m rebelling against my God. I don’t want to get angry with you, so please be nicer. I’ve lost a treasure such as you’ve never had, and you can’t judge me now. You ought to look at her: did you see how she took pity on me? I came here to find an evil soul—that’s why I was drawn to coming here, because I was base and wicked, but I found a sincere sister; I’ve found a treasure—a loving soul. . . . She took pity on me at once. . . . Agrafena Aleksandrovna, I’m talking about you. Just now you’ve restored my soul.”

Alyosha’s lips were trembling and he stopped to catch his breath.

“It seems that she’s saved you!” Rakitin said with a malicious laugh. “She was prepared to devour you, do you know that?”

“Wait, Rakitka!” Grushenka said, suddenly jumping up. “Both of you, be quiet. “Now I’ll speak: you, Alyosha, be quiet because I feel embarrassed when I hear your words, because I’m wicked, and not good—that’s who I am. And you, Rakitka, keep quiet, because you’re lying. I did have the base thought that I wanted to devour him, but now you’re lying, it’s not the case at all . . . and I don’t want to hear you again, Rakitka!” Grushenka said all this in unusual agitation.

“They’re both crazy!” Rakitin hissed, regarding the two of them with amazement. “They’re both insane: I feel like I’m in a madhouse. They’re both so weak, they’ll soon start to cry!”

“I’ll start weeping, I will!” said Grushenka. “He called me his sister: I’ll never forget that! But here’s what, Rakitka, even though I’m wicked, I’ve still given away an onion.”

“What sort of onion? Phew, may the devil take them, she’s really gone crazy!”

Rakitin was surprised by their exalted state and was both offended and annoyed, although he should’ve realized that for both of them everything had merged that could’ve shaken their souls in a way that rarely happens in life. But Rakitin, who was capable of understanding everything that concerned him in an extremely sensitive way, was very insensitive in understanding the feelings and sensations of those around him—in part because of his youthful inexperience, and in part because of his rampant egotism.

“You see, Alyoshechka,” Grushenka said, turning to him suddenly with a nervous laugh, “I was boasting to Rakitka that I’d given away an onion, but I’m not boasting to you; I’m telling you for a different reason. It’s only a story, but it’s a good one. I used to hear it when I was just a child, from our cook Matryona. You see: ‘Once upon a time, there lived a wicked woman, and a very wicked woman she was, and she died. She didn’t leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and hurled her into a lake of fire. But her guardian angel stood there and thought: What sort of good deed can I recall to tell God? He remembered and said to God: “One time in her garden she pulled out an onion and gave it away to a beggar woman.” And God replied: “Take this same little onion, hold it out to her, and let her grab hold of it, be pulled out of the lake fire, and enter paradise. But if the onion breaks, the woman will have to stay where she is now.” So the angel ran back to the woman and held out the onion to her: “Here, woman, grab hold and I’ll pull.” And he started to pull her out carefully, and had almost done so when the other sinners, who saw that she was being pulled out of the lake, started to grab hold of her, so that they too could be pulled out with her. And this very wicked woman began kicking them away: “He’s pulling me out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours.” As soon as she said this, the onion broke, and the woman fell back into the lake of fire, where she’s burning to this very day. And the angel began to weep and went away.’

“So that’s the story, Alyosha; I know it by heart because I’m none other than that wicked woman. I boasted to Rakitka that I’d given away an onion, but I’m telling you something different: all my life I’ve done nothing but give away one onion; that’s the only good deed I’ve done. So don’t praise me, Alyosha, don’t think that I’m good; I’m wicked, very wicked, most wicked, and if you praise me, I’ll be embarrassed. Oh, I must confess everything. Listen, Alyosha: I was so eager to lure you here and kept pestering Rakitin, until I promised to give him twenty-five rubles if he brought you. Wait, Rakitin, stop!” She hurried over to the table, opened a drawer, found her purse, and pulled out a twenty-five-ruble note.

“What nonsense! What nonsense!” exclaimed the flustered Rakitin.

“Take it, Rakitka, I owe you; don’t refuse, you asked for it yourself.” And she tossed him the bill.

“As if I’d refuse it,” Rakitin said in a low voice, obviously discomfited, but bravely concealing his shame. “It’ll come in very handy; fools are made for clever men’s profit.”

“And now, shut up, Rakitka; everything I say now is not for your ears. Sit there and be quiet; you don’t love us; so be quiet.”

“Why should I love you?” Rakitin snapped, not concealing his anger. He shoved the twenty-five-ruble note into his pocket and was genuinely embarrassed before Alyosha. He had hoped to receive the payment later, so that Alyosha wouldn’t find out about it, and now in his shame he lost his temper. Up to this moment he’d been very politic in not contradicting Grushenka, in spite of all her slights, because it was clear that she held some sort of power over him. But now he also became angry.

“People love for a reason, but what has either of you done for me?”

“You should love people without a reason; that’s how Alyosha loves.”

“How does he love you? How has he shown it, that you’re making so much of it?”

Grushenka stood in the middle of the room and spoke with fervor, with some hysterical notes in her voice.

“Be quiet, Rakitka, you don’t understand a thing about us! And in the future, don’t you dare address me so familiarly;[2] I won’t allow it. Where did you get such nerve? Go sit in the corner and keep quiet, like my lackey. And now, Alyosha, I’ll tell you the whole truth so you can see what a despicable creature I am! I’m talking to you, not Rakitka. I wanted to destroy you, Alyosha, that’s the great truth; I had made up my mind; I wanted to do it so much that I bribed Rakitin to bring you here. And why did I want to do it? You didn’t know anything about it, Alyosha; you used to turn away from me, lower your eyes when you walked past me; I’ve looked at you a hundred times and have begun asking everyone about you. Your face remained in my heart: ‘He despises me,’ I thought. ‘He doesn’t even want to look at me.’ Finally I felt it so deeply that I myself was surprised: why was I so afraid of a young boy? I’ll devour him completely and will laugh about it. I was furious. Would you believe: no one here dares think or talk about coming to see Agrafena Aleksandrovna for any illicit favors; I have only my old man; I’m bound and sold to him; Satan married us, and there’s been no one else. But looking at you, I thought: I’ll devour him. I’ll devour him and then I’ll laugh. You see what sort of wicked cur I am, and you called me your sister! Now the man who destroyed me has come back and I’m here waiting for some news. Do you know what that man has meant to me? Some years ago Kuzma brought me here—and here I stayed, hiding from other people, so that no one saw me or heard me, a skinny, foolish young girl, sitting and sobbing, not sleeping for nights on end, and thinking, ‘Where is he now, my offender? He must be with another woman, laughing at me; if I could only see him, meet him again, I’d pay him back, I really would!’ I used to sob into my pillow at night and brood; I’d tear my own heart out in anger and stifle its malice. ‘I’ll get him, I’ll pay him back!’ That’s what I used to cry out in the darkness. Then I realized that I’d do nothing to him and that he was laughing at me now, and perhaps he didn’t even remember me and had completely forgotten; then I’d throw myself from my bed onto the floor, weep helpless tears, and shiver and shake until morning. I’d get to feel more vicious than a dog, ready to devour the whole world. Then what do you think? I began to accumulate some capital, without feeling any mercy; I grew fuller—smarter, don’t you think, eh? Not a bit; no one sees it and no one in the whole universe knows it, but when the darkness of night falls, still, the way I did as a young girl five years ago, I lie there, grind my teeth, and weep all night: ‘I’ll get back at him, I really will,’ that’s what I think. Have you heard all this? Now do you understand me? A month ago I received a letter: he’s coming back; he’d suddenly become a widower and now he wanted to see me. It took my breath away, Lord, and suddenly I thought: if he comes and whistles for me, if he calls me, I’ll go crawling back to him like a guilty, beaten little doggie. That’s what I thought, but I couldn’t believe it: ‘Are you that base or not? Will you run to him or not?’ All that month I was overcome by such rage that it was even worse than it was five years ago. Now do you see, Alyosha, what a furious, savage woman I am? I’ve told you the whole truth! I toyed with Mitya so as not to go running off with the other man. Be quiet, Rakitka, it’s not for you to judge; I’m not talking to you. Before you came today, I was lying here, waiting, thinking, deciding my fate; you can’t ever know what was in my heart. No, Alyosha, tell your young lady not to be angry with me for what happened the day before yesterday! No one in the whole world knows what I am going through now, and they can’t ever know it. . . . Therefore, perhaps, I’ll take a knife there today, I’m still trying to decide . . .”

After speaking this “pitiful” phrase, Grushenka suddenly couldn’t restrain herself and didn’t finish her thought; she covered her face with her hands, threw herself down on the sofa pillows, and burst into tears like a little child. Alyosha stood up and went over to Rakitin.

“Misha,” he said, “don’t be angry. She’s offended you, but don’t be angry. Did you hear what she just said? You can’t ask so much of another’s soul; you must be more merciful . . .”

Alyosha said this with an irrepressible burst of heartfelt emotion. He had to have his say and addressed Rakitin. If Rakitin hadn’t been there, he’d have proclaimed it alone. But Rakitin looked at him mockingly, and Alyosha suddenly stopped speaking.

“They loaded you with your elder’s teachings yesterday, and now you’ve fired your elder back at me, Alyoshechka, you little man of God,” Rakitin said with an odious grin.

“Don’t laugh, Rakitin, don’t grin, and don’t speak ill of the deceased: he’s above all of us who’ve lived on earth!” Alyosha exclaimed with tears in his voice. “I wasn’t speaking to you as a judge, but as the lowest of the judged. Who am I compared to her? I came here to be ruined. ‘Very well, so be it!’ I said, as a result of my cowardice; while she, after five years of torment, the first time someone came and said a sincere word to her, she forgave everything, forgot everything, and wept! Her offender returned, he calls her, and she forgives him everything, and hastens to him in joy, and she won’t take a knife, she won’t! No, I’m not like that. I don’t know if you’re like that, Misha, but I’m not! I learned this lesson today, just now. . . . Her love is higher than ours. Did you ever hear from her before what she’s just said? No, you didn’t; if you had, you’d have understood everything . . . and the other woman, the one who was insulted the day before yesterday, she must also forgive her! And she will forgive, if she finds out . . . and she will find out. . . . This soul is not yet at peace; we must have mercy on her. . . . There may be a treasure in this soul . . .”

Alyosha fell silent because he was out of breath. Rakitin, in spite of all his fury, regarded him with astonishment. He’d never expected such a tirade from the gentle Alyosha.

“What a lawyer you’ve become! Have you fallen in love with her, or what? Agrafena Aleksandrovna, our young monk has really fallen in love with you; you’ve conquered him!” he cried with impudent laughter.

Grushenka lifted her head off the pillow and looked at Alyosha with a tender smile shining on her face, which seemed swollen from her recent tears.

“Leave him alone, Alyosha, my cherub; you see what he is; he’s no one for you to talk to. Mikhail Osipovich,” she said, addressing Rakitin, “I’d wanted to beg your pardon for abusing you, but now I don’t feel like it. Alyosha, come over here and sit down next to me.” She beckoned him with a joyful smile. “That’s right, sit here, tell me”— she took him by the hand and, smiling, looked into his face—“tell me: do I love that man or not? The man who offended me: do I love him or not? Before you came I was lying here in the darkness, and kept inquiring of my heart: do I love that man or not? Resolve the matter for me, Alyosha, the time has come: it will be as you decide. Shall I forgive him or not?”

“You’ve already forgiven him,” Alyosha said with a smile.

“Yes, I suppose I really have,” Grushenka said wistfully. “What a mean heart I have! To my mean heart!” All of a sudden she snatched a glass from the table, gulped its contents down, raised it up, and hurled it to the floor. The glass rang out and shattered. Some sort of cruel streak flashed in her smile.

“Yet, perhaps I haven’t forgiven him yet,” she said somehow menacingly, dropping her eyes to the floor, as if she were talking to herself. “Perhaps my heart is only intending to forgive him. I’m still struggling with my heart. You see, Alyosha, I’ve grown very fond of my five-year-old tears. Perhaps I’ve come to love my injury, and not him at all!”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to be in his skin!” whispered Rakitin.

“And you won’t be, Rakitka, you’ll never be in his skin. You’ll shine my shoes, Rakitka, that’s what I’ll use you for; but you’ll never get a woman like me. . . . And, perhaps, he won’t either . . .”

“He won’t? Then why are you so dressed up?” Rakitin asked with a snide smile.

“Don’t reproach me for the way I’m dressed, Rakitka, you don’t know what’s in my heart at all! If I want to, I’ll rip off these fine clothes, tear them off immediately, this minute,” she cried loudly. “You don’t know what these clothes are for, Rakitka! Perhaps I’ll go to him and say, ‘Have you ever seen me like this or not?’ He abandoned me as a seventeen-year-old, a skinny, consumptive crybaby. I’ll sit next to him, beguile him, and arouse him: ‘You see what I am now?’ I’ll say. ‘Well, that’s all you get, my dear sir; your mouth may water, but you won’t ever get to taste it.’ That may be why I’m wearing these clothes, Rakitka,” Grushenka concluded with a malicious laugh. “I’m ferocious, Alyosha, vicious. I’ll tear off my clothes, I’ll disfigure myself, my own beauty, I’ll burn my face and cut myself with a knife, then I’ll go begging for alms. If I like, I won’t go anywhere now or to anyone; if I want, tomorrow I’ll send all Kuzma’s gifts and his money back to him, and I’ll go to work as a charwoman for the rest of my life! I will, I will, I can do it, but don’t tease me. . . . I’ll send that man away, make a rude gesture, and never see him again!”

She uttered these last words in a hysterical scream, but she couldn’t restrain herself again, covered her face with her hands, threw herself down on the pillow, and once more shook with sobs. Rakitin stood up.

“It’s time to go,” he said. “It’s late, and the monastery won’t admit us.”

Grushenka jumped up from her place.

“Do you really want to leave, Alyosha?” she cried in sorrowful surprise. “What are you doing to me: you got me all worked up, tormented me, and now you’re leaving me again to face this night alone?”

“He can hardly spend the night here with you. But if he wants to—let him! I’ll go alone!” Rakitin joked sarcastically.

“Shut up, you wicked man,” Grushenka shouted at him furiously. “You’ve never said any of the things he came here to say to me.”

“What did he say to you?” Rakitin muttered irritably.

“I can’t say; I don’t know; I don’t know what he said; he spoke to my heart and turned it upside down. He felt sorry for me, that’s what, he’s the only one! Why didn’t you, my cherub, come sooner?” she asked and suddenly sank to her knees before him, as if in a frenzy. “All my life I’ve been waiting for someone like you, knowing that someone like you would come and forgive me. I believed that someone would love a filthy woman like me, and not only for my shame!”

“What have I done to you?” Alyosha replied with a tender smile, bending over her and gently taking her hands. “I gave you an onion, a very small onion, and that’s all!”

After he said this, he started crying, too. At that moment in the entrance entry, there arose a noise; someone entered the hall; Grushenka jumped up as if in terrible fear. Fenya rushed into the room noisily and cried out:

“Mistress, my dearest, mistress, a messenger’s arrived!” she cried cheerfully, gasping for breath. “A carriage has come for you from Mokroye; the driver Timofey is in a troika; they’re just harnessing fresh horses. There’s a letter, mistress, a letter for you; here it is!”

A letter was in her hand; all the while she was shouting, she was waving it in the air. Grushenka grabbed the letter from her and held it up to the candle. It was only a short note, a few lines, and she read it in a moment.

“He’s sent for me!” she cried, her face pale and distorted with a feeble smile. “He’s whistled! Come crawling, you mutt!”

But she hesitated for only a moment; suddenly the blood rushed back into her head and her cheeks were set aglow.

“Off I go!” she cried suddenly. “My five years! Farewell! Good-bye, Alyosha; my fate’s been decided. . . . Leave me, leave me, all of you, leave me, I don’t want to see you ever again! Grushenka’s flown away to a new life. . . . Don’t think badly of me, Rakitka. Perhaps I go to my death! Ugh! I feel as if I were drunk!”

She abruptly left them and ran into her bedroom.

“Well, she doesn’t care about us now!” grumbled Rakitin. “Let’s go, or else we may hear that female shriek again; I’m fed up with those tearful exclamations . . .”

Alyosha let himself be led out mechanically. The carriage stood in the courtyard; the old horses were being unharnessed; men were walking to and fro with a lantern, bustling about. Three fresh horses were being led through the open gates. But as soon as Alyosha and Rakitin had left the porch, the window of Grushenka’s bedroom suddenly opened, and she shouted to Alyosha in a resonant voice:

“Alyoshechka, give my regards to your brother Mityenka, and tell him not to think badly of me, his rascal. And convey these words to him: ‘Grushenka’s gone off with her scoundrel, and not you, you noble heart.’ Also add that Grushenka loved him for one whole hour, but only for one hour, and let him remember this hour from now on for his entire life; say that Grushenka commands him for the rest of his life.”

When she finished speaking, her voice was full of sobs. The window slammed shut.

“Hmm, hmm,” Rakitin growled, with a laugh. “She devastates your brother Mityenka, and orders him to remember it for the rest of his life. What a predator!”

Alyosha made no reply, as if he hadn’t heard; he walked rapidly alongside Rakitin, as if in a terrible hurry; he seemed to be oblivious, and walked mechanically. Rakitin felt a sudden pang, as if someone had stuck his fingers in an open wound. He had expected something quite different when he’d brought Grushenka and Alyosha together; yet something almost opposite from what he’d hoped for had occurred.

“He’s a Pole, that officer of hers,” he began again, restraining himself, “and he’s no longer even an officer; he used to serve in a customs office in Siberia, somewhere on the Chinese frontier, it must be, he’s some puny little Polack. They say he’s lost his position. Now he’s heard that Grushenka’s amassed some capital, so he’s come back—that’s the explanation of all these miracles.”

Once again Alyosha seemed not to have heard him. Rakitin couldn’t restrain himself:

“Well, have you converted a sinner?” he asked Alyosha spitefully. “Have you turned the harlot onto the true path? Have you driven out seven devils, eh? So here they are: those miracles we were expecting today have now taken place!”

“Stop it, Rakitin,” Alyosha replied with suffering soul.

“Do you ‘despise’ me now for those twenty-five rubles? I’ve sold a true friend. But you’re no Christ and I’m no Judas.”

“Ah, Rakitin, I can assure you, I’d even forgotten all about that,” cried Alyosha. “But you yourself just reminded me . . .”

Rakitin was now positively furious.

“The devil take each and every one of you,” he roared suddenly. “And why the devil did I take up with you? From now on I don’t want to know you anymore. Go on alone: there’s your road!”

And he turned hastily onto another street, leaving Alyosha alone in the darkness. Alyosha walked out of town and headed across a field to the monastery.

1 An affectionate diminutive form of Rakitin’s name.

2 Rakitin had switched from the formal vy to the informal form, ty. (Cf. the French vous and tu.)

IV

CANA OF GALILEE[1]

It was very late according to monastery norms when Alyosha arrived back at the hermitage; the porter let him in a special entrance. It was already nine o’clock—the hour of common rest and repose after such a trying day for everyone involved. Alyosha opened the door timidly and entered the elder’s cell, in which the coffin now stood. Except for Father Paisy, who was alone, reading the Gospel, and the young novice Porfiry, exhausted by last night’s conversation and today’s commotion and fast asleep with the deep slumber of youth, on the floor in the other room, there was no one else present. Father Paisy, although he heard Alyosha enter the cell, didn’t even look in his direction. Alyosha turned to the right of the door and proceeded to the corner, sank down on his knees, and began praying.

His soul was filled to overflowing, but with vague sensations, no one standing out clearly; on the contrary, each sensation pushed another out in a quiet, even rotation. But his heart felt at ease and, strange to say, Alyosha was not astonished by that. Once again he beheld the coffin containing the body of his precious elder, but there was no mournful, aching, tormenting grief in his soul, as there had been the morning before. As soon as he had entered, he had fallen down before the coffin, as before a holy shrine, but joy, genuine joy glowed in his mind and heart. One window in the cell was open, the air was fresh and cool—“That means the smell had become stronger if they decided to open the window,” thought Alyosha. Even the thought of the odor of decomposition, which had recently seemed so terrible and disgraceful to him, didn’t occasion his previous misery or indignation.

He began to pray softly, but soon felt that he was doing so almost mechanically. Fragments of thoughts flew through his mind, flashing like stars and then dying out again, replaced by others; on the other hand, some feeling of fullness, firmness, and comfort reigned in his soul, and he himself became aware of this. Sometimes he began to pray intensely, he so wanted to express his gratitude and love. . . . But, after starting to pray, he suddenly moved on to other things, sank into thought, and forgot both about his prayer and what had interrupted it. He began listening to what Father Paisy was reading, but, feeling exhausted, he gradually started to doze . . .

“And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee,” read Father Paisy. “And the mother of Jesus was there;

“And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.”

“Marriage? What’s that? A marriage . . .” drifted through Alyosha’s mind like a whirlwind. “She’s also happy . . . she went off to the feast. . . . No, she didn’t take a knife, she didn’t. . . . That was merely a ‘pathetic’ word. . . . Well . . . one has to forgive pathetic words, absolutely. Pathetic words comfort the soul . . . without them people’s grief would be too burdensome. Rakitin went down a narrow lane. While he thinks about his insults, he’ll always walk down a narrow lane. . . . And the road, the road is wide, straight, bright, crystal clear, and the sun is at the end of it. . . . Eh? What’s he reading?”

“And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto them, They have no wine,” Alyosha heard.

“Ah, yes, I missed a part here, and I didn’t want to. I love this passage: it’s Cana of Galilee, the first miracle. . . . Ah, it’s a miracle, ah, a nice miracle. It wasn’t men’s grief but their joy that Christ visited, performing a miracle for the first time. He added to their joy. . . . ‘He who loves men also loves their joy. . . . ’ The deceased elder was constantly repeating that: it was one of his principal ideas. . . . ‘It’s impossible to live without joy,’ says Mitya. . . . Yes, Mitya. . . . ‘Everything that’s true and beautiful is always full of universal forgiveness’—he used to say that, too . . .’ ”

“Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.

“And his mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.”

“Do it. . . . Joy, the joy of some poor, very poor people. . . . Of course, they were poor, if they didn’t even have wine for the wedding. . . . Historians write that in those days the population living around the Lake of Gennesaret and nearby was the poorest that one can possibly imagine. . . . And another great heart, that other great being, His Mother, knew that He had come down to earth not only to perform His great and terrible feat; she knew that His heart was open to the simple, honest joy of some dark, unenlightened, guileless beings, who’d cordially invited Him to their humble wedding celebration. ‘Mine hour is not yet come,’ He says with a quiet smile (he must have smiled gently to her). . . . And indeed, was it to increase the wine at poor weddings that He came down to earth? Yet, He went and did what she’d asked Him. . . . Ah, he’s reading again.”

“Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim.

“And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bore it.

“When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was (but the servants who drew the water knew), the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,

“And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.”

“But what’s this? What’s this? Why is the room getting bigger? Ah, yes . . . it’s a marriage, a wedding . . . yes, of course. Here are the guests, here’s the young couple, and the merry crowd. . . . Where’s the wise governor of the feast? But who’s this? Who is it? The room is expanding again. . . . Who’s standing up at the large table? What? Is he here, too? But he’s in his coffin. . . . But he’s also here . . . he stood up, noticed me, and is coming over here. . . . Oh, Lord!”

Yes, he came up to him, right up to him, a withered old man with tiny wrinkles on his face, joyful, and laughing softly. The coffin was now gone; he was wearing the same clothes as yesterday when he had spoken to them, when visitors had gathered in his cell. His face was open, his eyes shining. How could this be? So, he’s also present at the feast, also summoned to the marriage in Cana of Galilee . . .

“My dear, I was invited, invited and summoned,” a quiet voice said above him. “Why did you hide where I couldn’t see you? Come here and join us.”

It was his voice, the voice of the elder Zosima. . . . And it had to be, if he was calling. The elder raised Alyosha with his hand and he got up from his knees.

“Let us rejoice,” said the withered old man. “Let us drink the new wine, the wine of new joy, great joy; you see how many guests are assembled here? Here’s the bride and groom; here’s the wise governor of the feast; he’s tasting the new wine. Why do you stand in awe of me? I gave away an onion, and I’m here, too. And many people here have also given away a little onion, only one small onion each. . . . What are our deeds? And you, my quiet boy, my gentle boy, you, too, knew how to give away an onion to a hungry woman. Begin your work, my dear boy, begin, my gentle boy. . . . And do you see our Son, do you see Him?”

“I’m afraid. . . . I dare not look . . .” whispered Alyosha.

“Don’t be afraid of Him. He’s terrible in His greatness before us, awesome in His eminence, but He’s infinitely merciful. Out of love He made Himself like unto us and He rejoices with us. He changes water into wine so the guests’ joy will not be interrupted; He awaits new guests. He invites new guests constantly, forever and ever. Here they’re bringing in new wine, do you see, they’re carrying in the vessels . . .”

Something was glowing in Alyosha’s heart, something suddenly filled it until it ached; tears of ecstasy were bursting forth from his soul. . . . He stretched forth his arms, uttered a cry, and woke up . . .

Again the coffin, the open window, and the soft, solemn, distinct reading of the Gospel. But Alyosha was no longer listening to what was being read. It was strange: he’d fallen asleep on his knees but was now standing on his feet; all of a sudden, as if breaking loose from this spot, he took three firm steps and went right up to the coffin. His shoulder even brushed against Father Paisy without noticing it. Father Paisy raised his eyes from his book for a moment; then he looked away again, understanding that something strange was happening to the young man. For half a minute or so Alyosha stared at the coffin, at the covered, motionless corpse that lay stretched out in it with an icon on its chest, and a monk’s cowl and eight-pointed cross on its head. He had just heard Zosima’s voice and that sound still rang in his ears. Alyosha kept listening, waiting for more words . . . but suddenly, he turned abruptly and walked out of the cell.

He didn’t stop on the porch but went directly down the stairs, his soul filled with ecstasy, yearning for freedom, space, and breadth. The vault of heaven was filled with quiet, twinkling stars, stretching endlessly above him. The Milky Way in two pale streams ran from the zenith to the horizon. The fresh, still, quiet night enveloped the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the cathedral sparkled against the sapphire sky. Lush autumnal flowers in beds around the house were asleep until morning. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens, the mystery of the earth blending with the mystery of the stars. . . . Alyosha stood there gazing and suddenly, like one whose legs were knocked out from under him, he threw himself down onto the earth.

He didn’t know why he was embracing it; he wasn’t aware of why he longed so irrepressibly to kiss the earth, kiss it all, but he did so weeping, sobbing, watering the earth with his tears, vowing ecstatically to love it, love it forever and ever. “Water the earth with tears of joy and love those tears . . .”: these words resonated in his soul. Why was he weeping? Oh, he wept in ecstasy even about those stars that were shining to him from the abyss of space, and “he was not ashamed of this ecstasy.” It was as if threads from all these innumerable worlds of God combined at once in his soul and it was now trembling all over “from its contact with other worlds.” He longed to forgive everyone for everything and to ask forgiveness, oh, not for himself, but for all men, for everyone and everything, and “others asked the same for me,” resonated again in his soul. But with every moment he felt manifestly and, as it were, palpably that something steady and unshakable, like this heavenly vault, was entering into his soul. It was as if some idea was taking over his mind—and it was for the rest of his life, and forever. He’d fallen down on the earth a feeble youth, but had risen a determined warrior, and now he felt and knew it all of a sudden, at the very moment of his ecstasy. And never, never could Alyosha forget this moment during his entire life afterward. “Someone visited my soul at that hour,” he would say later with resolute faith in his own words . . .

Three days later he left the monastery, in accordance with his late elder’s words commanding him to “sojourn in the world.”

1 John 2:1–10.

BOOK EIGHT

MITYA

I

KUZMA SAMSONOV

Meanwhile, Dmitry Fyodorovich, to whom Grushenka, now flying away to a new life, “had ordered” Alyosha to convey her final greeting and her command that he remember her one hour of love forever, at that moment knew nothing of what had happened to her and was also in terrible confusion and turmoil. During the last two days he’d been in such an unimaginable state that he really could have fallen ill with brain fever, as he himself later admitted. The morning before Alyosha had been unable to find him, and that same day brother Ivan had failed to arrange a meeting with him at the tavern. The landlord of the little apartment where he lived concealed his whereabouts by Mitya’s own order. He’d spent these last two days rushing around aimlessly, “struggling with his own fate and saving himself,” as he himself expressed it afterward; for a few hours he even made a quick trip out of town to take care of some urgent business, in spite of the fact that he was afraid to leave Grushenka even for a minute without keeping his eye on her. All of this came out later in the most detailed and documented form, but now we mention in factual terms only the most necessary aspects of these two horrible days in his life, preceding the terrible catastrophe that so suddenly burst over his fate.

Even though Grushenka had loved him genuinely and sincerely for one very short hour—that was true—she sometimes really tormented him cruelly and mercilessly. The main thing was that he was completely unable to discern her intentions; there was no possibility of discovering them with either kindness or force: she wouldn’t yield for any reason, but would merely get angry or turn away from him; he understood that clearly at the time. He suspected, rightly so, that she herself was also undergoing some kind of struggle, in some unusual indecision, trying to decide, but unable to do so; therefore, he assumed with a sinking heart, not unfounded, that at certain times she must have simply hated him and his passion. And so it might have been, but as to what was distressing Grushenka, he didn’t understand that at all. The entire question torturing him came down to just two choices: “Either him, Mitya, or Fyodor Pavlovich.”

Here, by the way, it’s necessary to document one definite fact: he was absolutely convinced that Fyodor Pavlovich would propose lawful marriage (if he hadn’t already done so); he didn’t believe, even for one minute, that the old voluptuary was counting on getting away with paying her only three thousand rubles. That’s what Mitya had concluded, knowing Grushenka and her character. That’s why it could seem to him at times that all of her torment and indecision was taking place only because she didn’t know which of them to choose and which would be more advantageous for her.

Strange to say, during these days it never even occurred to Mitya to think about the return of her “officer,” that is, the principal man in Grushenka’s life, whose arrival she was awaiting with such anxiety and fear. It’s true that in the last few days Grushenka had kept silent about this possibility. However, he knew from her all about the letter she’d received a month or so ago from her former seducer; he also knew something of its content. At the time, in one spiteful moment, Grushenka had shown him that letter, but to her amazement, he hadn’t placed any value on it. And it would be very difficult to explain why: perhaps it was simply because he himself, weighed down by his hideous revulsion at the struggle with his father over this woman, he couldn’t imagine anything more terrible and dangerous for himself than this, at least at that time. He simply didn’t believe in this suitor who’d showed up from God knows where after an absence of some five years or, especially, the fact that he would now arrive momentarily. And in the first letter from this “officer,” which she’d shown to Mityenka, word of this new rival’s appearance was very vague: the letter was extremely nebulous, high-flown, full of nothing but sentimentality. We must note that at the time Grushenka had concealed the last lines of the letter from him, in which the officer’s return was mentioned somewhat more precisely. Besides, Mityenka recalled afterward that in that moment, he had observed in Grushenka’s face something like involuntary and proud contempt to this missive from Siberia. Thereafter she told him nothing concerning her further relations with this rival. Thus gradually he forgot all about this officer. His only thought was that come what may, however it turned out, a looming decisive clash with Fyodor Pavlovich was imminent and had to be resolved before anything else. With a sinking heart he awaited Grushenka’s decision and believed that it would come suddenly, by momentary inspiration, as it were. All of a sudden she would say to him: “Take me, I’m yours forever.” And it would all be over: he would seize her and carry her off at once to the ends of the earth. Oh, he would carry her as far away as possible, if not to the ends of the earth, then at least to the end of Russia, marry her there, and settle down with her incognito, so that no one would know about them, not here, not there, not anywhere. Then, oh, then a completely new life for them would begin without delay! He dreamed constantly and feverishly about this new, renewed, “virtuous” life (“definitely, definitely virtuous”). He yearned for this resurrection and renewal. The filthy slough into which he’d sunk of his own free will oppressed him too severely, and he, like many others in similar straits, believed most of all in a change of location: if it were not for these people, not for these circumstances, if only he could fly away from this accursed place—he would be reborn, everything would start afresh! That’s what he believed and what he was yearning for.

But this was only in case of the first, happy resolution of the question. There was another solution, another possibility, and a terrible outcome. She would suddenly say to him: “Go away, I’ve decided in favor of Fyodor Pavlovich; I will marry him and I no longer need you.” Then . . . but then. . . . However, Mitya didn’t know what would happen then; he wouldn’t know until the very last hour, that much must be said on his behalf. He had no definite intentions; no crime had ever been planned. He merely followed, spied on, and suffered, while he prepared himself for the first, happy outcome of his fate. He would even drive away other thoughts. But now began a completely new torment, an altogether new and peripheral concern, but another crucial and unresolved circumstance.

If she were to say to him, “I’m yours, take me away,” how would he do so? Where were the means, the money to do this? It was just at this time that all the income he’d been receiving from Fyodor Pavlovich regularly over the years had dried up. Of course, Grushenka had some money, but on this point Mitya felt an inordinate pride: he wanted to take her away on his own, and begin a new life with her using his own money, not hers; he couldn’t even imagine taking her money, and he suffered from this thought to the point of intense disgust. I won’t carry on here about this fact or analyze it; I merely mention it: such was his soul’s stance at the time. All this may have been happening indirectly and, as it were, even unconsciously, due to the secret torments of his conscience for the money he’d fraudulently appropriated from Katerina Ivanovna: “I’ve acted like a scoundrel to one of them and will act the same way to the other,” he thought at the time, as he himself later admitted. “When Grushenka finds out, she won’t even want such a scoundrel.” And so, where could he find the means, where could he get the vital money? Otherwise, it would all come to nothing; all would be lost, “solely because he lacked the money. Oh, the shame!”

I’m getting ahead of myself: the fact is that perhaps he knew where he could get the money, even knew, perhaps, where the money was stashed. I won’t go into more detail at this time, since it will all become clear afterward; but this is what constituted the greatest misfortune for him; though it’s somewhat imprecise, I will explain. To take these means, he had to have the right to do so; he first had to return the three thousand rubles to Katerina Ivanovna—otherwise, Mitya decided, “I’m a common thief and a scoundrel, and I don’t want to begin my new life as a scoundrel.” Therefore he resolved to overturn the whole world if necessary, but without fail he’d return that three thousand to Katerina Ivanovna no matter what, and before everything. The final stage of this decision had been reached, so to speak, in the latest hours of his life, that is, since the last meeting with Alyosha, two days ago in the evening, along the road, after Grushenka had offended Katerina Ivanovna; and Mitya, hearing about all this from Alyosha, became aware that he was a scoundrel, and ordered him to say this to Katerina Ivanovna, “if it would comfort her in any way.” Then, that night, after parting with his brother, he felt, in his frenzied state, that it would be even “better to rob and kill someone, but he had to repay his debt to Katerina Ivanovna.” “It’s better to be thought a robber and a murderer by that man and before everyone and be sent to Siberia, than that Katya should have the right to say I betrayed her and stole her money, and with that money ran away with Grushenka to begin a virtuous life! I can’t do that!” Mitya said this, grinding his teeth; he could really imagine at times that he’d end up with brain fever. Meanwhile, he kept struggling . . .

Strange to say: it seemed that once he’d reached such a decision, nothing was left for him except despair; because where could he, a pauper, get the money? Still, he persisted in thinking to the end that he could procure the three thousand, that the money would simply come to him, fly in from somewhere, even down from heaven. But that’s just how it is with people like Dmitry Fyodorovich, who all their lives know only how to waste and squander their inheritance, while they have no idea whatsoever how to earn money. The most fantastical whirlwind took possession of his mind right after he parted with Alyosha two days ago, and it muddled all his thoughts. Thus it happened that he embarked on a most unbelievable enterprise. Perhaps it’s precisely under such conditions that people embark on the most impossible and fantastical undertakings, which at first seem most possible. He suddenly decided to visit the merchant Samsonov, Grushenka’s protector, and propose a certain “scheme” to him, and, under the auspices of this scheme, to procure from him the required sum of money; he had no doubts about his scheme from the commercial point of view; he doubted only how Samsonov himself would regard his scheme, if he would take a look at it not merely from the commercial point of view. Although Mitya could recognize Samsonov’s face, he wasn’t really acquainted with him, and had never spoken with him even once. But for some reason, for a while he even believed that the old seducer, with one foot in the grave, might not object at the present time if Grushenka were somehow to embark on an honest life and marry a “trustworthy man.” Perhaps he’d do more: he might even wish for such a thing; and should the occasion arise, he might even do something to facilitate it. Whether it was a rumor or some remark passed along by Grushenka, Mitya also concluded that perhaps the old man preferred him to Fyodor Pavlovich.

It may be that many of the readers of our tale will consider this calculation of such assistance, and his intention to take his bride, so to speak, out of the hands of her protector, shows excessive brusqueness and a disregard for propriety on the part of Dmitry Fyodorovich. I can only note that Grushenka’s “past” seemed to Mitya to be past indeed. He regarded this past with endless compassion and resolved with all the fervor of his passion that once Grushenka told Samsonov that she loved Mitya and was planning to marry him, it would signal the beginning of a completely new Grushenka and a completely new Dmitry Fyodorovich, without any vices, only with virtues: that they would all forgive one another and begin their life in a new way. As far as Kuzma Samsonov was concerned, Dmitry looked upon him as a man who, in Grushenka’s former, vanished past, had played a fateful role in her life, but whom she had never loved, and whose time had “passed,” finished, so that he no longer existed. Besides, Mitya couldn’t even consider him a man now, because it was known to one and all in town that he was a shattered wreck whose relations to Grushenka had changed to purely paternal, not on the same basis as previously, and that this had been the case for some time, in fact almost a year.

In any case, there was a great deal of simple-heartedness on Mitya’s part, because in spite of all his vices, he was a very simple-hearted man. As a result of this trait, however, he was firmly convinced that old Kuzma, preparing to leave for the other world, now felt genuine repentance for his past with Grushenka, and that now she lacked a protector and friend more devoted than this harmless old man.

The day after his conversation with Alyosha in the field, after which Mitya could hardly sleep the whole night, Mitya appeared in Samsonov’s house at about ten o’clock in the morning and had himself announced. The house was old, gloomy, very spacious, two stories, with outbuildings and a cottage in the courtyard. Samsonov’s two married sons lived on the first floor with their families, an old sister, and one unmarried daughter. His two clerks, one of which also had a large family, lived in the cottage. Both children and clerks were crowded into their quarters, but the old man kept the upper story of the house to himself and wouldn’t allow even his own daughter, who looked after him and who, at appointed hours and every time he called her, in spite of her shortness of breath, was required to run upstairs to see him.

This upper story consisted of a number of large ceremonial rooms, furnished in the old-fashioned merchant style, with long monotonous rows of uncomfortable armchairs and mahogany chairs along the walls, crystal chandeliers covered with shades, and dismal mirrors on the walls. All these rooms were empty and unoccupied, because the sickly old man kept to one small room—his remote, tiny bedroom, where an old woman servant whose hair was covered by a kerchief waited on him, as well as a young lad who sat on a chest in the hallway. The old man could hardly walk because of his swollen legs; he rarely stood up from his leather armchair; and the old woman, supporting him under his arm, would escort him once or twice around the room. He was stern and taciturn even with this old woman.

When he was informed about the “captain’s” arrival, he immediately refused to see him. But Mitya insisted and had himself announced a second time. Kuzma Kuzmich interrogated the lad closely: What did he look like? Was he drunk? He was told that “he was sober, but wouldn’t leave.” The old man refused again to see him. Then Mitya, having foreseen all this, and having come prepared with paper and pencil for just this eventuality, wrote clearly on a piece of paper: “On most pressing business, intimately concerning Agrafena Aleksandrovna,” and sent it up to the old man.

After considering this for a little while, the old man had the lad show the visitor into the hall and sent an order downstairs summoning his younger son to join him upstairs. This younger son, who was over six feet tall and possessed inordinate strength, whose face was closely shaved, and who dressed like a German (Samsonov himself had a beard and went around in a caftan), appeared immediately and without objection. They all quaked in fear before the old man. The father had invited this titan not because he was afraid of the captain (Samsonov was not a timid man); rather it was just in case, so that he’d have a witness present. Supported by his son, who took his arm, and the servant, he finally emerged into the hall. It must be supposed that he had rather a great deal of curiosity. The drawing room in which Mitya was waiting was enormous, dreary, and depressing, with two lights, a gallery, “marbled” walls, and three huge crystal chandeliers covered with shades.

Mitya was sitting on a tiny chair near the entrance, anxiously awaiting his fate. When the old man appeared at the opposite door, about seventy feet from Mitya’s chair, Mitya jumped up and strode to meet him, taking long, military-style steps. Mitya was decently attired, in a modest jacket, holding his round hat in his hands, wearing black gloves, just as he had three days earlier in the elder’s cell at the family gathering with Fyodor Pavlovich and his brothers. The old man stood gravely and sternly waiting to meet him; Mitya felt at once that the old man was examining him closely as he approached. Mitya was also struck by Kuzma Kuzmich’s face, which had of late become extremely swollen: his lower lip, which was already thick, now seemed to hang down like a flat pancake. He bowed imposingly and silently to his guest, pointed to the armchair next to the sofa, while he himself leaned on his son’s arm and groaned painfully; then he began to seat himself slowly on the sofa opposite Mitya, so that Mitya, seeing his painful efforts, soon felt remorse in his heart and delicate shame at his insignificance before this imposing person whom he’d inconvenienced.

“What is it, sir, what do you want of me?” asked the old man slowly, distinctly, severely, but politely, after he was seated at last.

Mitya shuddered, was about to jump up, but sat down again. Then he began speaking loudly, quickly, nervously, gesticulating, and with definite agitation. It was obvious that this man had been driven into a corner, he was lost, and was searching for a way out, and if he didn’t succeed, he’d end it all at once. Old man Samsonov, no doubt, understood all this right away, although his face remained as motionless and cold as a statue’s.

“Most honorable Kuzma Kuzmich, no doubt you’ve heard more than once about my disagreements with my father, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, who robbed me of my inheritance from my dear mother. . . . The whole town is gossiping about it . . . because here everyone gossips unnecessarily about everything. . . . Besides, you might have heard about it from Grushenka . . . I’m sorry: from Agrafena Aleksandrovna . . . from the much-respected and much-esteemed Agrafena Aleksandrovna . . .” So began Mitya, though he broke down after the first words.

We won’t quote his entire speech word for word, but will summarize its content. The point is that three months ago he’d intentionally (he chose this word carefully) consulted, in the local provincial capital, “a well-known lawyer, Pavel Pavlovich Korneplodov, whom you, Kuzma Kuzmich, have no doubt heard of. A magnificent intellect, almost like a statesman . . . he knows you, too . . . and thinks highly of you . . .” Mitya broke off a second time. But these interruptions didn’t stop him; he skipped over them and carried on further and further. This same Korneplodov, after cross-examining him and scrutinizing all the documents that Mitya could provide him with (Mitya expressed himself rather vaguely and very hastily about these documents), stated his opinion that as far as the village of Chermashnya was concerned, it should rightfully belong to him, Mitya, having been bequeathed from his mother, and that it might really be possible to initiate a suit and unnerve the old villain, “because not all doors are locked, and justice itself knows how to sneak in.”

In a word, he might even count on an additional sum of six thousand from Fyodor Pavlovich, even seven, because Chermashnya is worth no less than twenty-five thousand, that is, probably twenty-eight, “thirty, thirty, Kuzma Kuzmich, and, just imagine, I didn’t wrest even seventeen thousand from that cruel man! So, I, Mitya, gave up on this matter at the time, because I don’t know how to deal with the law; but upon my arrival here, I was struck dumb by a countersuit”—Mitya lost track again and then skipped over it once more—“and so,” he said, “wouldn’t you, most honorable Kuzma Kuzmich, care to assume all my rights against that monster and you yourself provide me with only three thousand rubles. . . . You can’t lose in any way, I swear to this on my honor, on my honor; quite to the contrary, you stand to win six or seven thousand instead of only three. . . . But the main thing is, to end it all ‘even today.’

“I’ll swear to it before a notary, or however it’s done. . . . In a word, I’m ready to do anything, to give you all the documents you need, to sign everything . . . and we’d complete all the paperwork today, at once, if it’s possible, this very morning. . . . You could give me that three thousand . . . because who in this wretched town is a capitalist compared to you . . . and you would save me from . . . in a word, you would save my poor head for a most honorable action, a most sublime action, one might say . . . for I hold the most honorable feelings for a certain person, whom you know all too well and whom you care for as a father. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have come, if it hadn’t been as a father. If you like, three men are banging their heads together, because fate is a terrible thing, Kuzma Kuzmich! Realism, Kuzma Kuzmich, realism! And since you should have been excluded long ago, there remain only two heads, as I expressed absurdly, but then I’m not a man of letters. That is, one of the heads is mine, and the other belongs to that monster. And so, choose: either me or that monster! Everything is in your hands now—three fates and two destinies. . . . Excuse me, I’ve wandered, but you understand . . . I see that by your honorable eyes. . . . And if you haven’t understood, I’ll drown myself, that’s what!”

Mitya broke off this ridiculous speech with this “that’s what”; jumping up from where he sat, he waited for an answer to his foolish proposal. With his last phrase, he suddenly and hopelessly felt that all was lost and, primarily, that he had uttered terrible nonsense.

“It’s a strange thing, but on the way here it all seemed reasonable, though now it’s just nonsense!” This thought suddenly flashed into Mitya’s hopeless mind. All the while he was speaking, the old man sat motionless and listened to him with an icy expression on his face. After keeping him in suspense for a minute, Kuzma Kuzmich finally spoke in a most decisive and cheerless tone:

“Excuse me, sir, we don’t get involved in such matters.”

Mitya suddenly felt his legs growing weak under him.

“What will I do now, Kuzma Kuzmich?” he mumbled, smiling faintly. “It’s all over for me now. Don’t you think?”

“Excuse me, sir . . .”

Mitya continued standing there, staring motionlessly, and suddenly noticed that something had moved in the old man’s face. He shuddered.

“You see, sir, such matters are not in our line,” the old man said slowly. “There’s the court, lawyers, and nothing but trouble! However, if you like, there is one man to whom you can appeal . . .”

“My God! Who is it? You’re my salvation, Kuzma Kuzmich,” Mitya stammered suddenly.

“He’s not from around here, this man, and he’s not here at all now. He comes from the peasantry, trades in lumber, and his name is Lyagavy.[1] Fyodor Pavlovich has been haggling with him for the past year over your grove in Chermashnya; they can’t agree on a price—perhaps you’ve heard? Now he’s come back again and he’s staying with the priest at Ilyinskoye, some eight miles from the Volovya station. He wrote to me, too, about the same business, that is, about that grove, and asked for advice. Fyodor Pavlovich wants to go see him himself. So if you were to beat Fyodor Pavlovich and propose to Lyagavy the same deal that you put to me, he might be interested . . .”

“What a brilliant idea!” Mitya interrupted ecstatically. “He’s just the man, let him deal with it! He’s trading, asks a high price, and here’s a document of ownership for him, ha-ha-ha!” And Mitya suddenly burst out laughing in his stunted, wooden laugh, completely unexpectedly, so that even Samsonov flinched.

“How can I ever thank you, Kuzma Kuzmich?” Mitya gushed.

“It’s nothing, sir,” Samsonov said, bending his head.

“You don’t know how you’ve saved me. Oh, I came here with a premonition. . . . And so, I’m off to that priest!”

“It’s not worth your gratitude, sir.”

“I’ll hasten and fly there. I bothered you when you were sick. I’ll never forget that. It’s a Russian who’s saying this to you, Kuzma Kuzmich, a real R-r-russian!”

“So, that’s all.”

Mitya was about to grasp the old man by the hand to shake it, but something malicious was shining in Samsonov’s eyes. Mitya drew his hand back, but immediately reproached himself for his suspiciousness. “He must be tired . . .” flashed through his mind.

“For her! For her sake, Kuzma Kuzmich! You understand that this is for her!” he bellowed suddenly for the whole hall to hear; he bowed, turned abruptly, and, with the same long strides, headed for the door without looking back. He was trembling with ecstasy. “Everything was almost lost, and then my guardian angel saved me,” occurred to him. “And if such a wheeler-dealer as this old man (a most worthy old man, and what bearing!) pointed out this path, then . . . then, of course, the path must be a winner. I must fly off at once. Whether I’ll be back before nightfall or return at night, the matter’s won. But could the old man really have been mocking me?” That’s what Mitya cried as he made his way to his apartment, and, of course, he couldn’t imagine any other outcome, that is: either it was sensible advice (from such a wheeler-dealer)—with an understanding of the business, of this Lyagavy (what a strange surname!)—or the old man was laughing at him! Alas! This last thought was the only correct one. Later, long afterward, when the catastrophe had already happened, the old man Samsonov himself admitted, laughing, that at the time he’d made a “fool of the captain.” He was a malicious, cold, sarcastic man; besides, he had morbid antipathies. The captain’s ecstatic face, the foolish conviction of this “prodigal and spendthrift” that he, Samsonov, could be taken in by such rubbish as his “plan,” his jealousy concerning Grushenka, in whose name “this madcap” had come to see him for money with some nonsense—I don’t know exactly what worked on the old man at the time, but at the moment when Mitya stood before him, feeling his legs growing weak, and foolishly cried that all was lost—at that moment the old man looked at him with spite and decided to make fun of him. When Mitya had left, Kuzma Kuzmich, pale with malice, turned to his son and ordered him to make sure that in the future that vagabond never be seen or heard from again, and never be admitted even into his courtyard, or else . . .

He didn’t finish his threat, but even his son, who’d frequently seen him enraged, shuddered from fear. An hour later, the old man was still even shaking with rage; toward evening he fell ill and sent for his “medic.”

1 See above, p. 328. Fyodor Pavlovich had previously warned Ivan not to call the man by that name (which means “bird dog” or “setter”).

II

LYAGAVY

And so he must “gallop off,” but he had no money for horses, not even a kopeck, that is, he had two twenty-kopeck pieces but that was all—all that remained from his previous years of opulence! But at home he had an old silver watch that had long since stopped working. He fetched the watch and took it to a Jewish watchmaker whose shop was located in the market. He received six rubles for the watch. “I never even expected that much!” cried the ecstatic Mitya (he continued to be in ecstasy); he took his six rubles and ran home. There he added to it by borrowing three rubles from his landlords; they loaned it to him with pleasure, in spite of the fact that they were giving him their last rubles, because they liked him so much. Mitya, in his ecstatic state, told them that his fate was being decided, and he relayed, hurrying terribly of course, almost his entire “scheme,” which he’d just presented to Samsonov, Samsonov’s decision, his future hopes, and so on and so forth. His landlords had been apprised previously of many of his secrets, and therefore regarded him almost as one of the family, and not at all a proud gentleman. Having thus amassed nine rubles, Mitya sent for post horses to take him to Volovya. This was how the facts were recalled and established later, “that the day before a certain event Mitya didn’t have even a kopeck and that to acquire some money, he’d sold his watch and borrowed three rubles from his landlords, all in the presence of witnesses.”

I note this fact in advance; later it will become clear for what purpose I am doing this.

As he galloped to Volovya, though Mitya was radiant with a joyful premonition that he would conclude and unravel “all these matters,” nevertheless he was trembling with fear: what would happen to Grushenka in his absence? What if she decided to go to Fyodor Pavlovich today? That’s why he left, not even telling her, and ordering his landlords not to reveal where he’d gone, if anyone came to inquire as to his whereabouts. “I must return, absolutely must return by this evening,” he repeated, as he sat in his jolting wagon, “even if I have to drag this Lyagavy back here—to complete this business.” Thus, with sinking heart, did Mitya dream; alas, his dreams were not fated to be fulfilled according to his “scheme.”

In the first place, he was late, setting off from Volovya along a cart track. This route turned out to be twelve miles, not eight. In the second place, he didn’t find the priest from Ilyinskoye at home; he’d gone away to a neighboring village. While Mitya was looking for him, having set off for the neighboring village with the same exhausted horses, it was already growing dark. The priest, a timid, affable little man, quickly explained to him that this Lyagavy, although he’d been staying with him at first, was now at Sukhoy Posyolok, spending the night in the forester’s hut because he was also trading in timber there. In response to Mitya’s insistent requests that he be taken to see Lyagavy at once, and “thus to save him, Mitya, so to speak,” the priest at first hesitated, but then agreed to conduct him to Sukhoy Posyolok, obviously curious; unfortunately, he advised going “on foot,” since the journey would be a “little more” than half a mile. Mitya agreed, of course, and proceeded with his large strides, so that the poor priest almost had to run after him. The priest was not old, but was very cautious. Mitya began speaking passionately about his plans, and he nervously requested advice concerning Lyagavy, talking all along the way. The priest listened attentively, but provided little advice. He replied to Mitya’s questions evasively: “I don’t know,” “Oh, I don’t know,” “How could I know?” and so on. When Mitya started talking about his quarrels with his father over his inheritance, the priest even got frightened, since he was in certain respects dependent on Fyodor Pavlovich. The priest inquired, however, with surprise, why he referred to this peasant trader Gorstkin as Lyagavy; he explained considerately to Mitya that although he was indeed Lyagavy, he wasn’t really Lyagavy either, and took grievous offense at that name. Mitya should really call him Gorstkin, “or else you won’t accomplish anything with him and he won’t even listen to you,” concluded the priest. Mitya was somewhat surprised for a moment and explained that Samsonov had referred to him by that name. After hearing this fact, the priest changed the subject, but he’d have done well to explain to Dmitry Fyodorovich at the time what he suspected: namely, that if Samsonov himself had sent Mitya to this peasant referring to him as Lyagavy, then was he doing it as a joke and was there something wrong here? But Mitya had no time to pause “over such details.” He hastened, taking large strides, and only when he arrived at Sukhoy Posyolok did he realize that they had covered not half a mile, nor even a whole mile, but probably at least two miles; that annoyed him, but he controlled himself.

They entered the hut. The forester, known to the priest, lived in one half of the cabin, and Gorstkin occupied the other, clean half, across the entrance hall. They entered this clean half and lit a tallow candle. The hut was very overheated. On a pine table stood an extinguished samovar, a tray with cups, an empty bottle of rum, a not quite empty bottle of vodka, and some half-eaten crusts of bread. Lyagavy himself lay stretched out on a bench, with his jacket folded under his head for a pillow, and was snoring heavily. Mitya stood there in bewilderment. “Of course, I must wake him; my business is too urgent; I rushed here and am hastening to return today,” Mitya said, growing anxious; but the priest and the forester stood there in silence, and didn’t express their opinions. Mitya approached the sleeper and started to rouse him, shaking him energetically, but he didn’t wake up. “He’s drunk,” Mitya decided, “what am I to do? Oh, Lord, what am I to do?” Then he suddenly began to pull the sleeping man by the arm, leg, to shake his head, to sit him up on the bench, and, after extremely lengthy attempts, managed only to get the drunk to mumble some nonsense and to curse, though he expressed himself indistinctly.

“No, better to wait a bit,” the priest said at last, “because he’s clearly not in any condition.”

“He’s been drinking all day long,” the forester added.

“Good Lord!” cried Mitya, “if you only knew how essential this is to me and what despair I’m suffering!”

“No, it would be better to wait until morning,” repeated the priest.

“Until morning? For mercy’s sake, that’s not possible!” And in despair he was about to try to rouse the drunken sleeper once again, but he desisted, having realized the futility of his efforts. The priest remained silent; the sleepy forester looked gloomy.

“Realism contrives such terrible tragedies for people!” Mitya cried in a state of complete desperation. Perspiration dripped from his face. Taking advantage of the moment, the priest very reasonably pointed out that even if he’d succeeded in waking the drunken sleeper, he’d not be fit for any sort of conversation, “and your business is important, so it would be better to wait until morning . . .” Mitya spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness and agreed.

“I’ll stay here, Father, with a candle and wait for the right moment. As soon as he wakes up, I’ll begin. I’ll pay you for the candle,” he said, turning to the forester, “and for the night’s lodging, too. You’ll remember Dmitry Fyodorovich Karamazov. But I don’t know what to do with you, Father. Where will you sleep?”

“No, I’ll be going home, sir. I’ll take his nag,” he said, indicating the forester. “And for now I’ll say good-bye, sir. I wish you success.”

Thus it was decided. The priest headed off on the nag, glad that he’d escaped at last, but shaking his head and wondering if tomorrow he shouldn’t warn his benefactor Fyodor Pavlovich in good time about this curious episode, “or else who knows what might happen, he might hear of it, get angry, and withdraw his support.” The forester, scratching himself, quietly departed for his own half of the hut; whereas Mitya sat down on the bench to try to catch, as he expressed it, a “favorable moment.” A heavy gloom settled on his soul like a thick fog. Profound, terrible misery! He sat there, thought, but couldn’t come up with anything. The candle burned dimly, a cricket started to chirp, and it was becoming unbearably stuffy in the overheated room. He suddenly pictured the garden, the path behind it, his father’s door opening secretly, and Grushenka running inside. . . . He jumped up from the bench.

“It’s a tragedy!” he said, grinding his teeth, mechanically approaching the sleeping man, staring into his face. He was a skinny peasant, though still not old; he had an extremely long face, with light brown curly hair and a long, thin reddish beard; he was wearing a blue cotton shirt and a black vest, out of the pocket of which hung a little chain from a silver watch. Mitya examined his physiognomy with intense hatred, and for some reason or other the man’s curls particularly annoyed him. The main thing that was so intolerably offensive was that he, Mitya, was standing over him with his urgent business, having sacrificed so much, given up so much, completely exhausted, while this scrounger, “on whom my whole fate depends, snores as if nothing’s wrong, as if he came from another planet.” “Oh, the irony of fate!” Mitya cried and suddenly, as if he’d lost his head completely, threw himself on the drunken peasant to try to rouse him. He tried with such ferocity, pulled him, pushed him, even beat him, but after five minutes of futile attempts, he returned to his bench and sat down in helpless despair.

“It’s stupid, stupid!” Mitya kept exclaiming, “and . . . how disgraceful it all is!” he added suddenly for some reason. His head began aching terribly: “Should I give up? Leave completely?” flashed through his mind. “No, I’ll wait until morning. I’ll stay on purpose, on purpose! Why did I come here after all that? I have no money for the journey home; how will I get away from here, oh, what absurdity!”

His head ached, however, more and more. He sat motionless and no longer remembered how he dozed off and fell fast asleep where he sat. Evidently he slept for about two hours or more. He woke up with an unbearable headache, so unbearable that he felt like screaming. His temples were throbbing; the top of his head ached; after waking, for a long time he was unable to come to his senses and to realize what had happened to him. He finally realized that in this overheated room he might have even died from charcoal fumes. The drunken peasant meanwhile continued to lie there snoring; the candle was guttering and about to go out. Mitya shouted and rushed, staggering, across the entrance hall to the forester’s room. The latter soon woke up, but after hearing that there were charcoal fumes in the other room, although he went to make arrangements for taking care of it, he seemed to accept the fact with strange indifference, a fact that surprised Mitya agonizingly.

“But if he’s dead, he’s dead, and then what? Then what?” Mitya kept exclaiming hysterically before him.

They threw open the doors, opened the windows, and opened the chimney flue; Mitya dragged a bucket of water from the entrance and first soaked his own head; then, after finding some rag, he tossed it into the water and placed it on Lyagavy’s head. The forester continued to treat the episode with a sort of contempt, and, after opening the windows, muttered gloomily: “Very well!” and went back to sleep, leaving a lit iron lantern for Mitya. Mitya fussed over the drunkard for half an hour, trying to keep his head moist, and seriously planned not to go back to sleep for the rest of the night, but, feeling exhausted, he sat down for a minute to catch his breath, closed his eyes momentarily, stretched out on the bench unconsciously, and fell asleep like the dead.

He awoke very late. It was already almost nine o’clock in the morning. The sun shone brightly into the two windows of the hut. Yesterday’s curly-headed peasant was sitting up on the bench already dressed in a caftan. A new samovar stood on the table with a new bottle. The bottle from yesterday was now empty, and the new one was already only half full. Mitya jumped up and realized at once that the accursed peasant was drunk again, hopelessly and irretrievably drunk. He looked at him for a moment, eyes wide open. The peasant stared back at him silently and craftily, with some sort of offensive serenity, even contemptuous arrogance, or so it seemed to Mitya. He rushed over to him.

“Excuse me, you see . . . I . . . you probably heard from the local forester in this hut: I’m Lieutenant Dmitry Karamazov, the son of old man Karamazov, with whom you’re bargaining for a grove.”

“You’re lying!” the peasant suddenly blurted out quickly and calmly.

“What do you mean? Do you happen to know Fyodor Pavlovich?”

“I don’t happen to know any of your Fyodor Pavloviches,” the peasant said, tripping clumsily over his own tongue.

“The grove, you’re bargaining with him for the grove; wake up, come to your senses. Father Pavel Ilyinsky led me here. . . . You wrote to Samsonov and he sent me to you.” Mitya gasped for breath.

“You’re lying!” blurted out Lyagavy again.

Mitya’s legs went cold.

“For mercy’s sake, this is no joke. You may be tipsy. But you can speak, understand . . . otherwise . . . otherwise I don’t understand anything!”

“You’re a dauber!”

“For mercy’s sake, I’m Karamazov, Dmitry Fyodorovich, and I have a proposal for you . . . a profitable proposal . . . extremely profitable . . . concerning that grove.”

The peasant stroked his beard pensively.

“No, you signed a contract, but you turned out to be a scoundrel. You’re a scoundrel!”

“I can assure you, you’re mistaken!” Mitya cried in despair, wringing his hands. The peasant kept stroking his beard and suddenly squinted craftily.

“No, here’s what you can show me: the law that says it’s permissible to play dirty tricks, do you hear? You’re a scoundrel, do you understand?”

Mitya retreated gloomily, and all of a sudden “something seemed to strike his head,” as he himself later described it. In an instant a light seemed to dawn on him, “a light was kindled and I came to understand everything.” He stood dumbfounded, wondering how he, a smart man, could have yielded to such stupidity, gotten involved in such an adventure, and persisted for almost a whole day and night, falling in with this Lyagavy, even wetting his head. . . . “Well, the man’s drunk, drunk as a skunk, and he’s going to drink for the next week. What’s the use of waiting? What if Samsonov sent me here on purpose? And what if she . . . Oh, Lord, what have I done?”

The peasant sat looking at him, grinning. Another time Mitya might have killed the fool in a fury, but now he merely felt as weak as a child. He approached the bench quietly, picked up his coat, silently put it on, and walked out of the hut. He didn’t find the forester in the other half of the hut; there was no one at home. He took fifty kopecks out of his pocket and placed it on the table for the night’s lodging, the candle, and the inconvenience. As he left the hut, he saw that there was forest all around, and nothing else. He proceeded aimlessly, not even recalling which way to turn, right or left; the previous night, as he hurried here with the priest, he hadn’t noticed the way. He didn’t harbor any ill will for anyone in his heart, not even for Samsonov. He walked along a narrow forest path without thinking, lost, “with his lost scheme,” and paid no attention to where he was going. A child could have knocked him over, he was feeling so weak in mind and body. Somehow or other, however, he managed to find his way out of the forest: he suddenly saw bare, harvested fields on an endless expanse. “What despair, what death all around!” he repeated to himself, as he walked on and on.

He was saved by some travelers: a driver was transporting an old merchant along a country road. When they drew even, Mitya asked about the road, and it turned out that they were also headed to Volovya. They entered into negotiations, and after some discussion they agreed to give Mitya a lift. They reached the station about three hours later. At Volovya Mitya ordered post horses into town and realized that he was incredibly hungry. While they were harnessing the horses, they made him an omelet. He ate it all in a moment, devoured a large hunk of bread, a sausage they’d managed to find, and drank three shots of vodka. After having thus fortified himself, he felt stronger and his spirits grew lighter. He was flying down the road, urging the driver on, suddenly formulating a new, “irreversible” plan to procure “that accursed money” by the end of the day. “And think, just think that a man’s fate could be ruined on account of those measly three thousand rubles!” he cried with contempt. “I’ll resolve it today!” And if it weren’t for the constant thought of Grushenka and what might have happened to her, he might even have felt cheerful again. But the thought of her pierced his soul persistently like a sharp knife. At last they arrived, and Mitya ran to see Grushenka at once.

III

GOLD MINES

This was precisely the visit by Mitya that Grushenka had mentioned to Rakitin with such fear. She had been waiting for her “message” and was very glad that Mitya had failed to come either yesterday or today; she hoped that God might grant that he wouldn’t turn up before her departure, but then he suddenly burst in on her. We know the rest: in order to get rid of him, she promptly persuaded him to accompany her to Kuzma Samsonov’s, where, she said, she had to “help him with his accounts”; after Mitya had escorted her there, and after bidding him good-bye at Kuzma’s gate, she got him to promise to come back for her at midnight to escort her back home. Mitya was also glad about this arrangement: “If she’s at Samsonov’s, it means she won’t be going to see Fyodor Pavlovich . . . if only she’s not lying,” he added immediately. But in his opinion, she wasn’t lying. He was the sort of jealous man who, in the absence of his beloved, invents God knows what sort of horrors about what’s happening to her and how she’s “betraying” him; but when shaken, heartbroken, conclusively convinced that she’s still managed to betray him, with his first glance at her cheerful, laughing, affectionate face, his spirit is immediately reborn; he loses all suspicion, and abuses himself with joyful shame for his own jealousy.

After accompanying Grushenka to the gate, he rushed home. Oh, he still had so much to do that day! But at least his heart felt relieved. “Now I must hasten to find out from Smerdyakov whether anything happened last evening; had she come, by any chance, to see Fyodor Pavlovich, ugh!” flashed into his mind. So before he’d managed to reach his apartment, jealousy had once again surged in his agitated heart.

Jealousy! “Othello wasn’t jealous; he was trusting,” observed Pushkin.[1] This observation alone bears witness to our great poet’s extraordinary profundity. Othello’s soul is simply shattered and his entire worldview is clouded because his ideal had been destroyed. But Othello won’t start hiding, spying, or peeping: he is trusting. On the contrary, he had to be led on, pushed about, aroused by extreme efforts, so that he’d countenance the possibility of deceit. A truly jealous man isn’t like that at all. It’s impossible even to imagine all the shame and moral degradation that a jealous man can accept without feeling even the slightest twinge of conscience. It’s not that these people are all vulgar and immoral. On the contrary, with a lofty heart, with pure love, full of self-sacrifice, one can still hide underneath tables, bribe the basest people, and get along with the lowliest filth of spying and eavesdropping.

Othello was completely incapable of reconciling himself to betrayal—he couldn’t forgive and be reconciled—although his soul was forgiving and blameless, like that of child. This is not the case with a genuinely jealous man: it’s hard to imagine what a jealous man can reconcile himself to and forgive! Jealous men would sooner forgive: all women know that. A jealous man can forgive extremely quickly (first, of course, after a violent scene)—for example, infidelity that has already been proven, even hugs and kisses that he’s witnessed, if at the same time, for example, he can be persuaded that “this is absolutely the last time” and that after this his rival will disappear from now on, to the ends of the earth, or else that he himself will carry his beloved off somewhere, where that dreaded rival won’t be able to get anywhere near her. Naturally, the reconciliation will last only an hour, because even if the rival did actually disappear, the next day he’ll invent another rival, a new one, and he’ll be jealous of that one. And one might wonder what there is in a love that has to be guarded so closely, and what is a love that requires such forceful protection worth? But a genuinely jealous man will never understand that; meanwhile, there can be found among such people those who possess noble hearts. It’s noteworthy that these same people with noble hearts, who hide away in some little room, eavesdropping and spying, although they understand clearly with their “noble hearts” the shame to which they’ve voluntarily sunk, still, however, at that moment at least, while they’re hiding away, they feel no pangs of conscience whatsoever.

Mitya’s jealousy vanished at the sight of Grushenka, and for a moment he became trusting and generous; he even hated himself for his wicked feelings. But this only meant that his love for this woman contained something far more elevated than he supposed, and not only passion, not only “the curve of her body,” about which he’d spoken with Alyosha. On the other hand, as soon as Grushenka had gone away, Mitya immediately began to suspect again all the baseness and deceit of betrayal. He didn’t experience any pangs of conscience for that.

And so, jealousy flared up in him again. In any case, he had to make haste. The first matter of business was to procure at least a small sum of money to gain some time. Almost all of the nine rubles from yesterday had gone to cover his journey; it’s well known that it’s impossible to get anywhere without money. But together with his new plan, as he’d sat in the cart the day before, he’d considered where to borrow the money. He owned a pair of fine dueling pistols with cartridges; up to now he hadn’t pawned them because he loved them more than anything else. In the Capital City tavern he’d met a young civil servant, and somehow he’d found out in the tavern that he was an extremely well-off bachelor who loved collecting weapons; he purchased pistols, revolvers, and daggers and hung them on his walls, showed them off to his friends, boasted about them, could explain how the revolver works, how to load it and fire, and so on. Without having to think for long, Mitya set off to find him and ask him to pawn the pistols for him for ten rubles. The official gladly tried to get Mitya to sell them outright, but he wouldn’t agree, so he gave him the ten rubles and said that he wouldn’t charge any interest for them under any circumstances. They parted as friends. Mitya hurried, rushing to Fyodor Pavlovich by the back way, to his gazebo, to summon Smerdyakov. But in this way the fact was established once again that three or four hours before a certain event occurred—about which, more later—Mitya had not a kopeck to his name; while he had pawned his favorite possession for ten rubles, all of a sudden, three hours later, it turned out that he had three thousand rubles in his hands. . . . But I’m getting ahead of myself.

He learned from Marya Kondratyevna (Fyodor Pavlovich’s neighbor) some extremely shocking and troubling news about Smerdyakov’s illness. He heard a complete account of his fall in the cellar, his epileptic attack, the doctor’s visit, and Fyodor Pavlovich’s worries; with curiosity he also learned that his brother Ivan had that morning already departed on the train to Moscow. “He must have passed through Volovya before me,” thought Dmitry Fyodorovich; but the news about Smerdyakov disturbed him terribly: “How shall I manage? Who’ll stand guard? And who’ll inform me?” He began avidly interrogating the women to see if they’d noticed anything the evening before. They understood very well what he was asking about and reassured him completely: no one had come; Ivan Fyodorovich had spent the night; “everything was in perfect order.” Mitya got to thinking. Without doubt he’d have to stand guard that night, but where? Here or at Samsonov’s gate? He decided that he had to be in both places, meanwhile, meanwhile. . . . The fact was that now he had to execute this new “plan” conceived during his trip back, his new and reliable plan, and it was impossible to postpone its implementation. Mitya decided to sacrifice an hour on this: “In an hour I’ll resolve everything, know everything, and then, then, in the first place I’ll go to Samsonov’s house and ask if Grushenka is there, and then return quickly, stay until eleven o’clock, and then I’ll go back to Samsonov’s to escort her home.” That’s what he decided.

He rushed home, washed, combed his hair, brushed his clothes, got dressed, and set off to see Madame Khokhlakova. Alas, his “plan” lay there. He’d decided to borrow three thousand rubles from this lady. And the main thing was that suddenly, somehow unexpectedly, there appeared the extraordinary conviction that she wouldn’t refuse his request. Perhaps one wonders why, in the face of such conviction, he hadn’t turned to her sooner, to one of his own, but had gone to Samsonov, a man of a different class, whom he didn’t even know how to address. But the fact was that in the last month he’d almost broken off his acquaintanceship with Khokhlakova; even before that he hadn’t been well acquainted with her; besides, he knew very well that she herself couldn’t stand him at all. This lady had come to despise him from the very beginning simply because he was Katerina Ivanovna’s fiancé, when she herself hoped that Katerina Ivanovna would abandon him and marry that “nice, chivalrously educated, well-mannered Ivan Fyodorovich.” She despised Mitya’s manners. Mitya even made fun of her, and one time had even expressed the view that she was “just as lively and perky as she was uneducated.” But that morning in the cart a brilliant idea had occurred to him. “If she’s so opposed to my marrying Katerina Ivanovna”—he knew that she became positively hysterical on that subject—“why should she refuse me that three thousand now, since I would give up Katya and drive away from here forever? These society ladies, if they conceive a whim for something, will spare no expense to see that it happens the way they want. Besides, she’s so wealthy,” Mitya reasoned.

As far as his “plan” was concerned, it was still the same as before: that is, he’d offer her his rights to Chermashnya, but no longer with a commercial goal, as he’d done with Samsonov the day before, not trying to tempt the lady with the possibility of earning a large profit, instead of three thousand, some six or seven thousand, but simply as an honorable pledge against the debt. As he was developing this new idea of his, Mitya was becoming ecstatic; but that’s what always happened to him with every new beginning, with all his impulsive decisions. He succumbed to every one of his new ideas with intense passion. Nevertheless, when he stepped onto the porch of Madame Khokhlakova’s house, he suddenly felt a chill of horror run up and down his spine: only at that very second did he realize with mathematical certainty that this was his last chance; there was nothing else left in the world, and if it came to nothing, he “might have to rob and murder someone for the sake of those three thousand, and that’s all there was to it . . .” It was half past seven when he rang the bell.

At first things seemed to go well: as soon as he was announced, he was received with unusual speed. “As if she was waiting for me,” flashed through Mitya’s mind. Then suddenly, as soon as he was led into the drawing room, the lady of the house came running in and declared that she’d been expecting him . . .

“I’ve been waiting for you, I have! Why, I never even conceived of the idea that you’d come to see me, you must agree; however, I was waiting for you; you may be surprised at my instinct, Dmitry Fyodorovich. I was convinced all morning that you’d come today.”

“That really is astonishing, madame,” said Mitya, sitting down clumsily, “but . . . I’ve come on very important business . . . the most important, for me, that is, madame, for me alone, and I hasten to . . .”

“I know that it’s on the most important business, Dmitry Fyodorovich, it’s not a matter of any premonitions, nor reactionary pretensions of miracles (have you heard about Father Zosima?); no, this is mathematics: you had to come after all that happened with Katerina Ivanovna. You couldn’t fail to come; it’s mathematics.”

“It’s the realism of everyday life, madame, that’s what it is! Allow me, however, to explain . . .”

“Realism, indeed, Dmitry Fyodorovich. I’m all for realism now; I learned my lesson as far as miracles are concerned. Have you heard that Father Zosima died?”

“No, madame, this is the first I’ve heard of it,” Mitya said, somewhat surprised. The image of Alyosha flashed through his mind.

“Last night, and just imagine . . .”

“Madame,” Mitya interrupted her, “I can imagine nothing except that I’m in a most desperate state, and that if you don’t help me, all will be lost, and I’ll be the first one to go. Forgive me for the clichéd nature of my expression, but I’m ill, in a fever . . .”

“I know, I really do, you’re in a fever; I know everything; you can’t be in any other spiritual state; and, no matter what you say, I knew it all beforehand. I took your fate into consideration some time ago, Dmitry Fyodorovich; I’ve been following and studying it. . . . Oh, believe me, Dmitry Fyodorovich, I’m an experienced doctor of the soul.”

“Madame, if you’re an experienced doctor, then I’m an experienced patient,” Mitya said, forcing himself to be polite. “I have the feeling that if you’ve been following my fate, you’ll assist me at this time of its ruin, but for this purpose, allow me at last to lay out before you my plan, with which I risked coming to see you . . . and what I expect from you. . . . I’ve come, madame . . .”

“Don’t bother to expound on it; it’s of secondary importance. As far as the assistance, you’re not the first one I’ve helped, Dmitry Fyodorovich. You’ve no doubt heard about my cousin Belmesova; her husband was in the process of being ‘destroyed,’ as you so characteristically described it, Dmitry Fyodorovich, but I suggested that he take up horse-breeding, and now he’s thriving. Do you have any notion of horse-breeding, Dmitry Fyodorovich?”

“Not the slightest, madame—oh, madame, not the slightest!” cried Mitya in nervous impatience; he was even about to get up from where he sat. “I merely implore you, madame, to hear me out; let me have only two minutes of uninterrupted conversation so that I can explain to you the entire project with which I’ve come to you. Besides, I’m short of time and in a terrible hurry!” Mitya shouted hysterically, fearing that she’d begin talking again, and hoping to outshout her. “I’ve come to you in despair . . . in the final stage of despair, to ask you to give me three thousand rubles, as a loan, but on a reliable, most reliable pledge, madame, under the most reliable security! Allow me to explain . . .”

“Afterward, you’ll do it later!” Madame Khokhlakova waved her hand dismissively in turn. “I know in advance everything that you’ll say, I’ve already told you that. You’re asking for a certain sum: you need three thousand, but I’ll give you more, immeasurably more, I will save you, Dmitry Fyodorovich, but you have to listen to me!”

Mitya once again almost jumped up from his seat.

“Madame, would you really be so kind?” he cried with extreme feeling. “Good Lord, you have saved me! You’re saving a man, madame, from a violent death, from a pistol shot. . . . My eternal gratitude . . .”

“I shall give you more. Infinitely more than three thousand!” cried Madame Khokhlakova, looking at Mitya’s ecstasy with a radiant smile.

“Infinitely more? I don’t need that much. I need only that fateful three thousand, and on my part I’ve come to guarantee you my endless gratitude and to propose a plan, which . . .”

“Enough, Dmitry Fyodorovich. No sooner said than done,” Madame Khokhlakova replied with the virtuous triumph of a benefactress. “I promised to save you and I will do so. I will save you as I did Belmesov. What do you think about gold mines, Dmitry Fyodorovich?”

“Gold mines, madame? I’ve never thought about them!”

“But I have thought about them for you! I’ve thought and thought again! I’ve been following you for the last month with this goal in mind. I’ve looked at you a hundred times as you’ve passed by and I’ve repeated to myself: there goes an energetic man who should head for the mines. I’ve even studied your gait and decided: this man will find a lot of gold mines.”

“My gait, madame?” Mitya asked with a grin.

“What of it, yes, by your gait. Do you really reject the notion that one can discern character by someone’s gait, Dmitry Fyodorovich? Natural science confirms this very thing. Oh, now I’m a realist, Dmitry Fyodorovich. From today on, after that episode in the monastery, which so upset me, I’m an absolute realist and want to get involved with practical affairs. I’ve been cured. ‘Enough!’ as Turgenev declared.”[2]

“But, madame, what about those three thousand you so generously promised to lend me?”

“You’ll get it, Dmitry Fyodorovich,” Madame Khokhlakova said, cutting him off immediately. “Those three thousand are as good as in your pocket, and not just three thousand, but three million, Dmitry Fyodorovich, in a very short time! I’ll explain my idea: you’ll seek out the gold mines, earn millions, return and become a man of action, one who’ll also inspire us to better things. Should we really leave it all to the Yids? You’ll construct buildings and various enterprises. You’ll help the poor and they’ll bless you. This is the age of the railway, Dmitry Fyodorovich. You’ll become known and essential to the Ministry of Finance, which is now in such great need. The decline of our paper ruble keeps me up at night; Dmitry Fyodorovich, people don’t know that about me . . .”

“Madame, madame!” Dmitry interrupted her again with anxious foreboding. “I shall most likely follow your advice, your shrewd advice, madame, and perhaps I’ll set off for the gold mines, and will come back again to talk to you about that, even many times, but now for those three thousand rubles, which you so generously. . . . Oh, they would free me; and if you could manage it today. . . . That is, you see, I don’t have a moment to lose, not a moment . . .”

“Enough, Dmitry Fyodorovich, enough!” Madame Khokhlakova interrupted him insistently. “The question is: will you go to the gold mines or not? Have you made your final decision? Reply mathematically.”

“I will, madame, afterward. I’ll go wherever you want, madame . . . but now . . .”

“Wait then!” cried Madame Khokhlakova, jumping up and rushing over to a handsome bureau with many little drawers; she began opening one drawer after another, searching for something and hurrying desperately.

“The three thousand!” thought Mitya, his heart skipping a beat. “And at once . . . without any papers, without any document . . . oh, that’s the way gentlemen do business! What a magnificent woman, if only she weren’t so verbose . . .”

“Here!” Madame Khokhlakova cried in great joy, returning to Mitya. “This is what I was looking for!”

It was a tiny little silver icon on a chain, such as is sometimes worn with a cross next to the skin.

“It’s from Kiev, Dmitry Fyodorovich,” she continued with reverence, “from the relics of the holy martyr Varvara. Allow me to hang it around your neck and bless you for a new life and your new deeds.”

And, in fact, she placed the little icon around his neck and began to adjust it. Mitya, in great embarrassment, leaned over and started to help her, finally managing to get it under his tie and his shirt collar, onto his chest.

“Now you can go!” Madam Khokhlakova declared, solemnly retaking her seat.

“Madame, I’m very touched . . . I don’t know how to thank you . . . for such feelings, but . . . if you only knew how valuable time is to me now! That sum of money, which I await from your generosity. . . . Oh, madame, if you’re so kind, so tenderly magnanimous to me,” Mitya cried suddenly in inspiration, “then allow me to reveal . . . what, however, you already know . . . that I love a certain creature here. . . . I have betrayed Katya . . . Katerina Ivanovna, I want to say. Oh, I was inhuman and dishonorable to her, but I fell in love with . . . another woman, whom, madame, you may despise, because you know everything already, but whom I can’t leave in any way, not at all, and therefore now, those three thousand . . .”

“Abandon everything, Dmitry Fyodorovich!” Madame Khokhlakova interrupted him most decisively. “Leave, especially the women. Your goal is—gold mines, and there’s no need to drag any women along with you. Afterward, when you return with riches and fame, you’ll find yourself a soul mate in the highest society. She will be a modern woman, with knowledge and without prejudices. By that time, the women’s question, which is now emerging, will have been developed and the new woman will have appeared . . .”

“Madame, that’s not it, not it . . .” Dmitry Fyodorovich implored, clasping his hands.

“Yes, it is, Dmitry Fyodorovich, it’s precisely what you need, what you yearn for, although you may not know it yourself. I’m not at all opposed to the women’s question, Dmitry Fyodorovich. Woman’s development and even her political role in the near future—that’s my ideal. I myself have a daughter, Dmitry Fyodorovich, and people don’t know that side of me. I wrote a letter on this very subject to the writer Shchedrin.[3] This writer has revealed so much to me, so very much, about the importance of women that I dispatched an anonymous letter to him some two years ago in just two lines: ‘I embrace and kiss you, my writer, for the contemporary woman; continue your work.’ And I signed it ‘A mother.’ I wanted to sign it ‘a contemporary mother,’ and hesitated, but I settled simply on ‘a mother’: there’s more moral beauty, Dmitry Fyodorovich, and the word ‘contemporary’ would have reminded him of the journal the Contemporary—a bitter reminder for him, especially in view of today’s censorship.[4] Ah, good Lord, what’s the matter with you?”

“Madame.” Mitya finally jumped up, clasping his hands before her in helpless entreaty. “You’ll make me weep, if you delay what you so generously . . .”

“Weep, Dmitry Fyodorovich, go on, weep! It’s your splendid feelings . . . such a path lies before you! Tears will relieve you; then you’ll return and rejoice. You’ll hurry back to me from Siberia to share your joy with me . . .”

“But allow me,” cried Mitya suddenly. “For the last time I implore you, tell me, can I receive the sum you promised me today? If not, then when exactly should I come back for it?”

“What sum, Dmitry Fyodorovich?”

“The three thousand you promised . . . which you so generously . . .”

“Three thousand? Rubles? Oh, no, I don’t have three thousand,” Madame Khokhlakova interrupted with quiet bewilderment. Mitya was stupefied.

“How did you . . . just now . . . you said . . . you even said the money was as good as in my pocket . . .”

“Oh, no, you didn’t understand me correctly, Dmitry Fyodorovich. If that’s what you think, then you didn’t understand. I was speaking about the gold mines. . . . It’s true, I promised you more, infinitely more than three thousand; but I had in mind only the gold mines . . .”

“But the money? The three thousand?” Dmitry Fyodorovich cried in disbelief.

“Oh, if you meant money, I don’t have any. I don’t have any money at all now, Dmitry Fyodorovich; I myself am arguing with my steward and had to borrow five hundred rubles from Miusov just a few days ago. No, no, I don’t have any money. And do you know, Dmitry Fyodorovich, even if I had some, I wouldn’t give it to you. In the first place, I don’t lend money to anyone. To lend means to quarrel. But to you in particular, I wouldn’t give any, because I love you; I wouldn’t give it to save you, I wouldn’t, because you need only one thing: gold mines, gold mines, gold mines!”

Suddenly striking his fist on the table with all his might, Mitya roared, “Oh, the devil take you!”

“Ah!” shouted Madame Khokhlakova in fear and fled to the other end of the drawing room.

Mitya spat abruptly and strode out of the room, out of the house, onto the street, and into the darkness! He walked like a madman, beating himself on the chest, on the very same spot as he had two days ago before Alyosha, the last time he saw him, in the evening darkness, along the road. What beating his chest on that very spot meant and what he wanted to indicate by it—that was still a secret, which no one in the world knew, and which he didn’t reveal at the time even to Alyosha; but that secret meant more to him than disgrace: it meant ruin and suicide. Thus he’d already resolved that if he didn’t get three thousand rubles to repay Katerina Ivanovna, in so doing, he’d remove from his chest, from that very spot, the shame he bore, which was weighing heavily on his conscience.

All this will be explained to the reader subsequently, but now, after his last hope had vanished, this physically strong man, having proceeded only a few steps from the Khokhlakovs’ house, suddenly burst into tears like a little child. He walked along, wiping his tears with his fist. When he came into the square, he suddenly felt that he’d stumbled against something. He heard the piercing cry of an old woman he’d almost knocked over.

“Good Lord, you almost killed me! Why don’t you watch where you’re going, you scamp!”

“So, is it you?” cried Mitya, making out the old woman in the dark. It was the same old servant who’d been waiting on Kuzma Samsonov and whom Mitya had noticed all too well.

“And who would you be, sir?” the old woman asked in a completely different tone of voice. “I don’t recognize you in the darkness.”

“You live at Kuzma Samsonov’s and wait on him, don’t you?”

“Exactly so, sir, I’m just running over to see Prokhorych. . . . But I still don’t know who you are.”

“Tell me, mother, is Agrafena Aleksandrovna at your place now?” Mitya asked, beside himself with anticipation. “I accompanied her there earlier.”

“She was there, sir; she came, stayed for a little while, then left.”

“What? She left?” cried Mitya. “When did she leave?”

“Almost as soon as she came; she stayed only a minute. She told Kuzma Kuzmich only one story, which made him laugh, and then she ran off.”

“You’re lying, damn you!” Mitya shouted.

“Ah-h-h!” the old woman cried, but Mitya had vanished without a trace; he ran as fast as he could to the Morozovs’. That was exactly the moment when Grushenka was on her way to Mokroye, not more than a quarter of an hour after her departure. Fenya was sitting with her grandmother, the cook Matryona, in the kitchen, when all of a sudden the “captain” came rushing in. Seeing him, Fenya began shouting at the top of her lungs.

“You’re shouting?” roared Mitya. “Where is she?” But without allowing the terror-stricken Fenya to utter a word, he suddenly collapsed at her feet:

“Fenya, for Christ’s sake, tell me, where is she?”

“Sir, I don’t know, Dmitry Fyodorovich, my dear, I don’t know a thing, even if you kill me, I still don’t know a thing,” Fenya said, vowing and swearing. “You yourself came with her not that long ago . . .”

“She came back!”

“No, she didn’t, my dear, I swear to God, she didn’t come back!”

“You’re lying!” shouted Mitya. “I can tell from how afraid you are where she is!”

He rushed out. The frightened Fenya was glad that she’d gotten off so easily, but she understood all too well that it was because he had no time to spare, and that otherwise things might have turned out badly for her. But in running away, he still managed to astonish both Fenya and the old woman Matryona by one most unexpected act: there was a brass mortar on the table and a small brass pestle in it, only about seven inches long. Mitya, as he was running out, one hand already opening the door, suddenly grabbed the pestle from the mortar in passing, stuffed it into his side pocket, and left.

“Oh, Lord! He wants to kill someone!” Fenya said, raising her arms in despair.

1 An inexact quotation from Pushkin’s Table Talk, a collection of historical anecdotes jotted down in the years 1830–36.

2 “Enough” is the title of Turgenev’s pretentious “farewell to literature” (1862), brilliantly parodied in Dostoevsky’s Devils. He continued writing for the next twenty years.

3 A reference to M. Ye. Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826–1889), a leading radical journalist, satirist, and novelist with whom Dostoevsky feuded on and off for twenty years.

4 A Russian literary, social, and political magazine founded by Pushkin and published in Petersburg in 1836–66. It was the most widely read radical journal in nineteenth-century Russia.

IV

IN THE DARKNESS

Where did he run? Of course: “Where else could she be if not at Fyodor Pavlovich’s? She went directly from Samsonov to him; now that’s clear. The whole intrigue, the whole deception is now obvious . . .” All of this flew through his head like a whirlwind. He didn’t run into the courtyard at Marya Kondratyevna’s house: “There’s no need, none at all . . . no need to raise the slightest alarm . . . they’ll all tell and betray me at once. . . . Marya Kondratyevna, obviously, is in on the conspiracy, and Smerdyakov, too, they’ve all been bought!”

A different intention formed in his mind: he circled around Fyodor Pavlovich’s house, crossed the lane, ran along Dmitrovsky Street, crossed a little bridge, and wound up in a deserted lane at the back, a vacant and uninhabited space with the wattle fence of the neighbor’s garden on one side and, on the other, a tall stone fence circling Fyodor Pavlovich’s garden. Here he chose the spot where, according to the legend known to him, Stinking Lizaveta had crawled over the fence at one time. “If she could climb over”—God knows why this thought flashed through his mind—“then surely I can, too.” And, in fact, he jumped up and a moment later was able to grab hold of the top of the fence with one hand, and then he energetically lifted himself up and sat straddling the fence. The little bathhouse stood in the garden nearby, but the illuminated windows of the house were also visible from where he sat. “Just as I thought, the lights are lit in the old man’s bedroom: she’s in there!” He jumped off the fence and down into the garden. Although he knew that Grigory was ill, and that perhaps Smerdyakov was also really ill, and that there was no one to hear him, he instinctively hid, stood still, and began listening. But there was dead silence all around, and, as if on purpose, it was completely still, with not a breath of wind.

“And only silence whispers . . .”[1] This line flashed through his mind for some reason. “If only no one heard me jump over the fence; it seems no one did.” Pausing for a moment, he quietly made his way through the garden, across the grass; walking around the trees and bushes, he proceeded slowly, concealing every step, listening to his own footsteps. After some five minutes he reached the lighted window. He remembered that there, right under the window, were some tall, large, thick bushes of elder and guelder rose. The door from the house into the garden on the left side of the façade was locked; he’d looked carefully as he passed by to make sure. He finally reached the bushes and hid behind them. He didn’t breathe. “I have to wait now,” he thought. “If they heard my steps and are listening, they have to be reassured. . . . If only I don’t cough or sneeze . . .”

He waited about two minutes, but his heart was pounding terribly; at times he was almost gasping for air. “No, these palpitations won’t stop,” he thought. “I can’t wait any longer.” He stood behind a bush in the shadows; the front of the bush was illuminated from the window. “Guelder rose, red berries, how lovely!” he whispered, not knowing why. Quietly, with separate, inaudible steps, he approached the window and stood on his tiptoes. Fyodor Pavlovich’s entire bedroom was clearly visible. It was a small room, divided by a red folding screen, “Chinese,” as Fyodor Pavlovich referred to it. The word “Chinese” echoed in Mitya’s mind, “and Grushenka’s behind the screen.” He began watching Fyodor Pavlovich. He was wearing his new striped silk robe, which Mitya had never seen before, fastened by a silk cord with tassels. From under the collar of the robe Mitya could see clean, stylish linen, a fine Holland shirt with gold studs. On his head Fyodor Pavlovich wore the same red bandage that Alyosha had seen. “He’s all dressed up,” thought Mitya.

Fyodor Pavlovich stood next to the window, apparently deep in thought; suddenly he jerked his head up, listened closely, but, hearing nothing, went over to the table, poured himself half a glass of brandy from a decanter, and drank it down. Then he sighed deeply, stood there once again, distractedly went up to the mirror between the windows; with his right hand he raised the red bandage from his forehead slightly and began examining his bruises and scars, which hadn’t yet healed. “He’s alone,” thought Mitya, “in all likelihood he’s alone.” Fyodor Pavlovich walked away from the mirror, suddenly turned to the window, and glanced outside. Mitya instantly slipped back into the bushes.

“Perhaps she’s behind his screen; maybe’s she’s already asleep.” This thought pierced his heart. Fyodor Pavlovich moved away from the window. “He was trying to see her out the window: therefore, she’s not there; why else would he be staring out into the darkness? Impatience is eating him up.” Mitya immediately jumped back and once again began peering into the window. The old man was sitting in front of the little table, apparently dejected. At last he rested his elbows on the table and placed his right palm on his cheek. Mitya observed greedily.

“Alone, alone!” he affirmed again. “If she were there, he’d have a different look.” It was strange: all of a sudden some senseless, peculiar annoyance that she wasn’t there seethed in his heart. “It’s not because she’s not here,” Mitya thought and replied to himself right away: “It’s that I can’t tell for sure whether she’s there or not.” Mitya remembered afterward that at the time his mind was unusually clear and he understood everything right down to the last detail; he grasped every little nuance. But anguish, the anguish of not knowing and of indecision, grew in his heart with inordinate speed. The question “Is she here, once and for all, or not?” began to rage furiously in his heart. All of a sudden he made a decision: he stretched out his hand and knocked softly on the window frame. He used the signal the old man had agreed upon with Smerdyakov: two soft knocks, followed by three rapid knocks: tap, tap, tap, the signal that meant “Grushenka’s come.” The old man shuddered, jerked his head, jumped up quickly, and rushed to the window. Mitya leapt back into the shadows. Fyodor Pavlovich opened the window and stuck his whole head out.

“Grushenka, is it you? Is it?” he asked in a sort of trembling half whisper. “Where are you, my sweet little angel, where?” He was terribly agitated, gasping for breath.

“He’s alone!” decided Mitya.

“Where are you?” the old man cried again and stuck his head even farther out, past his shoulders; he looked around at all sides, to the right and the left. “Come here. I’ve got a little present for you. Come here and I’ll show you!”

“He’s talking about the envelope with the three thousand rubles,” flashed through Mitya’s mind.

“Where are you? Are you at the door? I’ll open it right away . . .”

The old man almost climbed out the window, glancing to the right, to the side, where there was a door to the garden, and trying to peer into the darkness. A moment more and he certainly would have run to open the door, without waiting for Grushenka’s reply. Mitya looked at him from one side without stirring. The old man’s entire repulsive profile, his large protruding Adam’s apple, his hooked nose, his lips smiling in syrupy expectation—all this was brightly lit by the slanting rays from the lamp on the left side of the room. A dreadful, violent malice boiled up suddenly in Mitya’s heart: “There he is, my rival, my tormentor, the tormentor of my life!” This was a surge of that sudden, vindictive, violent hatred, about which, as if foreseeing it, he’d spoken to Alyosha during their conversation in the gazebo four days ago, when he’d replied to Alyosha’s question “How can you say that you’ll kill our father?”

“I don’t know, I just don’t know,” he’d said at the time. “Perhaps I won’t kill him, and perhaps I will. I’m afraid that his face will suddenly become so hateful to me at that moment. I hate his Adam’s apple, his nose, his eyes, his shameless snigger. I feel a personal repugnance. That’s what I’m afraid of, that I won’t be able to control myself . . .”

His personal repugnance was unbearably increasing. Mitya was beside himself; he suddenly pulled the brass pestle out of his pocket . . .

. . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .

“God,” as Mitya himself kept saying afterward, “was watching over me at that time”: just at that moment the ailing Grigory Vasilievich woke up on his bed. Toward evening of that same day he’d taken that well-known treatment Smerdyakov had mentioned to Ivan Fyodorovich; that is, with his wife’s help he’d wiped his whole body with vodka mixed with some sort of secret powerful infusion and drunk the rest of it with “some prayer” whispered over him by his wife, and had then gone to bed. Marfa Ignatyevna partook as well, but as a nondrinker, she soon fell sound asleep next to her husband.

But then, completely unexpectedly, Grigory suddenly woke up during the night, thought a moment, and, although still feeling a burning pain in his lower back, sat up in bed. Then he thought about something again, got up, and quickly got dressed. Perhaps he was bothered by pangs of conscience for sleeping and leaving the house without a watchman “at such a dangerous time.” Smerdyakov, worn out by his epileptic fit, lay motionless in the next room. Marfa Ignatyevna didn’t stir. “The woman’s become weak,” he thought, having glanced at her. With a groan Grigory Vasilievich went out onto the porch. Of course he merely wanted to take a look from there, because he was in no condition to walk; the pain in his lower back and leg was unbearable. But then he suddenly remembered that last evening he’d forgotten to lock the garden gate. He was an extremely prompt and precise man, one who held to his established routine and age-old habits. Limping and writhing with pain, he went down the porch stairs and made his way into the garden. So it was, the gate stood wide open. Mechanically he proceeded into the garden: perhaps he was only imagining it, perhaps he’d heard some noise, but glancing to the left, he noticed the master’s open window; it was empty now—no one looking out.

“Why is it open? It’s not summer now!” Grigory wondered, and all of a sudden, at that same moment, something strange flashed before him. Some forty paces in front someone was running in the darkness, some shadow moving very quickly. “Good Lord!” cried Grigory; beside himself, forgetting all about the pain in his lower back, he set off at a run to intercept the runner. He took a shortcut, evidently knowing the garden better than the runner; the latter headed toward the bathhouse, ran behind it, and raced toward the wall. . . . Grigory followed him, without losing sight of him, and ran for all he was worth. He managed to reach the fence at the very same moment when the fugitive was climbing over it. Beside himself, Grigory cried out, rushed ahead, and grabbed hold of his leg with both hands.

So it was; his premonition hadn’t deceived him. He recognized him: it was him, the “monster-patricide”!

“Patricide!” the old man shouted to the whole neighborhood, but he managed to shout only that one word; he suddenly fell as if struck by lightning. Mitya jumped back into the garden and bent over the fallen man. He still had the brass pestle in his hand and mechanically tossed it onto the grass. The pestle fell some two paces from Grigory, not in the grass, but on the path, in a most visible place. For a few seconds he examined the man lying on the ground. The old man’s head was covered in blood; Mitya stretched out his hand and began probing the wound. Afterward he remembered clearly that he wanted terribly to “determine absolutely for himself” whether he’d broken the man’s skull or merely “knocked him out” with a blow to his temple from the pestle. But blood was flowing, flowing terribly, and in a moment a warm stream poured over Mitya’s trembling fingers. He remembered that he’d grabbed his new white handkerchief from his pocket, which he had taken along before going to see Madame Khokhlakova, and he applied it to the old man’s head, senselessly trying to wipe the blood from his forehead and face. But the handkerchief also became soaked in blood immediately.

“Good Lord! What am I doing this for?” Mitya asked, suddenly coming to his senses. “If I broke his skull, how can I find out? And does it really make any difference?” he suddenly added hopelessly. “If I killed him, then I killed him. . . . You got caught, old man, so lie there!” he cried loudly and suddenly rushed toward the fence, climbed over it into the lane, and took off running. He held the crumpled handkerchief soaked in blood in his right fist; as he ran he stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket. He ran at breakneck speed; the few infrequent passersby on the dark streets recalled subsequently how that night they’d met a frenzied man running through town. He flew back to the widow Morozova’s house.

Right after he’d left that evening, Fenya had rushed to find the chief porter, Nazar Ivanovich, and began imploring him, “For Christ’s sake, don’t admit the captain again, either today or tomorrow.” Nazar Ivanovich, after hearing this, agreed but, alas, went upstairs to the mistress, who’d summoned him, and on the way met his nephew, a lad of about twenty, who’d not long ago arrived from the country, and ordered him to stay in the courtyard but forgot to warn him about the captain. Having run up to the front gate, Mitya knocked. The lad recognized him at once: Mitya had tipped him more than once in the past. He opened the gate for him immediately, admitted him, smiled cheerfully, and hastened to inform him obligingly that “Agrafena Aleksandrovna isn’t at home now.”

“Where is she, Prokhor?” Mitya stopped suddenly.

“She left before, some two hours ago, with Timofey, to go to Mokroye.”

“Why?” cried Mitya.

“I can’t say, sir. To meet some officer—someone summoned her and sent horses to fetch her . . .”

Mitya left him and ran in like a madman to see Fenya.

1 An inexact quotation from Book 2, line 219 of Pushkin’s early mock-heroic narrative poem, “Ruslan and Lyudmila” (1820).

V

A SUDDEN DECISION

She was sitting in the kitchen with her grandmother, and both were getting ready to go to bed. Relying on Nazar Ivanovich, they had once again neglected to lock themselves in. Mitya came running, rushed at Fenya, and seized her tightly by the throat.

“Tell me right now where she is. Who is she with in Mokroye?” he roared in a frenzy.

Both women squealed.

“Ah, I’ll tell you, dear Dmitry Fyodorovich, I’ll tell you everything; I won’t hide a thing,” cried Fenya rapidly, scared to death. “She’s in Mokroye with her officer.”

“What officer?” roared Mitya.

“That same officer, the one she used to know, five years ago, who was here, deserted her, and then left,” Fenya blathered in the same rapid manner.

Dmitry Fyodorovich dropped his hands, which had been squeezing her throat. He stood before her pale as a corpse, speechless, but by his eyes it was clear that he understood everything immediately, everything from her first word to the last detail and guessed the rest. Poor Fenya, of course, couldn’t tell at that moment whether he understood or not. She was still sitting on the trunk as she had been when he’d come running in: trembling all over, holding her arms out in front as if trying to defend herself, as if frozen in that position. The pupils of her wide-open, frightened eyes were fixed on him without moving. And worse still, both his hands were stained with blood. As he’d run along the road, he must have wiped the sweat off his face, and so traces of smeared blood remained on his forehead and right cheek. Fenya was about to have hysterics; the old cook jumped up, looking like a madwoman, and almost fainted. Dmitry Fyodorovich stood there a minute and all of a sudden sank mechanically onto the chair next to Fenya.

He sat, not exactly reflecting, but as if in a state of fright, like a stupor. Now everything was as clear as day: this officer—he knew about him, had learned everything all too well from Grushenka herself, how a month ago he’d sent her a letter. In other words, for the last month, a whole month, this affair had been going on as a deep secret from him, until the arrival of this new man, and he’d never even thought about him! But how was it, how could it be that he’d never considered him? Why had he completely forgotten about this officer, forgotten immediately, as soon as he’d found out about him? That’s the question that stood before him now, like some sort of monster. And he contemplated this monster in alarm, growing cold with fear.

Suddenly, like a quiet, affectionate child, he started speaking with Fenya softly and gently, as if he’d completely forgotten that he’d just frightened, offended, and tormented her. He immediately set about interrogating her with extreme and even astonishing precision. And Fenya, although she regarded his bloodstained hands nervously, replied to every question with surprising willingness and promptness, even hastening to lay the “whole truth and nothing but the truth” before him. Little by little, even with some joy, she began to explain every detail, though not wishing to torture him, but seeming to hurry with all she had to be of service to him. She related to him all the events of the day in full detail, the visit of Rakitin and Alyosha, and how she, Fenya, stood watch, how the mistress departed, and the words she’d shouted out the window for Alyosha to convey to him, Mityenka, so that “he would remember forever how she’d loved him for one little hour.” After hearing these words, Mitya suddenly smiled ironically and his pale face became flushed. At the same time Fenya said to him, no longer afraid of her own curiosity:

“Your hands, Dmitry Fyodorovich, are covered in blood!”

“Yes,” Mitya replied mechanically, regarding his own hands absentmindedly, and immediately forgot about them and about Fenya’s question. Once again he sank into silence. About twenty minutes had elapsed since he’d come running in. His previous fright had passed; apparently some new firm decisiveness had completely overtaken him. He suddenly stood up and smiled pensively.

“Sir, what happened to you?” asked Fenya, once more indicating his hands. She spoke with compassion, as if she were feeling very close to him now.

Mitya looked at his hands again.

“It’s blood, Fenya,” he said, looking at her with a strange expression on his face, “it’s human blood, and oh God, why was it shed? But . . . Fenya . . . there’s a fence here”—he stared at her as if he were posing a riddle—“a tall fence, terrible to look at, but . . . tomorrow at first light, when ‘the sun rises high,’ Mitya will leap over that fence. . . . You don’t understand, Fenya, which fence, well, never mind . . . tomorrow you’ll hear about it and understand everything . . . but for now, good-bye! I won’t bother you and will step aside, I know how to step aside. Live, my joy . . . she loved me for an hour, remember Mityenka Karamazov forever. . . . She always called me Mityenka, do you remember?”

With these words he suddenly left the kitchen. And now Fenya was almost more afraid of his departure than she’d been when he’d come rushing in before and had thrown himself at her.

Exactly ten minutes later Dmitry Fyodorovich went to see Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin, the official to whom he’d previously pawned his pistols. It was by now half past eight, and Pyotr Ilyich, after having had some tea at home, had just put on his jacket again to head off to the Capital City tavern to play some billiards when Mitya caught him leaving. Seeing him with his face all smeared with blood, the official cried out:

“Good Lord! What happened to you?”

“I’ve come to reclaim my pistols,” Mitya said quickly, “and I’ve brought the money. With gratitude. I’m in a hurry, Pyotr Ilyich, so please get them for me now.”

Pyotr Ilyich was more and more surprised: all of a sudden he noticed a wad of money in Mitya’s hands. The main thing was that he was holding on to this money as he came in, the way no one else holds money or enters: he carried all the bills in his right hand, as if to display them, with his hand out in front of him. A young lad, the official’s servant, who’d met Mitya in the entrance hall, later related that he’d entered like that, with the money in his hand, and must have carried it like that even as he’d walked along the streets. The bills were all in denominations of one hundred rubles, rainbow-colored, and he held them in his bloodstained fingers. Subsequently Pyotr Ilyich was questioned about the money: “How much was there?” He replied that it was difficult to know at a glance; perhaps two thousand, or three, but the wad was large, “fat enough.” Dmitry Fyodorovich, as he himself also testified later, “was also beside himself, though not drunk, but as if in some sort of ecstasy, very distracted; yet at the same time he was also focused, as if considering something, trying to settle something, but unable to do so. He was in a great hurry, replying abruptly, very strangely; at times he seemed not to be grief-stricken at all, but rather cheerful.”

“What’s the matter with you? Did something happen?” Pyotr Ilyich cried again, surveying his guest excitedly. “How did you get so covered with blood? Did you fall or what? Just look at you!”

He took hold of Mitya’s elbow and led him to a mirror. When Mitya saw his bloodstained face, he shuddered and frowned angrily.

“What the devil! That’s all I needed,” he muttered furiously; he quickly transferred the money from his right hand to his left and feverishly withdrew his handkerchief from his pocket. But his handkerchief was soaked with blood (it’s the same one he’d used to wipe Grigory’s face and head): not one part of it was left clean; it had not only started to dry out, but somehow had hardened into a ball and refused to unfold. Mitya angrily hurled it to the floor.

“What the devil! Do you have some sort of rag . . . so I can wipe my face?”

“Are you just bloodstained, and not wounded? Better if you washed,” replied Pyotr Ilyich. “Here’s a washbasin; I’ll get some water.”

“A washbasin? That’s good . . . but where will I put this?” With the strangest confusion, he indicated to Pyotr Ilyich his bundle of hundred-ruble bills, looking at him as if he should decide what Mitya should do with his own money.

“Put it in your pocket or on the table here; it won’t get lost.”

“In my pocket? Yes, in my pocket. Good idea. . . . No, don’t you see, it’s all nonsense!” he cried, as if suddenly emerging from his state of distraction. “You see: we’ll finish this business first, the pistols, that is, you’ll give them back to me; here’s your money . . . because I really, really need them. . . . and I haven’t a moment to spare, not a moment . . .”

Removing a hundred-ruble bill from the wad, he extended it to the official.

“I don’t have change,” he replied. “Do you have anything smaller?”

“No, said Mitya, looking at the money again, and, as if unsure of his own words, he checked the two or three bills on top. “No, they’re all the same,” he added, then looked questioningly at Pyotr Ilyich again.

“How did you suddenly get so rich?” Pyotr Ilyich asked. “Wait, I’ll send my boy to Plotnikov’s shop. They close late—we’ll see if he can change a bill. Hey, Misha,” he cried into the entrance hall.

“To Plotnikov’s shop—a good idea!” Mitya cried too, as though a thought had suddenly dawned on him. “Misha,” he said, addressing the lad who’d come in, “run to Plotnikov’s shop and say that Dmitry Fyodorovich sends him regards and will soon be along himself. . . . Listen, listen: tell him to get some champagne ready, three dozen bottles, packed up like the ones I took to Mokroye. I bought four dozen then,” he said, turning to Pyotr Ilyich. “They know everything; don’t be alarmed, Misha,” he said, turning back to the lad. “Listen: get some cheese, some Strasbourg pies,[1] smoked fish, ham, caviar, everything, everything that he has, for a hundred or a hundred and twenty rubles, as he did last time. . . . But listen: he shouldn’t forget the sweets: candy, pears, two or three watermelons, or four; oh, the devil, one watermelon’s enough; and chocolate, fruit drops, toffee, everything the same as I took to Mokroye before, with three hundred rubles’ worth of champagne. . . . Just let it be the same again. Remember, Misha, if your name is Misha. . . . He’s called Misha, isn’t he?” he said, turning back to Pyotr Ilyich.

“Wait a minute,” Pyotr Ilyich interrupted, listening and watching him uneasily. “You should go yourself and tell them; he’ll get it all mixed up.”

“He will, I can see that, he’ll get mixed up! Hey, Misha, I was about to send you off on this commission with a kiss. . . . If you don’t mix it up, I’ll give you ten rubles. Off you go! Champagne, that’s the main thing to bring, and brandy, red wine, white wine, and everything else, as it was then. . . . They know what I took last time.”

“Listen!” Pyotr Ilyich interrupted him again impatiently. “I’m telling you: let him run and change the bill and tell them not to close; then you’ll go and tell them yourself. Give him your hundred-ruble bill. Go on, Misha, come back before you know it!” Pyotr Ilyich seemed to send Misha off hurriedly because the lad was standing in front of Mitya, staring at his bloody face and hands and the bundle of cash in his trembling fingers, just standing there, his mouth wide open in surprise and fear, probably understanding very little of all that Mitya was ordering.

“Well, now come and wash up,” Pyotr Ilyich said sternly. “Put the money on the table or stick it in your pocket. . . . That’s right; let’s go. Take off your frock coat.”

And he’d begun helping Mitya remove his frock coat when he suddenly shouted again:

“Look, your frock coat’s covered with blood!”

“This . . . this isn’t on the frock coat. There’s only a little blood on the sleeves. . . . It’s only here, where the handkerchief was. It must have seeped through my pocket. I must have sat on the handkerchief when I was at Fenya’s, and the blood soaked through,” Mitya explained at once with astonishing trustfulness. Pyotr Ilyich listened and frowned.

“How did you manage this? You must have been in a fight with someone,” he muttered to himself.

Mitya began to wash. Pyotr Ilyich held the pitcher and poured out some water. Mitya hurried and soaped up his hands ineffectively. (His hands were trembling, as Pyotr Ilyich later recalled.) Pyotr Ilyich ordered him to use more soap and to rinse well. He seemed to have the upper hand over Mitya at the time, more and more so as time went on. Let us observe, by the way: the young official’s character was not timid.

“Look, you didn’t get your nails clean. Well, now rub your face, here: on your temples, by your ear. . . . Are you going to wear this shirt? Where are you going? Look, the whole cuff of the right sleeve is bloody.”

“Yes, it is bloody,” remarked Mitya, examining the cuff of his shirt.

“So change your linen.”

“There’s no time. You see, I’ll manage . . .” Mitya continued with the same trustfulness, now wiping his face and hands with a towel and putting on his frock coat. “I’ll turn up the end of this shirtsleeve and it won’t be visible under the frock coat. . . . You see?”

“Now tell me, where did this happen? Did you have a fight with someone? Were you in the tavern again, like the last time? Did you beat that captain up again?” Pyotr Ilyich asked him with a reproach. “Who else did you beat up . . . or did you kill someone perhaps?”

“Nonsense!” said Mitya.

“What do you mean, ‘nonsense’?”

“Never mind!” said Mitya and suddenly grinned. “I just trampled a little old woman in the square as I was rushing here.”

“Trampled? A little old woman?”

“An old man!” cried Mitya, staring right into Pyotr Ilyich’s face, laughing and shouting at him as if he were deaf.

“Hey, what the devil! An old man, a little old woman. . . . Did you kill someone?”

“We made it up. We got into a fight; then we made up. In a certain place. We parted as friends. He’s a fool . . . he forgave me . . . by now he must have forgiven me. . . . If he’d stood up, he wouldn’t have forgiven me,” Mitya said suddenly with a wink. “But you know, devil take him, you hear, Pyotr Ilyich, devil take him, never mind! I don’t want to bother with him right now!” Mitya declared decisively.

“Why on earth do you keep getting involved with such characters . . . as you did back then over some rubbish with that captain. . . . You fought and now you’re about to go off on a spree—that’s you in a nutshell. Three dozen bottles of champagne—why do you need so much?”

“Bravo! Now give me the pistols. So help me God, there’s no time now. I’d like to chat with you, my friend, but there’s no time. And there’s no need at all, it’s too late to talk. Ah! Where’s my money? What did I do with it?” he cried and set about searching his pockets.

“You put it on the table . . . you did it yourself . . . there it is. Did you forget? Money’s like dirt or water to you. Here are your pistols. It’s strange, but at six o’clock you pawned them for ten rubles, and now you’ve got thousands. Two or three thousand, I think.”

“Three, most likely,” Mitya said with a laugh, shoving the money into the side pocket of his trousers.

“You’ll lose it that way. Do you have a gold mine, or what?”

“A mine? A gold mine!” Mitya cried as loud as he could and roared with laughter. “If you like, Perkhotin, you can come, too! Just now there’s a lady who’ll dole out three thousand to you if you decide to go. She did it for me, since she loves the gold mines so much. Do you know Madame Khokhlakova?”

“I’m not acquainted, but I’ve heard about her and seen her. Did she really give you three thousand rubles? Just doled it out to you?” Pyotr Ilyich asked rather dubiously.

“Tomorrow, as soon as the sun rises, and the ever-young Phoebus flies high, praising and glorifying God, tomorrow go to Khokhlakova, that is, and ask her yourself: did she dole out three thousand rubles to me or not? Inquire.”

“I don’t know your relations with her . . . since you’re saying it so positively, I guess she gave it to you; you’ve got the money in your paws, but instead of going to Siberia, you plan to spend it all. . . . Where are you headed now?”

“To Mokroye.”

“To Mokroye? But it’s nighttime!”

“Once Mastryuk was dressed up rich, but now he hasn’t even one stitch!”[2] Mitya said suddenly.

“Not even one stitch? With so many rubles?”

“I’m not talking about money. Devil take the money! I’m talking about women’s ways:

“Fickle is the heart of woman,

Treacherous and depraved.[3]

“I agree with Homer’s Ulysses, what he says.”

“I don’t understand you!”

“Am I drunk, or what?”

“Not drunk, but worse.”

“I’m drunk in spirit, Pyotr Ilyich, in spirit, and that’s enough, enough . . .”

“What are you doing, loading the pistol?”

“Yes, I’m loading the pistol.”

Mitya really was, having opened the case holding the pistols, opening the horn, carefully sprinkling in some powder, and ramming in the charge. Then he took a bullet, and before he inserted it, he raised it up in his two fingers to look at it in the candlelight.

“Why are you staring at the bullet?” Pyotr Ilyich asked with uneasy interest as he followed his action.

“Just so. Imagination. If you intended to shoot a bullet into your brain, then, loading the pistol, wouldn’t you look at it?”

“Why look at it?”

“If it’s going into my brain, it would be interesting to see what it looked like before. . . . But this is all nonsense, a moment’s foolishness. Here, it’s all done,” he added. “Pyotr Ilyich, now give me a piece of paper.”

“Here’s one.”

“No, a clean, new sheet of writing paper. That’s right.” And Mitya, grabbing a pen from the table, quickly wrote a few lines on the paper, folded it in quarters, and shoved it into his vest pocket. He placed the pistols back in their case, locked it with a key, and picked up the case. Then he looked at Pyotr Ilyich and gave him a long, pensive smile.

“Now let’s go,” he said.

“Where to? No, wait. . . . Are you intending to put that bullet in your brain, perhaps?” Pyotr Ilyich asked apprehensively.

“The bullet’s nonsense! I want to live; I love life! You should know that. I love golden-haired Phoebus and his warm light. . . . Dear Pyotr Ilyich, do you know how to step aside?”

“What do you mean?”

“To make way. To make way for a dear creature and for one who’s hated. So that the hated one becomes dear—that’s what I mean by ‘making way.’ And to say to them: ‘God be with you! Go on, pass by, while I . . .’ ”

“While you—?”

“Enough, let’s go.”

“So help me God, I’ll tell someone,” Pyotr Ilyich said, staring at him, “so they won’t let you go there. Why are you going to Mokroye now?”

“A woman’s there, a woman; enough from you, Pyotr Ilyich, that’ll do!”

“Listen, although you’re such a savage, I’ve always liked you somehow . . . now I’m worried.”

“Thank you, brother. I’m a savage, you say. Savages, savages! That’s what I always say. Savages! Here’s Misha now; I forgot all about him.”

Misha came in hurriedly with a bundle of banknotes in small denominations in his hand, and reported that “everyone got busy,” bottles were being fetched, as well as fish and tea—and soon it would all be ready. Mitya took a ten-ruble note and handed it to Pyotr Ilyich, then tossed another one to Misha.

“Don’t you dare!” cried Pyotr Ilyich. “Not in my house, you won’t: it’ll spoil him. Put your money away, hide it here. Why throw it around? You’ll need it tomorrow: you’ll come here to borrow ten rubles from me again. Why do you shove it in your side pocket? Hey, you’ll lose it!”

“Listen, dear man, let’s go to Mokroye together.”

“Why should I go there?”

“Listen, if you like, I’ll open a bottle now and we’ll drink to life! I feel like a drink and, most of all, a drink with you. You and I have never drunk together, right?”

“All right, we can get a drink in the tavern. Let’s go; I was heading there anyway.”

“There’s no time for the tavern; let’s go to Plotnikov’s shop—there’s a back room. Would you like me to tell you a riddle?”

“Go on.”

Mitya pulled the piece of paper from his vest, unfolded it, and showed it to Pyotr Ilyich. On it was written in large, clear handwriting:

“I punish myself for the whole of my life, the whole of my life I punish.”

“I’ll tell someone, I really will; I’ll go right now and tell someone,” Pyotr Ilyich said after reading the paper.

“You won’t have time, my friend; let’s go and drink. Off we go!”

Plotnikov’s shop was located only one house away from Pyotr Ilyich’s, on the corner of the street. It was the main grocery shop in our town, run by wealthy traders, and not a bad shop at all. It had everything one could find in any shop in the capital, all sorts of groceries: wines “bottled by the Yeliseyev brothers,”[4] fruits, cigars, tea, sugar, coffee, and so on. There were always three shop assistants on hand and two errand boys. Even though our district had grown poorer, landowners had moved away, and trade had declined, the shop still thrived as before and had become even busier as the years passed; there were plenty of buyers for their goods.

They awaited Mitya at the shop with impatience. They remembered all too well how three or four weeks ago he’d purchased almost the same items and wines at one fell swoop, spending several hundred rubles in cash (of course, they wouldn’t extend him any credit); they recalled how, just like now, he’d held a wad of colorful bills in his hands, and had dispensed them at random, without bargaining, without considering, and not wanting to think why he needed so many items and so much wine, etc. Afterward the story was told throughout the town about how he’d driven off to Mokroye with Grushenka, “squandered three thousand rubles at once in one night and the following day and returned from his splurge broke, without a kopeck to his name.”

At that time he’d taken up with a whole encampment of gypsies (who were then living in our neighborhood), who’d managed in two days to steal all his money while he was drunk, and to drink up all his expensive wine. The tale was told, while laughing at Mitya, that in Mokroye he’d given too much to drink to grubby peasants, and had stuffed the country girls and old ladies with candies and Strasbourg pies. Townspeople used to laugh, especially in the tavern, at Mitya’s own revelations and public confessions at the time (not to his face, of course; it was somewhat dangerous to do so) that for this entire “escapade,” all he’d received from Grushenka was that “she allowed him to kiss her foot, but nothing more.”

When Mitya and Pyotr Ilyich got to the shop, they found a troika by the entrance and a cart already covered by a rug, with various bells, and with the driver Andrey waiting for Mitya. In the shop they’d almost finished “loading” one box of provisions, and now they were just awaiting Mitya’s arrival to seal it and place it in the cart. Pyotr Ilyich was astounded.

“Where did you manage to find a troika?” he asked Mitya.

“As I was rushing to see you, I met Andrey and told him to drive straight to the shop. There’s no time to lose! The last time I drove with Timofey, but he’s nowhere to be found; he went off ahead of me with a certain enchantress. Andrey, will we get there very late?”

“They’ll arrive only an hour before us, if that, because they’ve got an hour’s head start!” Andrey replied hastily. “I helped Timofey get ready, so I know when he left. Their ride won’t be the same as ours, Dmitry Fyodorovich, how could it be? They won’t even get there an hour earlier!” Andrey said with enthusiasm; he was not yet old, had red hair, and was a lean lad; he wore a light coat and carried a heavy one over his arm.

“Fifty rubles for vodka if we’re only an hour behind them.”

“I’ll guarantee the time, Dmitry Fyodorovich; hey, they won’t be half an hour ahead of us, let alone an hour!”

Although Mitya bustled about looking after things, he spoke and gave orders strangely, at random, and not in any order. He began one thing and then forgot to finish it. Pyotr Ilyich found it necessary to get involved and assist.

“Four hundred rubles, not less than four hundred, exactly as it was then,” commanded Mitya. “Four dozen bottles of champagne, and not one less.”

“Why do you need so much? What’s in it? Wait!” cried Pyotr Ilyich. “What’s this box here? What’s it for? Is this really four hundred rubles’ worth?”

The busy shopkeepers explained in sugary tones that this first box contained only half a dozen bottles and “all the items necessary in the first instance,” consisting of hors d’oeuvres, candies, fruit drops, and so on. But the main part of the order would soon be packed up and dispatched at once, just like last time, in a separate cart, also a troika, and would get there in time, “not more than an hour after Dmitry Fyodorovich himself arrives.”

“Not more than an hour, no more than an hour. And include more fruit drops and toffee; the girls love it,” Mitya insisted heatedly.

“The toffee’s fine. But why do you need four dozen? One dozen’s enough,” Pyotr Ilyich said, almost in anger. He began to bargain: he demanded the bill and refused to calm down. However, he managed to save only about one hundred rubles. In the end it was agreed that no more than three hundred rubles’ worth of items would be dispatched.

“The devil take you!” cried Pyotr Ilyich, as if suddenly thinking better of it. “What does it have to do with me? Squander your money, if you got it for nothing!”

“Come here, my thrifty manager, here, don’t be angry,” Mitya said, pulling him to the back of the shop. “They’ll give us a bottle right here and we’ll try it. Hey, Pyotr Ilyich, let’s go together, because you’re a nice man, the kind I like.”

Mitya sat down on a small wicker chair in front of a tiny table covered with a dirty napkin. Pyotr Ilyich sat down opposite him and the champagne arrived instantly. They offered the gentlemen oysters, “first-class oysters, fresh today.”

“Devil take the oysters; I don’t eat them, and we don’t need anything,” Pyotr Ilyich snapped, almost angrily.

“There’s no time for oysters,” cried Mitya. “And I’m not hungry. You know, my friend,” he said with feeling, “I’ve never liked all this disorder.”

“Does anyone like it? Three dozen bottles of champagne for peasants: that would make anyone angry!”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about higher order. There’s no order in me, no higher order. . . . But . . . that’s all finished; there’s nothing to grieve over. It’s late, the devil take it! My entire life has been disorder, and it’s necessary to bring order to it. I’m making puns, right?”

“You’re raving, not punning.”

“Glory to God in the world,

Glory to God in me![5]

“This verse emerged from my soul at one time; it’s not a verse, but a tear . . . I composed it myself, but it wasn’t when I dragged that staff captain around by his beard . . .”

“Why are you suddenly bringing that up?”

“Why am I bringing that up? Rubbish! Everything comes to an end; everything’s equaled out; a line is drawn and then the total.”

“You know, I keep wondering about your pistols.”

“The pistols are rubbish! Drink and don’t fantasize! I love life; I’ve come to love life so much that it’s disgusting. Enough! To life, my dear, let’s drink to life, I offer a toast to life! Why am I so pleased with myself? I’m base, but I’m satisfied with myself. However, I’m tormented by the fact that I’m base, yet satisfied with myself. I bless creation; I’m prepared to bless God and His creation, but . . . it’s necessary to eliminate a certain stinking insect so it won’t crawl around and spoil life for others. . . . Let’s drink to life, dear brother! What could be more valuable than life? Nothing, nothing! To life and to a certain queen of queens.”

“Let’s drink to life and, perhaps, to your queen.”

They each drank a glass. Although Mitya was ecstatic and distracted, he was somehow sad. It was just as if some insurmountable, intense concern was pressing on him.

“Misha . . . is that your Misha who just came in? Misha, my boy, Misha, come here, drink up this glass, to golden-haired Phoebus, of tomorrow morning . . .”

“Why are you giving it to him?” Pyotr Ilyich cried angrily.

“Let me, just so, I want to.”

“Hey!”

Misha drank the glass, bowed, and ran out.

“He’ll remember it longer,” remarked Mitya. “I love a woman, a woman! What’s a woman? Queen of the earth! I’m sad, sad, Pyotr Ilyich. You remember Hamlet: ‘I’m very sorry, good Horatio. . . . Alas, poor Yorick!’ Perhaps that’s me; I’m Yorick. Now I’m Yorick, and afterward just a skull.”

Pyotr Ilyich listened and remained silent; Mitya also said nothing for a while.

“What kind of dog is that?” he suddenly asked the shopkeeper distractedly, after noticing, in the corner, a nice little lapdog with little black eyes.

“The lapdog belongs to Varvara Alekseevna, our proprietor,” replied the shopkeeper. “She brought it here and forgot all about it. It has to be returned to her.”

“I’ve seen one like it . . . in the regiment . . .” Mitya said vaguely, “except that it had a broken hind leg. . . . By the way, Pyotr Ilyich, I wanted to ask you if you’ve ever in your life stolen anything or not?”

“What sort of a question is that?”

“No, just so. From someone else’s pocket? I’m not talking about the treasury; everyone steals from it; you probably do, too . . .”

“Go to the devil!”

“I’m talking about something else: from someone’s pocket, or his purse, huh?”

“Once I stole twenty kopecks from my mother when I was about nine years old; I took it off the table. I did it quietly and clutched it in my hand.”

“Well, and then what?”

“Nothing. Three days later I was ashamed, confessed, and gave it back.”

“Well, and then what?”

“Naturally I got a beating. What about you? Have you perhaps stolen something?”

“I have,” Mitya said with a sly wink.

“What did you steal?” Pyotr Ilyich inquired.

“Twenty kopecks from my mother; I was about nine years old, and gave it back three days later.” After he said this, Mitya suddenly stood up.

“Dmitry Fyodorovich, shouldn’t we hurry up?” Andrey cried suddenly from the shop door.

“Ready? Let’s go!” Mitya cried in agitation. “ ‘One final tale’[6] and . . . for Andrey, a shot of vodka for the road right now! Give him some brandy, too, in addition to the vodka. Put this case”—with the pistols—“under the seat for me. Good-bye, Pyotr Ilyich, remember us kindly.”

“You’ll come back tomorrow?”

“Absolutely.”

“Would you be so kind as to settle your account now?” the shopkeeper asked, jumping up.

“Ah, yes, the bill! Absolutely!”

Once again he grabbed the wad of bills from his pocket, peeled off three hundred-ruble notes, tossed them onto the counter, and hurried out of the shop. Everyone followed him out, bowing, bidding him good-bye, and wishing him luck. Andrey grunted from the brandy he’d just swallowed and jumped up onto his bench. But as soon as Mitya had started to take his seat, Fenya turned up completely unexpectedly. She came running all out of breath, clasped her hands before him with a shout, and threw herself at his feet:

“My dear fellow, Dmitry Fyodorovich, my dear, don’t harm my mistress! I’m the one who told you everything! And don’t hurt him either; he’s her former lover, and he’s hers! He’s going to marry Agrafena Aleksandrovna now, that’s why he returned from Siberia. . . . My dear fellow, Dmitry Fyodorovich, don’t take another man’s life!”

“Tut, tut, tut; so that’s what it is! Well, you’re going there to make some trouble now!” Pyotr Ilyich muttered to himself. “Now it’s all clear, it makes perfect sense. Dmitry Fyodorovich, give me those pistols back, if you want to be a real man,” he cried loudly to Mitya. “Do you hear, Dmitry?”

“The pistols! Wait, my friend, I’ll throw them in a puddle along the way,” replied Mitya. “Fenya, get up, don’t just lie there in front of me. Mitya won’t harm anyone; this foolish man won’t harm anyone in the future. Here’s what, Fenya,” he shouted to her after taking his seat, “I offended you before; forgive me, and if you can take mercy on me, forgive a scoundrel. . . . And if you can’t, it doesn’t matter! It really doesn’t matter now! Let’s go, Andrey, full speed ahead!”

Andrey started off and the bells began jingling.

“Good-bye, Pyotr Ilyich! My last tear is for you!”

“He’s not drunk, but he keeps talking rubbish!” Pyotr Ilyich thought to himself after Mitya had gone. He was about to stay and oversee the loading of the cart (behind the troika) with the remaining provisions and wines, suspecting that they’d cheat and swindle Mitya, but all of a sudden, growing angry at himself, he said “To hell with it” and headed to the tavern to play billiards.

“Mitya’s a fool, but he’s a good lad,” he muttered to himself along the way. “I’ve heard about this ‘former’ officer of Grushenka’s. Well, if he’s come, then. . . . Hey, those pistols! But, devil take him, what am I, his guardian? Let them go! It’ll come to nothing! They’re loudmouths, nothing more. They’ll get drunk and fight, they’ll fight and make up. They never mean business. What’s all this about: ‘I’ll step aside,’ ‘I’ll punish myself’? Nothing will happen! He’s shouted such words in the tavern thousands of times before when he was drunk. But he’s not drunk now. ‘He’s drunk in spirit.’ They love fine phrases, these scoundrels. Am I his keeper, or what? He must have been in a fight already; his whole mug was bloody. Who with? I’ll find out at the tavern. And his handkerchief was bloodstained, too. . . . Ugh! The devil, he left it on my floor. . . . Damn it!”

Pyotr Ilyich arrived at the tavern in a most foul mood and started a game of billiards immediately. The game cheered him up. He played another and suddenly began telling one of his partners that Dmitry Karamazov had money again, some three thousand rubles, he’d seen it himself, and that he’d gone off to Mokroye again to carouse with Grushenka. The news was received with almost unexpected interest by his listeners. And they all began talking about it, not laughing, but somehow with strange solemnity. They even interrupted their billiards.

“Three thousand? Where did he get three thousand rubles?”

They began to inquire further. They took the news about Khokhlakova skeptically.

“He didn’t rob his old man, did he?”

“Three thousand! Something’s not right here.”

“He boasted aloud here about wanting to kill his father; everyone heard him. And he mentioned the sum of three thousand . . .”

Pyotr Ilyich listened and suddenly began replying to the questions dryly and sparingly. He didn’t mention a word about the blood that was on Mitya’s face and hands, but on the way to the tavern he had intended to talk about that. They began a third game, and gradually the talk about Mitya died down. By the end of the third game, Pyotr Ilyich didn’t feel like playing anymore; he put down his cue and, without having supper, which he had planned to do, left the tavern. Coming out into the square, he was confused and even surprised at himself. He suddenly realized that now he wanted to visit Fyodor Pavlovich, to see if anything had happened there. “Because of some silly nonsense, which it will turn out to be, am I going to rouse the whole household and create a scandal? Ugh! Devil take it; am I their keeper, or what?”

In the foulest mood, he headed straight for home and suddenly remembered Fenya. “Hey, devil take it: I should have questioned her just now,” he thought in annoyance, “then I would’ve found out everything.” Such an anxious, stubborn desire to speak to her and find out flared up in him that, halfway home, he made a sharp turn and headed for Morozova’s house, where Grushenka lived. After arriving at the gate, he knocked; the sound of his knock resounded in the night stillness, seemed to sober him up momentarily and made him furious. Besides, no one answered; everyone in the house was asleep. “And I’ll also create a scandal here!” he thought with some sort of suffering in his soul, but instead of leaving once and for all, he suddenly started knocking again with all his might. The clamor filled the whole street. “No one’s coming; I’ll keep knocking, I will!” he muttered, growing furious with himself with every knock but, at the same time, redoubling his efforts.

1 A pie filled with pâté de foie gras.

2 A line from a folk ballad about a lad whose clothes are stolen while he’s asleep.

3 A quotation from Schiller’s poem “Das Siegesfest” (“The Victory Festival,” 1803).

4 Famous Russian wine merchants.

5 See above, p. 126.

6 An inexact quotation from Pimen’s famous speech in Pushkin’s historical drama Boris Godunov (1825).

VI

HERE I COME!

Meanwhile, Dmitry Fyodorovich flew along the road. It was a little more than twelve miles to Mokroye, but Andrey’s troika galloped so fast that they made the journey in an hour and a quarter. It was as though the swift ride had suddenly revived Mitya. The air was fresh and cool; huge stars shone in the bright sky. This was the same night, and perhaps the same time, that Alyosha, having fallen on the earth, “had sworn rapturously to love it forever and ever.” But Mitya’s soul was troubled, very troubled, and although much was now tormenting his soul, at that moment his entire being was yearning irresistibly for her, his queen, toward whom he was flying, to take a look at her for the last time. I’ll say just one thing: his heart didn’t waver in its determination even for a moment. They might not believe me if I say that this jealous man wasn’t harboring the least bit of jealousy for this other man, his new rival, this “officer,” who’d sprung up from under the earth. For any other man, had one appeared, he’d have felt intense jealousy at once; perhaps he might even have stained his terrible hands with blood once more; but to this man, her “first lover,” as he flew along in the troika, not only did he not feel any jealous hatred now, he didn’t even feel any hostility—though it’s true, he had yet to see him. “Here there was no dispute: it was a question of her right and his; this was her first love, whom she hadn’t forgotten after five years. That means she’d loved only him for those last five years. As for me, why have I turned up? Where do I fit in? Step aside, Mitya, make way! What am I now? Even without this officer, it’s all over, even if he hadn’t shown up, even then it would’ve been all over . . .”

These words would’ve approximately expressed his feelings, if he could think at the time. But he couldn’t. All his present resolve was conceived without thinking, in one moment, born instantly, and undertaken in its entirety, with all its consequences, at Fenya’s only recently, from her first words. Nevertheless, in spite of all his resolve, his soul was confused, confused to the point of suffering: this resolve had failed to produce any tranquillity. Too much stood behind him and tormented him. And this seemed strange to him at certain moments: that he himself had written his own sentence with pen on paper—“I punish myself”—and that piece of paper was right here, in his own pocket, all ready; after all, the pistol was loaded, and he’d decided how, the next morning, he would greet the first warm rays of “golden-haired Phoebus”; however, he couldn’t be reconciled with all that had happened to him, all that was in the past and had tormented him; and the thought of it filled his heart with despair. There was a moment during his ride when he suddenly wanted to stop Andrey, jump out of the cart, grab his loaded pistol, and end everything, without even waiting for the dawn. But this moment flashed by like a spark. The troika flew, “devouring the distance,” and as he drew closer to his goal, once again the thought of her, her alone, seized hold of his spirit more and more, driving all the remaining dreadful phantoms from his soul. Oh, he so wanted to look at her, even just a glance, from far away! “She’s with him now,” he thought. “I want to see what she looks like with him, her previous love, that’s all I need.” Never before had he felt such love in his heart for this woman who’d sealed his fate, so much new feeling, never experienced before, unexpected even to him, a feeling a bit like adoration, like dissolving into nothingness before her. “So I will disappear!” he said suddenly, in a burst of something like hysterical ecstasy.

They’d been galloping for almost an hour. Mitya was silent, and Andrey, although he was a talkative man, didn’t utter a word, as if afraid to start speaking; he merely urged on his “nags,” his lean but speedy troika of bay horses. Then, all of a sudden, Mitya cried, in terrible anxiety:

“Andrey! What if they’re asleep?”

This thought had suddenly flashed through his mind; it hadn’t even occurred to him up to this point.

“They must have already gone to bed by now, Dmitry Fyodorovich.”

Mitya frowned painfully: in fact, what if he arrives there . . . with such feelings . . . and they’re asleep . . . she’s asleep, and perhaps there, too. . . . A feeling of anger flared up in his heart.

“Hurry up, Andrey! Faster, Andrey. Hurry up!” he cried in a fury.

“Maybe they haven’t gone to bed yet,” Andrey said after a pause. “Earlier Timofey was saying that there were lots of them gathered there.”

“At the station?”

“No, not at the posting station, but at Plastunov’s, at the inn.”

“I know; what did you say? There were lots of them there? Where? Who are they?” cried Mitya, in terrible anxiety at this unexpected news.

“Yes, Timofey was saying they’re all gentry: two from town, but I don’t know who they are; and two others, strangers; there may be someone else, but I didn’t ask him clearly. He said they began playing cards.”

“Cards?”

“So, maybe they’re not asleep yet, if they’ve started playing cards. Most likely it’s no later than eleven o’clock.”

“Drive on, Andrey, faster!” Mitya nervously cried again.

“Can I ask you something, sir?” Andrey began again after a little silence. “But I’m afraid to make you angry, sir.”

“What is it?”

“Earlier Fyedosya Markovna[1] threw herself at your feet and begged you, sir, not to hurt her mistress or anyone else. . . . It’s me who’s taking you there. . . . Forgive me, sir, it’s my conscience; maybe it’s foolish of me to say it.”

Mitya suddenly grabbed hold of his shoulders from behind.

“Are you a driver? A driver?” he began frantically.

“I am, sir.”

“You know that you have to make way. What would you say to a driver who refuses to make way: watch out, he says, here I come! No, driver, don’t trample anyone! It’s wrong to trample others, to ruin someone else’s life; and if you’ve done so—then punish yourself . . . if you’ve ruined someone’s life, destroyed it, then punish yourself and go away.”

Mitya blurted all this out as if in hysteria. Although Andrey was surprised at him, he continued the conversation:

“That’s right, Dmitry Fyodorovich, you’re right: it’s wrong to trample someone else, also to torment him, or any other creature, because every creature is created by God, even this horse, for instance, because some drivers just press on in vain; they rush ahead, just keep charging forward.”

“To hell?” Mitya interrupted and suddenly burst into unexpected, abrupt laughter. “Andrey, you simple soul,” he said, seizing his shoulders again, “tell me: will Dmitry Fyodorovich Karamazov wind up in hell or not? What do you think?”

“I don’t know, dear man; that depends on you, because you’re. . . . You see, sir, when the Son of God was nailed to the cross and died, He went from the cross directly to hell and released all the sinners who were being tortured. And hell groaned because it thought that it wouldn’t get any more sinners. And then the Lord said to hell: ‘Don’t grieve, hell, because from now on all the high and mighty, stewards, judges, and wealthy men, will come to you, and you’ll be filled up again just as you were in ages past, and you’ll be that way until I come again.’ That’s exactly what He said.”

“That’s a common legend. Splendid! Whip up the left horse, Andrey!”

“So you see, sir, who hell is intended for,” Andrey said, whipping up the left horse. “And you, sir, are like a little child . . . that’s what we think of you. . . . And although you’re short-tempered, sir, the Lord will forgive you because you’re openhearted.”

“And you, will you forgive me, Andrey?”

“What do I have to forgive you for? You’ve never done me any harm.”

“No, for everyone, you alone for everyone, right here and now, on the road, will you forgive me for everyone? Speak, oh man of the common people!”

“Oh, sir, I’m afraid to drive you; your words are so strange!”

But Mitya didn’t hear him. He was praying fervently and whispering frantically to himself.

“Oh, Lord, receive me in all my lawlessness, but don’t judge me. Allow me to pass without Thy judgment. . . . Don’t judge me because I have condemned myself; don’t judge me because I love Thee, oh, Lord! I’m loathsome, but I love Thee: if Thou will send me to hell, I’ll love Thee there also, and from there I’ll shout that I’ll love Thee forever and ever. . . . But allow me to love to the end . . . here, now, love to the end, for all of five hours until Thy warm rays. . . . For I love the queen of my soul. I love her and can’t help but love her. Thou sees all of me. I will gallop ahead, fall down before her, and say: ‘You’re right to have passed me by. . . . Farewell and forget your victim; don’t ever trouble yourself again!’ ”

“Mokroye!” shouted Andrey, indicating with his whip.

Through the pale dark of night stood a solid black mass of buildings, strewn around on a huge expanse of space. The village of Mokroye had two thousand souls, but at this hour everyone was already asleep; only a few lights glowed here and there.

“Drive on, drive on, Andrey. I’m coming!” Mitya cried as if in a fever.

“They’re not asleep!” Andrey said, pointing his whip to Plastunov’s inn, which stood at the very entrance to the village and where all six windows looking out onto the street were lit.

“They’re not asleep!” Mitya cried joyfully. “Ring your bells, Andrey, gallop right up to it, make some noise, so everyone knows that I’ve arrived! I’m coming. Here I come!” Mitya kept shouting in a frenzy.

Andrey sent his exhausted team into a gallop and really did drive right up to the elevated porch with a racket and reined in his wearied, panting horses at the bottom of a steep flight of steps. Mitya jumped down from the cart; at once the owner of the inn, on his way to bed, peered out from the porch to see who’d just arrived.

“Trifon Borisych, is it you?”

The owner leaned over, looked carefully, ran downstairs quickly, and rushed up to the newly arrived guest with fawning delight.

“My dear Dmitry Fyodorovich! Do we get to see you again?”

This Trifon Borisych was a solidly built, healthy peasant of average height, with a somewhat stout face and a stern and implacable expression, especially with the peasants of Mokroye, but he possessed the gift of being able to change his expression to be the most obsequious when he felt it’d be of some use. He dressed like a typical Russian, in a shirt buttoned down one side and a tight-fitting coat; he had a fair amount of money but was always dreaming of improving his station. More than half of the peasants in the village were in his clutches, and all of them were in debt to him. He bought and leased land from the neighboring landowners; the peasants worked this land for him to pay off their debts, from which they could never escape. He was a widower and had four grown daughters, one of whom was already a widow; she lived with him along with her two small children, his granddaughters; and she worked for him as a charwoman. Another daughter was married to a civil servant, some lowly clerk; on the wall in one of the rooms of the inn one could see, among miniature family photographs, one of this man wearing a uniform and sporting official epaulettes. The two youngest daughters used to wear fashionable blue or green dresses, close-fitting behind, with yard-long trains, on church holidays and when they went visiting. But the next day they’d rise at dawn as they did every day, sweep out the rooms with birch brooms, empty the slops, and carry out the trash after the guests had departed. In spite of the thousands of rubles he’d amassed, Trifon Borisych still liked to empty the pockets of his drunken lodgers, and to recall that not more than a month ago, in one twenty-four-hour period, he’d cleared more than two hundred rubles, if not three hundred, from Dmitry Fyodorovich, during his last fling with Grushenka; therefore he greeted him now joyfully and eagerly, sniffing his prey again the moment Mitya drove up to the porch.

“My dear Dmitry Fyodorovich! Do we see you here again?”

“Wait, Trifon Borisych,” Mitya began. “The main question is: where is she?”

“Agrafena Aleksandrovna?” The innkeeper understood immediately, staring closely at Mitya’s face. “She’s here, too . . . she is . . .”

“With whom? With whom?”

“Some guests who just arrived, sir. . . . One’s a civil servant, a Pole, to judge by his speech; he sent horses to fetch her; and his friend or fellow traveler, who knows, is wearing civilian clothes . . .”

“Are they on a spree? Are they rich?”

“What spree? It’s small potatoes, Dmitry Fyodorovich.”

“Small potatoes? And the others?”

“They’re from town, two gentlemen. . . . They’re returning from Cherny and stopped here. One of them, a young man, must be Mr. Miusov’s relative, but I’ve forgotten his name . . . and the other, you must also know: the landowner Maksimov; he’s been on a pilgrimage, so he says, to our monastery, and he’s traveling with Mr. Miusov’s young relative . . .”

“Is that all of them?”

“Yes, that’s all.”

“Wait, listen, Trifon Borisych, now tell me the most important thing: what about her? How is she?”

“She’s only just arrived and she’s sitting with them.”

“Is she cheerful? Laughing?”

“No, it seems she’s not laughing very much. . . . She even looks completely bored; she was combing the young man’s hair.”

“The Pole? The officer?”

“But he’s not young and he’s not really an officer; no, sir, not him but Mr. Miusov’s nephew, the young fellow . . . whose name I’ve forgotten.”

“Kalganov?”

“Yes, that’s it, Kalganov.”

“Good. I’ll see for myself. Are they playing cards?”

“They were, but they stopped; then they were drinking tea; the civil servant ordered some liqueur.”

“Wait, Trifon Borisych, wait, my good man, I’ll see for myself. Now tell me the main thing: are the gypsies here?”

“There’s no trace of the gypsies, Dmitry Fyodorovich; the authorities chased them away; but there are some Yids who play fiddles and cymbals, over in Rozhdestvenskaya; you can send for them now if you wish. They’ll come.”

“Yes, send for them, without fail, send for them!” cried Mitya. “And get some girls, too, like last time, especially Marya, also Stepanida and Arina. Two hundred rubles for a chorus!”

“For that kind of money I could rouse the entire village for you, if they hadn’t already gone to sleep. Are the local peasants here really worth such kindness, Dmitry Fyodorovich, kind sir, and the girls, too? To spend a sum like that on such baseness and rudeness! Why give our peasants cigars to smoke? They smell bad already, the bandits. And the girls, all of them, are covered with lice. I’d call my own daughters for you for nothing, let alone for that kind of money, but they’ve all gone to bed; I’d kick them in the backside and make them sing for you. The last time you treated the peasants to champagne, e-ech!”

There was no reason for Trifon Borisych to feel sorry for Mitya: the last time he’d hidden away half a dozen bottles of champagne and had found a hundred-ruble note under a table and clutched it in his fist. And there it had remained . . .

“Trifon Borisych, I squandered more than a thousand rubles the last time I was here. Do you remember?”

“You did, my dear man, how could I forget it? You spent three thousand here.”

“Well, I’ve come to do it again, you see?”

He took out a wad of bills and thrust it right under the proprietor’s nose.

“Now, listen and understand: the wine will arrive in an hour, also the appetizers, pies, and sweets—take it all upstairs right away. That case that Andrey has, take that up, too, open it, and start serving the champagne. . . . And the main thing is girls, girls, and definitely Marya . . .”

He turned to the cart and pulled his case with the pistols out from under the seat.

“Let’s settle, Andrey, right here, take it! Here’s fifteen rubles for the troika, and fifty for the vodka . . . and for your willingness, your love. . . . Remember the gentleman Karamazov!”

“I’m afraid, your honor,” Andrey said, hesitating. “Give me five rubles as a tip, but I can’t accept any more. Trifon Borisych as my witness. Forgive my foolish words.”

“What are you afraid of?” Mitya asked, taking his measure. “Well, go to the devil, if that’s what!” he cried, tossing him five rubles. “Now, Trifon Borisych, lead me up there quietly, and let me take a good look at them, so they don’t see me. Where are they, in the blue room?”

Trifon Borisych glanced cautiously at Mitya, but immediately did as he’d been ordered: he led him carefully into the front hall; he entered the first large room, next to the one in which the guests were seated, and he took the candle away. Then he quietly led Mitya and positioned him in the corner, in the darkness, from which he could clearly observe the company without being seen. But Mitya didn’t look for long; he really couldn’t make them out: when he saw her, his heart started pounding and his eyes clouded over. She sat sideways at a table, in an armchair; next to her, on a sofa, sat the very young, handsome Kalganov; she held his hand, and seemed to be laughing, while he, not looking at her, was saying something aloud, as if annoyed, to Maksimov, who was sitting across the table opposite Grushenka. Maksimov was laughing very loudly at something. On the sofa sat he, and next to the sofa, on a chair by the wall, sat some other stranger. The one who was sitting on the sofa was sprawling, smoking a pipe, and Mitya had the fleeting impression that he was a chubby, broad-faced little man, not very tall, and seemed to be angry about something. His friend, the other stranger, seemed to Mitya to be very tall; but he couldn’t make out anything else. It took his breath away. He couldn’t stand it any longer; he put the case with the pistols on a chest of drawers; growing cold and feeling faint, he headed into the blue room, toward the company.

“Ah!” shrieked Grushenka in fear, the first to notice him.

1 Fenya’s full first name and patronymic.

VII

THE FORMER AND INDISPUTABLE ONE

With his long, rapid strides Mitya walked right up to the table.

“Gentlemen,” he began loudly, almost shouting, though stammering with every word. “I . . . I’m all right! Don’t be afraid,” he exclaimed. “I’m all right, all right,” he said, turning suddenly to Grushenka, who’d recoiled in her armchair in Kalganov’s direction and had taken firm hold of his arm. “And . . . I’m also on my way somewhere. I’m here only until morning. Gentlemen, may a passing traveler . . . join you until morning? Only until then, for the last time, in this very room?”

He concluded by turning to the chubby little Pole, who was sitting on the sofa smoking a pipe. The latter pompously removed the pipe from his lips and replied sternly:

“Sir, this is a private gathering. There are other rooms.”

“Is it you, Dmitry Fyodorovich? What do you mean?” Kalganov suddenly spoke up. “Greetings! Sit down with us.”

“Greetings, you dear man . . . and inestimable fellow! I’ve always respected you,” Mitya replied joyfully and enthusiastically, immediately extending his hand across the table.

“Ah, what a firm grip! You’ve broken my fingers,” Kalganov said with a laugh.

“That’s how he always shakes hands, always!” Grushenka replied merrily, smiling timidly, suddenly seeming to be convinced by Mitya’s appearance that he wasn’t going to make a scene; she regarded him with great curiosity, yet still with some unease. She was struck by something about him: it was the last thing she’d expected, that he’d come in at such a moment and begin talking like this.

“Greetings, sir,” the landowner Maksimov ventured sweetly on the left. Mitya rushed over to him.

“Greetings. You’re here, too. I’m so glad! Gentlemen, gentlemen, I . . .” He turned once again to the man with the pipe, clearly taking him for the most important person there. “I’ve rushed here. . . . I wanted to spend my last day and my last hour here in this room, in this very room . . . where I worshipped . . . my queen! Forgive me, sir!” he cried frantically. “I rushed here and I swore. . . . Oh, don’t be afraid; it’s my last night! Let’s drink, sir, to our amicable agreement! They’ll bring the wine right away. . . . Here’s what I brought.” Then for some reason he suddenly pulled out his wad of bills. “Allow me, sir! I want music, noise, tumult, and everything that there was before. . . . But this worm, this useless worm, will end his crawl on earth, and will be no more. I will commemorate my day of joy on my last night!”

He was almost out of breath; he wanted to say a good deal more, but merely blurted out these strange exclamations. The Pole gazed fixedly at him, at the wad of bills, then looked at Grushenka, in obvious confusion.

“If my królowa allows . . .” he began.

“What does królowa mean? Is it a queen, or what?” Grushenka suddenly said, interrupting him. “It makes me laugh to see all of you talk this way. Sit down, Mitya, what are you going on about? Don’t frighten me, please. You won’t, will you? If you won’t frighten me, I’ll be very glad to see you . . .”

“Me? Frighten you?” Mitya cried abruptly, throwing up his arms. “Oh, pass me by, go your own way, I won’t interfere!” Suddenly and unexpectedly for everyone, himself included of course, Mitya flung himself into a chair and burst into tears, having turned his head to the opposite wall and grabbed a firm hold on the back of the chair with his arms, as if he were embracing it.

“Now, now, what a fellow you are!” Grushenka cried reproachfully. “That’s exactly how he used to visit me; he begins talking and I don’t understand a thing. Once he started crying like this, and now he’s crying again. It’s shameful! Why are you crying? As if you had any reason to cry!” she added suddenly and mysteriously, emphasizing each word with some irritation.

“I . . . I’m not crying. . . . Well, greetings!” He turned around on his chair rapidly and suddenly began laughing, but not with his abrupt wooden laughter; rather, with some kind of nervous, shaking laughter.

“Well, here we are again. . . . Cheer up, cheer up!” Grushenka said to convince him. “I’m very glad you’ve come, very glad, Mitya. Do you hear that I’m very glad? I would like him to sit down here with us,” she said imperiously, addressing everyone, although her words were intended for the Pole who was sitting on the sofa. “I want it, I do! If he leaves, I will, too, that’s what!” she added, her eyes suddenly flashing.

“Whatever my queen commands is the law!” replied the Polish gentleman, gallantly kissing Grushenka’s hand. “I invite the gentleman to join our company!” he said, turning cordially to Mitya.

Mitya almost jumped up again, evidently intending to deliver another tirade, but something else ensued.

“Let’s drink, sir!” he blurted out instead of making a speech. Everyone started laughing.

“Good Lord! I thought he wanted to speak again,” Grushenka cried nervously. “You hear, Mitya,” she added stubbornly, “don’t keep leaping up; it’s good that you brought champagne. I myself will have a drink, but I can’t stand liqueurs. Best of all, you yourself came, because I was so bored here. . . . Did you come to go on another spree? Put your money away in your pocket! Where did you get so much?”

Mitya, who was still clutching the wad of bills in his hand, noted by everyone, especially by the Poles, quickly and awkwardly stuffed the banknotes into his pocket. He blushed. At that very moment the landlord brought in an open bottle of champagne and some glasses on a tray. Mitya went to grab the bottle, but was so distracted that he forgot what to do with it. Kalganov took the bottle and poured some wine for everyone.

“More! Another bottle!” Mitya shouted to the innkeeper and, forgetting to clink glasses with the Pole, whom he had so solemnly invited to drink to their new agreement, suddenly drank down his whole glass all alone, without waiting for anyone. His entire face changed instantly. Instead of the solemn and tragic expression he’d worn when he’d arrived, now a childlike look came over his face. It was as if he’d suddenly become subdued and humbled. He regarded everyone timidly and joyously, often giggling nervously, with the grateful look of a guilty puppy, one that was being petted again and readmitted to the house. It was as if he’d forgotten everything; he gazed around at everyone in amazement with his childish smile. He looked at Grushenka, constantly laughing, and moved his chair right up to her armchair. He gradually surveyed both Poles, although he couldn’t make much sense of either.

The gentleman on the sofa struck him with his bearing, his Polish accent, and the main thing: his pipe. “Well, so what? It’s all right if he’s smoking a pipe,” Mitya reflected. The Pole’s somewhat flabby, already almost forty-year-old face, with a tiny nose, under which a very thin, sharp little mustache could be seen, dyed and impudent, failed to arouse any questions for the moment. Even his wretched little wig, made in Siberia, with its stupid little temple locks combed forward, didn’t particularly shock Mitya: “Well, if he’s wearing a wig, it’s as it should be,” he continued, reflecting blissfully.

The other Pole, sitting near the wall, was younger than the man on the sofa, and was regarding the whole company boldly and provocatively, listening to the general conversation with silent contempt. Mitya was struck only by his very tall stature, grossly out of proportion to the man seated on the sofa. “If he stands up,” flashed through Mitya’s mind, “he’d be at least six foot three.” It also occurred to him that this tall Pole was probably a friend and follower of the man on the sofa, his “bodyguard,” as it were, and the little Pole with the pipe was undoubtedly giving orders to the tall man. But even this seemed to Mitya just fine and as it should be. All feelings of rivalry had died away in this little “puppy dog.” He still didn’t understand a thing about Grushenka or the enigmatic tone of some of her words; he merely understood, with a quaking heart, that she was being affectionate toward him, Mitya, that she’d “forgiven” him, and that she’d placed him next to her. He was beside himself with delight, watching her sip her glass of wine. However, he was suddenly struck by the silence of the group and began surveying the company with his expectant eyes. “Well, why are we all sitting here; why don’t you begin doing something, gentlemen?” his mellow glance seemed to say.

“He just keeps on lying, and here we all sit laughing,” Kalganov began suddenly, as if he’d guessed Mitya’s thought, and pointed to Maksimov.

Mitya stared directly at Kalganov and then at Maksimov.

“Lying?” he said with his abrupt wooden laugh, suddenly delighted by something. “Ha, ha!”

“Yes. Imagine, he maintains that in the 1820s our entire cavalry married Polish women; but that’s terrible nonsense, isn’t it?”

“Polish women?” Mitya ventured again, this time in rapturous delight.

Kalganov understood all too well Mitya’s relationship to Grushenka; he also guessed about the Pole, but all that didn’t interest him very much, perhaps even not in the least; most of all he found Maksimov entertaining. He’d encountered him accidentally, and was meeting the Poles here at the inn for the first time in his life. He knew Grushenka from before and had once even visited her accompanied by someone; at that time she hadn’t much liked him. But now she was treating him with affection; before Mitya’s arrival she’d even been caressing him, but he’d remained somehow indifferent.

He was a young man, no more than twenty, fashionably dressed, with a very pale little face and splendid, thick light brown hair. But from that pale face magnificent light blue eyes regarded the world with a clever, sometimes profound expression, one even beyond his age, in spite of the fact that the young man sometimes spoke and looked like a child; he was not at all ashamed of this, and was even aware of it himself. In general he was very unusual, even capricious, although always friendly. Sometimes something rigid and stubborn flashed across his face: he was looking at everyone, listening, yet he himself seemed to be dreaming determinedly about something all his own. He’d become limp and lazy, then sometimes he’d suddenly begin to grow anxious, apparently for the least of reasons.

“Imagine, I’ve been taking him around with me for four days now,” he continued, as if drawing out his words lazily, without any pretentiousness, but with complete naturalness. “Do you remember, ever since your brother Ivan pushed him off the carriage that time and went rushing off? I found his behavior then entertaining, and brought him out to the country, but he keeps on lying, so now I’m ashamed of him. I’m taking him back . . .”

“The gentleman has never seen any Polish women here and says that it’s not possible,” remarked the Pole with the pipe to Maksimov.

The gentleman with the pipe spoke decent Russian, at least much better than he let on. But if he was using Russian words, he distorted them into Polish forms.

“Why, I myself was once married to a Polish woman, sir,” Maksimov replied, with a titter.

“And, did you really serve in the cavalry? You kept talking about it. Are you really a cavalry officer?” Kalganov spoke up now.

“Yes, of course, is he really a cavalry officer? Ha, ha!” Mitya cried, listening greedily and hurriedly turning his inquisitive glance at each person who was speaking, as if expecting to hear God knows what.

“No, sir, do you see, sir,” Maksimov said, turning to him. “I was talking about those Polish girls . . . the pretty ones, sir . . . as soon as they finish dancing the mazurka with an uhlan[1] . . . as soon as one of them dances a mazurka with an uhlan, she jumps right into his lap like a little kitten, sir . . . a little white kitten, sir . . . and the pan father and pani mother see it and allow it . . . they allow it . . . and, sir, he offers her his hand in marriage, hee, hee!” Maksimov tittered as he concluded.

“The gentleman is a łajdak!”[2] suddenly growled the tall Pole sitting on the chair, and he crossed one leg over the other. Mitya was struck by his huge, greasy boot and its thick, dirty sole. In general both Poles were dressed in somewhat soiled clothes.

“Well, now he’s a łajdak! Why is he abusing him?” Grushenka suddenly asked angrily.

“Pani Agrippina,[3] the gentleman saw peasant girls when he was in Poland, but not aristocratic ladies,” observed the gentleman with the pipe to Grushenka.

“You can count on that!” the tall Pole on the chair snapped contemptuously.

“Just listen to that! Let him continue! People talk, why interfere? It makes it more interesting,” Grushenka retorted.

“I’m not interfering, madame,” said the Pole with the little wig imposingly, with a prolonged glance at Grushenka, and, after a significant pause, he once again began sucking on his pipe.

“No, no, this gentleman was telling the truth,” Kalganov said excitedly, as if they were talking about God knows what! “He’s not been to Poland; how can he talk about it? You didn’t get married in Poland, did you?”

“No, sir. In Smolensk Province, sir. But an uhlan had previously brought her from Poland to Russia, sir, my fiancée, sir, my future fiancée, sir, with her pani mother and with her auntie, and with one other relative who had a grown son; that was right from Poland itself, and . . . he gave her away to me. It was a lieutenant in our regiment, a very nice young man. At first he himself wanted to get married, but he didn’t because it turned out she was limping . . .”

“So you married a cripple?” cried Kalganov.

“Yes, sir. They deceived me a little at the time and concealed it from me. I thought she was just jumping up and down. . . . When she kept jumping, I thought it was because of her high spirits . . .”

“That she was marrying you from joy?” Kalganov shrieked in a childish, musical voice.

“Yes, sir. From joy, sir. But it turned out not to be for that reason, sir. Later, when we were married, after the wedding, that very evening she confessed, and very movingly begged my forgiveness. She said she had once tried to jump over a puddle and had injured her little foot, hee, hee!”

Kalganov burst into the most childish laughter and almost fell on the sofa. Grushenka started laughing, too. As for Mitya, he was at the peak of happiness.

“You know, don’t you, that’s the truth now, he’s not telling lies!” cried Kalganov, turning to Mitya. “And, you know, he was married twice—he’s talking about his first wife—but his second wife, you know, ran away and is still alive. Do you know that?”

“Really?” Mitya asked, turning quickly to Maksimov, an expression of extreme astonishment on his face.

“Yes, sir, she ran off, sir, I had that misfortune,” Maksimov confirmed modestly. “With a certain monsieur, sir. And the main thing is that she’d managed to transfer my entire village to her own name beforehand. ‘You,’ she says, ‘you’re an educated man, and you’ll manage to earn your own living.’ That’s how she left me. A venerable bishop once said to me, ‘Your first wife was crippled and the other one was light-footed.’ Hee, hee.”

“Listen, listen!” Kalganov said, now really bubbling over. “Even if he’s lying—and he often is—then he’s doing it just to provide pleasure to others: that’s not nasty, is it? You know, sometimes I love him. He’s very nasty, but he’s naturally nasty. What do you think? Another person would act meanly for some reason, to receive some benefit, but he simply does it naturally. . . . Imagine, for example, he claims that Gogol in Dead Souls was writing about him.[4] You remember, there’s a landowner in that novel named Maksimov who was flogged by Nozdryov and then charged with ‘inflicting bodily harm with birch rods while in a drunken state.’ Well, do you remember? So, can you imagine, he claims that it was he who was thrashed! Can this really be? Chichikov made his journey, at the latest in the early 1820s, so the dates don’t match up. They couldn’t have thrashed him then. They really couldn’t have, could they?”

It was hard to imagine why Kalganov was getting so excited, but he was sincerely agitated. Mitya wholeheartedly followed his lead.

“Well, what if he was thrashed?” he shouted with a laugh

“It wasn’t exactly a thrashing, sir, but just so,” Maksimov suddenly replied.

“What do you mean? Either they thrashed you or they didn’t.”

“Która godzina, panie? (What time is it?)”[5] the pan with the pipe and the bored look asked the tall pan sitting on a chair. He shrugged his shoulders in reply: neither of them wore a watch.

“Why not talk? Let others talk, too. If you’re bored, don’t speak and let others,” Grushenka exclaimed again, evidently trying to annoy him on purpose. Something seemed to flash into Mitya’s mind for the first time. This time the pan replied with evident irritability.

“Pani, ja nic nie mówie¸ przeciw. Nic nie powiedziałem. (I don’t object. I didn’t say anything.)”

“Well, all right; and you continue your story,” cried Grushenka to Maksimov. “Why have you fallen silent?”

“There’s no more to tell, ma’am, because it’s all just nonsense,” Maksimov replied at once, with evident satisfaction, putting on airs. “And in Gogol, it’s only in the form of an allegory, because all the names are allegorical: Nozdryov was really called Nosov, and Kuvshinikov—was not at all similar, but was Shkvornev. But Fenardi was really called Fenardi, only he wasn’t really Italian, but Russian, Petrov; and Mam’selle Fenardi was a pretty lass with nice little legs in tights, sirs, a short little skirt with sequins, and she would twirl, but not for four hours, only four minutes, sir . . . and she charmed everyone.”

“What did they thrash you for? For what?” roared Kalganov.

“For Piron,[6] sir,” replied Maksimov.

“What Piron?” cried Mitya.

“For the well-known French writer Piron, sir. At the time we were all drinking wine in a large group, in a tavern, at that same fair. They invited me, too, and I began by reciting epigrams: ‘Is that you, Boileau, what a funny outfit.’[7] And Boileau replies that he’s planning to go to a masquerade, that is, to the bathhouse, sir, hee, hee. They took it personally. But I quickly recited another one, very sarcastic, well known by all educated people:

“You’re Sappho and I’m Phaon; I won’t argue that,

But, one grief is weighing on me,

You don’t know your way to the sea.[8]

“They were even more offended by that one and began to abuse me rudely, so, to set things right, I just told an interesting anecdote about Piron, how they hadn’t accepted him in the French Academy, and how, to take his revenge, he’d composed his own epitaph for his gravestone:

“Ci-git Piron qui ne fut rien

Pas même academicien.[9]

“They seized me and thrashed me.”

“Why? What for?”

“For my education. A man can be thrashed for all sorts of reasons,” Maksimov concluded briefly and moralistically.

“Hey, enough of this; it’s all nasty. I don’t want to listen to this. I thought it might be entertaining,” Grushenka interrupted suddenly. Mitya was alarmed and stopped laughing at once. The tall Pole rose from his place and, with the haughty expression of a man bored and in unfamiliar company, began to pace the room from corner to corner, his hands behind his back.

“Look, he’s started pacing!” Grushenka said, regarding him contemptuously. Mitya began to feel anxious; besides, he’d noticed that the Pole on the sofa was regarding him with an irritated look.

“Sir,” cried Mitya, “let’s drink, sir! And with the other one, too. Let’s drink, gentlemen.” He quickly took three glasses and filled them with champagne.

“To Poland, gentlemen, I drink to your Poland, the Polish land!” Mitya exclaimed.

“Bardzo mi to miło, panie, wypiemy! (That’s nice to hear, gentlemen, let’s drink!),” said the Pole on the sofa grandly and picked up his glass.

“And the other one, too, what’s his name? Hey, most illustrious sir, take a glass!” Mitya urged.

“Pan Wróblewski,” prompted the man on the sofa.

Pan Wróblewski, swaying as he walked, came up to the table, stood there, and took a glass.

“To Poland, panowie, hurrah!” bellowed Mitya, raising his glass.

All three of them drank. Mitya grabbed the bottle and immediately filled all three glasses again.

“Now to Russia, panowie, and let us be brothers!”

“Pour some for me, too,” said Grushenka. “I want to drink to Russia, too.”

“Me, too,” said Kalganov.

“And I would, too . . . to our dear Russia, the old grandma,” Maksimov said with a giggle.

“Everyone, everyone!” cried Mitya. “Excuse me, sir, another bottle!”

They brought in the remaining three bottles from those that Mitya had brought with him. Mitya filled the glasses.

“To Russia, hurrah!” he cried again. Everyone except the Poles drank up; Grushenka downed her glass in one swallow. The Poles didn’t even touch their glasses.

“What’s wrong, gentlemen?” cried Mitya. “So that’s how you’re behaving?”

Pan Wróblewski picked up his glass, raised it, and declared in a resonant voice:

“To Russia within its original borders in 1772!”[10]

“Oto bardzo pięknie! (That’s much better!),” cried the other Pole, and both quickly emptied their glasses.

“You’re little fools, panowie!” Mitya suddenly blurted out.

“Sir!” shouted both Poles ominously, glaring at Mitya like a pair of angry roosters. Pan Wróblewski was particularly agitated.

“Ale nie można nie miec´ słabos´ci do swojego kraju? (Can a man not love his own land?),” he declared.

“Silence. No arguments. I won’t have any fighting,” cried Grushenka peremptorily, stamping her foot on the floor. Her face was flushed and her eyes were flashing. The glass she’d just finished was having its effect. Mitya was terribly alarmed.

“Panowie, forgive me! I’m to blame; I won’t do it again. Wróblewski, Pan Wróblewski, I won’t do it again!”

“Won’t you sit down and keep silent, you stupid man?” Grushenka scolded him in angry annoyance.

Everyone sat down, fell silent, and stared at one another.

“Gentlemen, I’m the cause of it all,” Mitya began again, not understanding Grushenka’s admonition. “Well, why are we sitting here? What shall we do to amuse ourselves . . . to cheer things up, to make merry once again?”

“It really isn’t very merry at all,” muttered Kalganov lazily.

“We should play a game of faro,[11] sir, like before,” said Maksimov suddenly with a titter.

“Faro? Splendid!” Mitya cried, “if only the panowie . . .”

“Póz´no, panie!”[12] the Pole on the sofa ventured, as if reluctantly.

“That’s true,” agreed Pan Wróblewski.

“Póz´no? What does that mean?” asked Grushenka.

“It means it’s late, gentlemen, late, the hour is late,” explained the Pole on the sofa.

“It’s always late with them; they can’t do anything!” Grushenka almost screamed in annoyance. “They’re sitting there bored, and they want others to be bored. Before you arrived, Mitya, they were sitting there in silence and putting on airs with me.”

“My goddess!” cried the Pole on the sofa. “Co mówisz, to się stanie.[13] Widze niełaskę i jestem smutny. (I see you’re ill-disposed toward me and that makes me sad.) Jestem gotów. (I’m ready), gentlemen,” he concluded and turned to Mitya.

“Begin, sir!” cried Mitya, pulling his money out of his pocket, taking two hundred-ruble notes, and placing them on the table.

“I want to lose a great deal to you, sir. Take your cards; set up the bank.”

“We’ll get some cards from the landlord, gentlemen,” the little Pole said emphatically and seriously.

“To najlepszy sposób.” (That’s the best way),” agreed Pan Wróblewski.

“From the landlord? All right, I understand, let it be from him, that’s all right, gentlemen. “Bring us some cards,” Mitya commanded.

The landlord brought an unopened deck of cards and informed Mitya that the girls were arriving, that the little Yids with their dulcimers would probably be coming soon, too, but that the troika with his provisions had yet to arrive. Mitya jumped up from the table and ran immediately into the next room to make arrangements. Only three girls had come, and Marya wasn’t among them. He himself didn’t know what to do or why he’d coming running out; he merely gave orders to fetch the presents for the girls, the sweets and the toffee, and to distribute it to them. “And some vodka for Andrey, vodka for Andrey!” he ordered hastily. “I offended Andrey!” Then Maksimov, who’d come running out after him, touched him on the shoulder.

“Give me five rubles,” he whispered to Mitya. “I want to stake something on the game, too, hee, hee.”

“Excellent, splendid! Take ten, here!” He pulled out the wad of bills from his pocket again and found a ten-ruble note. “And if you lose, come back for more, come right back . . .”

“All right, sir,” Maksimov whispered joyfully and ran back into the hall. Mitya went in, too, and apologized for making them wait. The Poles were already seated and unwrapping the cards. They looked much more welcoming now, almost cordial. The Pole on the sofa started smoking his pipe again and was preparing to deal; his face looked very solemn.

“Take your seats, gentlemen!” announced Pan Wróblewski.

“No, I don’t want to play anymore,” remarked Kalganov. “I lost fifty rubles to them before.”

“The gentleman was very unlucky; this time he may be lucky,” the Pole on the sofa said in his direction.

“How much is in the bank? Enough to cover?” Mitya was getting excited.

“That depends, sir, maybe a hundred, or two hundred, as much as you want to stake.”

“A million!” said Mitya with a roar of laughter.

“Has the captain heard about Pan Podwysocki?”

“What Podwysocki?”

“In Warsaw there was a bank and anyone could stake as much as they wanted. So Podwysocki sees a thousand złotys[14] and stakes against the bank. The banker says: ‘Pan Podwysocki, are you putting up money or your honor?’ ‘My honor, sir,’ Podwysocki replies. ‘All the better, sir.’ The banker deals the cards, and Podwysocki wins a thousand złotys. ‘Take it, sir,’ says the banker; he opens the drawer and hands him a million. ‘Take it, sir, it’s your winnings.’ There was a million in the bank. ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Podwysocki. ‘Pan Podwysocki,’ says the banker, ‘you staked on your honor and we pledged on ours.’ Podwysocki took the million.”[15]

“That’s not true,” said Kalganov.

“Pan Kalganov, W szlachetnej kompanii tak mówic´ nie pryzstoi (one doesn’t say such things in honorable company).”

“As if a Polish gambler would turn over a million złotys to you!” cried Mitya, but immediately thought better of it. “Forgive me, gentlemen, I’m guilty again; he would turn it over, he would, on his honor, his Polish honor! You see how I speak Polish, ha-ha! Here, I stake ten rubles on the jack.”

“And I stake a ruble on the queen, the queen of hearts, the pretty little panyonochka,[16] hee-hee,” said Maksimov with a giggle, moving out his queen, as though trying to hide it from everyone, coming right up to the table and making the sign of the cross under it. Mitya won. Maksimov’s ruble staked on the queen won him a ruble.

“Corner!” cried Mitya.[17]

“I stake a ruble once again, one simple, little, very simple ruble,” Maksimov mumbled blissfully, terribly happy at having won, too.

“Lost!” cried Mitya. “Double on the seven!”

He lost again on the seven.

“Stop!” cried Kalganov suddenly.

“On the seven, the seven,” Mitya said, doubling his bet; but no matter how much he staked on it, the seven kept losing. And Maksimov’s ruble kept winning.

“The seven!” roared Mitya in a rage.

“You lost two hundred, sir. Do you want to bet two hundred more?” asked the Pole on the sofa.

“What? I’ve lost two hundred? Then another two hundred! All on the seven!” Pulling the money out of his pocket, Mitya was about to stake it on the queen, but Kalganov suddenly covered it with his hand.

“Enough!” he cried in his resonant voice.

“What are you doing?” Mitya asked, glaring at him.

“Enough. I don’t want it. I don’t want you to play anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Just because. Say to hell with it and walk away, that’s why. I won’t let you play anymore.”

Mitya stared at him in astonishment.

“Give it up, Mitya; he may be telling the truth; you’ve lost a lot even now,” Grushenka chimed in with a strange note in her voice. Both Poles stood up suddenly from their places, looking very offended.

“Żartujesz (Are you joking?), sir?” asked the small pan, looking sternly at Kalganov.

“Jak się poważesz to robic´, sir? (How dare you do that?),” Pan Wróblewski roared at Kalganov.

“Don’t you dare shout, don’t you dare!” cried Grushenka. “You’re like turkey cocks!”

Mitya looked at them one at a time; but something in Grushenka’s face suddenly struck him, and at that moment an altogether new idea flashed into his mind—a strange new thought!

“Pani Agrippina!” the small Pole started to say, all flushed from passion, when suddenly Mitya went over to him and slapped him on the shoulder.

“Most illustrious sir, a few words.”

“Czego chcesz, panie? (What do you want, sir?)”

“Into the other room, the other chamber, I want to say a few good words to you, the very best; you’ll be pleased.”

The small Pole was surprised and looked at Mitya cautiously. He agreed at once, however, but on the absolute condition that Pan Wróblewski come with him.

“Is he your bodyguard? Let him come, too, we’ll need him as well. He’s even essential!” cried Mitya. “Let’s go, gentlemen!”

“Where are you going?” Grushenka asked anxiously.

“We’ll be back in a minute,” replied Mitya. Some sort of boldness, an unexpected audacity shone in his face; an hour ago, when he’d first entered, his face had been entirely different. He led the Poles to the room on the right, not into the large one where the girls’ chorus was gathering and where the table was set, but into the bedroom, where there were trunks, packages, and two large beds with a pile of cotton pillows on each. Here there was only a candle burning on a small wooden table in the corner. The Pole and Mitya sat down opposite each other at this table, and the enormous Pan Wróblewski sat to one side, putting his arms behind his back. The gentlemen looked severe, but with evident curiosity.

“Czym mogę służyc´ panu? (How can I help you, sir?),” the small Pole asked.

“Here’s how, sir, I won’t say much: here’s some money for you.” He pulled out his banknotes. “If you want three thousand, take it and go on your way.”

The Pole looked inquisitively, all eyes, staring directly at Mitya.

“Trzy tysiaęce, panie?”[18] He exchanged glances with Wróblewski.

“Trzy, panowie, trzy! Listen, sir, I see you’re a reasonable man. Take three thousand, go to the devil, and take Wróblewski with you—do you hear me? But right now, this very moment, once and for all, do you understand, sir, leave by this door forever. What do you have in there? An overcoat? A fur coat? I’ll bring it out. They’ll get the troika ready immediately and then—do widzenia, panie.[19] Eh?”

Mitya waited confidently for the reply. He was in no doubt. Something very decisive passed across the Pole’s face.

“And the rubles, sir?”

“Here’s how, sir: I’ll give you five hundred rubles now for the driver and as a deposit; then I’ll give you two thousand, five hundred more tomorrow in town—I swear on my honor, I’ll get the money, no matter what it takes!” cried Mitya.

The Poles exchanged glances once more. The gentleman’s face began to change for the worse.

“Seven hundred, seven hundred, not five hundred, this moment, into your hands!” Mitya said, increasing his offer, aware of something unpleasant. “What’s wrong, sir? Don’t you believe me? I can’t give you all three thousand at once. If I gave it all to you, you might come back for her tomorrow. . . . Besides, I don’t have three thousand in my possession now; the money’s at home in town,” mumbled Mitya, losing heart, his spirit falling with every word. “I swear, the money’s there, hidden away . . .”

In one moment an extraordinary feeling of personal dignity shone on the face of the short Pole.

“Czy nie potrzebujesz jeszcze czego? (Is there anything else you would like?),” he asked ironically. “Pfui! Ah, pfui! (Shame on you, shame!)” And he spat. So did Pan Wróblewski.

“You spat, sir,” Mitya said like a man in despair, realizing that the game was over, “because you’d hoped to squeeze more money out of Grushenka. You’re two capons, that’s what!”

“Jestem do żywego dotknięty! (That is a mortal insult!),” the little Pole said suddenly, turned red as a lobster, and briskly walked out of the room in terrible indignation, as if he didn’t want to hear any more. Wróblewski shuffled out after him, and then Mitya did, too, confused and taken aback. He was afraid of Grushenka, feeling that the Pole would start hollering immediately. That’s exactly what happened. The gentleman entered the hall and stood theatrically right in front of Grushenka.

“Pani Agrippina, jestem do żywego dotknięty!” he started shouting, but Grushenka suddenly lost all her patience, as if she’d been wounded in a sore spot.

“Russian, speak Russian, without one word of Polish!” she yelled at him. “You used to speak Russian; have you forgotten it in the last five years?” She was completely flushed with fury.

“Pani Agrippina . . .”

“My name is Agrafena, Grushenka; speak Russian or I don’t want to listen to you.”

The Pole started to huff and puff from his offended honor; then, in broken Russian, he quickly and pompously pronounced:

“Pani Agrafena, I came here to forget the past and to forgive, to forget all that happened before today . . .”

“What do you mean, ‘forgive’? Did you come back to forgive me?” Grushenka cried, interrupting him and jumping up from her place.

“Tak jest, pani (That’s right, miss); I’m not fainthearted; I’m high-minded. But I bylem zdzivony (was surprised) when I saw your lovers. Your Mitya was going to give me trzy tysiące in that room, if I left. I spat in the gentleman’s face.”

“What? He was going to give you money for me?” Grushenka shouted hysterically. “Is it true, Mitya? How dare you? Am I for sale?”

“Sir, sir,” wailed Mitya. “She’s pure and shining and I’ve never been her lover! You’re lying . . .”

“How dare you defend me to him?” howled Grushenka. “It wasn’t for virtue’s sake that I remained pure, and not that I was afraid of Kuzma, but it was to be proud before him and to have the right to call him a scoundrel when I met him. Are you saying that he really didn’t take the money from you?”

“Yes, he took it, he did!” cried Mitya. “But he wanted all three thousand at once, and I was offering only seven hundred as an advance.”

“Well, now I understand: he heard that I have money and therefore he came to marry me!”

“Pani Agrippina,” shouted the Pole, “I’m a knight, a nobleman, not a łajdak! I came here to take you for my wife, but now I see a new woman, different from before, uparty and bezwstydny (stubborn and shameless).”

“Go back to where you came from! I’ll order them to throw you out and they will!” cried Grushenka frantically. “Fool, I was a fool to have suffered these last five years! I didn’t suffer for his sake; it was more from spite! And this isn’t him at all! Was he like that? It’s more like his father! Where did you get that wig? He used to be a falcon, but now he’s just a drake. He used to laugh and sing songs. . . . And I, I wept for five years, damned fool that I was, base and shameless!”

She slumped into her chair and covered her face with her hands. At that moment the sound of the chorus of local girls rang out in the next room on the left—a rollicking song.

“A regular Sodom!” roared Pan Wróblewski suddenly. “Landlord, drive those shameless hussies away.”

The landlord, who for some time had been peeking curiously through the door, listening to the shouting and sensing that his guests were quarreling, appeared immediately in the room.

“Why are you shouting? Do you want to tear your throat open?” he asked, turning to Wróblewski with some inexplicable disrespect.

“Swine!” Pan Wróblewski bellowed.

“Swine? And what sort of cards were you just playing with? I handed you a new pack, and you hid it! You were playing with marked cards! Do you know that I can have you sent off to Siberia for playing with marked cards? Because it’s just like counterfeiting banknotes . . .” Then, approaching the sofa, he thrust his fingers between the sofa back and the pillow and pulled out a pack of unopened cards.

“Here are my cards, unopened!” He held up the new pack to show everyone. “I watched from there and saw how he hid my cards in the beginning and exchanged his own for them—you’re a cheater, not a gentleman!”

“Twice I saw how he cheated,” cried Kalganov.

“Ah, how shameful, how shameful,” cried Grushenka, clasping her hands, genuinely blushing from shame. “Good Lord, what sort of man has he become!”

“I thought so, too,” cried Mitya. But he wasn’t able to finish what he was saying because Pan Wróblewski, embarrassed and enraged, turned to Grushenka, shook his fist at her, and shouted:

“You common whore!” But he’d hardly gotten the words out when Mitya hurled himself at him, grabbed hold of him with both arms, lifted him into the air, and instantly carried him out of the room, into the room on the right, from which they’d both just entered.

“I left him there on the floor!” he announced as soon as he returned, gasping from excitement. “He was fighting back, the rogue. But he won’t come back!” He closed one side of the door and, holding the other one open, exclaimed to the small Pole:

“Jas´nie wielmoęny, won’t you join him there? Przepraszam.”[20]

“My dear Dmitry Fyodorovich,” said Trifon Borisovich,[21] “get the money that you lost back from them. It’s as if they stole it from you.”

“I don’t want my fifty rubles,” Kalganov declared suddenly.

“And I don’t want my two hundred either!” cried Mitya. “I won’t take it back for anything; let them keep it as a consolation.”

“Splendid, Mitya! What a man, Mitya!” cried Grushenka, and a terrible note of spite could be heard in her exclamation. The small Pole, bright red with rage, but in no way losing his dignity, was about to head for the door, but he stopped and suddenly spoke, turning to Grushenka:

“Pani, jes´li chcesz is´c´ za mną, idz´my; jes´li nie—bywaj zdrowa! (Madame, if you wish to come with me, come; if not, farewell!)”

And, puffing with indignation and arrogance, he went out the door. He was a man of character: after all that had happened, he hadn’t lost hope that the lady would follow him—he thought so highly of himself. Mitya slammed the door after him.

“Lock it,” said Kalganov. But the key clicked from their side of the door. They’d locked themselves in.

“Splendid!” Grushenka cried again, spitefully and mercilessly. “Splendid! Good riddance!”

1 Uhlans were Polish-Lithuanian light cavalry units formed in the eighteenth century and armed with lances, sabers, and pistols.

2 “Scoundrel” (Pol.).

3 The Polish equivalent of Grushenka’s first name, Agrafena.

4 See the episode at the end of Chapter 4 in Gogol’s comic novel.

5 Dostoevsky includes translations of the Polish phrases in parentheses. My own translations of other Polish phrases are placed in footnotes.

6 See above, p. 163.

7 An epigram by Ivan Krylov (1769–1844) based on Nicolas Boileau’s L’art poétique (1674). Boileau (1636–1711) was a famous French poet and critic.

8 A near quotation of Konstantin Batyushkov’s epigram “A Madrigal to the New Sappho” (1809). Phaon was a mythological boatman of Lesbos with whom Sappho fell in love.

9 “Here lies Piron, who was no one, not even an academician” (Fr.). A sarcastic jibe at the French Academy.

10 The partitioning of Poland in 1772–95 among Russia, Austria, and Prussia ended the Polish monarchy.

11 A late-seventeenth-century French card game.

12 “It’s late, gentlemen!” (Pol.).

13 “It shall be as you say.” (Pol.).

14 Polish currency.

15 A legendary anecdote about Polish cardsharps.

16 “Little lady”; this is a Polish word with a Russian diminutive suffix.

17 Mitya bends one corner of his jack, indicating that he doubles his stake on that card from ten to twenty rubles.

18 “Three thousand, sir.” (Pol.)

19 “Good-bye, sir.” (Pol.).

20 “Most illustrious. . . . Excuse me” (Pol.).

21 There are two forms for Trifon’s patronymic, Borisych and Borisovich.

VIII

DELIRIUM

What began then was something like an orgy: a sumptuous feast of feasts. Grushenka was the first to call for more wine: “I want to drink and drink until I’m completely drunk, just like last time; do you remember, Mitya, do you remember, how well we got along?” Mitya himself seemed delirious and was anticipating “his happiness.” Grushenka, however, kept sending him away: “Go enjoy yourself; tell them to dance and make merry, ‘Dance, cottage, dance, stove,’[1] just like then,” she kept exclaiming. She was terribly animated. Mitya went off to give orders. The chorus had gathered in the next room; the room in which they’d been sitting up to now was too crowded and had been divided into two parts by a cotton curtain, behind which stood an enormous bed with a puffy feather mattress and a pile of cotton pillows. In fact, there were beds in each of the four “best” rooms of the house. Grushenka stood in the doorway; Mitya brought her an armchair: that was just the way she’d been sitting “then,” the day of their first spree, when she sat listening to the chorus, watching the dancing. The same girls had gathered the same way; the Yids with their fiddles and zithers were also there, and, finally, the long-awaited troika arrived with the wine and provisions.

Mitya bustled about. Outsiders also came into the room to take a look, peasants and their wives; they’d been asleep, but had been awakened and attracted by the possibility of another lavish feast as had occurred a month ago. Mitya greeted them and embraced his acquaintances; he remembered their faces, uncorked the bottles of wine, and filled the glasses of everyone who happened to be there. Only the girls really hankered after champagne; the men preferred rum, brandy, and, especially, warm punch. Mitya had hot chocolate brewed for all the girls, and made sure that three samovars were kept boiling all night for tea and punch for anyone who came in: whoever wanted some could help himself. In a word, there began something chaotic and absurd, but Mitya seemed to be in his natural element, and the more absurd things became, the livelier he was. If one or another of the peasants had come to him at the time and asked for money, he’d have pulled out his wad of bills and would’ve distributed it to the right and left without even counting it. That was most likely why the proprietor, Trifon Borisych, hovered around Mitya almost continually to protect him; he’d apparently given up the idea of going to bed that night; he drank very little, however (in all, only one small glass of punch); in his own way he carefully looked after Mitya’s interests. At the appropriate moments he politely and unctuously stopped him and persuaded him not to give the peasants “cigars and Rhine wine,” as he’d done the last time, or, God forbid, money; he was also very indignant with the girls for drinking the liqueur and eating sweets: “They’re mere riffraff, Mitry Fyodorovich,” he kept saying, “I’d give them a kick with my knee, every one of them, and order them to consider it an honor—that’s all they’re worth!”

Mitya remembered Andrey once again and ordered that he be given some punch. “I offended him before,” he repeated in a weak and tender voice. Kalganov at first didn’t feel like drinking and didn’t like the girls’ chorus at all, but after downing two more glasses of champagne, he cheered up considerably, strolling through the rooms laughing and praising everyone and everything, both the songs and the music. Maksimov, blissful and intoxicated, didn’t desert him. Grushenka also began to feel tipsy, pointed Kalganov out to Mitya, and said: “He’s such a nice lad, a wonderful lad!” Mitya was delighted and ran over to exchange kisses with Kalganov and Maksimov. Oh, he was anticipating a great deal: she still hadn’t said anything to him, and had even intentionally hesitated from saying anything, merely glancing at him from time to time with her ardent, affectionate eyes. At last she suddenly seized him firmly by the hand and pulled him forcefully to her. At the time she herself was sitting in an armchair near the door.

“That was quite an entrance you made before, eh? Quite an entrance! I was so frightened. So you were ready to concede me to him, eh? Were you really?”

“I didn’t want to wreck your happiness!” Mitya murmured to her blissfully. But she didn’t really need to hear his reply.

“Well, now go . . . and enjoy yourself . . .” she said, sending him away again. “Don’t cry: I’ll send for you again.”

He scurried away; and once again she set about listening to the songs and watching the dances, following him with her eyes, wherever he was, but a quarter of an hour later, she summoned him again, and once more he came running.

“Now sit here next to me; tell me how you heard yesterday that I’d come here. Who did you hear it from first?”

And Mitya began to tell her the whole story, incoherently, disconnectedly, passionately, but he spoke strangely, often frowning suddenly, breaking off his tale.

“Why are you frowning?” she kept asking.

“It’s nothing . . . I left a man there who was ill. If only he’d get better; if only I knew that he’d recover, I’d give ten years of my life!”

“Well, God help him, if he’s sick. Did you really plan to shoot yourself tomorrow, you foolish man; why on earth? I like foolhardy people such as you.” She prattled on, her speech becoming a bit thick: “So are you ready to do anything for me? Eh? Did you really mean to shoot yourself tomorrow, you little fool? No, wait, tomorrow I might say something to you. I won’t say it today, but tomorrow. You’d like to hear it today? No, I don’t want to say it today. . . . Well, go away now, go away, and enjoy yourself.”

Once, however, she summoned him as if she were muddled and troubled.

“Why are you so sad? I see that you’re sad. . . . No, I can see it,” she added, looking him closely in the eye. “Even though you’re kissing the peasants and keep shouting, I still see something. No, go enjoy yourself; I’m joyful and you should be, too. . . . I love someone here; can you guess who it is? Ah, look: my young lad has fallen asleep, poor dear, he’s had too much to drink.”

She was talking about Kalganov: he really had drunk too much and had momentarily dozed off, sitting on the sofa. And it wasn’t only from the drink: he’d suddenly started feeling very dejected or, as he said, “bored.” In the end he was intensely depressed by the girls’ songs, which gradually became lewd and unruly. And their dances did, too: two girls dressed up as bears, and Stepanida, a frisky young woman with a stick in her hand, acted like their trainer and began to “show” them off. “Look lively, Marya, or else you’ll get the stick!” At last the bears rolled over on the floor in the most indecent manner, accompanied by loud guffaws of laughter from the packed crowd of peasants, men and women. “Well, let them be, let them be,” Grushenka kept saying sententiously, with a blissful look on her face. “If there comes a day when they can enjoy themselves, why shouldn’t they?”

Kalganov, however, looked as though he’d been sullied by something. “It’s all swinishness, all this national nonsense,” he remarked, moving away from it. “It’s their spring custom, when they guard the sun all through the summer night.” But he took a special dislike to one “recent” little song with a lively dance tune, about how a gentleman came to look for girls:

The gentleman questioned the girls,

Would they love him or not?

But the girls thought it was impossible to love the gentleman:

The gentleman would beat me cruelly,

And I won’t love him at all.

Then along comes a gypsy:

He questioned the gypsy girls,

Do they love him or not?

But it’s impossible to love a gypsy:

The gypsy will go stealing,

And I’ll be sad.

And many more men came along to court the girls, even some soldiers:

The soldier questioned the girls, too,

Do they love him or not?

But they rejected the soldier with contempt:

The soldier will carry his pack,

And I would trail him . . .

There followed the most uncensored verse, sung completely openly, and creating a furor among the audience. The song ended with a merchant:

A merchant asked the girls,

Do they love him or not?

And it turned out that they loved him very much, because, they say,

The merchant will trade,

And I’ll be a queen.

Kalganov was even indignant:

“That’s an old song,” he said aloud. “Who composes such things for them? All that’s needed is for a railway man or a Yid to come through and try with the girls: they would’ve won out.” Almost taking offense, he announced right then that he was bored; he sat down on the sofa and suddenly dozed off. His fetching little face grew a little pale, and he fell back onto the sofa cushions.

“Just look at how fetching he is,” said Grushenka, leading Mitya to him. “I was combing his hair a while ago: it’s just like flax, it’s so thick . . .”

And tenderly leaning over him, she kissed his forehead. Kalganov opened his eyes instantly, glanced at her, stood up, and asked with the most worried look: “Where’s Maksimov?”

“That’s who he wants,” said Grushenka with a laugh. “Sit here with me for a while. Mitya, run and fetch his Maksimov.”

It turned out that Maksimov couldn’t tear himself from the girls; he occasionally ran to pour himself a liqueur; he drank two cups of hot chocolate. His little face flushed, his nose turned red, and his eyes became moist and affectionate. He ran up and declared that he was going to dance the “sabotière.”[2]

“They taught me all these aristocratic society dances when I was little, sir . . .”

“Well, go on, go with him, Mitya; I’ll watch from here and see how he dances,” said Grushenka.

“No, I will, too, I’ll also go to watch,” cried Kalganov, rejecting in the most innocent manner Grushenka’s invitation to sit down with her. Everyone went to watch. Maksimov really did dance his dance, but it occasioned no particular enthusiasm from anyone except Mitya. The whole dance consisted of some sort of hopping and kicking his other foot out to the side and, with each kick, slapping the sole with his palm. Kalganov didn’t like the dance at all, but Mitya even hugged the dancer.

“Well, thank you. Are you tired perhaps? What are you looking for here? Do you want a sweet, eh? A cigar, perhaps?”

“A cigarette, sir.”

“Don’t you want something to drink, eh?”

“I’ll have a liqueur, sir. . . . You don’t have any chocolate candies, do you, sir?”

“There’s a whole pile of them on the table; choose one, my dear soul!”

“No, sir, not that kind, sir. I want it with vanilla . . . like for old men, sir. Hee, hee!”

“No, friend, we don’t have any of that kind.”

“Listen!” The old man suddenly bent down to Mitya’s ear. “That girl over there, sir, Maryushka, sir, hee, hee. How can I make her acquaintance, if you were so kind . . .”

“So that’s what you want. No, friend, you’re talking nonsense!”

“I won’t do anyone any harm, sir,” Maksimov mumbled despondently.

“Well, all right, all right. All they’re doing here is singing and dancing, friend; however, devil take it, wait a bit. . . . Meanwhile, eat, drink, and be merry. Do you need any money?”

“Maybe later, sir,” said Maksimov with a smile.

“All right, all right . . .”

Mitya’s head was burning. He went out to the passage and onto the small wooden gallery upstairs, which ran around the building on the inside, overlooking the courtyard. The fresh air revived him. He stood there alone, in a dark corner, and suddenly clutched his head with both hands. His scattered thoughts suddenly came together; his sensations merged into one, and all became light. It was a terrible, horrible light!

“If I were to shoot myself, why not do it right now?” flashed into his mind. “To go fetch the pistol, bring it here, and in this dirty, dark corner to end it all.” He stood there for almost a minute in indecision. Earlier, as he was racing here, behind him stood disgrace, the theft he’d committed, and all that blood, that blood! But it was easier then, easier! At that time everything was over: he’d lost her, ceded her, and she’d perished, vanished for him—oh, then the verdict was easier for him; at least it seemed inevitable, necessary, because what reason was there for him to remain living on earth? But now? Was it the same as it was then? Now one terror, at least one apparition, was gone: it was her “former,” indisputable lover, that fatal man had vanished, without leaving a trace. The terrible apparition had become something so small, so comic; he’d been carried into the bedroom and locked in with a key. He’d never return. She was ashamed, and from her own look he could now clearly see whom she really loved. Now all he had to do was to live . . . yet it was impossible to live, impossible, damn it! “O God, revive the man I left wounded by the fence! May this fearful cup pass from me![3] You’ve performed miracles, O Lord, for sinners like me! Well, and if the old man lives? Oh, then I’d do away with the shame of the other disgrace; I’d return the stolen money, give it back, get it from somewhere. . . . There’ll be no trace left of my shame, except in my heart forever. But no, no, impossible spineless dreams! Oh, damn it all!”

Nevertheless a ray, as it were, of some kind of bright hope flashed toward him in the darkness. He jumped up and ran into the other room—to her, to her again, to his queen once and for all! “Isn’t one hour, one single minute of her love worth all the rest of his life, even spent in the torments of shame?” This harsh question gripped his heart. “To her, to her alone, to see her, hear her, and think about nothing else, to forget everything, even for just this one night, for one hour, for one moment!” Just outside the entrance to the passage to the balcony, he bumped into the proprietor, Trifon Borisych. He seemed gloomy and worried and was coming to find him.

“What’s the matter, Trifon Borisych? Were you looking for me?”

“No, sir, not you,” said the landlord, seeming flustered. “Why should I be looking for you? And you, sir . . . where were you going?”

“Why are you so sad? Are you angry, perhaps? Wait, you’ll go to bed soon. . . . What time is it?”

“It’s almost three o’clock. It must be past three already.”

“We’ll finish soon, we will.”

“Never mind, sir. Stay as long as you wish, sir.”

“What’s the matter with him?” Mitya wondered for a moment and ran into the room where the girls were still dancing. But she wasn’t in there. She wasn’t in the blue room either; it was only Kalganov snoozing on the sofa. Mitya looked behind the curtain—there she was. She was sitting in the corner, on a trunk, her head and arms leaning on the bed nearby, weeping bitterly, trying with all her might to stifle her sobs so that no one would hear. Seeing Mitya, she beckoned to him, and he went running to her; she grabbed him firmly by the hand.

“Mitya, Mitya, I really loved him!” she began in a whisper. “I loved him so much, all these five years, all this time! Did I really love him or was it my spite? No, it was him, him! Oh, him! I’m lying when I say that I loved only my spite, and not him! Mitya, I was all of seventeen at the time; he was so tender, so very merry, he sang songs to me. . . . Or so it seemed to a silly young fool like me. . . . But now, good Lord, he’s not the same man, not at all; even his face is different, it’s not him at all. I couldn’t recognize him. As I was on my way here with Timofey I kept thinking all along the road: ‘How shall I meet him, what will I say, how will we look at each other?’ My soul was feeling weak, and here all he did was throw a bucket of dirty water on me. He talked to me like a schoolteacher: so learned and serious; he met me so gravely that I was at a loss. I couldn’t say a word. At first I thought he was embarrassed to speak in front of his tall Pole. I sat there looking at him and thinking: ‘Why do I have nothing to say to him now?’ You know, it must have been his wife who spoiled him. He threw me over then to get married. . . . It was she who changed him. Mitya, what a disgrace! I’m ashamed, Mitya, ashamed, oh, I’m ashamed for my entire life! Damn those five years, damn them!” And she burst into tears again, but she didn’t let go of Mitya’s hand and held on to it firmly.

“Mitya, my dearest, wait, don’t leave, I want to say a word to you,” she whispered and suddenly raised her face to him. “Listen, tell me, whom do I love? I love one man here. Who is it? That’s what I want you to tell me.” A smile lit up her face, swollen from tears, and her eyes shone in the semidarkness. “A certain falcon flew in here before, and my heart leapt inside me. ‘You fool, that’s the man you love!’ That’s what my heart whispered to me at once. You entered and everything lit up. ‘What’s he afraid of?’ I wondered. But you grew afraid, very afraid, and didn’t know what to say. It’s not them he’s afraid of, I thought—can you really be afraid of anyone? It’s me he’s afraid of, only me, I thought. So Fenya told you, you little fool, that I’d shouted out the window to Alyosha that I’d loved Mityenka for one little hour and that now I was going away to love . . . another man. Mitya, Mitya, how could I, fool that I am, think that I could love another man after you? Do you forgive me, Mitya? Do you forgive me or not? Do you love me? Do you?”

She jumped up and took hold of his shoulders with both hands. Mitya, speechless with ecstasy, looked into her eyes, at her face, her smile, and suddenly, embracing her tightly, began kissing her.

“Will you forgive me for tormenting you? It was from spite that I tormented all of you. It was from spite that I intentionally drove the old man crazy. . . . Do you remember how once you drank at my house and broke the wine glass? I remembered that today and I also broke a wine glass; I drank ‘to my base heart.’ Mitya, you falcon, why aren’t you kissing me? You kissed me once and then stopped; he’s only looking and listening. . . . Why listen to me? Kiss me, kiss me hard. If you love me, then really love me! Now I’ll be your slave, a slave for my whole life! It’s sweet to be a slave! Kiss me! Beat me, torment me, do what you will with me. . . . Oh, I really deserve to be tormented. Stop! Wait, afterward, I don’t want that now . . .” she said, suddenly pushing him away. “Go away, Mitka, now I’m going to drink; I want to get drunk, I want to get drunk and dance. That’s what I want, it’s what I want!”

She broke away from him and went out of the curtained part of the room. Mitya followed her like a drunken man. “Come what may, whatever happens now, I would give up the entire world for one minute,” flashed through his mind. As a matter of fact, Grushenka drank another glass of champagne in one gulp and suddenly felt very drunk. She sat down in the armchair she’d previously occupied, with a blissful smile on her face. Her cheeks were aflame, her lips were burning, and her eyes, which had been flashing, now became bleary; there was a lure of passion in them. Something touched even Kalganov’s heart, and he went up to her.

“Did you feel how I kissed you before when you were asleep?” she mumbled into his ear. “Now I’m drunk, that’s what. . . . Aren’t you drunk, too? Why isn’t Mitya drinking? Why aren’t you drinking, Mitya? I’m drinking and you’re not . . .”

“Drunk! I’m so drunk . . . I’m drunk with you, and now I want to be drunk with wine.”

He drank another glass—and it seemed strange to him—he felt drunk only after drinking that last glass; he suddenly felt drunk; up to that point he’d been sober, as he recalled. From that moment, everything whirled around him, as if in a delirium. He walked, laughed, chatted with everyone—all of this without really knowing what he was doing. Only one constant and burning emotion made itself felt all the time, “as if I had a burning coal in my heart,” he recalled later. He went up to her, sat down beside her, stared at her, listened to her. . . . She became terribly talkative, summoned everyone to her, from time to time called some girl from the chorus; she came up to her, and Grushenka either kissed her and let her go, or else would make the sign of the cross over her. Another minute or so and she’d have burst into tears. The “little old man,” as she called Maksimov, amused her very much. He kept running up to kiss her hands, “each one of her fingers,” and finally he danced another dance to an old tune, which he himself sang. In particular he danced the refrain with great enthusiasm:

The piglet says, Oink, oink, oink, oink,

The calf says, Moo, moo, moo, moo,

The duckling says, Quack, quack, quack, quack,

The gosling says, Honk, honk, honk, honk.

The hen struts through the rooms,

Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, she says,

Ai, ai, she clucks once more![4]

“Give him something, Mitya,” said Grushenka. “Give him a present, he’s so poor. Ah, the poor folks, the insulted ones! You know, Mitya, I’ll go to a monastery. No, it’s true, sometime I will. Alyosha said something to me today to last a lifetime. . . . Yes. . . . But today, let’s dance. Tomorrow, I’ll go to a monastery, but today, let’s dance. I want to be naughty, good people, and what of it, God will forgive. If I were God, I’d forgive all people: ‘My dear little sinners, from this day forward I forgive all of you.’ I’ll go and beg forgiveness: ‘Forgive, dear people, a foolish woman, that’s what.’ I’m a beast, that’s what. But I want to pray. I gave away a little onion. I’m a wicked woman, but I feel like praying! Mitya, let them dance: don’t interfere. All people on earth are good, every single one. The world is a good place. Although we’re vile, the world is a good place. We’re vile and good, vile and good. . . . No, tell me, I’ll ask you, everyone come up and I’ll ask: tell me this, why am I such a good person?” Thus Grushenka muttered, getting more and more drunk; finally she declared outright that she herself wanted to dance. She stood up from the armchair and started to stagger.

“Mitya, don’t give me any more wine, if I ask for more—don’t give me any. Wine doesn’t give me any peace. Everything’s spinning around, even the stove, and everything else is spinning. I want to dance. Let everyone watch how I dance . . . how well and how beautifully I dance . . .”

Her intention was serious: she took a little white cotton handkerchief from her pocket and held it by one end in her right hand to wave while dancing. Mitya began to rush around; the girls fell silent, ready to break into a song at the first signal. Maksimov, after hearing that Grushenka herself wanted to dance, squealed in delight, and started skipping in front of her and mumbling:

“Thin little legs, sides so smooth,

Tail so curly.”[5]

But Grushenka waved her handkerchief at him and drove him away:

“Shh. Mitya, why aren’t they coming? Let everyone come in . . . to watch. Call them, even the ones who were locked in. Why did you lock them in? Tell them that I’m dancing; let them see how I dance . . .”

Mitya staggered over to the locked door and began pounding on it with his fist, hailing the Poles.

“Hey, you . . . Podwysockis! Come out; she wants to dance and is calling you.”

“Łajdak!” one of pans shouted in reply.

“And you’re a sub-łajdak! You’re a scoundrel łajdak; that’s who you are.”

“You should stop making fun of Poland,” remarked Kalganov sententiously, also drunk beyond his control.

“Be quiet, lad! If I call him a scoundrel, it doesn’t mean that I’m calling all Poles scoundrels. One łajdak doesn’t make a Poland. Be quiet, my handsome boy, and have some candy.”

“Ah, what men they are. It’s almost as if they weren’t real people. Why don’t they want to make peace?” asked Grushenka and went to dance. The chorus struck up a song: “Oh, You Hall, My Hall.”[6] Grushenka flung her little head back, half-opened her little lips, smiled, and started waving her handkerchief; but all of a sudden, after lurching violently on the spot, she stood there bewildered in the middle of the room.

“I’m weak . . .” she said in an weary voice. “Forgive me, I’m weak, I can’t. . . . I’m sorry.”

She bowed to the chorus and then began to bow to all four sides in turn.

“I’m sorry. . . . Forgive me . . .”

“She’s had too much to drink, the lady has, she’s had too much, the pretty lady has,” voices were heard to cry.

“She’s smashed,” Maksimov explained with a giggle to the girls.

“Mitya, take me away . . . take me . . . take me, Mitya,” said Grushenka helplessly. Mitya rushed over to her, seized her in his arms, and ran off behind the curtain with his precious prize. “Well, now I can go,” thought Kalganov, coming out of the blue room, closing both halves of the door after him. But the feast in the large room continued and grew louder and louder. Mitya lifted Grushenka onto the bed and locked his lips with hers in a passionate kiss.

“Don’t touch me . . .” she murmured to him in an imploring voice, “don’t touch me until I’m yours. . . . I said that I’m yours, but don’t touch me now . . . spare me. . . . In their presence, it’s impossible with them next door. He’s still here. It’s foul here . . .”

“I’ll obey! I wouldn’t think of it . . . I worship you!” muttered Mitya. “Yes, it’s foul here, oh, it’s despicable.” And, not letting her out of his embrace, he sank down to his knees on the floor next to the bed.

“I know that even though you’re a beast, you’re noble,” Grushenka said with difficulty. “It must be honorable . . . it will be . . . and we’ll be honorable, and we’ll be good, not beasts, but good. . . . Take me away, far, far away, do you hear. . . . I don’t want to stay here; I want to go away, far away . . .”

“Oh, yes, yes, absolutely!” he said, squeezing her in his embrace. “I’ll take you away, we’ll fly away. . . . Oh, I’d give my whole life for one year now. If only to know about that blood!”

“What blood?” Grushenka asked in bewilderment.

“It’s nothing!” Mitya muttered, grinding his teeth. “Grusha, you want honesty, but I’m a thief. I stole money from Katka.[7] What a disgrace, a disgrace!”

“From Katka? That young lady? No, you didn’t steal. Give it back to her; I have money, give it back to her. Why are you shouting? Now all that’s mine is yours. What do we need money for? We’ll go on a spree even without it. People like us can’t help going on sprees. It’d be better if we went to plow the earth. I want to dig the soil with my own hands. We have to work, do you hear? Alyosha’s ordered it. I won’t be your mistress; I’ll be faithful to you, be your slave, and work for you. We’ll go to the young lady, both bow to her, ask that she forgive us, and then we’ll leave. And if she doesn’t forgive us, we’ll still leave. Take the money to her, but love me. . . . Don’t love her. Don’t love her anymore. And if you do, I’ll strangle her. . . . I’ll stick needles in both her eyes . . .”

“I love you, only you, I’ll love you in Siberia . . .”

“Why Siberia? And so what, even Siberia will do, if you want, it doesn’t matter. . . . We’ll work. . . . There’s snow in Siberia. . . . I love to drive through the snow . . . to hear sleigh bells. . . . Do you hear bells ringing? Where is that coming from? Someone’s coming here. Now the ringing has stopped.”

She closed her eyes in exhaustion and suddenly seemed to doze off for a moment. Bells really were ringing somewhere in the distance and all of a sudden stopped. Mitya rested his head on her breast. He didn’t notice that the bells had stopped ringing; nor did he notice that the singing had suddenly ceased, and instead of songs and the drunken racket, deathly silence prevailed throughout the house. Grushenka opened her eyes.

“What happened? Was I asleep? Yes . . . the bells . . . I was asleep and had a dream: I was driving through the snow . . . bells were ringing, and I was dozing. With a man dear to me, who seemed to be you. And we were going far away, very far. . . . I was hugging and kissing you, embracing you tightly; I felt cold, and the snow was glistening. . . . You know, if the snow glistens at night and the moon is shining, I feel like I’m no longer on earth. . . . I woke up, and my dear one was next to me; how nice it is . . .”

“Next to you,” muttered Mitya, kissing her dress, her breast, and her hands. Suddenly something strange occurred: it seemed that she was looking straight ahead, not at him, not at his face, but above his head, staring intently and with strange stillness. Astonishment was suddenly reflected in her face, almost fright.

“Mitya, who’s that staring at us?” she whispered suddenly. Mitya turned and, as a matter of fact, saw that someone had parted the curtain and seemed to be staring at them. And it seemed he wasn’t alone. Mitya jumped up and moved quickly to the intruder.

“Here, come here,” someone’s voice said to him, not loudly, but firmly and insistently.

Mitya stepped out from behind the curtain and stood there motionless. The whole room was full of people, not those who had been there before, but new people. An instantaneous chill ran down his spine, and he shuddered. He recognized all of them in an instant. The tall, hefty old man wearing an overcoat and a service cap with a cockade—that was the police captain, Mikhail Makarych. And that “consumptive” fellow, a neatly dressed dandy “who always wore such highly polished boots,” was the deputy prosecutor. “He has a chronometer worth four hundred rubles; he showed it to me.” And that short young fellow wearing glasses. . . . Mitya had just forgotten his name; but he knew him, too. He’d seen him before; he was “from Jurisprudence,” just recently arrived. And this one here was the state investigator. And this man was a district police officer, Mavrikii Mavrikievich, whom he knew well. And those fellows with the badges, why were they here? And two other peasants. . . . And there in the doorway were Kalganov and Trifon Borisych . . .

“Gentlemen. . . . What’s this all about?” Mitya began, but suddenly, as if beside himself, not knowing what he was doing, he cried loudly, at the top of his lungs:

“I un-der-stand!”

The young man in glasses suddenly stepped forward and, after approaching Mitya, began in a dignified manner, although hurriedly:

“We must have . . . in a word, I ask you to come here, right here, to this sofa. . . . It’s absolutely essential that we have an explanation.”

“The old man!” Mitya cried in a frenzy. “The old man and his blood! I un-der-stand!”

And, as if his legs had been knocked out from under him, he sank down, almost fell down, into the chair next to him.

“You understand? You understood! A patricide and a monster—your father’s blood is crying out against you!” the old police captain roared, stepping right up to Mitya. He was beside himself, flushed crimson, and trembling.

“But this is impossible!” cried the small young man. “Mikhail Makarych, Mikhail Makarych! It’s not like that, not like that, sir! I ask that you allow me to be the one speaking. . . . I’d never have expected such behavior from you . . .”

“But this is delirium, gentlemen, delirium!” exclaimed police captain. “Look at him: it’s nighttime, he’s drunk, and with a wanton wench, covered in his father’s blood. . . . Delirium, it’s delirium!”

“I beg you with all my might, dear Mikhail Makarych, to restrain yourself on this occasion,” the old deputy prosecutor started to say in a rapid whisper, “otherwise I’ll be forced to take appropriate measures . . .”

But the little investigator didn’t allow him to finish; he turned to Mitya and spoke in a loud, firm, and stately voice:

“Mr. Retired Lieutenant Karamazov, I must inform you that you stand accused of the murder of your father, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, which took place this very night . . .”

He said something else, and the prosecutor also inserted something, but Mitya, although he heard them, no longer understood them. He looked around at all of them with a wild gaze.

1 Part of a refrain from a popular Russian dance song.

2 A peasant dance (Fr.).

3 Matthew 26:39.

4 This is a refrain combining several different Russian folk songs.

5 A children’s riddle; the answer is “a dog.”

6 Another Russian folk song.

7 A pejorative diminutive form for Katerina.

BOOK NINE

THE PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION

I

THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL SERVANT PERKHOTIN’S CAREER

Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin, whom we left knocking with all his might on the sturdy locked gates of the widow Morozova’s house, ended, of course, by knocking until he was heard. Hearing such ferocious knocking at the gate, Fenya, who’d been frightened about two hours before and was unable to go to bed because of her agitation and “thoughts,” was now frightened once more almost to the point of hysterics: she imagined that it was Dmitry Fyodorovich knocking again (in spite of the fact that she’d seen him leave), because no one but him could knock so “rudely.” She rushed to the porter, who’d already been awakened and was going out to the gate, and she began begging him not to admit whoever was there. But the porter had already inquired who was knocking and, discovering who it was, and that he wanted to see Fyedosya Markovna about some very important matter, decided to unlock the gate for him. After Pyotr Ilyich entered Fyedosya Markovna’s kitchen, she asked him to allow the porter in, too, because of her “misgivings”; Pyotr Ilyich began interrogating her and in a moment reached the heart of the matter: that is, that Dmitry Fyodorovich, rushing off to look for Grushenka, had seized the pestle from the mortar and had returned without it, but with bloodstained hands: “And the blood was dripping from them, dripping, dripping!” Fenya kept exclaiming, obviously supplying this awful detail from her own distraught imagination. But Pyotr Ilyich had seen the bloody hands himself, although at the time nothing had been dripping from them; he himself had helped to wash them clean, and the question wasn’t how quickly the blood had dried but, rather, where Dmitry Fyodorovich had run with the pestle, that is, whether it was really to Fyodor Pavlovich, and, if that was the case, how could one definitively conclude that. Pyotr Ilyich insisted on this point doggedly, and although he didn’t discover anything for sure, nevertheless he arrived at the conclusion that Dmitry Fyodorovich had run nowhere else but to his father’s house, and that something must have occurred there.

“When he returned,” Fenya added anxiously, “and I informed him about everything, I began to question him: ‘Why, my dear Dmitry Fyodorovich, are both your hands covered in blood?’ He replied that it was human blood and that he’d just killed a man, that’s what he confessed, repenting for all of it to me, and then he suddenly ran away as if he were a madman. I sat down and began thinking: ‘Where was he now running off to like a madman?’ I thought that he was going to Mokroye and would kill my mistress there. I ran out after him and implored him not to kill her. I was on my way to his apartment, passing Plotnikov’s shop, where I saw him just about to leave and his hands were now clean.” (Fenya had noticed this detail and remembered it.) The old woman, Fenya’s grandmother, confirmed all of her granddaughter’s testimony as best she could. Having questioned her about a few other things, Pyotr Ilyich left the house in even greater agitation and anxiety than he’d come with.

It would seem that the most direct and easiest thing for him to do now would be to head directly to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house and to find out definitively if something had occurred there, and if so, what; and only then would he go to the police captain, as he firmly intended to do. But the night was dark, the gates at Fyodor Pavlovich’s house were sturdy, and it was necessary to knock once more; he was only slightly acquainted with Fyodor Pavlovich, but what if he knocked until someone answered, the gates were opened for him, and the next day a sarcastic Fyodor Pavlovich went all over town telling this amusing anecdote, how near midnight a stranger named Perkhotin had forced his way in to find out if someone had killed him. What a scandal! Pyotr Ilyich dreaded scandals more than anything on earth. Nevertheless, the feeling that drew him on was so strong that he, angrily stamping his foot on the ground and swearing once again, set off immediately on this new path, not to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house, but to Madame Khokhlakova’s instead. He wondered if she’d answer his question: had she recently, and at what time, given Dmitry Fyodorovich three thousand rubles? In the case of a negative reply, he’d go straight to the police captain, not to see Fyodor Pavlovich; if yes, then he’d postpone the matter until tomorrow and return home. Here, of course, one can imagine that in the young man’s decision to go late at night, almost eleven o’clock, to the house of a complete stranger, a society woman, perhaps to rouse her from bed, in order to pose an astonishing question had an even greater chance of creating a scandal than going to see Fyodor Pavlovich. But this can sometimes occur, especially in similar circumstances, with the decisions of the most precise and phlegmatic people. At this moment Pyotr Ilyich was far from phlegmatic! All his life, after this night, he recalled how the irresistible anxiety that gradually overtook him finally reached the point of tormenting him and driving him on, even against his own will. Of course, he still cursed himself all along the way for going to see that lady, but he’d “pursue it to the very end!” he kept repeating a dozen or so times, grinding his teeth; and pursue it he did.

It was exactly eleven o’clock when he arrived at Madame Khokhlakova’s house. He was admitted to the courtyard rather quickly, but in reply to his question “Was the lady still awake or had she gone to sleep?” the porter could supply no good answer, except that she was usually asleep by this time. “Ask upstairs: if she wants to receive you, she will; if not, she won’t.” Pyotr Ilyich went upstairs, but there things got more complicated. The lackey was unwilling to announce him, and finally called the maid. Pyotr Ilyich politely but insistently asked her to announce him to the mistress, saying that a certain local official, Perkhotin, had arrived on unusual business, and if it had not been so important, he’d never have dared come. “Tell her in exactly these words,” he told the maid. She went away. He was left to wait in the hall. Madame Khokhlakova herself, although she’d not yet gone to bed, was already in her bedroom. She was upset by Mitya’s most recent visit and had a premonition that the night would not pass without her suffering a migraine, which usually followed such agitation. She was surprised upon hearing the maid’s report, however, and irritably refused to see the mysterious “local official,” although his unexpected visit at such an hour succeeded in arousing her feminine curiosity. But on this occasion Pyotr Ilyich was stubborn as a mule: after hearing her refusal, he adamantly entreated the maid to take in another message and convey to her mistress, “in these very words,” that he’d come “on an extremely urgent matter, and that she might come to regret it very much if she didn’t receive him now.”

“I rushed ahead rashly,” he explained afterward. The maid, staring at him in amazement, went in again to convey his message. Madame Khokhlakova was struck; she thought a bit, asked what he looked like, and learned that “he was decently dressed, young, and very polite.” We note parenthetically and in passing that Pyotr Ilyich was a rather handsome young man, and he was aware of this himself. Madame Khokhlakova decided to see him. She was already in her dressing gown and slippers, but she tossed a black shawl over her shoulders. The maid invited the “official” to enter the living room, the same place in which she’d recently received Mitya. The lady came out to greet the guest with a stern inquisitive expression and, without asking him to sit down, began at once with a question: “What do you want?”

“I decided to disturb you, madame, on account of our mutual acquaintance, Dmitry Fyodorovich Karamazov,” Perkhotin began, but as soon as he’d uttered that name, all of a sudden the lady’s face displayed the strongest irritation. She almost shrieked and interrupted him in a fury.

“How much longer, how much longer will I be tormented by this dreadful man?” she cried frantically. “How dare you, my dear sir, how dare you disturb a lady you don’t even know in her own house at such an hour . . . and appear before her to talk about a man who, in this very living room, all of three hours ago, came here to kill me? He stamped his feet and walked out as no one dares to leave a decent house. You know, kind sir, that I will lodge a complaint against you, that I won’t let this pass. Kindly leave here at once. . . . I’m a mother, I’ll immediately . . . I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”

“To kill you! So he wanted to kill you, too?”

“Has he really killed someone else already?” Madame Khokhlakova asked impetuously.

“Be so good as to listen, madame, if only for half a minute, and I’ll explain it all to you in a few words,” Perkhotin replied resolutely. “Today, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Mr. Karamazov borrowed ten rubles from me, as a friend, and I know for a fact that he had no other money; yet today at nine o’clock in the evening he came to see me, carrying in his hands for all to see a bundle of hundred-rubles notes, approximately two or even three thousand rubles. His hands and face were covered in blood, and he himself seemed to be a madman. In answer to my question about where did he get so much money, he replied precisely that he’d received that amount from you just before, for him to go to the gold mines . . .”

Madame Khokhlakova’s face suddenly displayed extraordinary and excruciating agitation.

“Oh, God! He must have killed his old father!” she cried, clasping her hands. “I didn’t give him any money, none at all! Oh, run, run! Don’t say another word! Save the old man; run to his father, run!”

“Excuse me, madame. So, you didn’t give him any money? You recall that you didn’t give him that sum?”

“I didn’t, I didn’t! I refused him, because he wouldn’t know how to appreciate it. He left in a fury, stamping his feet. He came rushing at me, and I jumped aside. . . . I can also tell you, as someone from whom I won’t hide anything now, that he even spit at me; can you imagine that? But why are we standing here? Ah, have a seat. . . . Excuse me. . . . Or, better still, run, run, you must run and try to save that unfortunate old man from a horrible death!”

“But if he’s already killed him?”

“Ah, my God, really? Then what are we going to do? What do you think we should do now?”

Meanwhile, she sat Pyotr Ilyich down opposite her. In a few words, but fairly clearly, he laid out the whole story, at least that part of it he’d witnessed that day; he described his recent visit to Fenya and conveyed the news about the pestle. All of these details alarmed the excited lady exceedingly; she kept shrieking and covering her eyes with her hands . . .

“Imagine: I foresaw all of this! I’m endowed with that faculty: everything I foresee really happens. And so often, so many times did I look at that dreadful man and think: here’s a man who’ll end up killing me. And that’s what happened. . . . That is, if he hasn’t killed me yet, but only his father, then, very likely, it was because the hand of God preserved me; in addition, he was ashamed to kill me because right here in this very room, I myself fastened a little icon with a relic of Saint Varvara, the great martyr, around his neck. . . . And just to think how close I came to death at that moment; I went right up to him and he stretched out his neck to me! You know, Pyotr Ilyich (excuse me, you did say your name was Pyotr Ilyich, didn’t you?) . . . you know, I don’t believe in miracles, but that little icon and this obvious miracle that happened to me now—all this has shaken me, and I’m beginning to believe in anything. Have you heard about Father Zosima? However, I don’t know what I’m talking about. . . . Just imagine, he spit at me even with that little icon around his neck. . . . Of course, he only spit, and didn’t kill me, and . . . and then he galloped away! But what are we to do now? What do you think?”

Pyotr Ilyich stood up and declared that now he’d go directly to the police captain and tell him everything, and that the captain would know what to do.

“Ah, that splendid, splendid man. I’m acquainted with Mikhail Makarovich.[1] Absolutely, go to see him. How resourceful you are, Pyotr Ilyich, and how well you’ve thought it all out; you know, in your place I never would have thought of doing that!”

“Especially since I myself know the police captain well,” remarked Pyotr Ilyich, still standing there and wanting to get away as quickly as possible from this impetuous woman, who wouldn’t allow him to bid her farewell and set off.

“You know, don’t you,” she said, babbling on, “you must come right back to tell me what you see and learn there . . . and what’s happening . . . how they deal with him and sentence him. Tell me, do we still have capital punishment? Be sure to come back, even at three in the morning, even at four, or four-thirty. . . . Tell them to wake me up, to shake me if I don’t wake up. . . . Oh God, I’ll never even get to sleep. You know, maybe I should go with you?”

“N-no . . . madame, but if you were to write a few lines right now, just in case, stating that you didn’t give Dmitry Fyodorovich any money, that might not be superfluous . . . just in case . . .”

“Absolutely!” Madame Khokhlakova cried ecstatically, and she jumped up and ran to her bureau. “And, you know, you astound me, you simply amaze me by your resourcefulness and your skill in dealing with such matters. Are you in government service here? How pleasant it is to hear that you’re in the service . . .”

While saying this, she quickly scribbled in large handwriting the following few lines on half a sheet of notepaper:

Never in my life did I give the unfortunate Dmitry Fyodorovich Karamazov (in spite of it all, he is so unfortunate now) three thousand rubles today, nor at any other time, never! I swear to this by all that’s holy in the world.

Khokhlakova.

“Here’s your note!” she said and quickly handed it to Pyotr Ilyich. “Go and save him. This is a noble deed on your part.”

Then she made the sign of the cross over him three times. She even ran to escort him to the entrance.

“How grateful I am to you! You won’t believe how grateful I am that you came to see me first. How is it that we haven’t met before? I’d be very flattered to receive you here in my house in the future. And how pleasant it is to hear that you’re in service here . . . and with such meticulousness and resourcefulness. . . . They must appreciate you, they must understand you ultimately, and if there’s anything I can do for you, believe me that. . . . Oh, I love young people so much! I’m in love with young people. Young people are the foundation of our suffering Russia, her great hope. . . . Oh, go on, go!”

But Pyotr Ilyich had already rushed out, or else she wouldn’t have let him go so soon. However, Madame Khokhlakova had made a rather pleasant impression on him, even somewhat soothing his anxiety about being drawn into such a sordid affair. Tastes differ—and that’s a fact. “She’s not really all that old,” he thought with pleasure. “In fact, I’d have taken her for her daughter.”

As far as Madame Khokhlakova was concerned, she was simply charmed by the young man. “So much skill, so much diligence, in such a young man in our day, and all this with such good manners and pleasing appearance. They say that our young people don’t know how to do anything, yet here’s an example for you,” etc., etc. Thus she simply even forgot all about the “terrible event”; only when she was getting into bed did she suddenly remember “how close she’d come to death.” She muttered: “Ah, it’s awful, just awful!” But she fell at once into a sound, sweet sleep.

However, I wouldn’t have dwelled on such trivial and random details if this eccentric meeting between a young official and a widow, by no means old, hadn’t served subsequently as the foundation of the entire future career of this precise and meticulous young man; he’s remembered to this day with astonishment in our little town; perhaps, we’ll say a special little word about him, after I finish this lengthy account of the Karamazov brothers.

1 “Makarovich” is an alternative patronymic of “Makarych.”

II

THE ALARM

Our police captain, Mikhail Makarovich Makarov, a retired lieutenant colonel, redesignated as a court councillor, was a widower and a fine man. He came to us only some three years ago, but had already earned general esteem primarily because “he knew how to unite society.” There was no end to the guests in his house, and it seemed that he couldn’t even live without them. Without fail someone or other always dined with him every day, sometimes two guests, sometimes only one, but he never sat down to a meal without them. He also hosted regular dinners under various pretexts, sometimes very unexpected ones. The meals, though not elegant, were always very abundant, and the fish pies were excellent; the wines, although not of the best quality, made up for it in quantity.

A billiard table stood in an extremely decent setting in the first room the guests entered; that is, the room even had pictures of English racehorses in black frames displayed on the walls, which, as is well known, seems to be the required decoration for every bachelor’s billiard room. They played cards every evening, at least at one small table. Very often the best society of our town gathered there, with mothers and their young ladies present, in order to dance. Mikhail Makarovich, although he was a widower, lived with family, supporting his long since widowed daughter, now the mother of two ladies, Mikhail Makarovich’s granddaughters. The two were grown and had completed their education; their appearance was not at all unpleasant; they were of cheerful temperament, and although everyone knew that they wouldn’t receive any dowry, they still attracted fashionable young men to their grandfather’s house.

Mikhail Makarovich was not exactly shrewd in his business dealings, but he carried out his responsibilities no worse than many others. If one were to put it plainly, he was a man of narrow education, even lacking in an understanding of the limits of his own administrative power. It wasn’t that he failed to grasp the meaning of certain reforms in the current regime, but he understood them with some errors, sometimes very noticeable ones, not as a result of his own inability but, rather, from a careless feature in his character, because he’d never gotten around to investigating these matters closely. “I have the soul of a military man, gentlemen, more than that of a civilian,” he would say, describing himself. He had even yet to form a definitive and supported opinion on the emancipation of the serfs; he found out more about it, so to speak, from year to year, involuntarily increasing his knowledge in practice, although he himself was a landowner. Pyotr Ilyich knew for a fact that he’d meet at least one guest that evening at Mikhail Makarovich’s, but he didn’t know who it would be.

In the meantime, just then, at his house, playing game of cards, sat the prosecutor and our district doctor Varvinsky, a young man who’d recently come to us from Petersburg, one of the most brilliant graduates of the Petersburg Academy of Medicine. The prosecutor (that is, actually the deputy prosecutor, but we always referred to him as the prosecutor), Ippolit Kirillovich, was a peculiar man, not very old, only some thirty-five years, but strongly inclined to consumption, and married to a portly, childless lady. He was prickly and irritable; however, he had a very sound intellect and even a good soul. It seems that the whole misfortune of his character was that he thought more highly of himself than his true worth deserved. And that’s why he always seemed ill at ease. He also had certain gallant, artistic pretensions, for example, toward psychologism, a special knowledge of the human soul, the gift of cognition of the criminal and his crime. In this sense, he considered himself somewhat offended and passed over in the service and was always convinced that up there, in the higher spheres, they failed to understand how to value him properly and that he must have enemies. In his gloomy moments he even threatened to cross over and take up criminal cases. The unexpected case of the Karamazovs and the patricide really shook him up: “It was a case that could become known all throughout Russia.” But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In the next room, with the ladies, sat our young court investigator, Nikolai Parfyonovich Nelyudov, who came to us from Petersburg a mere two months ago. Afterward people talked about it and were even surprised by the fact that all the officials seemed to be gathered in one place on the night of the “crime,” at the home of the executive authority. Meanwhile, this matter was much simpler and had transpired quite naturally: Ippolit Kirillovich’s wife had been suffering from a toothache for the last two days, and he had to escape and get away from her groans; the doctor, by his very nature, couldn’t spend his evenings other than playing cards; and three days ago Nikolai Parfyonovich Nelyudov had promised to drop in that evening at Mikhail Makarovich’s, so to speak, incidentally, to surprise his eldest granddaughter, Olga Mikhailovna, with a fact he’d learned from our society. He knew her little secret: that today was her birthday and that she was concealing that fact on purpose, so as not to have to invite everyone to a party. He expected much laughter and many hints about her age, which she seemed reluctant to reveal, and the fact that he now knew her secret, and so on and so forth. The nice little young man was very mischievous in this regard, and the ladies of our town had nicknamed him “the naughty child”; evidently that name pleased him very much. However, he came from very good society, a good family, education, and feelings; although he was a bon vivant, he was extremely innocent and always respectable. In appearance, he was short, weak, and of a delicate constitution. He always wore an assortment of large, glittering rings on his thin, pale little fingers. When he was fulfilling his duties, he became unusually imposing, as if construing his significance and obligations as a sacred trust. He was particularly talented at confounding murderers and other criminals among the simple folks during his interrogations, and if he did not earn their respect, he certainly succeeded in arousing their astonishment.

Pyotr Ilyich, entering the police captain’s house, was simply overwhelmed: all of a sudden he realized that everyone already knew what had happened. As a matter of fact, they’d abandoned the card game and were standing around discussing the event; even Nikolai Parfyonovich had left the ladies and come running in with a most urgent look, ready for action. Pyotr Ilyich was met with the astonishing news that the old man Fyodor Pavlovich had in fact been murdered that evening in his own home, murdered and robbed. The news had just reached them in the following manner.

Marfa Ignatyevna, the wife of Grigory, who’d been laid low at the fence, was fast asleep in her own bed; although she could’ve slept that way until morning, she was suddenly awakened. This was occasioned by a dreadful scream from Smerdyakov, who was lying unconscious in the next room—the same sort of scream that always preceded his epileptic fits and that always, all her life, terrified Marfa Ignatyevna and had a morbid effect on her. She could never get used to these sounds. She jumped up and, half asleep, ran into Smerdyakov’s little room almost beside herself. But it was dark in there, and the only thing she could hear was the patient, who’d begun snoring and writhing.

Then Marfa Ignatyevna started to scream, and she was about to call her husband when she suddenly realized that Grigory hadn’t been in bed when she’d gotten up. She ran back to the bed and felt around it again, but it really was empty. That meant he’d gone out, but where to? She ran out to the porch and began timidly calling to him from the stairs. She got no answer, of course; however, she heard amid the night stillness someone’s moans from far away in the garden. She listened carefully; the moans were repeated, and it became clear that they really were coming from the garden. “Good Lord, it’s just as it was with Stinking Lizaveta!” came to her distraught mind. She went down the steps timidly and noticed that the garden gate was open. “He must be out there, poor thing!” she thought; she went to the gate and all of a sudden clearly heard Grigory calling, “Marfa! Marfa!” in a weak, moaning, terrible voice. “Good Lord, save us from harm!” Marfa Ignatyevna whispered and ran toward the cry; thus did she find Grigory. However, she found him lying not next to the fence, where he’d been struck, but some twenty paces away. It had happened that after he’d regained consciousness, he’d crawled, probably for a long while, losing consciousness at times. She noticed at once that he was covered in blood; she screamed at the top of her lungs.

Grigory was mumbling softly and incoherently: “He killed him . . . he killed his father. . . . What are you shouting for, you fool? . . . Run, call someone . . .”

But Marfa Ignatyevna didn’t stop and kept shouting; suddenly seeing that the master’s window was open and there was light coming from it, she ran toward it and began calling for Fyodor Pavlovich. But, glancing in the window, she saw a terrible sight: her master lay on his back on the floor, motionless. His light-colored dressing gown and the white shirt on his chest were soaked in blood. Light from the candle on the table revealed blood and Fyodor Pavlovich’s motionless dead face. Then, in great horror, Marfa Ignatyevna went rushing away from the window, ran out of the garden, threw the bolt of the large gate, and ran as fast as she could along the back way to her neighbor Marya Kondratyevna. Both neighbors, mother and daughter, were asleep at the time, but in response to Marfa Ignatyevna’s forceful and ferocious knocking at the shutters and her shouts, they woke up and rushed to the window.

Marfa Ignatyevna, shrieking and screaming incoherently, managed to convey the main point and begged for their help. As it happened, Foma had returned from his wanderings and was spending the night at their house. They roused him at once, and all three of them ran to the scene of the crime. Along the way Marfa Ignatyevna managed to recall that earlier, after eight o’clock, she’d heard a dreadful, piercing scream from the garden. Undoubtedly this was, of course, when Grigory had screamed, “Patricide!” as he’d grabbed hold of Dmitry Fyodorovich’s leg as he was sitting on top of the fence.

“Someone screamed and suddenly fell silent,” Marfa Ignatyevna explained as she ran. After racing to the place where Grigory was lying, the two women, with Foma’s assistance, carried him to the lodge. They lit a candle and saw that Smerdyakov was still writhing and convulsing in his room, his eyes squinting, foam trickling from his lips. They washed Grigory’s head with water mixed with vinegar; as a result, he revived at once and asked immediately, “Was the master killed or not?” Then Foma and both women went to see the master and saw that this time not only the window, but also the door into the garden was wide open, although for the past week Fyodor Pavlovich had been locking himself in every night, not allowing even Grigory to enter for any reason whatever. After seeing the open door, all three of them, Foma and the two women, were afraid to enter the master’s room “for fear of what might happen afterward.” When they returned, Grigory told them to go at once to fetch the police captain. Marya Kondratyevna ran off to rouse everyone at the police captain’s house. She arrived only five minutes before Pyotr Ilyich, so that he appeared not with mere guesses and theories, but as an eyewitness with direct confirmation of the belief shared by everyone as to the identity of the criminal (a theory that, in the depths of his soul, he’d refused to believe until the very last minute).

They resolved to act forcefully. The deputy police inspector was commissioned to select four witnesses, and, following all legal procedures, which I won’t describe here, they entered Fyodor Pavlovich’s house and began carrying out their investigation on the spot. The district doctor, a man with enthusiasm, new to his job, almost insisted on accompanying the police captain, the prosecutor, and the investigator. I shall merely note in brief: Fyodor Pavlovich turned out to be quite dead, his skull shattered, but with what? “Most likely of all, it was the same weapon that was later used to attack Grigory.” They searched for the weapon immediately, having heard from Grigory, to whom all possible medical assistance was rendered, in a weak and broken voice, an account of how he’d been attacked. They began searching near the fence with a lantern, and soon found the brass pestle, where it had been tossed onto the garden path, lying there in full view. They didn’t notice any particular disorder in the room where Fyodor Pavlovich was stretched out, but behind the screens, next to the bed, they picked up from the floor a large, thick envelope with the inscription “To my angel Grushenka, if she wishes to come.” Below, probably in Fyodor Pavlovich’s own handwriting, had been added, “And for my little baby chick.” There were three large red wax seals on the envelope, but it had already been torn open and emptied: the money had been taken. On the floor they also found a thin pink ribbon, with which the envelope had been tied.

Meanwhile, one circumstance in Pyotr Ilyich’s account made an extraordinary impression on the prosecutor and the investigator, namely: that Dmitry Fyodorovich would certainly shoot himself before daybreak; that he had resolved to do so and had spoken about it to Pyotr Ilyich, had loaded the pistol in his presence, written a note, put it into his pocket, and so on and so forth. When Pyotr Ilyich, still unwilling to believe him, had threatened to go and tell someone in order to prevent the suicide, Mitya himself, supposedly grinning broadly, had replied: “You won’t make it.” Therefore, they had to rush there, to Mokroye, to catch the criminal, before he really did decide to shoot himself.

“That’s clear, that’s clear,” the prosecutor kept repeating in extreme excitement, “that’s just the way it happens with rascals like him: ‘Tomorrow I’ll kill myself, but I’ll go on a spree before I die.’ ”

The story of how he had procured the wine and provisions in the shop served merely to excite the prosecutor even further: “Do you recall, gentlemen, the lad who killed the merchant Olsufyev?[1] He stole fifteen hundred rubles and immediately went off to have his hair curled; then, not even hiding the money very well, also almost grasping it in his hands, he headed off to see the girls.”

Everyone was delayed by the investigation, the search in Fyodor Pavlovich’s house, the formalities, and so forth. All of this demanded time, and so, some two hours before they departed for Mokroye, they sent a district police officer, Mavrikii Mavrikievich Smerdtsov, on ahead; he’d come to town the day before to collect his salary. They gave him instructions: after arriving in Mokroye, not to raise the alarm but to follow the “criminal” constantly until the arrival of the proper authorities; also to secure witnesses, deputies, and so on and so forth. Mavrikii Mavrikievich did as he was told, maintained his incognito status, and revealed his secret business, to some extent, to no one except his old acquaintance Trifon Borisovich. The time also happened to coincide with the time when Mitya met the landlord, who was looking for him on the balcony in the darkness; moreover, he noticed at once a sudden change in Trifon Borisych’s face and in his voice. Thus, neither Mitya nor anyone else knew that they were being observed; the case with the pistols had been confiscated earlier by Trifon Borisych, and hidden in some out-of-the-way place. It was only after four o’clock in the morning, almost at dawn, when all the authorities arrived, the chief of police, the prosecutor, the investigator, in two carriages and two troikas. The doctor had remained at Fyodor Pavlovich’s house to conduct a postmortem on the body the following morning, but mostly, he became interested in the condition of the ailing servant Smerdyakov: “Such powerful, long-lasting, and recurring epileptic fits in the course of two days are rarely encountered and are of interest to science,” he said excitedly to his colleagues, who were leaving for Mokroye; they congratulated him on his discovery with a laugh. Furthermore, the prosecutor and the investigator remembered very clearly that the doctor had added in the most definitive terms that Smerdyakov would not survive until morning.

Now, after this long but apparently necessary explanation, we’ll return to the place in our story where we stopped in the last book.

1 A reference to the case of an eighteen-year-old lad who robbed and murdered a merchant in November 1878; it was reported in the newspapers in January 1879. (Since this story takes place in the late 1860s, this reference is an anachronism.)

III

THE SOUL’S JOURNEY THROUGH TORMENTS[1]

The First Torment

And so, Mitya sat there looking wildly at the people around him, without understanding a word of what was being said to him. Suddenly he stood, threw up his arms, and cried:

“I’m not guilty! I’m not guilty of that crime! I didn’t shed my father’s blood. . . . I wanted to kill him, but I’m not guilty! It wasn’t me!”

He’d only managed to utter these words when Grushenka rushed from behind the curtain and flung herself at the police captain’s feet.

“It’s me, me, doomed as I am, I’m guilty!” she shouted in a heart-rending cry, bathed in tears, stretching forth her arms to everyone. “He killed for my sake! I tormented him and this is what it led to! I also tormented that poor old man, who’s now dead, from spite, and this is what it led to! I’m guilty, I’m the first one, the main one, and I’m guilty!”

“Yes, you are! You’re the real criminal! You’re vicious, depraved, the main guilty party,” roared the police captain, threatening her with his hand, but he was quickly and decisively restrained. The prosecutor even grabbed hold of him with his arms.

“This is out of order, Mikhail Makarovich,” he cried, “you’re really hindering the inquiry . . . you’re ruining the case,” he said, almost gasping.

“Take some measures, some measures, some measures!” bawled Nikolai Parfyonovich, too, “or else it’s totally impossible!”

“Try us together!” Grushenka continued shouting hysterically, still down on her knees. “Execute us together, I’ll follow him anywhere, even if it’s to his execution!”

“Grusha, my life, my blood, my sanctuary!” Mitya cried, falling on his knees beside her, holding her tight in his embrace. “Don’t believe her,” he shouted, “she’s not guilty of anything, of any blood, of anything!”

He recalled later that several men forcibly dragged him away from her, and suddenly led her away; when he came to his senses, he was already sitting at a table. People with badges were standing next to him and behind him. On the sofa across from him sat Nikolai Parfyonovich, the court investigator, who kept urging him to drink some water from a glass on the table. “It’ll refresh you, calm you down. Don’t be afraid, don’t worry,” he kept repeating very politely. Mitya, as he later recalled, suddenly took a great interest in the investigator’s large rings, one of which held an amethyst, the other, some sort of bright yellow stone, transparent, gleaming. Long afterward he remembered with astonishment that those rings had attracted his attention even during all those terrible hours of interrogation, so that for some reason he was unable to tear his gaze away from them and forget them, as something that had nothing to do with his current predicament. On Mitya’s left, where Maksimov had been sitting earlier in the evening, the prosecutor had taken a seat; on Mitya’s right, where Grushenka had been before, sat a rosy-cheeked young man wearing some sort of shabby hunting jacket, with paper and ink in front of him. He turned out to be the investigator’s clerk, who’d also been brought along. The police captain stood by the window now, at the other end of the room, next to Kalganov, who was also sitting in a chair.

“Drink some water!” repeated the investigator softly, for the tenth time.

“I did, gentlemen, I did . . . but . . . come on, gentlemen, crush me, punish me, decide my fate!” cried Mitya, staring with terrible, fixed, bulging eyes at the investigator.

“And so, you positively assert that you’re not guilty of the death of your father, Fyodor Pavlovich?” the investigator asked gently, but insistently.

“Not guilty! I’m guilty of shedding someone else’s blood, the blood of another old man, but not my father’s blood. And I regret it! I did kill; I killed the old man, killed him, and knocked him down. . . . But it’s difficult to answer for that blood with another’s blood, dreadful blood, of which I’m not guilty. . . . It’s a terrible accusation, gentlemen, as though I’ve been struck on the head! But who did kill my father, who killed him? Who could’ve killed him, if it wasn’t me? It’s a marvel, an absurdity, an impossibility!”

“Yes, here’s who could’ve killed him . . .” the investigator began, but the prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovich (actually the deputy prosecutor, but we’ll call him the prosecutor for short), glanced at him and addressed Mitya:

“You needn’t worry about the old servant, Grigory Vasilyev. You should know that he’s alive: he came to and in spite of the beating you gave him, according to his own testimony and yours just now, it seems that he’ll certainly live, at least from the doctor’s report.”

“Alive? So he’s alive?” bellowed Mitya suddenly, clasping his hands. His whole face lit up. “Lord, thank You for this greatest miracle, which You created for me, a sinner and a criminal, in answer to my prayers! Yes, yes, it’s in answer to my prayers; I’ve been praying all night!” he said, and crossed himself three times. He was almost gasping for breath.

“It was from this same Grigory that we received evidence about you, that . . .” the prosecutor continued, but Mitya suddenly jumped up from his chair.

“One minute, gentlemen, for heaven’s sake, give me a moment; I want to run in and tell her . . .”

“Excuse me! That’s not possible at this time!” Nikolai Parfyonovich almost even screeched, and also jumped to his feet. Men with badges on their chests seized Mitya; then he himself sat back down in his chair . . .

“Gentlemen, what a pity! I wanted to see her only for a minute . . . I wanted to inform her that it’s been washed away, the blood’s disappeared, the blood that sucked at my heart all night, and that I’m not a murderer! Gentlemen, she’s my fiancée!” he said all of a sudden, ecstatically and reverentially, casting his eyes at everyone in the room. “Oh, thank you, gentlemen! Oh, how you’ve raised me up, resurrected me in one moment! That old man carried me in his arms, gentlemen, he washed me in the tub when I was deserted at the age of three, he was like my own father.”

“And so you . . .” the investigator began.

“Allow me, gentlemen, allow me one more moment,” Mitya interrupted him, placing both elbows on the table and covering his face with his hands. “Give me a little moment to think, let me catch my breath, gentlemen. This is all terribly shocking, terribly; after all, a man’s not like a drum skin, gentlemen!”

“Have a little more water,” muttered Nikolai Parfyonovich.

Mitya took his hands away from his face and began laughing. His expression was now confident; he seemed to have been transformed in an instant. His tone of voice also changed: now he sat there as a man equal to all those in the room, all these previous acquaintances of his; it was as if they’d all gathered yesterday, before anything had occurred, somewhere in society. We note, by the way, that when Mitya had first arrived in town, he’d been well received by the police captain; later, especially during the last month, Mitya had hardly seen him, while the police captain, encountering him on the street, for example, had frowned grimly, and bowed only out of politeness, something Mitya had noticed all too well. His acquaintance with the prosecutor was even more distant, but sometimes he’d pay polite visits to the prosecutor’s wife, a nervous and fanciful lady, and she’d always receive him affectionately. For some reason she’d taken an interest in him until quite recently. He hadn’t managed to make the acquaintance of the investigator; however, he’d met him and even chatted with him once or twice, both times about the opposite sex.

“I see that you, Nikolai Parfyonovich, are a most skillful investigator,” Mitya said suddenly with a burst of laughter, “but I myself will assist you now. Oh, gentlemen, I’m resurrected . . . and don’t misconstrue that I address you so simply and directly. Besides, I’m a little drunk, and admit that openly. It seems I’ve had the honor . . . the honor and the pleasure of meeting you, Nikolai Parfyonovich, previously, at my relative Miusov’s. . . . Gentlemen, gentlemen, I don’t claim to be on equal terms with you; I understand who I am sitting here before you. There’s now a terrible suspicion, if it was only Grigory who bore witness against me. It’s a terrible suspicion! It’s awful, awful—I understand this! But let’s get down to business, gentlemen; I’m ready, and now we’ll finish it all in a minute because, listen, listen, gentlemen. If I know that I’m not guilty, then we can finish it all in one minute! Isn’t that so? Isn’t it?”

Mitya spoke quickly and a great deal, nervously and expansively, as if he really assumed that his listeners were his best friends.

“And so, for the present time we’ll write down that you conclusively deny the accusation brought against you,” Nikolai Parfyonovich said imposingly, then turned to the clerk and dictated to him in an undertone what to write.

“Write it down? You want to write it down? Well then, do so; I agree; I give my full consent, gentlemen. . . . Only you see. . . . Wait, wait a moment, write this down: ‘He’s guilty of disorderly conduct, guilty of inflicting grievous bodily harm on a poor old man.’ And there’s something else, too, deep in my heart, that I’m guilty of, but you don’t have to write that,” he said, suddenly turning to the clerk, “that’s my personal life, gentlemen; but that doesn’t concern you, that is, it’s deep in my heart. . . . But for the murder of my old father—I’m not guilty! What a wild idea that is! It’s absolutely wild! I’ll prove it to you and then you’ll be convinced immediately. You’ll laugh, gentlemen, you’ll guffaw at your own suspicions!”

“Calm down, Dmitry Fyodorovich,” the investigator reminded him, as if, apparently, trying to ease Mitya’s apprehension with his own composure. “Before we continue the interrogation, I’d prefer that, only if you agree to answer, to hear confirmation of the fact that you disliked the late Fyodor Pavlovich, and were in a state of constant quarreling with him. . . . Here, at least, a quarter of an hour ago, you stated that that you even wanted to kill him. ‘I didn’t kill him,’ you cried, ‘but I wanted to kill him.’ ”

“Is that what I cried? Oh, perhaps I did, gentlemen! Yes, unfortunately, I did want to kill him, many times . . . unfortunately, unfortunately!”

“You wanted to. Would you agree to explain what precise motives led you to that hatred of your parent?”

“What’s there to explain, gentlemen?” Mitya replied gloomily, shrugging his shoulders and lowering his head. “I didn’t hide my feelings; the whole town knew about it—everyone in the tavern knew. Not long ago I repeated it in Father Zosima’s cell. . . . That same day, in the evening, I gave my father a beating and almost killed him and swore in the presence of witnesses that I’d come back and kill him. . . . Oh, there were a thousand witnesses! I shouted for a whole month, everyone’s a witness! That fact is out in the open; the evidence speaks, it shouts, but—feelings, gentlemen, feelings are a different thing. Don’t you see, gentlemen,” Mitya said with a frown, “it seems you have no right to ask about my feelings. You’re invested with power, I understand that, but this is my own business, my personal business, intimate, but . . . since I didn’t conceal my feelings before . . . in the tavern, for example, and told each and every person there that . . . but I still won’t make a secret of it now. You see, gentlemen, I do understand that you have terrible evidence against me in this case: I told everyone I’d kill him and all of a sudden someone actually killed him: how could it be anyone else but me? Ha, ha! I can excuse you, gentlemen; I can excuse you completely. You see that I’m shocked through to my epidermis, because in that case, in the end who could’ve killed him except for me? Isn’t that true? If not me, then who could’ve done it, who? Gentlemen,” he exclaimed suddenly, “I want to know, I even demand of you, gentlemen, where was he killed? How was he killed, with what and how? Tell me,” he asked quickly, appraising the prosecutor and the investigator with his eyes.

“We found him lying on the floor, on his back, in his own room, with a broken skull,” said the prosecutor.

“That’s terrible, gentlemen!” Mitya said with a sudden shrug and, resting his elbows on the table, covered his face with his right hand.

“We’ll continue,” Nikolai Parfyonovich interrupted. “And so, what was it that inspired in you these feelings of hatred? It seems that you declared publicly that it was a matter of jealousy?”

“Yes, jealousy, but it wasn’t only jealousy.”

“Was it a quarrel over money?”

“Yes, also over money.”

“It seems that the amount was three thousand rubles, which you were owed as part of your inheritance?”

“Three thousand? More, more,” cried Mitya. “More than six thousand, perhaps more than ten. I told everyone, shouted it to everyone! But I decided, so be it, I’d settle for three thousand. I urgently needed those three thousand rubles . . . so that packet of bills I knew he kept under his mattress prepared for Grushenka, I considered that money as simply stolen from me; that’s what, gentlemen, I considered it my own, just as if it were my own property . . .”

The prosecutor glanced significantly at the interrogator and managed to wink at him unseen.

“We’ll come back to that subject again,” said the investigator at once. “Permit us to note and write down precisely this point: you considered the money in that envelope as belonging to you.”

“Write it down, gentlemen; after all, I understand that it’s one more piece of evidence against me, but I’m not afraid of the evidence and I’m testifying against myself. Do you hear, against myself! You see, gentlemen, you take me for a different sort of person than I really am,” he added suddenly in a gloomy and dejected voice. “An honorable man is speaking with you, the most honorable, the main thing is—and don’t lose sight of it—I’m a man who’s done a lot of foul things, but who’s always remained most honorable as a human being, inside, down deep; well, in a word, I don’t know how to express myself. . . . It’s precisely what’s tormented me my whole life, that I’ve yearned to be honorable; I was, so to speak, a martyr to honor, and I searched for it by daylight with a lantern, as Diogenes did with his lantern,[2] meanwhile, all my life, I’ve committed only foul deeds, like all of us, gentlemen . . . that is, like me alone, gentlemen, not everyone, but only me, I was mistaken; I alone, alone! Gentlemen, I have a headache,” he said with a frown and an air of suffering. “You see, gentlemen, I didn’t like the look of him; there was something dishonorable, boastful about him, his trampling of everything sacred, his mockery and unbelief. It was vile, vile! But now that he’s dead, I think differently.”

“How differently?”

“Not differently, but I regret having hated him so much.”

“Do you feel repentance?”

“No, not repentance, don’t write that down. I myself am not a good person, gentlemen, that’s what; I’m not very beautiful and therefore didn’t have the right to consider him repulsive, that’s what I mean! That’s what you can write down.”

Having said this, Mitya suddenly became extremely disconsolate. For some time he’d gradually been getting gloomier and gloomier with each reply to the investigator’s questions. All of a sudden, at that moment, another unexpected event occurred. The thing is, although they’d managed before to remove Grushenka, they hadn’t taken her very far away, only to the third room away from the blue room, in which the interrogation was taking place. It was a small room with one window, and was next to the one in which they’d been dancing that night and enjoying their lavish feast. She was sitting there, with only Maksimov present; he was terribly shaken, frightened, and sticking close to her, as if seeking salvation just from being near her. At the door stood a peasant with a badge on his breast. Grushenka was weeping; then suddenly, when the grief became too much for her to bear, she jumped up, clasped her hands, and shouted in a loud voice: “Woe is me, woe is me!” and she went rushing from that little room right to him, to her Mitya; it was so unexpected that no one was able to stop her. Mitya, after hearing her wailing, began shaking; he jumped up, cried out, and rushed headlong to meet her, as if he were beside himself. But they wouldn’t let him join her, even though they’d already caught sight of each other. They seized him firmly by the arms: he struggled, tried to tear himself away; it took three or four men to hold him back. They took hold of her, too, and he saw how she stretched out her arms to him as they were dragging her away. When this scene had ended, he came to his senses again, sitting in the same place, at the table, opposite the investigator, and kept shouting while addressing them:

“What do you want with her? Why are you tormenting her? She’s innocent, innocent!”

The prosecutor and the investigator tried to talk some sense into him. Some time passed, around ten minutes; at last Mikhail Makarovich, who’d been away for a while, hurriedly entered the room and announced to the prosecutor in a loud, excited voice:

“She’s been removed, she’s downstairs; won’t you allow me, gentlemen, to say a few words to this poor man? In your presence, gentlemen, in your presence.”

“By all means, Mikhail Makarovich,” replied the investigator. “In the present case we’ve nothing against that.”

“Dmitry Fyodorovich, listen, my friend,” Mikhail Makarovich began, turning to Mitya; his whole agitated face expressed warm paternal sympathy for the poor man. “I myself conducted your Agrafena Aleksandrovna downstairs and entrusted her to the care of the landlord’s daughters; that little old man Maksimov will be with her all the time. I calmed her down, do you hear?” he said. “I soothed her and quieted her, impressed on her that the most important thing is for you to clear your name and that she shouldn’t interfere, shouldn’t dishearten you, or else you might get muddled and say the wrong thing, do you understand? Well, in a word, I said all this and she understood. She’s a clever girl, my friend, a good girl; she even wanted to kiss my hands, an old man like me, imploring me to help you. She sent me to you to tell you not to worry about her; I have to go back to her and tell her that you’re at ease and now reassured about her. And so, calm down, and understand all this. I’m guilty before her; she’s a good Christian, gentlemen, a gentle soul, and in no way is she guilty. So, Dmitry Fyodorovich, what shall I tell her? Will you sit quietly or not?”

The good-natured police captain said more than was necessary, but Grushenka’s suffering, human suffering, had penetrated his kind soul, and tears had even appeared in his eyes. Mitya jumped up and rushed up to him.

“Forgive me, gentlemen, please, oh, please!” he cried. “You’re an angel, an angelic soul, Mikhail Makarovich, I’m grateful on her behalf. I’ll be calm, calm, I’ll be cheerful, tell her, in the infinite kindness of your soul, that I’m cheerful, cheerful; I’ll even start laughing now, knowing that there’s such a guardian angel like you with her. I’ll finish all this business soon, and as soon as I’m released, I’ll go to her at once; she’ll see; let her wait! Gentlemen”—he turned suddenly to the prosecutor and the investigator—“I shall now reveal my entire soul to you, I’ll pour everything out, so that we’ll finish here very soon, we’ll finish it cheerfully—toward the end we’ll all be laughing, won’t we? But, gentlemen, this woman is the queen of my soul! Oh, allow me to say, this is what I’ll reveal: I can see that I’m dealing with men of the most honorable sort. She’s my light, my shrine, if you only knew! You heard her cries: ‘I’ll even go to my death with you!’ But what have I done for her, beggar that I am, a tramp, why does she love me so? Am I, a clumsy, disgraceful creature with a disgraceful face, really worth such love, so that she’d even go into exile with me? And for my sake she just threw herself at your feet, such a proud woman who’s not guilty of anything! How can I not adore her, cry out, reach for her, as I did just now? Oh, gentlemen, forgive me! But now, now I’m feeling calmer!”

He sank down into his chair and, covering his face with both hands, burst into tears. But they were tears of happiness. He recovered in an instant. The old police captain was very pleased, as were the jurists: they felt that the interrogation was entering a new phase. After the police captain left the room, Mitya was positively cheerful.

“Well, gentlemen, now I’m yours, entirely yours. And . . . if it weren’t for all these details, we’d reach an agreement at once. Once more, to the details. I’m yours, gentlemen, but I swear, we must have mutual trust—yours in me, and mine in you—or else we’ll never finish this business. I’m speaking for you. To business, gentlemen, and the main thing is: don’t delve like that into my soul, don’t torment me with trifles; ask me only about the facts and what matters and I’ll satisfy you immediately. To the devil with the details!”

Thus Mitya kept exclaiming. The interrogation began anew.

1 After death, some Russian Orthodox believers maintain, the soul passes through a period of torments or trials before reaching its final destination.

2 Diogenes of Sinope (ca. 410–ca. 320 B.C.), a Greek Cynic philosopher, best known for holding a lantern (or candle) up to the faces of Athenians, claiming he was looking for an honest man.

IV

THE SECOND TORMENT

“You won’t believe how encouraged I feel, Dmitry Fyodorovich, by your readiness to answer . . .” said Nikolai Parfyonovich with an animated expression and evident pleasure beaming from his large, nearsighted, bulging, light gray eyes, from which he’d just removed his glasses.

“And you correctly noted just now the importance of our mutual confidence, without which it’s sometimes even totally impossible to proceed in similar important cases, especially when the suspect genuinely desires, hopes, and is capable of exonerating himself. As far as we’re concerned, we’ll use everything at our disposal, and you yourself can see even now how we conduct this case. . . . Do you approve, Ippolit Kirillovich?” he asked, turning to the prosecutor.

“Oh, undoubtedly,” the prosecutor replied, although rather dryly, compared with Nikolai Parfyonovich’s burst of emotion.

I’ll note once and for all: the newly arrived Nikolai Parfyonovich, from the very beginning of his career in our town, felt uncommon respect for our prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovich, and had become very close friends with him. He was almost the only man who believed without any doubt in the extraordinary psychological and oratorical talents of our “overlooked” Ippolit Kirillovich and absolutely believed that he’d been passed over. He’d heard about him while still in Petersburg. The young Nikolai Parfyonovich, in turn, also happened to be the only man in the whole world who genuinely came to like our “overlooked” prosecutor. On the way here they’d managed to discuss and come to an agreement on the present case, and now, sitting at the table, Nikolai Parfyonovich focused his sharp little mind to catch on the fly and take in every indication, every movement in his older colleague’s face, every word uttered, every glance, even a slight wink of the eye.

“Gentlemen, just allow me to tell my own story and don’t interrupt me with trivial matters: I’ll explain it all to you in one minute,” Mitya said excitedly.

“Splendid, sir. Thank you. But before we move to hear your account, would you allow me merely to stipulate one little fact of great interest to us, namely the ten rubles that, around five o’clock yesterday, you acquired by pawning your pistols to your acquaintance Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin.”

“I pawned them, gentlemen, I did pawn them for ten rubles, and what more is there? That’s all there is to it; I pawned them as soon as I returned to town from my journey.”

“You returned from a journey? You’d been out of town?”

“I had, gentlemen, I traveled about twenty-five miles into the countryside. Didn’t you know?”

The prosecutor and Nikolai Parfyonovich exchanged glances.

“In general, what if you begin your account with a systematic description of everything you did yesterday from early morning? Allow me to inquire, for example: why did you leave town, where did you go, and when did you return? All these facts . . .”

“Well, you should’ve asked me that at the very beginning,” Mitya said with a loud laugh. “If you like, we’ll begin not with yesterday, but with the events of three days ago, in the early morning: then you’ll understand where, how, and why I left town. Three days ago, gentlemen, in the morning I went to see the local merchant Samsonov, to borrow three thousand rubles from him on the most reliable security. The money was an urgent necessity, gentlemen, an urgent necessity . . .”

“Let me interrupt you,” the prosecutor said politely. “And just why did you need that sum of money so urgently, those three thousand rubles?”

“Hey, gentlemen, there’s no need for such details: how, when, and why, and why so much money and not more, and all that nonsense. . . . You’d have to write three volumes and still need to add an epilogue!”

Mitya said all this with the kindhearted but impatient familiarity of a man who wished to tell the whole truth and who was filled with the best intentions.

“Gentlemen,” he said, seeming to remember his situation suddenly, “don’t complain about my obstinacy, I beg you again: believe me once more that I feel complete respect for and understanding of the current state of the case. Don’t think I’m drunk. I’m quite sober now. Besides, being drunk would be no obstacle. After all, with me it’s like the old saying:

“Sobered up, got smarter—became stupid,

Got drunk, grew foolish—became clever.

“Ha-ha! However, I see, gentlemen, that it’s improper to make jokes with you, until we’ve explained things. Allow me to maintain my own dignity. I understand the present difference between us: I’m now in the position of a criminal and by no means an equal of yours, and it’s your job to observe me: after all, you won’t pat me on the head for what I did to Grigory; after all, one shouldn’t go around breaking the skulls of old men with impunity; so you’ll try me and send me to prison for six months, perhaps a whole year. I don’t know what the sentence will be, but it’ll be without loss of rights,[1] isn’t that so, Mr. Prosecutor? So you see, gentlemen, I understand the difference between us. . . . But you’ll also agree, gentlemen, that you could stump even God Himself by raising such questions: Where did you step? How did you step? When did you step? And into what did you step? Why, I’ll get muddled if you do that, and you’ll hold it against me, and will write it down; then what will come of it? Nothing at all! In the end, if I’ve started to tell lies now, I’ll finish, and you, gentlemen, as honorable men of higher education, you’ll forgive me. I shall conclude with a request: discontinue the conventional method of interrogation, that is, don’t you see, beginning with something trivial, insignificant: that is, so to speak, when you woke up, what you ate, how you spit; and so, ‘having distracted the criminal,’ you suddenly pounce on him with the overwhelming questions: ‘Whom did you kill? Whom did you rob?’ Ha-ha! That’s your well-established method, your directive; that’s what all your cleverness is based on! You might be able to catch peasants off guard with such clever tricks, but not me! I myself understand the matter; I’ve been in the service, too. Ha-ha-ha! Don’t be angry, gentlemen, do you forgive my audacity?” he cried, regarding them with almost surprising amiability. “It’s only Mitka Karamazov who said it, so you can excuse it; that’s inexcusable in a clever man, but for Mitka it’s excusable! Ha-ha!”

Nikolai Parfyonovich listened and also laughed. Even though the prosecutor didn’t laugh, he kept his eyes narrowly fixed on Mitya, as if not wanting to miss the slightest little word, nor the slightest indication, nor the slightest change in the features of his face.

“However, that’s how we began with you originally,” replied Nikolai Parfyonovich, as he continued laughing. “We didn’t want to get you off track with our questions: ‘What did you eat when you got up in the morning?’ So we began with the most important matters.”

“I understand; I understood and appreciated it, and even more I value your present kindness toward me, which is unprecedented and worthy of the noblest souls. We three honorable men have come together; let everything among us be based on the mutual trust of educated, well-bred people, connected by our noble birth and our honor. In any case, allow me to consider you my best friends at this moment of my life, at this moment of the degradation of my honor! This doesn’t offend you, gentlemen, does it?”

“On the contrary, you’ve expressed it all splendidly, Dmitry Fyodorovich,” Nikolai Parfyonovich agreed imposingly and approvingly.

“And no more of these details, all these devious details,” Mitya exclaimed ecstatically, “or else the devil only knows what might happen, isn’t that so?”

“I’ll follow your absolutely reasonable advice,” the prosecutor interjected, turning to Mitya. “However, I won’t withdraw my question. It’s fundamentally necessary that we know precisely why you needed such a sum, that is, exactly three thousand rubles?”

“Why was it needed? Well, for this and that. . . . To repay a debt.”

“To whom exactly?”

“That’s something I categorically refuse to answer, gentlemen! You see, not because I can’t say, or don’t dare, or am afraid, but because it’s a trivial matter and complete nonsense: therefore, I won’t say. It’s a matter of principle: it’s my private life and I won’t let you intrude upon my private life. That’s my principle. Your question doesn’t relate to the matter at hand and everything that doesn’t is my private life! I wanted to repay a debt, a debt of honor, and I won’t say to whom!”

“Allow me to make a note of that,” said the prosecutor.

“By all means. Write it down like this: I won’t say, I won’t. Write down, gentlemen, that I even consider it dishonorable to say. My goodness, you have plenty of time to write!”

“Allow me, kind sir, to warn you and remind you once again, if you don’t already know,” said the prosecutor with particular and extremely strict formality, “that you have a perfect right to refuse to answer the questions posed to you; and we, by the same token, have no right to extract answers from you, if you decline to answer for one or another reason. It’s a matter of your personal consideration. But once again, on the other hand, our concern consists, in such cases as the present one, to lay out and explain the degree of harm you’re causing yourself by refusing to provide this or that bit of evidence. And now I ask you to continue.”

“Gentlemen, I’m not angry . . . I . . .” Mitya started to mutter, somewhat embarrassed by the reprimand, “you see, gentlemen, this same Samsonov, to whom I went at that time . . .”

Of course, we won’t reproduce his account in detail, since it is already known to the reader. The speaker was eager to narrate the tale down to the slightest detail and, at the same time, to do so hastily. But since they were writing it all down, they had to keep stopping him. Dmitry Fyodorovich disapproved, but submitted; he was annoyed, although still in a good-natured way. It’s true that he sometimes cried, “Gentlemen, this would infuriate the Lord God Himself!” or “Gentlemen, don’t you know that you’re annoying me to no avail?” Nevertheless, in spite of these exclamations, he still managed to maintain his cordial, expansive mood. Thus he related how Samsonov had “tricked” him two days ago. (He was now beginning to realize fully that he’d been duped at that time.) The sale of his watch for six rubles to obtain money for the journey was entirely new to both the investigator and the prosecutor, and immediately aroused their full attention, to Mitya’s boundless indignation: they found this fact necessary to record in detail, in the form of secondary confirmation of the circumstance that the evening before he didn’t have a kopeck to his name. Little by little Mitya began to become gloomy. Then, after describing his journey to see Lyagavy and the night spent in the suffocating hut, and so on and so forth, he reached the story of his return to town, and here he himself began, without even being asked, to describe in detail his jealous miseries with Grushenka. They listened to him in silence and with great attention, especially to the circumstance that he had long since established an observation post for watching Grushenka in Fyodor Pavlovich’s garden, at the back of Marya Kondratyevna’s house, and about how Smerdyakov had conveyed the information to him: they noted this with great interest and wrote it all down.

He spoke about his jealousy passionately and effusively, and although he was ashamed of exposing his most intimate feelings “to public disgrace,” so to speak, he was clearly overcoming his shame in order to be truthful. The undaunted severity with which the investigator and, even more, the prosecutor stared at him during his account troubled him rather deeply: “That lad Nikolai Parfyonovich, with whom I was talking nonsense about women only a few days ago, and that sickly prosecutor aren’t worth my telling this to,” flashed gloomily through his mind. “Shame! ‘Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal,’ ”[2] he thought, ending his reflection with a line of verse, but once again he composed himself so he could continue.

Moving on to the episode with Madame Khokhlakova, he became composed, even cheerful, once again, and even wanted to tell a little anecdote about that woman that had no bearing whatever on the case, but the investigator stopped him and proposed politely that he proceed to “more essential” matters. At last, after describing his despair and relating how at that moment as he was leaving Madame Khokhlakova’s, he’d even thought about “murdering someone and getting the three thousand rubles,” they stopped him again and wrote down that “he’d wanted to murder someone.” Mitya kept quiet and let them write it down. Finally he reached the point in his account when he suddenly learned that Grushenka had deceived him and had left Samsonov’s house as soon as he’d escorted her there, though she herself had said that she’d be with the old man until midnight: “If I didn’t kill that Fenya then and there, gentlemen, it was simply because I didn’t have time,” he blurted out at this point in his story. They recorded this very carefully. Mitya waited gloomily and was about to begin the account of how he ran to his father’s garden when suddenly the investigator stopped him and, opening his large briefcase, which lay next to him on the sofa, took out a brass pestle.

“Are you familiar with this object?” he asked, showing it to Mitya.

“Ah, yes!” He smiled gloomily. “Of course, I am! Let me have a look. . . . Oh, what the devil, there’s no need!”

“You forgot to mention it,” the prosecutor observed.

“Oh, what the devil! I wouldn’t have concealed it from you; do you think I could’ve managed without it? It merely slipped my memory.”

“Be so kind as to tell us how you came to be armed with it.”

“Certainly I will be so kind, gentlemen.”

And Mitya described how he’d taken the pestle and run out.

“But what purpose did you have in mind, arming yourself with that weapon?”

“What purpose? None at all! I grabbed it and ran.”

“Why, if you had no purpose?”

Mitya was seething with vexation. He stared fixedly at the “lad” and grinned gloomily and angrily. The fact was that he was growing more and more ashamed that he’d revealed the story of his jealousy with such effusiveness “to such people.”

“To hell with the pestle!” he blurted out suddenly.

“However . . .”

“So I grabbed it to keep the dogs away. Well, it was dark. . . . Well, just in case.”

“Previously, when you went out at night, did you ever take a weapon along, given your fear of the dark?”

“Hey, what the devil, bah! Gentlemen, it’s simply impossible to talk to you!” Mitya cried at the last stage of irritation; flushed with anger, turning to the secretary, he said with a note of fury in his voice:

“Write down this moment . . . this moment . . . ‘that I took a pestle with me to go off and kill my father . . . Fyodor Pavlovich . . . by striking him on the head!’ Well, are you satisfied now, gentlemen? Have you relieved your minds?” he asked, staring insolently at the investigator and the prosecutor.

“We understand all too well that you made that statement in a state of exasperation with us and annoyance at the questions we’re asking you, which you consider trivial but which, in essence, are extremely pertinent,” the prosecutor replied matter-of-factly.

“For pity’s sake, gentlemen! Well, I took the pestle. . . . Well, why do people pick up things like that at such a moment? I don’t know why. I picked it up and I ran out. That’s all there is to it. It is a shame, gentlemen, passons,[3] or else, I swear, I won’t tell you any more!”

He rested his elbows on the table and his head on one hand. He sat sideways to them and stared at the wall, trying to overcome his bad feeling. As a matter of fact, he really felt like standing up and declaring that he wouldn’t say another word, “even if you take me out to hang me.”

“You see, gentlemen,” he said suddenly, restraining himself with difficulty, “you see, I’m listening to you and I’m haunted. . . . You see, I sometimes have a dream . . . a particular dream, one that is frequently repeated, where someone’s chasing me, someone I’m terribly afraid of; he’s chasing me at night, in the dark, looking for me, and I’m hiding somewhere from him, behind a door or a cupboard, hiding in humiliation; but the main thing is that he knows very well where I’m hiding, but seems to be pretending he doesn’t know, to torment me longer so that he can enjoy my terror. . . . That’s what you’re doing to me now! It’s just like that!”

“Is that the sort of dreams you have?” the prosecutor inquired.

“Yes, it is. . . . Don’t you want to write that down?” Mitya asked with a wry grin.

“No, sir, we don’t need to write it down. But you certainly have some strange dreams.”

“This is no dream! It’s realism, gentlemen, the realism of actual life! I’m a wolf and you’re the hunters; well, hunt down the wolf.”

“You’re wrong to make such a comparison,” Nikolai Parfyonovich began with extraordinary gentleness.

“No, it’s not wrong, gentlemen, not at all!” Mitya said, seething again, although with this outburst of sudden rage, he’d apparently relieved his mind; he seemed to become kinder with every word. “You don’t have to believe the criminal or the suspect, tortured by your questions, but a most honorable man, gentlemen, the most honorable impulses of his soul (I shout this boldly!)—no! You must believe him . . . you have no right . . . but . . .

“Speak not, oh heart,

Endure, resign yourself, and speak not![4]

“Well then, shall we continue?” he interrupted himself gloomily.

“If you’d be so kind,” replied Nikolai Parfyonovich.

1 Mitya doesn’t want to forfeit his military rank.

2 An inaccurate quotation of the first line of a famous lyric poem, “Silentium” (1833), by Fyodor Tyutchev (1803–1873).

3 “Let’s pass over this” (Fr.).

4 Another inaccurate paraphrase from Tyutchev’s “Silentium.”

V

THE THIRD TORMENT

Although Mitya began speaking sternly, it was even more apparent that he was trying hard not to forget or omit a single detail from his account. He described how he’d jumped over the fence into his father’s garden, how he’d approached the window, and everything that had happened beneath the window. Clearly, precisely, as if he were drumming it out, he expressed the feelings that had troubled him during those moments in the garden, when he’d so desperately wanted to know: was Grushenka there with his father or not? But it was strange: this time both the prosecutor and the investigator listened to him with extreme restraint; they regarded him coolly, and asked him far fewer questions. Mitya was unable to conclude anything from their faces. “They got angry and took offense,” he thought. “Well, devil take them!”

As he was narrating the part when he’d decided to give his father the signal that Grushenka had come, and his father had opened the window, Mitya noticed that the prosecutor and the investigator paid no attention whatsoever to the word “signal,” since they didn’t understand its significance. At last, reaching the moment when, having seen his father’s head protruding from the window, his hatred boiled up and he took the pestle from his pocket, he suddenly stopped talking, as if consciously. Now he sat there, staring at the wall, knowing that the two men had their eyes riveted on him.

“Well, sir,” said the investigator, “you grabbed hold of the weapon and . . . what happened then?”

“Then? And then I killed him . . . I grabbed hold of his head and split his skull. . . . That’s your version of it, isn’t it?” he blurted out suddenly, his eyes flashing. All his repressed rage suddenly flared up in his soul with extraordinary force.

“Our version,” repeated Nikolai Parfyonovich. “Well, and what’s your version?”

Mitya dropped his eyes and was silent for a long time.

“My version, gentlemen, my version—here’s what happened,” he began softly. “Whether it was someone’s tears, or my mother praying to God, or a bright spirit kissing me at that moment—I don’t know, but the devil was vanquished. I rushed away from the window and ran toward the fence. . . . My father was frightened: at that moment he saw me for the first time. He cried out and jumped back from the window—I remember that clearly. And I ran through the garden up to the fence . . . that’s where Grigory took hold of me, while I was sitting on the fence . . .”

Here at last he raised his eyes to look at his listeners. They seemed to be staring at him with quiet attention. A shudder of indignation passed through Mitya’s soul.

“Why, gentlemen, you’re making fun of me right now!” he suddenly burst out.

“Why do you think so?” asked Nikolai Parfyonovich.

“You don’t believe a word of it, that’s why! I can understand that I’ve reached the critical point: now the old man is lying there with a broken skull, and I—having described dramatically how I wanted to kill him, how I seized the pestle, and suddenly I run away from the window. . . . It’s a poem! In verse! As if one could take a fellow at his word! Ha-ha! You’re mockers, gentlemen!”

He turned his whole body around on the chair so that it creaked.

“And did you notice,” the prosecutor began suddenly, as if paying no attention to Mitya’s agitation, “did you notice, as you ran away from the window: was the door at the other end of the lodge open to the garden or not?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“It wasn’t open?”

“It was closed, on the contrary; who could have opened it? Bah, the door—wait a moment!” he said as if remembering suddenly and almost shuddered. “Did you find the door open?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Who could’ve opened it if you yourself hadn’t done so?” cried Mitya in great astonishment.

“The door stood open, and the murderer of your parent undoubtedly entered through this door and, after committing the murder, left by this door,” the prosecutor explained slowly and distinctly, as if almost rapping out his words. “That’s perfectly clear to us. The murder took place, obviously, in his own room, and not through the window, that’s positively clear from an examination of the body, its position, and from everything else. There can be absolutely no doubt about this circumstance.”

Mitya was terribly stunned.

“But that’s impossible, gentlemen!” he cried, completely at a loss. “I . . . I didn’t go in . . . I’m telling you positively and precisely: the door was closed all the time I was in the garden and as I was running away from it. I merely stood under the window and saw him through it, and only, only. . . . I remember it to the last moment. And even if I didn’t, I know that anyway because those signals were known only by me and Smerdyakov, and by him, the deceased; without the signals, he wouldn’t have opened the door to anyone in the whole world.”

“Signals? What kind of signals?” the prosecutor cried, gasping with almost hysterical curiosity, and in an instant he lost his dignified restraint. He asked his question as if cringing timidly. He sensed an important fact, not yet known to him, and immediately felt intense dread that Mitya might not be willing to disclose it.

“So you didn’t know!” Mitya said with a wink and a malicious, mocking grin. “What if I won’t tell you? Then how will you find out? The deceased knew about the signals, Smerdyakov did, and me; that’s all. Heaven also knew, but it won’t tell you. It’s a curious little fact; the devil only knows what you might make of it, ha-ha! Calm down, gentlemen, I’ll reveal it to you; your minds are full of foolish thoughts. You don’t know with whom you’re dealing! You’re dealing with a defendant who gives evidence against himself, to his own detriment. Yes, sir, because I’m a knight of honor, while you—you are not!”

The prosecutor swallowed this bitter pill without a murmur; he merely trembled from impatience to hear this new fact. Mitya accurately explained everything related to the signals, invented by Fyodor Pavlovich for Smerdyakov; he explained what each tap at the window meant, even demonstrating these taps on the table. In answer to Nikolai Parfyonovich’s question as to whether he, Mitya, had used this signal at the old man’s window to indicate “Grushenka’s come,” he replied truthfully that he had indeed tapped out precisely that signal, that is, “Grushenka’s come.”

“There you are, so now go build your tower!” Mitya blurted out and turned away from them again with contempt.

“So the only ones who knew about these signals were your deceased parent, you, and the servant Smerdyakov? No one else?” Nikolai Parfyonovich inquired again.

“Yes, the servant Smerdyakov and heaven. Write that down about heaven: it may come in handy. You’ll need God, too.”

Of course, they did write it down, but while they were writing, the prosecutor, as if hitting on a new idea, suddenly said:

“But if only you and Smerdyakov knew about these signals, and you absolutely deny any responsibility for the death of your father, then wasn’t it he who tapped the arranged signals, forced your father to open the door, and then . . . committed the crime?”

Mitya looked at him with profound mockery, but at the same time with intense hatred. He regarded him for a long time and in silence so that the prosecutor even blinked his eyes.

“Once again you’ve caught the fox!” Mitya said at last. “You’ve grabbed the rascal by the tail, hee-hee! I see right through you, Mr. Prosecutor! Why, you thought I’d jump at that conclusion, latch onto what you’re suggesting, and shout at the top of my voice, ‘Aha! It’s Smerdyakov! There’s your murderer!’ Confess, that’s what you were thinking; confess, and then I’ll continue.”

However, the prosecutor didn’t confess. He remained silent and waited.

“You made a mistake: I won’t accuse Smerdyakov!” said Mitya.

“And you don’t even suspect him?”

“Do you?”

“We’ve suspected him, too.”

Mitya dropped his eyes to the floor.

“Joking aside,” he said gloomily, “listen, from the very beginning, almost from the time I ran out from behind the curtain to meet you, that thought flashed through my mind: ‘Smerdyakov!’ And the idea of Smerdyakov won’t leave me alone. Now at last I suddenly thought the same thing: ‘Smerdyakov!’ but only for a second. I thought immediately, ‘No, it’s not Smerdyakov!’ It’s not his doing, gentlemen!”

“Then in that case do you suspect someone else?” Nikolai Parfyonovich began cautiously.

“I don’t know who it could be, the hand of heaven or Satan, but . . . it’s not Smerdyakov!” replied Mitya decisively.

“But why do you maintain so steadfastly and with such insistence that it’s not Smerdyakov?”

“From my conviction, my instinct. Because Smerdyakov’s a man of the lowliest nature and a coward. He’s not a coward: he’s a collection of all the cowardice in the world taken together and walking on two legs. He was born of a chicken. When he would speak with me, he was always trembling out of fear that I might kill him, but I never raised a hand against him. He’d fall at my feet and whimper; he’d kiss the boots I was wearing, literally, imploring me not to ‘scare him.’ Do you hear, ‘not to scare him’—what sort of a thing is that to say? I even gave him some money. He’s a sickly chicken with epilepsy and a weak mind; an eight-year-old boy could beat him up. Is that a real human being? No, gentlemen, it’s not Smerdyakov; and he doesn’t care about money; he wouldn’t accept any gifts from me. . . . Why should he kill the old man? He might even be his own son, his bastard son, did you know that?”

“We’ve heard that legend. But you’re also your father’s son, and you were telling everyone that you wanted to kill him.”

“That’s a snide remark. It’s low and base, too. I’m not afraid! Oh, gentlemen, perhaps that’s too mean to throw in my face! Because I told you that myself. Not only did I want to kill him, but I could’ve done it; what’s more, I willingly confessed that I almost killed him! But I didn’t kill him: my guardian angel saved me—you haven’t taken that into consideration. . . . Therefore, it’s mean, very mean! Because I didn’t kill him, I didn’t kill him, I didn’t! You hear, Mr. Prosecutor, I didn’t kill him!”

He was nearly gasping for breath. All during the interrogation he hadn’t been in such a state of agitation.

“What did he tell you, gentlemen, I mean Smerdyakov?” he suddenly asked, then fell silent. “May I inquire about this?”

“You can ask us about everything,” the prosecutor replied with a cold and severe expression. “About everything that relates to the factual side of the case, and we, I repeat, we’re even obliged to answer every question you ask. We found the servant Smerdyakov, about whom you’re inquiring, lying unconscious in his bed after an extremely severe epileptic fit that had recurred perhaps a dozen times. The doctor who was taking care of him told us that he might not survive until morning.”

“Well, in that case, the devil killed my father!” Mitya blurted out suddenly, as if up to that moment he’d been asking himself, “Was it Smerdyakov or not?”

“We’ll come back to this again,” Nikolai Parfyonovich decided. “Now, wouldn’t you like to continue your statement?”

Mitya asked for a break. They agreed politely. After a brief rest, he continued, but apparently he found it painful. He was exhausted, offended, and morally shaken. In addition, the prosecutor, now as if on purpose, began to irritate him by latching onto “trivial details.” Scarcely had Mitya described how, sitting on top of the fence, he’d bashed Grigory on the head with the pestle after the latter had grabbed hold of his left leg but had immediately jumped down to attend to the wounded man than the prosecutor stopped him and asked him to describe in greater detail exactly how he’d been sitting on the fence. Mitya was surprised.

“Well, here’s how I was sitting—one leg here and the other there . . .”

“And the pestle?”

“In my hands.”

“Not in your pocket? Do you recall exactly? Did you swing your arm down very hard?”

“It had to be hard. Why are you asking?”

“Would you now sit on the chair exactly as you’d been sitting on the fence then and show us just how you brandished your arm?”

“Are you making fun of me now?” asked Mitya, regarding his interrogator haughtily, but the prosecutor didn’t bat an eye. Mitya turned feverishly and sat astride his chair and swung his arm:

“That’s how I struck him! That’s how I killed him! What else do you want?”

“Thank you. Now may I trouble you to have you explain: why exactly did you jump down, what reason did you have?”

“Well, what the devil . . . I jumped down to see the victim. . . . I don’t know why!”

“Even though you were so agitated and were running away?”

“Yes, I was agitated and was running away.”

“You wanted to help him?”

“What help? Perhaps, I did . . . I don’t remember.”

“You were beside yourself? That is, in some sort of delirious state?”

“Oh, no, I wasn’t delirious at all; I remember everything, every last detail. I jumped down to have a look at him and to wipe his blood with my handkerchief.”

“We’ve seen your handkerchief. Were you hoping to bring the victim back to life?”

“I don’t know whether that’s what I was hoping. I simply wanted to ascertain whether he was alive or not.”

“So you wanted to ascertain it. And then what?”

“I’m not a doctor, so I couldn’t tell. I ran away, thinking that I’d killed him, but he recovered.”

“Splendid, sir,” concluded the prosecutor. “Thank you. That’s all I wanted to know. You may proceed.”

Alas, it never even occurred to Mitya, although he remembered it, to tell them that he’d jumped down from the fence out of pity and that, standing over the murdered man, he’d even uttered a few pitiful words: “If I killed him, then I killed him. . . . You got caught, old man, so lie there!” The prosecutor arrived at only one conclusion: that Mitya had jumped down, “at such a moment and in such a state of agitation,” merely to ascertain once and for all: was the sole witness of his crime dead or alive. And therefore, he must be a man of great strength, decisiveness, callousness, and calculation, and was so even at that moment . . . and so on and so forth. The prosecutor was content: “I needled the anxious fellow with ‘trivial details’ and he spilled the beans.”

Mitya continued with difficulty, but he was stopped immediately by Nikolai Parfyonovich.

“How was it that you ran to the servant Fyedosya Markovna with your hands covered in blood and, as it later turned out, your face as well?”

“I didn’t notice at all that I was covered in blood!” replied Mitya.

“That’s plausible; it can happen like that.” The prosecutor exchanged glances with Nikolai Parfyonovich.

“I simply didn’t notice. You’re quite right, Mr. Prosecutor,” Mitya said, suddenly approving of his reply. But then came Mitya’s sudden decision to “withdraw” and “make way for their happiness.” He couldn’t resolve, as he’d done before, to lay bare his heart once again and tell them about “the queen of his soul.” He felt disgusted in the presence of these cold-blooded men who were “latching onto him like bedbugs.” Therefore, in response to the repeated questions, he replied concisely and abruptly:

“Well, I decided to kill myself. Why remain alive: that question leapt up before me. Her first and rightful lover, her offender, had reappeared; he came galloping in after five years with a declaration of love, and to right the wrong by legally marrying her. Well, it was then I realized that it was all over for me. . . . Besides, there was disgrace behind me, all that blood, Grigory’s blood. . . . Why go on living? I went to redeem my pawned pistols, to load them, and to put a bullet into my skull before dawn the next day.”

“And hold a sumptuous feast that night?”

“Yes, indeed. Hey, what the devil, gentlemen, let’s hurry up and finish soon. I definitely wanted to shoot myself, not far from here, on the outskirts of the village; I planned to do it around five o’clock in the morning, and had prepared a note in my pocket; I’d written it at Perkhotin’s house, where I’d loaded my pistols. Here’s the little note: read it. I’m not telling all this for you!” he added suddenly with contempt. He took the note from his vest pocket and tossed it onto the table: the investigators read it with interest and, as appropriate, filed it away.

“But you didn’t think about washing your hands even when entering Mr. Perkhotin’s house? You weren’t afraid to arouse suspicions?”

“What sort of suspicions? Suspicions or not, I still would’ve galloped here at five o’clock in the morning to shoot myself, and no one would have had time to do anything about it. If it weren’t for the incident with my father, you wouldn’t have known anything and wouldn’t have come out here. Oh, it’s the devil, the devil who did it: he killed my father and it was through him that you found out about it so soon! How did you manage to get here so quickly? It’s a marvel, a fantasy!”

“Mr. Perkhotin informed us that when you went to find him, you had in your hands . . . your bloodstained hands . . . your money . . . a lot of it . . . a packet of hundred-ruble notes, and that his servant boy saw this as well.”

“Yes, gentlemen, that’s true. I remember it.”

“Now one little question arises. Can you possibly tell us,” Nikolai Parfyonovich began in an extremely gentle way, “where did you get so much money all of a sudden, given that it seems from the facts, and even considering the time, you hadn’t gone home?”

The prosecutor winced a bit at the question, posed in such a point-blank manner, but he didn’t interrupt Nikolai Parfyonovich.

“No, I didn’t go home,” replied Mitya, apparently very composed, but he was staring at the floor.

“In that case, allow me to repeat the question,” Nikolai Parfyonovich continued, somehow creeping up to his subject. “Where could you obtain such a large sum of money so quickly, when, by your own admission, at five o’clock that same day . . .”

“I needed ten rubles and pawned my pistols at Perkhotin’s, and then I went to borrow three thousand rubles from Madame Khokhlakova, but she didn’t give me any money, and so forth, and what have you,” Mitya abruptly interrupted. “Yes, gentlemen, I needed the money and all of a sudden thousands of rubles appear, eh? You know, gentlemen, you’re both afraid that I won’t tell you where I got it? Well, that’s true: I won’t tell you, gentlemen, you’ve guessed right, and you won’t find out,” Mitya replied suddenly with extreme decisiveness. The investigators fell silent for a moment.

“You must understand, Mr. Karamazov, that it’s absolutely essential for us to find this out,” Nikolai Parfyonovich said softly and mildly.

“I understand, but I still won’t tell you.”

The prosecutor also intruded, and once again reminded Mitya that, of course, a person under interrogation had the right not to answer the questions, if he considered it advantageous to himself, etc., but in view of the damage the man under suspicion might inflict on himself by his silence, and especially in view of questions of such importance, which . . .

“And so on, gentlemen, and so forth! Enough, I’ve heard this lecture before!” Mitya interrupted again. “I understand the importance of the case, and realize that this is the most fundamental point, but I still won’t tell you.”

“What’s it to us, sir; it’s not our business, but yours, but you’ll do yourself harm,” Nikolai Parfyonovich observed nervously.

“You see, gentlemen, joking aside,” Mitya said, glancing up and staring intently at both of them. “From the very beginning I had a feeling that we’d butt heads on this point. At first, when I began to testify, all this was floating in a distant fog, all was in flux, and I was even so naïve as to suggest we establish ‘mutual trust between us.’ Now I myself see that this trust couldn’t exist because we’d still come to that damned fence! Well, so here we are! It’s impossible, and that’s that! However, I don’t blame you; you can’t take it all based solely on my word. Of course, I understand that!”

He fell into a gloomy silence.

“Couldn’t you, without reneging in any way on your intention to keep silent about the main point, at the same time give us at least the slightest hint: what exactly were the motives powerful enough to lead you to fail to mention this in your present testimony, especially at such a moment that holds such risk for you?”

Mitya grinned somberly and somehow broodingly.

“I’m much more good-natured than you think, gentlemen; I’ll tell you why and I’ll give you a hint, even though you don’t deserve it. Gentlemen, I remain silent because it would result in a stain on my honor. The answer to the question about where I got the money would expose me to far greater disgrace, one with which even the murder couldn’t be compared, or the robbery of my father, if I really had killed and robbed him. That’s why I can’t speak. It’s from disgrace that I can’t. Well, do you want to write that down, gentlemen?”

“Yes, we will,” muttered Nikolai Parfyonovich.

“You shouldn’t write down the part about my ‘disgrace.’ I revealed that to you only out of the goodness of my heart; I gave you a gift, so to speak, and you’ll immediately hold it against me. Well, write, write down whatever you want,” Mitya concluded with contempt and disgust. “I’m not afraid of you and . . . I even feel proud before you.”

“Won’t you say what sort of disgrace it is?” Nikolai Parfyonovich began.

The prosecutor frowned deeply.

“No, no, c’est fini,[1] don’t bother. It’s not worth soiling my hands. I’ve soiled my hands enough with you. You’re not worth it, not you or anyone else. Enough, gentlemen, I’m cutting it short.”

This was uttered too definitively. Nikolai Parfyonovich stopped insisting, but from Ippolit Kirillovich’s eyes he saw that the latter had not yet given up hope.

“Couldn’t you tell us at least what sum you had in your hands when you went to see Mr. Perkhotin, that is, how many rubles you had?”

“I can’t even tell you that.”

“You seem to have told Mr. Perkhotin about three thousand rubles that you’d received from Madame Khokhlakova.”

“Perhaps I did. Enough, gentlemen, I won’t say how much I had.”

“In that case, would you be so kind as to tell us how you got here and what you’ve done since then?”

“Oh, ask the people here about that. But perhaps I can tell you.”

He did tell them, but we won’t repeat all that here. He told them matter-of-factly and briskly. He didn’t talk at all about the ecstasies of his love. He did recount, however, how his decision to shoot himself had passed, “in view of new facts.” He spoke without delving into motives or details. And this time the investigators didn’t pester him very much: it was clear that the main point didn’t reside in his tale.

“We’ll verify all of this and will come back to everything during the questioning of the witnesses, which will, of course, take place in your presence,” Nikolai Parfyonovich said, concluding the interrogation. “Now allow us to ask you to place on the table all the items you have on your person, especially the money you still have.”

“The money, gentlemen? Certainly. I understand why that’s necessary. I’m even surprised that you weren’t curious about it before. It’s true that I couldn’t have gotten away; I’m sitting here in front of you. Well, here it is, my money; count it, that’s all of it, I think.”

He took everything out of his pockets, even the coins, two twenty-kopeck pieces from a side pocket of his vest. They counted the money, which came to eight hundred and thirty-six rubles and forty kopecks.

“Is that all?” asked the investigator.

“Yes, it is.”

“You were good enough to tell us just now in your testimony that you spent three hundred rubles in Plotnikov’s shop; you gave Perkhotin ten rubles, you gave the driver twenty, and gambled away two hundred here, then . . .”

Nikolai Parfyonovich recounted it all. Mitya willingly assisted. They remembered every kopeck and included it in the sum. Nikolai Parfyonovich hastily added up the total amount.

“With this eight hundred, you must have had around fifteen hundred rubles at the outset?”

“I suppose so,” Mitya snapped.

“How is it that everyone asserts that you had much more than that?”

“Let them say so.”

“But you yourself confirmed that.”

“I did.”

“We’ll check all this with the testimony of the witnesses yet to be questioned; don’t worry about your money; it’ll be kept in an appropriate place and will be returned to you at the conclusion of the proceedings . . . if it turns out or, so to speak, if it’s proven that you have an undisputed right to it. Well, sir, and now . . .”

Nikolai Parfyonovich suddenly stood up and resolutely declared to Mitya that he was “compelled and obliged” to conduct a most thorough and rigorous search of “your clothes and everything else . . .”

“By all means, gentlemen, I’ll empty all my pockets, if you want.”

He really did start turning out his pockets.

“It will even be necessary for you to take your clothes off.”

“What? To undress? Bah, what the devil! Can’t you search me as I am?”

“It’s totally impossible, Dmitry Fyodorovich. You must remove your clothes.”

“As you like,” Mitya said, submitting gloomily, “only not here, but behind the curtain. Who’s going to examine me?”

“Of course, behind the curtain,” said Nikolai Parfyonovich, nodding his head in agreement. His small face expressed particular solemnity.

1 “It’s all over” (Fr.).

VI

THE PROSECUTOR CAUGHT MITYA

Something completely unexpected and astonishing began for Mitya. He couldn’t ever have previously imagined that someone could treat him like this, him, Mitya Karamazov! The main thing, it was humiliating, and from them, “haughtiness and condescension” toward him. It was nothing for him to remove his frock coat, but then they asked him to undress further. And they didn’t just request it: essentially, they ordered him, and he understood perfectly. With pride and contempt he submitted in full, not saying a word. Behind the curtain, in addition to Nikolai Parfyonovich and the prosecutor, there were several peasants. “Of course, for reinforcement,” thought Mitya, “and perhaps for something else.”

“Well, do I really have to take off my shirt, too?” he began abruptly, but Nikolai Parfyonovich didn’t reply: he and the prosecutor were busy examining his frock coat, trousers, vest, and cap; it was clear that both of them were keenly interested in the inspection. “They aren’t standing on ceremony,” flashed through Mitya’s mind, “not even the necessary courtesy.”

“I ask you for the second time: must I remove my shirt?” he said even more brusquely and irritably.

“Don’t trouble yourself; we’ll tell you what to do,” Nikolai Parfyonovich replied in a peremptory fashion. At least that’s the way it seemed to Mitya.

Meanwhile, a thoughtful consultation was being carried on in an undertone between the investigator and the prosecutor. There happened to be on the frock coat, especially the left flap, at the back, large stains of dried blood, hardened, and not yet softened. On the trousers, too. Besides that, in the presence of witnesses, Nikolai Parfyonovich ran his fingers around the collar, the cuffs, and along all the seams of the frock coat and trousers, obviously searching for something—money, of course. The main thing was that they didn’t hide their suspicions from Mitya that he might have sewn some money into his clothes. “They’re treating me like a thief, not like an officer,” he muttered to himself. They exchanged their thoughts about him with strange candor in his presence. For example, the clerk, who’d also turned up behind the curtain, bustled about and assisted in the process; he drew Nikolai Parfyonovich’s attention to Mitya’s cap, which they were also examining. “Do you recall the clerk Gridyenko, sir,” he remarked. “Last summer he went to collect the salaries for the whole office, and when he returned, he claimed that he’d lost the money when he was drunk. Where did they find it? In the piping of his cap, sir, hundred-ruble notes rolled up and sewn into the piping.” Both the investigator and the prosecutor recalled that case and put aside the cap and decided that they’d have to inspect it and the rest of Mitya’s clothes more thoroughly.

“Excuse me,” cried Nikolai Parfyonovich suddenly, having noticed that the right cuff of Mitya’s shirt, rolled up, was all soaked in blood. “Excuse me, sir, is this blood?”

“It is,” snapped Mitya.

“That is, whose blood is it, sir . . . and why is this cuff rolled up?”

Mitya explained how he’d stained the cuff while fussing over Grigory, and had folded the cuff inside at Perkhotin’s house, when he’d washed his hands.

“We’ll have to take your shirt, too, that’s very important . . . for material evidence.” Mitya flushed and flew into a rage.

“Do you want me to stand here naked?” he cried.

“Don’t trouble yourself. . . . We’ll take care of it, but for now be so good as to remove your socks.”

“You’re joking, aren’t you? Is that really necessary?” Mitya asked, his eyes flashing.

“We don’t have time for jokes,” Nikolai Parfyonovich countered harshly.

“Well, if I must . . . I . . .” muttered Mitya; sitting down on the bed, he began removing his socks. He was unbearably embarrassed: everyone else was dressed, while he was undressed; strange to say: once undressed, he began feeling guilty in their presence; the main thing was, he almost agreed that he was lower than all the rest and that now they had every right to despise him. “If everyone’s undressed, no one’s ashamed; but if only one person’s undressed, and everyone’s looking, it’s a disgrace.” This thought kept running through his mind again and again. “It’s like a dream; I used to see such humiliations in my dreams.” But it was almost pure torture for him to have to remove his socks: they weren’t very clean, nor was his underwear, and now everybody could see it. Moreover, he didn’t much care for his feet, because all his life he’d considered his two big toes hideous, especially the coarse, flat, misshapen nail on his right foot, and now everyone would see it. From this unspeakable shame he suddenly became even ruder, intentionally so. He himself tore off his shirt.

“Is there somewhere else you’d like to search, if you’re not too ashamed?”

“No, sir, not for the time being.”

“Well, am I to stand here naked like this?” he asked furiously.

“Yes, it’s necessary for now. . . . Kindly have a seat here for the moment; you may take the blanket from the bed to wrap yourself up . . . and I’ll take care of all this.”

All the items were shown to the witnesses; a report of the search was drawn up; finally Nikolai Parfyonovich left and they took Mitya’s clothes away with him. Ippolit Kirillovich also exited the room. Only the peasants were left with Mitya, and they stood there in silence, without taking their eyes off him. Mitya wrapped himself in the blanket; he felt cold. His bare feet stuck out; he was unable to pull the blanket down far enough to cover them. For some reason Nikolai Parfyonovich was gone for a long time, “an excruciatingly long time.” “He considers me a whelp,” Mitya thought, grinding his teeth. “That good-for-nothing prosecutor also went out, likely from his feeling of contempt for me; he is disgusted looking at me while I’m naked.” Mitya assumed, however, that they’d examine his clothes somewhere and would then return them to him. Imagine his indignation when Nikolai Parfyonovich suddenly came back with a completely different set of clothes, carried by a peasant following behind him.

“Here are some clothes for you,” he said casually, though apparently very satisfied with his mission. “Mr. Kalganov has kindly provided these clothes for this curious instance, as well as a clean shirt for you. Fortunately, he had all this in his suitcase. You can keep your own socks and underwear.”

Mitya flew into a terrible rage.

“I don’t want someone else’s clothes!” he yelled threateningly. “Give me back my own!”

“That’s not possible.”

“Give me my own; the devil take Kalganov and his clothes, too.”

It took a long time for them to persuade Mitya. Somehow, however, they calmed him down. They impressed on him that his bloodstained clothes “had to be included with the other material evidence,” that they “didn’t even have the right to allow him to keep his own clothes now . . . pending the possible outcome of the case.” At last Mitya understood somehow. In a gloomy silence, he began to dress hurriedly. Only then did he notice, as he put them on, that the new clothes were much better than his own old garments, and that he didn’t want “to profit from this.” Besides, the clothes were “ridiculously tight. Am I supposed to play the laughingstock in them . . . for your enjoyment?” he asked.

They made clear to him again that he was exaggerating, that although Mr. Kalganov was taller than he was, he was only slightly taller, and it was only the trousers that were a little too long for him. But the frock coat was also too tight for him in the shoulders.

“The devil take it: it’s hard to button,” grumbled Mitya again. “Do me a favor and tell Mr. Kalganov from me that I didn’t ask to borrow his clothes and they’ve dressed me up like a buffoon.”

“He understands this all too well and regrets . . . that is, he doesn’t regret lending you his clothes, but he regrets this entire incident . . .” Nikolai Parfyonovich began mumbling.

“To hell with his regrets! Well, where to now? Or am I supposed to stay seated here?”

They asked him to return to the “other room.” Mitya went sullen with rage, trying not to look at anyone. He felt totally disgraced, wearing someone else’s clothes, even in front of the peasants and Trifon Borisovich, whose face, for some reason, suddenly appeared in the doorway and then disappeared again. “He’s come to have a look at me dressed as a mummer,” thought Mitya. He sat down in the same chair as before. Some nightmarish and absurd images appeared to him, and it seemed to him that he wasn’t in his right mind.

“Well, what now? Are you going to thrash me with birch rods or what? There’s nothing else left to do,” he said, clenching his teeth and turning to the prosecutor. He no longer wanted to address Nikolai Parfyonovich, since he didn’t consider him worthy. “He examined my socks too closely and had them turned inside out, the scoundrel did; he did that on purpose, to show everyone how dirty they were.”

“Now it’s time to proceed to the examination of the witnesses,” announced Nikolai Parfyonovich, as if in reply to Dmitry Fyodorovich’s question.

“Yes, sir,” the prosecutor agreed pensively, as if he were thinking about something else.

“Dmitry Fyodorovich, we’ve done everything we could in your interest,” continued Nikolai Parfyonovich, “but, having received such a sweeping refusal from you to explain the origin of that sum of money you had in your possession, at the present time we must . . .”

“What’s the gemstone in your ring?” Mitya interrupted him suddenly, as if emerging from a trance, and he pointed to one of the three large rings on Nikolai Parfyonovich’s small right hand.

“My ring?” Nikolai Parfyonovich repeated in astonishment.

“Yes, that one . . . on your middle finger with the little veins in it. What sort of stone is that?” Mitya insisted, just like a cranky, stubborn little child.

“It’s a smoky topaz,” Nikolai Parfyonovich said with a smile. “Would you like to see it? I’ll take it off . . .”

“No, don’t take it off!” Mitya screamed ferociously, suddenly coming to his senses and growing angry with himself. “Don’t take it off. It’s unnecessary. . . . What the devil. . . . Gentlemen, you’ve shit all over my soul! Do you really think I’d conceal it from you if I’d actually killed my father? That I’d hedge, lie, and hide? No, that’s not who Dmitry Karamazov is; he wouldn’t stand for it. If I were guilty, I swear, I wouldn’t have waited for your arrival and the sunrise, as I had intended at first, and would’ve destroyed myself before then, without waiting for the dawn! Now I know that about myself. I’ve learned more during this accursed night than I have in the last twenty years of my life! And would I have been like this, just like this, on the night, and at this moment, sitting here with you—would I have spoken this way, moved this way, looked at you, and at the world, if I really were a patricide, when even the accidental murder of Grigory didn’t give me any peace all night—not from fear, oh, not from fear of your punishment! Disgrace! And you want me to be candid with scoffers like you, who don’t see or believe anything, blind moles and scoffers you are, and to open up and reveal another disgrace, even one that would save me from your accusations? It would be better to go into exile! The person who unlocked the door to my father and went in is the man who killed and robbed him. Who he is—I’m at a loss and in torment, but you must know that it wasn’t Dmitry Karamazov, and that’s all I can tell you and that’s enough. Leave me alone. Send me into exile, execute me, but don’t pester me anymore. I’ll say no more. Call your witnesses!”

Mitya delivered his sudden monologue as if he’d decided in advance to keep absolutely silent in the future. The prosecutor watched him the whole time and as soon as he’d stopped talking, suddenly announced, as if it were the most ordinary thing, in the frostiest, most composed manner:

“It’s precisely on account of that open door you just mentioned, by the way, that we can now inform you of a piece of evidence, one of extreme interest both to you and to us, presented by Grigory Vasilyev, the old man you injured. Upon his recovery he stated clearly and insistently, in answer to our questions, that at the time he emerged onto the porch, having heard some noise in the garden, he decided to enter the garden through the gate, which had been left open, and that, upon entering the garden, even before he noticed you running away, in the darkness, from the open window through which you’d been watching your father, as you described previously, that he, Grigory, glancing to the left, having really noted this open window, observed at the same time, much closer to himself, the wide-open door, which you declared had remained closed all the while you were in the garden. I won’t conceal from you that this same Grigory steadfastly maintains and bears witness to the fact that you had to have come running from that door, even though he didn’t see it with his own eyes, since he noticed you only from some distance away, running through the garden toward the fence.”

Halfway through this speech Mitya jumped up from his chair.

“Rubbish!” he suddenly roared in a frenzy. “A barefaced lie! He couldn’t have seen an open door, because it was closed at the time. . . . He’s lying!”

“I consider it my duty to repeat that his testimony is solid. He doesn’t waver. He insists on it. We cross-examined him several times.”

“Precisely. I cross-examined him several times!” Nikolai Parfyonovich confirmed ardently.

“It’s not true, it’s not true! Either he’s slandering me or it’s a madman’s hallucination,” Mitya continued yelling. “He’s simply delirious, inventing it from his loss of blood, his wound, when he came to. . . . He’s raving.”

“Yes, sir, but he noticed this open door not when he came to from his injury, but before that, when he was going from his lodge to the garden.”

“It’s not true, not true, it can’t be! He’s slandering me. . . . He couldn’t have seen it. . . . I didn’t come running out of that door,” Mitya cried, gasping for breath.

The prosecutor turned to Nikolai Parfyonovich and said imposingly:

“Show it to him.”

“Do you recognize this object?” Nikolai Parfyonovich suddenly set on the table a large, thick official envelope on which were three seals, still intact. The envelope itself was empty and torn open at one end. Mitya stared at it with eyes wide open.

“It’s . . . my father’s envelope, of course,” he muttered, “the one that contained those three thousand rubles . . . and if there’s an inscription, ‘For my little baby chick,’ allow me . . . there: three thousand,” he shouted, “three thousand, do you see?”

“Of course, we do, but we didn’t find any money in it; it was empty and lying on the floor, near the bed, behind the screen.”

Mitya stood there thunderstruck for several seconds.

“Gentlemen, it’s Smerdyakov!” he shouted suddenly at the top of his lungs. “He killed and robbed him! He’s the only one who knew where the old man hid this envelope. . . . It’s him, now it’s clear!”

“But you knew about the envelope, too, and the fact that it lay under the pillow.”

“I never knew it and never saw it before. I’m seeing it now for the first time; I merely heard about it from Smerdyakov. . . . He’s the only one who knew where the old man had hidden it, but I didn’t know . . .” Mitya said, completely out of breath.

“However, you yourself told us previously that the envelope was under your deceased parent’s pillow. You said it in so many words, that it was under the pillow, therefore, you must have known where it was.”

“We even wrote it down!” confirmed Nikolai Parfyonovich.

“Rubbish! Nonsense! I didn’t know that it was under the pillow. Perhaps it wasn’t even under the pillow, and now you. . . . I said it was under the pillow without thinking. . . . What does Smerdyakov say? Did you ask him where it was? What does he say? That’s the main thing. . . . I intentionally lied about it myself. I lied without thinking, when I said it was under the pillow. . . . You know, sometimes the words just come out of your mouth and it’s a lie. Only Smerdyakov knew, only he did, and no one else! He didn’t tell me where it was! But it was him, him; he’s undoubtedly the one who killed him; now it’s clear as daylight,” cried Mitya, growing more and more frantic, repeating himself incoherently, becoming increasingly impassioned and embittered.

“You must understand and arrest him at once. . . . He must have killed him as I was running away and Grigory lay there unconscious, now it’s clear. . . . He gave the signals, and Father opened the door for him. . . . Because he was the only one who knew the signals, and Father wouldn’t have opened the door to anyone without them . . .”

“But again you’re forgetting one circumstance,” the prosecutor observed in the same restrained manner, although now beginning to feel triumphant, “that there was no need to give the signals if the door was already open, when you were there, standing in the garden . . .”

“The door, the door,” muttered Mitya and stared in silence at the prosecutor; he sank down weakly onto his chair. Everyone fell silent.

“Yes, the door! That phantom! God is against me!” he cried, looking straight ahead in complete bewilderment.

“You see,” the prosecutor said imposingly, “and now judge for yourself, Dmitry Fyodorovich: on the one hand, this testimony about the open door from which you came running, a fact that overwhelms both you and us. On the other hand, your inexplicable, persistent, and almost embittered silence concerning the source of the money that suddenly appeared in your hands, when just three hours before that, on your own testimony, you pawned your pistols for a mere ten rubles! In light of all this, judge for yourself: what should we believe and what can we rely on? Don’t accuse us of being ‘cold cynics and derisive people’ who’re incapable of believing in the noble impulses of your soul. . . . On the contrary, put yourself in our shoes . . .”

Mitya was unimaginably agitated. He turned pale.

“All right!” he cried suddenly. “I’ll reveal my secret to you, I’ll tell you where I got the money! I’ll reveal my disgrace, so as not to blame you or myself afterward . . .”

“Believe me, Dmitry Fyodorovich,” Nikolai Parfyonovich interrupted in a somehow tender, joyful little voice, “that every sincere and complete confession on your part, made at the present time, may consequently impact the mitigation of your fate, and may even, moreover . . .”

But the prosecutor gently nudged him under the table and managed to stop him in time. Mitya, to tell the truth, wasn’t even listening to him.

VII

MITYA’S GREAT SECRET. GREETED WITH HISSES.

“Gentlemen,” he began in the same state of agitation, “this money . . . I want to confess fully . . . this money was mine.”

Both the prosecutor’s and the investigator’s faces even fell; they hadn’t expected this at all.

“How was it yours,” muttered Nikolai Parfyonovich, “when, at five o’clock that same day, by your own testimony . . . ?”

“Hey, the devil take five o’clock that day and my own confession, that’s not the point now! That money was mine, mine, that is, stolen by me . . . that is, not mine, but stolen, stolen by me; and there were fifteen hundred rubles, and they were with me, with me all the time . . .”

“But where did you get it from?”

“From around my neck, gentlemen, I took it from around my neck, it was here, around my neck, sewn into a rag, hanging around my neck, for a long time; it was a whole month since I put it around my neck and wore it with shame and disgrace!”

“But from whom did you . . . appropriate it?”

“You wanted to say ‘stole it’? Now speak plainly. Yes, I think I did indeed steal it, or, if you prefer, ‘appropriate’ it. But in my opinion, I stole it. And last night I conclusively stole it.”

“Last night? But you just said you acquired it . . . a month ago.”

“Yes, but not from my father, not from my father; don’t worry, I didn’t steal it from my father, but from her. Let me tell you the story and don’t interrupt. It’s difficult. You see: Katerina Ivanovna Verkhovtseva sent for me a month ago; she’s my former fiancée. . . . Do you know her?”

“Of course we do.”

“I know you do. She’s a most noble creature, the noblest of the noble, but she’s hated me for a long time, a very long time . . . and she’s hated me for good reason, for very good reason.”

“Katerina Ivanovna?” the investigator asked in astonishment. The prosecutor also stared at Mitya.

“Oh, don’t take her name in vain! I’m a scoundrel for even mentioning her. Yes, I saw that she hated me . . . for a long time . . . from the very beginning, from that evening in my apartment. . . . But enough, enough, you’re not even worthy of knowing that, and it’s entirely unnecessary. . . . All you need to know is that a month ago she summoned me, handed me three thousand rubles to send to her sister and to another relative in Moscow (as if she herself were unable to do it!), and I . . . it was precisely at that critical time in my life when I . . . well, in a word, when I’d just fallen in love with another woman, her, my present fiancée; she’s sitting downstairs now, Grushenka. . . . Then I carried her off here, to Mokroye, and in two days squandered half of that accursed three thousand, that is, fifteen hundred, and kept the other half on my person. Well, that fifteen hundred I kept, I wore around my neck instead of an amulet, and yesterday I opened it up and squandered it on a spree. You now have in your hands the change, eight hundred rubles, Nikolai Parfyonovich; it’s what’s left from yesterday’s fifteen hundred.”

“Excuse me, how’s that? Just a month ago you squandered three thousand rubles here, not fifteen hundred, as everyone knows.”

“Who knows? Who counted it? Whom did I allow to count it?”

“Pardon me, but you yourself told everyone that you squandered three thousand on a spree.”

“True, I did say it, I told the whole town, and the whole town talked about it; everyone here in Mokroye thought that, everyone thought that it was three thousand. However, I really didn’t spend three thousand, it was only fifteen hundred, and I sewed the other fifteen hundred into an amulet; that’s how it was, gentlemen, that’s where I got the money yesterday . . .”

“That’s almost miraculous,” muttered Nikolai Parfyonovich.

“Allow me to ask,” said the prosecutor at last, “did you at least tell someone about this circumstance before . . . that is, that you had fifteen hundred rubles in your keeping left over from a month ago?”

“I didn’t tell anyone.”

“That’s strange. You really told no one at all?”

“Absolutely no one. No one. Not one person.”

“But why such reticence? What induced you to make it such a great secret? Let me be more precise: you finally revealed your secret to us, in your own words, such a ‘disgraceful’ secret, although in essence—that is, of course, at least comparatively speaking—that act, that is, appropriating three thousand rubles that didn’t belong to you, and, without doubt, only temporarily—that act, in my opinion, at least, is merely one of thoughtlessness in the highest degree, not so disgraceful, taking into account, in addition, your character. . . . Well, let’s suppose it’s even a shameful act in the highest degree, I agree, but still only shameful, not disgraceful. . . . What I’m leading up to, really, is that during this past month many people had already surmised without your admitting it that the three thousand rubles you were spending were from Miss Verkhovtseva; I heard this legend myself. . . . Mikhail Makarovich also heard it. In fact, it was scarcely a legend, but the whole town’s gossip. Besides, there are indications, and you yourself, if I’m not mistaken, admitted this to someone, that is, that the money came from Miss Verkhovtseva. . . . Therefore, I find it extremely surprising that up to now, that is, up to the present moment, you’ve been so secretive about this fifteen hundred stashed away, in your own words, even connecting this secret of yours with some sort of terror. . . . It’s unlikely that confessing to such a secret could be worth so many torments . . . because you cried out just before that it would even be better to go into exile in Siberia than to reveal this secret . . .”

The prosecutor fell silent. He’d become upset. He didn’t hide his vexation, almost malice, and he’d disclosed all that he’d stored up, not even worrying about the beauty of his style; that is, he spoke disjointedly and almost incoherently.

“The disgrace isn’t in the fifteen hundred rubles, but that I kept it separate from the three thousand,” Mitya said firmly.

“But what,” the prosecutor replied irritably with a grin, “what exactly is disgraceful about your having retained half the three thousand, shamefully, or, if you prefer, disgracefully, appropriated? It’s more important that you appropriated the three thousand, not how you apportioned the money. By the way, why did you do that, that is, why did you apportion half the money? For what? What purpose did you have? Can you explain it?”

“Oh, gentlemen, that’s the whole point!” cried Mitya. “I apportioned it because I was base, that is, out of calculation, because calculation in this case is baseness. And this baseness lasted a whole month.”

“It’s incomprehensible.”

“I’m surprised at you. However, I’ll explain further; perhaps it really is incomprehensible. You see, follow me here: I appropriate the three thousand, entrusted to me on my honor, and I squander it on a spree; I spend it all and the next morning I appear before her and I say, ‘Katya, I’m guilty. I squandered your three thousand on a spree.’ Well, is it all right? No, it isn’t all right—it’s dishonest and cowardly; I’m a beast and, like a beast, I’m unable to restrain myself, that’s so, isn’t it? Still, I’m not a thief. I’m not an out-and-out thief, not a thief, don’t you agree? I squandered it on a spree, but I didn’t steal it. Now here’s a second, rather more favorable instance; follow me, or else I’ll get confused again—my head is sort of spinning—and so, the second instance. I fritter away only fifteen hundred of the three thousand, that is, only half the amount. The next day I go to her and return the remaining half: ‘Katya, take this half of your money from me, a scoundrel and a rascal, because I squandered half of it, and I’ll probably waste this half, too, so keep me out of harm’s way!’ Well, what about this instance? I’d be everything you want, a beast and a scoundrel, but not a thief, absolutely not a thief, because if I were, I wouldn’t have brought back what was left of the money, but would have appropriated that half, too. Here she’d see that if I brought her back half, that I would bring her the other half, that is, the money I squandered; all my life I’d look for it, work for it, but I’d find it and return it. Thus, I’m a scoundrel, but not a thief, not a thief, say what you like, not a thief!”

“Let’s presume there’s some difference,” the prosecutor said with a cold grin. “Still it’s strange that you see such a fundamental difference in it.”

“Yes, I do see such a fundamental difference! Everyone can be a scoundrel, and everyone probably is, but not everyone can be a thief, only an arch-scoundrel. I don’t know how to draw these distinctions. . . . But a thief is lower than a scoundrel, that’s my conviction. Listen: I carry that money around for a whole month, around my neck; tomorrow I can decide to give it back, and then I’m no longer a scoundrel, but I can’t resolve to do so once and for all, although every day I decide and every day I tell myself: ‘Decide, decide, you scoundrel!’ And for a whole month I can’t resolve to do it, that’s what! Well, is that right, in your opinion, is it?”

“Let’s suppose it’s not right; I can perfectly well understand that and won’t argue about it,” the prosecutor replied in a restrained manner. “But in general let’s lay aside squabbling about these distinctions and differences; if you would be so kind, let’s get back to the point. That is, you haven’t yet deigned to explain to us, although we’ve asked you: why did you divide the three thousand and squander half in a spree, while you hid the other half? For what purpose exactly did you hide it, what exactly did you plan to do with that fifteen hundred rubles? I insist on that question, Dmitry Fyodorovich.”

“Yes, of course!” cried Mitya, slapping his forehead. “Forgive me, I’m tormenting you and not explaining the main thing, or else you’d have understood at once, since it’s just the purpose itself that’s the disgrace! You see, it’s all that old man, the deceased, who was always hounding Agrafena Aleksandrovna; I was jealous, thinking at the time that she was hesitating between him and me. Every day I thought: suppose she were to stop tormenting me and suddenly say, ‘I love you, not him. Take me away to the ends of the earth,’ and all I had was two twenty-kopeck pieces. How could I carry her off, what could I do—I’d be lost. But then I didn’t know her and didn’t understand her; I thought she needed money and that she wouldn’t forgive my destitution. So I spitefully counted out half of the three thousand and coldheartedly sewed it up with a needle, sewed it with calculation, sewed it before I became drunk, and then, after I did so, I went off to get drunk on the first half! No, sir, it’s base! Do you understand now?”

The prosecutor laughed loudly, as did the investigator.

“In my opinion, it’s even reasonable and moral that you held back and didn’t squander all the money,” Nikolai Parfyonovich said with a chuckle, “because what’s wrong with that, sir?”

“The fact that I stole it, that’s what! Oh, God, you horrify me with your lack of understanding! All the time I was carrying around the fifteen hundred rubles on my breast, every day and every hour I’d say to myself, ‘You’re a thief, you’re a thief!’ That’s why I’ve been such a beast this past month, why I had a fight in the tavern, why I beat up my father, because I felt I was a thief! I didn’t resolve and didn’t even dare tell my brother Alyosha about this fifteen hundred rubles: I felt like such a scoundrel and a swindler! But you should know that while I was carrying it around, at the same time I’d tell myself every day and every hour: ‘No, Dmitry Fyodorovich, you may not be a thief yet. Why? Because tomorrow you might just decide to go to Katya and give her back that fifteen hundred.’ So yesterday on my way to Fenya from Perkhotin’s, I decided to rip that amulet off my neck, though until then I hadn’t decided to do it. It was only when I tore it off that I became an absolute and indubitable thief, a thief and a dishonorable man for the rest of my life. Why? Because with that amulet I demolished my dream of going to Katya and telling her, ‘I’m a scoundrel, but not a thief!’ Do you understand now? Do you?”

“Why in particular did you work up the courage to do this yesterday evening?” Nikolai Parfyonovich started to interrupt.

“Why? It’s ridiculous to ask: because I’d condemned myself to death, at five o’clock in the morning, here, at dawn: ‘After all, it doesn’t matter,’ I thought, ‘whether I die as a scoundrel or an honorable man!’ But I see that it’s not so: it turns out it does matter! Would you believe, gentlemen, what’s tormented me most during this night was not that I killed the old servant, and that I faced being sent to Siberia, and when? Just when my love was being crowned with success and heaven was opening up to me again! Oh, it did torment me, but not in the same way; not at all like that cursed consciousness that I finally tore off that accursed money from my breast and spent it all, and therefore, now I’m an absolute thief! Oh, gentlemen, I repeat sincerely: I learned a great deal this evening. I learned not only that it’s impossible to live as a scoundrel, but that it’s also impossible to die as a scoundrel. . . . No, gentlemen, one must die honorably!”

Mitya was pale. His face had an exhausted and tormented look, in spite of the fact that he was intensely excited.

“I’m beginning to understand you, Dmitry Fyodorovich,” the prosecutor said slowly and softly, even almost with sympathy. “But all of this, say what you like, is, in my opinion, just nerves . . . your overexcited nerves, that’s what, sir. Why, for instance, to save yourself from such torments, for a whole month, why didn’t you go and return the fifteen hundred rubles to that person who entrusted them to you, and explain things to her? Why didn’t you, in light of your situation at the time, such an awful one, as you portray it, try the arrangement that would’ve occurred to one’s mind so naturally, that is, after a generous confession to her of your errors, why didn’t you ask her to lend you the money you needed for your expenses, which she, with her noble heart and seeing your distress, of course wouldn’t have refused you, especially if there’d been some written document, or else, finally, some sort of guarantee, such as you had proposed to the merchant Samsonov and to Madame Khokhlakova? After all, I assume you still think that guarantee is valuable?”

Mitya suddenly blushed.

“Do you really think I’m a scoundrel to that degree? You can’t be serious!” he said in indignation, looking the prosecutor right in the eye, as if not believing what he’d just heard from him.

“I assure you that I’m serious. . . . Why do you think I’m not?” the prosecutor replied, astonished in turn.

“Oh, that would be so vile! Gentlemen, do you know you’re tormenting me? If you please, I’ll tell you everything, so be it; I’ll confess all my infernal iniquity to you, but in order to shame you, and you’ll be surprised at the baseness that an assortment of human emotions can reach. You should know that I already had that scheme in mind, that same one you were just talking about, Mr. Prosecutor! Yes, gentlemen, I had that thought during the last accursed month, so that I’d almost decided to go to Katya, that’s how base I was! But to do that, to declare my treachery to her, and to carry through with that treachery, and in order to finance that treachery, to beg for money from her, from Katya, to beg for money (to beg, do you hear, to beg!) and then to run off with another, with her rival, with a woman who hated her and insulted her—forgive me, but you’ve lost your mind, Mr. Prosecutor!”

“I haven’t lost my mind, but, of course, in the heat of the moment I didn’t consider feminine jealousy . . . if there could be jealousy, as you assert. . . . Yes, perhaps, it’s something like that,” said the prosecutor with a grin.

“But that would’ve been so vile,” Mitya said and violently banged the table with his fist. “That would’ve raised such a stench that I simply can’t comprehend it! You know, she could have given me that money, and she would have, probably would have, to satisfy her vengeance, to show her contempt for me, because she’s also an infernal soul and a woman of great wrath! And I would’ve taken the money, oh, I would’ve, and then for my whole life . . . oh, God! Forgive me, gentlemen, I’m shouting like this because I had this same thought not long ago, only a few days ago, when I was dealing with Lyagavy, and then yesterday, yes, yesterday, all day yesterday, I remember, until this incident . . .”

“Until what incident?” Nikolai Parfyonovich tried to interject inquisitively, but Mitya didn’t hear him.

“I made a terrible confession to you,” he concluded gloomily. “You should appreciate it, gentlemen. Moreover, you must do more than appreciate it, you must treasure it, and if not, if it just flies by your souls, then for sure you don’t respect me, gentlemen, that’s what I say, and I’ll die from shame, that I confessed to people like you! Oh, I’ll shoot myself! But I see, I can see that you don’t believe me! What, do you want to write that down, too?” he cried in alarm.

“What you just said,” Nikolai Parfyonovich replied, regarding him with astonishment, “that is, until the last moment you were contemplating going to Madame Verkhovtseva to beg for that sum of money. . . . I can assure you that it’s a very important piece of evidence for us, Dmitry Fyodorovich, that is, concerning that entire incident . . . and especially for you, it’s especially important for you.”

“Have mercy, gentlemen,” cried Mitya, throwing up his hands, “don’t write that down; you ought to be ashamed! Why I, so to speak, tore my soul in halves before you, and you’ve taken advantage of it and are rummaging around in it, with your fingers in both halves of my soul where it’s torn. . . . Oh, God!”

He hid his face in his hands in despair.

“Don’t be so distraught, Dmitry Fyodorovich,” concluded the prosecutor. “You’ll have the chance to hear everything we’ve written down, and whatever you don’t agree with, we’ll alter it with your own words. But now I’ll repeat one little question for the third time: is it really true that you told no one, no one at all, about the money you sewed up in the amulet? That, I tell you, is almost impossible to believe.”

“No one, no one, as I said, or else you didn’t understand a thing! Leave me in peace!”

“As you wish; this matter must be explained, and there’s still plenty of time for it, but for now consider: we have perhaps a dozen witnesses that you yourself spread the news and even shouted everywhere that you’d spent three thousand rubles, three thousand, not fifteen hundred, and now, with the appearance of that money yesterday, you gave many people the impression that you’d brought three thousand rubles here with you.”

“Not dozens, but hundreds of witnesses; you have in your hands two hundred witnesses, two hundred who’ve heard, a thousand!” cried Mitya.

“Well, you see, sir, all bear witness to it. The word ‘all’ means something.”

“It doesn’t mean anything; I was lying, and everyone began repeating my lie.”

“Why was it so necessary for you to ‘lie,’ as you say?”

“The devil knows why! From wanting to brag, perhaps . . . just so . . . that I’d squandered so much money on a spree. . . . Perhaps to try to forget the money I’d sewn up . . . yes, that was really why . . . what the devil. . . . How many times will you ask me that same question? Well, I lied once, and that’s all, I lied and didn’t want to change it. Why does a man sometimes tell lies?”

“It’s very difficult to decide, Dmitry Fyodorovich, why a man tells lies,” the prosecutor said majestically. “Tell me, however, was the amulet, as you call it, on your breast very large?”

“No, not large.”

“For example, what size was it?”

“The size of a hundred-ruble note folded in half—that’s how big it was.”

“It would be better if you showed us the shreds. You must have them somewhere.”

“Hey, what the devil . . . what nonsense. . . . I don’t know where it is.”

“Excuse me: when and where did you remove it from your neck? As you yourself said, you didn’t stop in at home.”

“It was when I left Fenya’s and was going to Perkhotin’s; along the road, I ripped it off and took out the money.”

“In the darkness?”

“Why would I need any light? I did it with my fingers in a minute.”

“Without scissors, on the street?”

“On the square, it seems; why would I need scissors? It was an old rag, and it tore in a minute.”

“What did you do with it then?”

“I threw it away there.”

“Where, precisely?”

“On the square, on the square! The devil knows where on the square. Why do you need to know this?”

“It’s extremely important, Dmitry Fyodorovich: material evidence in your favor. How is it you don’t want to understand this? Who helped you sew it up a month ago?”

“No one helped me. I sewed it myself.”

“You know how to sew?”

“A soldier has to know how to sew; it doesn’t take much skill.”

“Where did you get the material, that is, the rag, in which you sewed the money?”

“Can it be that you’re not laughing at me?”

“Not at all; we have no time for laughter, Dmitry Fyodorovich.”

“I don’t recall where I found the rag; it was from somewhere.”

“How can you not remember?”

“I swear to God, I don’t remember; maybe I tore off a piece of my clothing.”

“That’s very interesting: tomorrow might we find in your apartment the item, maybe a shirt from which you tore a piece? What material was it? Cotton or linen?”

“The devil knows what material! Wait a minute. It seems I didn’t tear it off anything. It was calico. . . . It seems I sewed it from the landlady’s cap.”

“Your landlady’s cap?”

“Yes, I stole it from her.”

“What do you mean, you stole it?”

“You see, in fact I remember once taking a cap to use as a rag, perhaps to wipe my pen. I took it on the sly, because it was a useless rag; the shreds were lying about in my room, and I had this fifteen hundred rubles, so I took it and sewed it up. . . . It seems I sewed it up in that rag. An old piece of calico, washed a thousand times.”

“And do you remember this for certain?”

“I don’t know if it’s for certain. It seems it was part of her cap. But to hell with it!”

“In that case, might your landlady recall at least that she was missing that item?”

“No, she won’t; she didn’t miss it. It was an old rag, I tell you, not worth a kopeck.”

“And where did you get the needle and thread?”

“I’m ending this now; I don’t want to say any more. Enough!” Mitya said, angry at last.

“It’s strange that you’ve completely forgotten exactly where on the square you tossed that . . . amulet.”

“Order the square to be swept clean tomorrow; perhaps you’ll find it,” Mitya said with a grin. “Enough, gentlemen, enough,” he concluded in an exhausted voice. “I can see clearly: you don’t believe me! Not a word of it, not one bit! I’m to blame, not you; I shouldn’t have butted in. Why, oh why did I defile myself by confessing my great secret? You think it’s funny—I can see that by your eyes. You led me to it, Mr. Prosecutor! Sing a triumphal hymn, if you wish. Damn you, you torturers!”

He bent his head and covered his face with his hands. The prosecutor and investigator were silent. A minute later he raised his head and looked at them without seeing. His face expressed complete, irrevocable despair, and, having slowly fallen silent, he sat there as if unaware of his surroundings. Meanwhile, it was necessary to conclude the proceedings; it was time to move on to the interrogation of the witnesses. It was already almost eight o’clock in the morning. The lights had long since been extinguished. Mikhail Makarovich and Kalganov, who’d been going in and out of the room all during the interrogation, had now both left. The prosecutor and investigator also appeared extremely tired. It was a inclement morning; the whole sky was overcast, and it was pouring down rain. Mitya stared vacantly at the window.

“May I look out the window?” he suddenly asked Nikolai Parfyonovich.

“Oh, as much as you like,” he replied.

Mitya stood up and went over to the window. Rain was pelting down on the little greenish panes of glass. The muddy road could be seen directly under the window, and farther away, in the rainy mist, stood poor, black dismal rows of huts, looking even poorer and blacker in the rain. Mitya recalled “golden-haired Phoebus,” and how he’d wanted to shoot himself with the first rays of the sun. “Perhaps on a morning like this it’d be even better,” he suddenly thought with a smile, then waved his arm dismissively and turned to his torturers.

“Gentlemen!” he cried. “I see that I’m lost. But what about her? Tell me about her, I implore you. Will she be destroyed along with me? Why, she’s innocent; when she cried yesterday that she was ‘guilty in all regards,’ she was not in her right mind. She’s not guilty of anything, anything at all! I’ve been agonizing all night while sitting here with you. . . . Can’t you, won’t you tell me: what are you going to do with her now?”

“You may absolutely set your mind at ease on that account, Dmitry Fyodorovich,” the prosecutor replied immediately with evident haste. “We have no grounds whatsoever for troubling in any way that person in whom you’re so interested. In the future course of this proceeding, I trust that might also be the case. . . . On the contrary, we’ll do all that we can in this matter. You may be completely relieved.”

“Gentlemen, I thank you; I knew that you were honorable and fair men, in spite of everything. You’ve removed a burden from my soul. . . . Well, what are we going to do now? I’m ready.”

“We ought to make haste. We have to move on to questioning the witnesses without delay. This all has to take place in your presence, therefore . . .”

“Shouldn’t we have some tea first?” interrupted Nikolai Parfyonovich. “I think we deserve it!”

They decided that if there was tea ready downstairs (in view of the fact that Mikhail Makarovich had already gone to “down a glass of tea”), they’d each have a glass and then “carry on and carry on.” They’d postpone their proper tea and “snack” for later, at a more convenient hour. Tea was indeed available downstairs, and it was soon delivered upstairs. At first Mitya refused the glass that Nikolai Parfyonovich politely offered him, but then he himself asked for some, and downed it greedily. In general, he had a remarkably exhausted look. One might think that with his Herculean strengths, a night of a drinking spree wouldn’t have had such an effect, even when combined with such intense emotions. But he himself felt that he was scarcely able to keep sitting there; at times everything seemed to be moving and spinning in front of his eyes. “If this continues, I’ll become delirious,” he thought to himself.

VIII

THE EVIDENCE OF THE WITNESSES. THE BABE IN ARMS.

The interrogation of the witnesses began. But we won’t continue our story in as much detail as we’ve been employing up to now. Therefore we’ll omit how Nikolai Parfyonovich impressed on each and every witness that he must testify according to the truth and his conscience, and that subsequently he’d have to repeat his testimony under oath in court; how every witness was required to sign the record of his testimony, so on and so forth. We’ll note only one thing, that the main point on which all the interrogators’ attention was focused was the very same question of the three thousand rubles, that is, was it really three thousand or only fifteen hundred the first time, that is, during Dmitry Fyodorovich’s first spree in Mokroye, a month ago, and was it three thousand or only fifteen hundred yesterday during Dmitry Fyodorovich’s second spree. Alas, all the evidence presented to the very last witness turned out to be against Mitya, none of it was in his favor, and some of the witnesses introduced new and almost devastating facts to contradict Mitya’s account.

The first witness questioned was Trifon Borisych. He stood before the interrogators without the least fear—on the contrary, with a look of stern, severe indignation with the accused; that undeniably endowed him with an air of extraordinary truthfulness and personal dignity. He said very little: he was restrained, waiting for the questions, and replied precisely and thoughtfully. He maintained steadfastly and without hesitation that a month ago the amount spent couldn’t have been less than three thousand rubles, and said that all the peasants here would corroborate that they’d heard about that sum from “Mitry Fyodorych” himself: “What a lot of money he threw at the gypsy girls. He squandered at least a thousand on them alone.”

“I gave them not even five hundred, perhaps,” Mitya remarked gloomily. “But I didn’t count it at the time; what a pity—I was drunk . . .”

Mitya was sitting sideways with his back to the curtains, listening despondently; he had a miserable, exhausted look, as if he were saying, “Hey, testify as you will, it’s all the same to me now!”

“More than a thousand was spent on them, Mitry Fyodorovich,” Trifon Borisovich retorted confidently. “You kept throwing it like it was nothing, and they caught it. They’re a bunch of thieves and scoundrels, they’re horse stealers; we drove them away from here, or else they might’ve testified to how much they stole from you. I myself saw the sum of money in your hands then; I didn’t get to count it, you didn’t let me, that’s true, but by the look of it, I recall that it was much more than fifteen hundred. . . . No way it was only fifteen hundred! We’ve seen money before and we can judge . . .”

As for the total sum yesterday, Trifon Borisovich plainly testified that Dmitry Fyodorovich had declared to him, right after he got out of his cart, that he’d brought three thousand rubles with him.

“That’ll do, Trifon Borisych,” objected Mitya. “Did I really proclaim so certainly that I’d brought along three thousand rubles?”

“You did, Mitry Fyodorovich. You said it in front of Andrey. He’s still here; he hasn’t left yet; you can call him in. And there in the hall, when you were handing out treats to the chorus, you clearly shouted that you’d leave a total of six thousand rubles here, that is, in addition to what you spent before, that was how we understood it. Stepan and Semyon heard it, and Pyotr Fomich Kalganov was standing right next to you; perhaps they’ll remember it, too . . .”

The evidence about the sixth thousand made an extraordinary impression on the interrogators. They liked the new version: three plus three made six; three thousand then and three thousand now made six. It was all clear.

They questioned all the peasants suggested by Trifon Borisovich, Stepan and Semyon, the driver Andrey, as well as Pyotr Fomich Kalganov. The peasants and the driver, without a moment’s hesitation, confirmed Trifon Borisovich’s testimony. In addition, they recorded, with special care, Andrey’s words about his conversation along the way with Mitya, about “where I, Dmitry Fyodorovich, would wind up: in heaven or hell, and will they forgive me in the next world or not?” The “psychologist” Ippolit Kirillovich listened to all this with a slight smile, and finally recommended that the testimony about where Dmitry Fyodorovich would wind up be “included in the evidence.”

The witness Kalganov entered reluctantly, sullen and capricious. He spoke with the prosecutor and Nikolai Parfyonovich as if this were the first time in his life he’d seen them, while he’d long been a close acquaintance of theirs. He began by saying that he “knew nothing about it and didn’t want to either.” But it appeared that he, too, had heard about the “sixth” thousand, and admitted that he’d been standing close by at that time. In his opinion, he “didn’t know how much” money was in Mitya’s hands. He confirmed that the Poles had been cheating at cards. He also explained, in reply to repeated questions, that after the Poles had been driven out, Mitya’s position vis-à-vis Agrafena Aleksandrovna had improved and that she herself had declared that she loved him. He testified in a restrained and respectful manner about Agrafena Aleksandrovna, as if she were a young lady from the best society; he didn’t let himself refer to her as “Grushenka” even once. In spite of the young man’s evident repugnance at having to testify, Ippolit Kirillovich interrogated him for a long time, and it was only from him that he managed to learn the details of Mitya’s so-called romance that night. Mitya didn’t interfere at all with Kalganov. At last they released the young man; he withdrew in undisguised indignation.

They also interrogated the Poles. Although they’d already gone to bed in their little room, they hadn’t been able to fall asleep all night; with the arrival of the authorities, they’d gotten dressed and tidied up, realizing that they’d certainly be needed. They appeared with dignity, although not without some fear. The principal one—that is, the shorter gentleman—turned out to be a retired civil servant of the twelfth rank[1] who’d served as a veterinarian in Siberia; his name was Musiałowicz. Mr. Wróblewski proved to be an independent dentist—or, in Russian, a tooth doctor. As soon as they both entered the room, they immediately, in spite of Nikolai Parfyonovich’s questions, began to address their answers to Mikhail Makarovich, who was standing on the side, assuming in their ignorance that he was of higher rank and the person in authority here; they called him “Panie Colonel” with every answer. Only after several reproaches from Mikhail Makarovich himself did they realize that they should direct their answers only to Nikolai Parfyonovich. It turned out that they could even speak Russian very correctly, except for the way their accent affected the pronunciation of certain words. Concerning their relations with Grushenka, both past and present, Mr. Musiałowicz began to speak heatedly and proudly, such that Mitya quickly lost his temper and cried that he wouldn’t allow that “scoundrel” to talk like that in his presence. Mr. Musiałowicz immediately turned his attention to the use of the word “scoundrel,” and asked that it be recorded in the protocol. Mitya seethed with rage.

“He’s a scoundrel, a scoundrel! Write that down and also enter it in spite of the protocol; I still declare that he’s a scoundrel!” cried Mitya.

Although Nikolai Parfyonovich did record this in the protocol, he demonstrated the most praiseworthy diplomacy and skill at managing this unpleasant situation: after a stern rebuke to Mitya, he himself curtailed any further questions regarding the romantic aspect of the case and moved more expeditiously to substantive questions. One piece of evidence in particular aroused extraordinary interest in the interrogators, namely, that Mitya had tried to buy off Mr. Musiałowicz in that very room and had offered him three thousand rubles in compensation, with seven hundred down and the remaining two thousand, three hundred “tomorrow morning in town,” and that he’d sworn on his word of honor that he didn’t have the whole sum with him there, in Mokroye, but that he did have the money in town. Mitya heatedly declared that he hadn’t said he’d provide the remainder of the money in town tomorrow, but Mr. Wróblewski confirmed that testimony, and Mitya himself, after reflecting for a minute, agreed with a scowl that it must have been as the Poles recalled, but that he’d been very excited at the time, and therefore might well have said it.

The prosecutor then fastened on this piece of evidence: it seemed clear to the investigation (and was concluded afterward) that half or part of the three thousand left in Mitya’s hands really could’ve remained hidden somewhere in town, or even somewhere here in Mokroye; this would explain the tricky circumstance that Mitya had only eight hundred rubles left in his possession—a relatively insignificant circumstance that, up to now, had been the only one still tending in Mitya’s favor. Now even this one piece of evidence in his favor had been demolished. In reply to the prosecutor’s question “Where would you have procured the remaining two thousand, three hundred rubles to give to the Pole tomorrow, if you yourself maintain that you had only fifteen hundred, yet had given your word of honor to the Poles?,” Mitya replied confidently that he’d wanted to propose to the “little Pole” that the next day he’d offer not money, but the formal deed of his rights to the village of Chermashnya, those very same rights he’d offered both to Samsonov and to Madame Khokhlakova. The prosecutor even smiled at the “innocence of this ploy.”

“And do you think that he’d have accepted these ‘rights’ instead of twenty-three hundred rubles in cash?”

“Absolutely,” Mitya declared heatedly. “For pity’s sake, he could’ve snatched not merely two thousand, but four, or even six thousand by doing so! He’d have set his shyster lawyers to work, all his little Poles and dirty little Yids, and would’ve wheedled not just three thousand, but the entire village of Chermashnya out of the old man!”

Mr. Musiałowicz’s testimony, of course, was entered into the protocol in full detail. With that they released the two Poles. The incident of the cheating at cards was hardly mentioned; Nikolai Parfyonovich was grateful enough to them without it, and he didn’t want to trouble them with trifles, all the more so since it had been no more than a ridiculous drunken dispute over a game of cards. There had been all sorts of binges and outrages during that night. . . . So the money, the two hundred rubles, remained in the Poles’ pockets.

Then the officials summoned the little old man Maksimov. He entered timidly, approached with small steps, and had a frazzled, very mournful expression. All this time he’d been huddling together downstairs with Grushenka, sitting quietly next to her, “from time to time whimpering over her and wiping his eyes with a little blue checked handkerchief,” as Mikhail Makarovich related afterward. She herself attempted to calm and quiet him. The little old man confessed at once that he was guilty, that he’d borrowed “ten rubles” from Dmitry Fyodorovich “because of my poverty, sir,” and that he was prepared to return the money. In reply to Nikolai Parfyonovich’s direct question about whether he had noticed how much money was in Dmitry Fyodorovich’s hands, since he’d been closer than anyone else when he’d received his loan, Maksimov replied in the most decisive manner that he’d had some “twenty thousand rubles.”

“Have you ever seen twenty thousand rubles anywhere before?” Nikolai Parfyonovich asked with a smile.

“Of course, sir, I have seen it, sir, but not twenty thousand, sir, but seven thousand, sir, when my wife mortgaged my little estate. She let me see it only from afar, boasting of it in front of me. It was a very large packet, sir, all rainbow-colored notes. And Dmitry Fyodorovich’s bundle was also rainbow-colored . . .”

They soon let him go. At last it was Grushenka’s turn. The investigators, evidently, were afraid of the impact her appearance might make on Dmitry Fyodorovich, and Nikolai Parfyonovich even muttered a few words of warning to him, but Mitya, in reply, just hung his head in silence, letting him know that “he wouldn’t create a scene.” Mikhail Makarovich himself led Grushenka in. She had a stern and gloomy face, with an almost serene look, and sat down quietly in the chair offered to her, across from Nikolai Parfyonovich. She was very pale; it seemed that she was cold and wrapped up tightly in her magnificent black shawl. As a matter of fact, she’d begun suffering from a slight feverish chill—the beginning of a long illness that afflicted her after this night. Her stern expression, her direct, serious look and serene manner produced an extremely favorable impression on everyone. Nikolai Parfyonovich was even a bit “enamored.” He himself admitted, when he spoke about it later, that only from this moment did he realize how “attractive” this woman was; although he’d seen her before, he’d always considered her something of a “provincial hetaera.”[2] “She had the manners of a high-society lady,” he blurted out heartily in a circle of women. But this was received by the ladies with flagrant indignation; they immediately labeled Nikolai Parfyonovich a “naughty boy,” an epithet that pleased him very much. As she entered the room, Grushenka cast only a quick glance at Mitya, who, in turn, looked anxiously at her, but her look at that moment reassured him. After the first few necessary questions and cautions, although hesitating a bit, but maintaining the most polite expression, Nikolai Parfyonovich asked her: “What was her relationship to the retired lieutenant Dmitry Fyodorovich Karamazov?” Grushenka replied softly and decisively:

“He was my acquaintance; I would receive him as an acquaintance during the last month.”

To further officious questioning, she declared with complete frankness that although she had liked him “at times,” she didn’t love him, but had enticed him “in her vile wickedness,” just as she had that “little old man”; she realized that Mitya was very jealous of Fyodor Pavlovich and everyone else, but she’d merely found that amusing. She had never planned to visit Fyodor Pavlovich; she had merely been making fun of him. “During that whole month I had no time for either of them; I was waiting for another man, one who’d ill-treated me. . . . But I think,” she said in conclusion, “that there’s no reason for you to be curious about that, and I have nothing more to say about that because it’s my own personal affair.”

Nikolai Parfyonovich quickly reacted accordingly: he stopped insisting on the “romantic” aspects and moved on to the more serious issue, that is, the source of the three thousand rubles. Grushenka confirmed that in Mokroye a month ago he really had spent three thousand, and although she herself had not counted the money, she’d heard it directly from Dmitry Fyodorovich himself that the sum was three thousand.

“Were you alone when he said this, was someone else present, or did you merely overhear it when he was talking with other people?” the prosecutor inquired at once.

To which Grushenka declared that she’d heard it in the presence of other people, when he was talking to others, and she’d heard it when she was alone with him.

“Did he say it to you once or did he repeat it several times?” the prosecutor asked again and learned that he’d said it more than once.

Ippolit Kirillovich was very satisfied with this evidence. From further testimony it became clear that Grushenka knew the source of this money and that Dmitry Fyodorovich had received it from Katerina Ivanovna.

“And did you ever hear that the amount of money spent a month ago was not three thousand, but less, and that Dmitry Fyodorovich had kept back a certain amount for himself?”

“No, I never heard that,” Grushenka testified.

Subsequently it even became clear that Mitya, on the contrary, had often said to her that he didn’t have a kopeck to his name. “He kept hoping to receive more money from his father,” she concluded.

“Did he ever say in your presence . . . or even mention in passing, or in irritation,” Nikolai Parfyonovich suddenly inserted, “that he intended to take his father’s life?”

“Oh, he did talk about it,” Grushenka said with a sigh.

“Once or repeatedly?”

“I recall it was several times, always in a fit of anger.”

“And did you believe that he would carry it out?”

“No, I never believed it!” she confirmed decisively. “I was relying on his nobility.”

“Gentlemen, allow me,” Mitya cried suddenly, “allow me to say just one word to Agrafena Aleksandrovna in your presence.”

Nikolai Parfyonovich decided to allow this: “Go ahead.”

“Agrafena Aleksandrovna,” Mitya said, standing up from his chair, “believe God and me: I’m not guilty of shedding my father’s blood yesterday!”

After saying these words, Mitya sat down in his chair again. Grushenka stood up and devoutly crossed herself in front of the icon.

“Glory to Thee, O Lord!” she uttered in a passionate, heartfelt manner; without sitting back down, she turned to Nikolai Parfyonovich and added: “Believe what he said just now! I know him. He’ll blurt out all sorts of things, whether in fun or from willfulness, but he’ll never deceive you against his conscience. He’s telling you the whole truth: you may believe him!”

“Thank you, Agrafena Aleksandrovna, you’ve lifted up my soul!” Mitya replied in a trembling voice.

To questions about the amount of money spent the previous day, she declared that she didn’t know how much it was, but she’d heard that he’d told many people yesterday that he’d brought three thousand rubles along with him. And as to where he’d gotten the money, he’d told her alone that he’d “stolen” it from Katerina Ivanovna, and that she, Grushenka, had told him that he hadn’t stolen it, and that he should give it back to her the next day. To the prosecutors’ insistent question as to which money he’d stolen from Katerina Ivanovna—yesterday’s sum or the three thousand he’d spent here a month ago—she declared that she was talking about the money spent a month ago, and that was how she’d understood him.

They finally released Grushenka; Nikolai Parfyonovich informed her right away that she could go back to town and that if she required any assistance with horses or an escort, for example, then he would . . . for his part . . .

“Thank you very kindly,” Grushenka said, bowing to him. “I’ll return with the little old man, the landowner, I’ll take him back with me; meanwhile I’ll wait downstairs, if you allow me, to see what you’ll decide about Dmitry Fyodorovich.”

She left. Mitya felt calm and even looked more encouraged, but it lasted only a moment. Some sort of strange physical weakness was overpowering him more and more. His eyes were beginning to close from exhaustion. At last the interrogation of witnesses concluded. They proceeded to a final revision of the record. Mitya stood up and moved from his chair to the corner of the room, near the curtain; he lay down on a large trunk covered with a rug and fell fast asleep.

He had a strange dream, utterly out of keeping with the time and place. He was somewhere out on the steppe, where he’d been stationed a long time ago, and a peasant was driving him through the slush in a cart with a pair of horses. Mitya felt cold; it was early November and snow was falling in large, wet flakes; it melted immediately, as soon as it hit the ground. The peasant drove along swiftly, boldly snapping his whip; he had a long fair beard. The driver wasn’t an old man, perhaps fifty, wearing a gray peasant’s homespun coat.

There was a village not far off. He could pick out the very black huts; half of them had burned down, and there were only a few charred beams sticking up. Standing along the road leading out of the village were lots of peasant women, a whole row of them, all thin and wan, with brownish faces. There was one in particular at the edge, such a bony woman, tall, looking about forty, but perhaps only twenty, with a long, thin face; in her arms she held a little child who was crying; her breasts must have dried up, with no milk left in them. The baby was crying, crying, holding out his bare little arms, his little fists blue from the cold.

“Why are they crying? What are they crying for?” he asks, briskly flying by.

“It’s the babe,” the driver replies. “It’s the babe crying.” And Mitya’s struck by the fact that he says it in his own way, the peasant way, “babe” and not “baby.” He likes the peasant’s calling it a “babe”; it seems as if there’s more pity in it.

“But why is he crying?” Mitya persists like a fool. “Why are his little arms bare? Why don’t they wrap him up?”

“The babe’s chilled to the bone; his little clothes are frozen and they don’t warm him.”

“But why is it so? Why?” foolish Mitya persists.

“They’re poor people, burned out; they haven’t a crust of bread; they’re begging because they’re burned out.”

“No, no.” Mitya still seems not to understand. “Tell me: why are these poor mothers standing there? Why are the people poor? Why is the babe poor? Why is the steppe barren? Why don’t they all embrace and kiss? Why don’t they sing songs of joy? Why are they so dark from black misery? Why don’t they feed the babe?”

He feels that although his questions are unreasonable and senseless, he still wants to ask them and he has to pose them in just that way. He also feels that an emotion of sweet tenderness is rising up in his heart, one he’s never experienced before, and that he wants to weep, he wants to do something for everyone so that the babe won’t cry anymore, and so that the dark, dried-up mother of the baby will no longer cry, so that no one will shed any more tears from this moment forth, and he wants to do all this at once, at once, without delay, in spite of all obstacles, with all of the Karamazov recklessness.

“And I’m here with you, too; I won’t leave you; I’ll be with you for your whole life.” Next to him he hears Grushenka’s kind words, filled with emotion. His whole heart starts to glow and aspire toward some light; and he wants to live and live, to go on and on, along some path, toward the new, beckoning light, and to do it quickly, quickly, now, this very minute!

“What? Where?” he cried, opening his eyes, sitting up on his trunk, as if he’d just recovered from a loss of consciousness, and smiling radiantly. Nikolai Parfyonovich was standing over him, inviting him to hear the protocol read aloud and to sign it. Mitya guessed that he’d slept for an hour or more, but he wasn’t listening to Nikolai Parfyonovich. It suddenly struck him that a pillow, one that hadn’t been there when he’d stretched out on the trunk so exhausted, had been placed under his head.

“Who was it who put a pillow under my head? Who was that kind man?” he cried with some sort of ecstatic and appreciative feeling and in a tearful voice, as if God knows what sort of charitable act had been done for him. Even later the kind person remained anonymous; perhaps it was one of the peasant witnesses or Nikolai Parfyonovich’s clerk who’d placed a pillow there out of compassion, but Mitya’s entire soul was trembling with tears. He approached the table and announced that he would sign whatever they liked.

“I’ve had a good dream, gentlemen,” he announced somehow strangely, with a fresh face, as if illuminated with joy.

1 The third-lowest rank in the fourteen steps of the civil service.

2 A highly educated female prostitute in ancient Greece.

IX

THEY TOOK MITYA AWAY

After the protocol had been signed, Nikolai Parfyonovich turned solemnly to the accused and read him the “resolution,” which stated that in such and such a year, on such and such a day, in such and such a place, the judicial interrogator of such and such a district court, having interrogated So-and-So (that is, Mitya), the accused of this and that (all the charges were carefully detailed), and, taking into consideration that the accused does not plead guilty to the charges levied against him, and that he has adduced no evidence on his own behalf, and that meanwhile the witnesses (So-and-So and So-and-So) and circumstances (such-and-such) establish his guilt entirely, and, in accordance with such-and-such statutes of the “Penal Code,” etc., it is resolved: that in order to prevent the accused (that is, Mitya) from the means to evade investigation and trial, he be confined to such-and-such a prison; that the accused be informed of this; and that a copy of this indictment be forwarded to the deputy prosecutor, etc., etc. In a word, they informed Mitya that he was under arrest from this time forth, and that he would be transferred to town immediately, where he would be incarcerated in a very unpleasant place. Mitya, after listening very closely to the indictment, merely shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, gentlemen, I don’t blame you. I’m ready. . . . I understand that you have no other choice.”

Nikolai Parfyonovich explained to him gently that he’d be escorted by a local police officer, Mavrikii Mavrikievich, who just happened to be there at the time.

“Wait,” Mitya interrupted suddenly, and with unrestrained emotion he uttered the following, addressing everyone in the room: “Gentlemen, we’re all cruel, we’re all monsters; we make men, mothers, and babes in arms weep. But of all the rest, may it now be resolved: I am the lowest reptile of all! So be it! Every day of my life, beating my chest, I kept promising to change, but I continued doing the same vile things. Now I understand that men like me need a blow, a blow of fate that will ensnare them as if with a lasso and bind them by external force. Never, never would I have risen up by myself. But the thunder has struck. I accept the torment of accusation and my national disgrace; I want to suffer and will be cleansed by suffering! Perhaps I will be cleansed, gentlemen, what do you think? But listen for the last time: I’m not guilty of shedding my father’s blood! I accept the punishment not for killing him, but for wanting to kill him; perhaps, I might have killed him. . . . Nevertheless, I’m prepared to fight with you: I’m announcing that. I’ll fight you until the end, and then God will decide! Farewell, gentlemen; don’t be angry that I shouted at you during the interrogation; oh, I was still so foolish at the time. A minute from now I’ll be a prisoner, but now, for the last time, Dmitry Karamazov, still a free man, extends his hand to you. In saying farewell to you, I bid farewell to all men!”

His voice trembled, and he was about to extend his hand, but Nikolai Parfyonovich, who was standing closest to him, suddenly somehow, with an almost convulsive gesture, hid his hands. Mitya noticed it instantly and shuddered. He let his outstretched hand drop at once.

“This investigation’s not over yet,” Nikolai Parfyonovich muttered, somewhat embarrassed. “We’ll continue it in town; and, of course, I’m prepared to wish you every success . . . for your acquittal. As for you, Dmitry Fyodorovich, I’ve always been inclined to consider you as a man more unfortunate than guilty. All of us here, if I can presume to speak for everyone, are prepared to acknowledge you as a basically honorable young man but, alas, one carried away by certain passions to a somewhat extreme degree.”

Toward the end of his speech the small figure of Nikolai Parfyonovich took on a posture of maximum pomp. It suddenly flashed through Mitya’s mind that this “young man” would soon take him by the arm and lead him to another corner of the room, where he’d want to resume their recent conversation about “girls.” But all sorts of peripheral and inappropriate thoughts can at times occur to a criminal being led to his execution.

“Gentlemen, you’re good men, you’re humane—may I get to see her, to bid farewell for the last time?” Mitya asked.

“Without doubt, but in view of the fact that . . . in a word, only in the presence of . . .”

“Stay here, if you like!”

They brought in Grushenka, but the farewell was brief, with few words, and didn’t satisfy Nikolai Parfyonovich. Grushenka bowed deeply to Mitya.

“I told you that I’m yours, that I’ll be yours, that I’ll go with you forever, wherever they send you. Farewell, you innocent man who’s brought guilt on himself!”

Her lips trembled and tears flowed from her eyes.

“Forgive me, Grusha, for my love, and for ruining you, too, with my love.”

Mitya wanted to say something more, but suddenly broke off and walked out. He was surrounded at once by men who kept watch over him. At the bottom of the stairs, where just yesterday he’d galloped up in Andrey’s troika with such thunder, two carts stood ready. Mavrikii Mavrikievich, a stocky, solid man with a flabby face, was annoyed at something, some sort of sudden glitch; he was angry and shouting. With excessive severity he asked Mitya to get into the cart. As Mitya climbed in, he thought, “Previously, when I was treating him to drinks in the tavern, this man had an entirely different face.” Trifon Borisovich also came down from the porch. People were crowded around the gate, peasants, women, and drivers. They were all staring at Mitya.

“Farewell and forgive me, good people!” Mitya shouted suddenly from the cart.

“And you forgive us, too,” two or three voices replied.

“And farewell to you, too, Trifon Borisych!”

But Trifon Borisovich didn’t even turn around; perhaps he was very busy. He was also shouting something and bustling about. It turned out that everything wasn’t yet ready in the second cart, in which two officers were to accompany Mavrikii Mavrikievich. The little peasant who’d been ordered to drive the second cart was putting on his homespun coat while arguing that it wasn’t his turn to drive, but Akim’s. However, Akim wasn’t there; they ran to fetch him; the little peasant persisted and begged them to wait.

“See what our peasants are like, Mavrikii Mavrikievich, completely shameless!” cried Trifon Borisovich. “Akim gave you twenty-five kopecks two days ago, and you drank it up,” he said to the driver, “and now you’re shouting. I’m surprised by your generosity toward our lowly folk, Mavrikii Mavrikievich, that’s all I can say!”

“Why do we need a second troika?” Mitya interrupted. “We can all go in one, Mavrikii Mavrikievich; I won’t be unruly; I won’t run away from you. Why do we need a convoy?”

“If you please, sir, learn how to address me politely, if you haven’t learned yet; use the formal form, not the informal, sir.[1] And hold your advice for next time,” Mavrikii Mavrikievich retorted angrily to Mitya, as if relieved to vent his anger.

Mitya fell silent. His face flushed intensely. A moment later he suddenly felt very cold. The rain had stopped, but the dark sky was enveloped in clouds and a brisk wind blew right in his face. “I’ve caught a chill,” thought Mitya, twitching his shoulders. Finally, Mavrikii Mavrikievich climbed into the cart, too; he sat down heavily, crudely, as though he hadn’t noticed, and crowded Mitya into the corner. True, he was out of sorts and really didn’t like the commission he’d been assigned.

“Farewell, Trifon Borisovich!” Mitya cried again; he himself felt that this time he had called out not because of his own good nature but, rather, involuntarily, from resentment. But Trifon Borisovich stood proudly, both hands behind his back, his eyes fixed on Mitya, regarding him sternly and angrily, making no reply to him.

“Farewell, Dmitry Fyodorovich, farewell!” Kalganov’s voice suddenly rang out; he’d come running out of somewhere all of a sudden. Approaching the cart, he extended his hand to Mitya. He was bareheaded. Mitya managed to grab hold of him and squeeze his hand.

“Farewell, dear man, I won’t forget your generosity!” he cried warmly. But the cart pulled away and their hands separated. The troika bell started ringing—and they took Mitya away.

Kalganov ran back into the passage, sat down in a corner, bent his head, covered his face with his hands, and burst into tears; he sat there weeping for a long time—he wept as if he were still a little boy, and not a young man of twenty. Oh, he believed almost totally in Mitya’s guilt! “What kind of people are these? What sort of people can they be after that?” he cried incoherently and in bitter despondency, almost despair. At that moment he didn’t even want to continue living on earth. “Is it worth it? Is it worth it?” the distraught young man kept exclaiming.

1 Mitya is being reprimanded and told to use the polite vy form, instead of ty.

PART FOUR

BOOK TEN

THE BOYS

I

KOLYA KRASOTKIN

It was the beginning of November. We had eleven degrees of frost and also some black ice. During the night a light coating of dry snow had fallen on the frozen earth; a “dry and sharp” wind[1] was lifting it and blowing it along the dismal streets of our little town, especially through the market square. The morning was dreary, but the snow had stopped. Not far from the square, quite close to Plotnikov’s shop, stands a very tidy—both inside and out—little house belonging to the widow of the civil servant Krasotkin. Mr. Krasotkin himself, a former provincial secretary, died a long time ago, now it’s been almost fourteen years, but his widow, about thirty years old, a lively and still very comely lady, lives in her tidy little house on “her own capital.” She lives respectably and shyly, and possesses a gentle, rather cheerful disposition. She was about eighteen years old at the time of her husband’s death, having lived with him only about a year and having just given birth to their son. From that time, the date of her husband’s death, she devoted herself entirely to the upbringing of her treasure, her little boy Kolya, and although she’d loved him passionately during those fourteen years, of course, he’d caused her incomparably more suffering than joy; almost daily she trembled and almost died from fear that he might fall ill, catch cold, make some mischief, climb on a chair and fall off, and so on and so forth. When Kolya started to attend school, and then passed into the lower grades of our gymnasium, his mother decided to study all his subjects with him to assist him and to go over his lessons with him; she also made the acquaintance of his teachers and their wives, even indulged Kolya’s comrades, his fellow schoolmates, and fawned over them so they wouldn’t pester Kolya, wouldn’t make fun of him or beat him up. It reached a point where the boys really did start ridiculing him because of her and began to tease him for being a “mama’s boy.” But Kolya knew how to stand up for himself. He was an audacious lad, “terribly strong,” as was rumored about him in class, and that soon proved to be the case; he was agile, stubborn, daring, and resourceful. He was a good student, and there was even a rumor at school that he could surpass the teacher Dardanelov at arithmetic and world history. Although the boy looked down on everyone, turning his little nose up, he was still a good friend and didn’t put on airs. He accepted the respect of the other boys at school as his due, but conducted himself cordially. The main thing was, he knew when to stop; he was able to restrain himself as necessary, and in his relations with the authorities, he never overstepped a certain ultimate and secret boundary, beyond which a prank could no longer be tolerated, and would become disorder, rebellion, and lawlessness. However, he was not at all opposed to making mischief at every possible opportunity, just like the worst boy in school, not so much to make trouble, but to be clever, to do something unusual, to “add some spice,” some style, to show off. Above all, he was very vain. He even managed to make his mother submit, behaving toward her in an almost despotic fashion. She gave in to him, oh, she gave in long ago, and her one unendurable thought was that the lad “didn’t love her enough.” It frequently seemed to her that Kolya was “unfeeling” toward her; there were incidents when, dissolving into hysterical tears, she’d berate him for his coldness. The boy disliked this, and the more she demanded a display of sincere feelings from him, the more he deliberately became obstinate. Yet this didn’t happen on purpose, but involuntarily—such was his character. His mother was wrong: he loved her very much; he merely disliked “sentimental slop,” as he referred to it in schoolboy jargon.

His father had left behind a bookcase that contained a number of books; Kolya loved to read and had already read several of them on his own. His mother wasn’t upset by this and was only surprised that sometimes the boy stood next to the bookcase reading some book for hours, instead of going out to play. Thus Kolya managed to read some things that were completely inappropriate to his age.

However, although the boy knew where to draw the line in the mischief he made, lately he’d engaged in some pranks that scared his mother for real—true, they were not immoral in any way, but they were desperate and wayward. On one occasion during the summer, in July, during school vacation, the mother and son happened to be spending a week visiting a distant relative in another district, some fifty miles away; her husband worked at the railway station (the one closest to our town and from which Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov had set off for Moscow a month ago). There Kolya began to examine the railway in detail, studying the particulars, aware that with his new knowledge he’d stand out among his schoolmates when he returned home. Just then there happened to be some boys at the time with whom Kolya made friends; some of them lived at the station, others nearby—there were six or seven of them, all young, between twelve and fifteen, and two of them happened to be from our little town. The boys fooled around together, played tricks, and on the fourth or fifth day of their visit at the station, a most impossible two-ruble bet was made among the foolish boys, namely: Kolya, almost the youngest, and therefore somewhat despised by the older boys, proposed, either out of vanity or shameless impudence, that at night, when the eleven o’clock train came through, he would lie facedown between the rails, and would remain motionless as the train rushed over him at full speed. True, they’d made a preliminary study in which it turned out that it was in fact possible to stretch out and lie flat between the rails, and that the train would pass over without touching the person underneath, but what would it take to lie there? Kolya insisted that he would do it. At first they laughed at him, called him a liar, a show-off, but that only spurred him on. Worst of all, these fifteen-year-old boys looked down their noses at him as a “youngster,” and didn’t want to consider him a friend, which he found unbearably offensive.

So it was decided that evening to proceed about half a mile from the station so that the train, having left the station, would have gathered full speed. The boys assembled. The night was moonless, not just dark, but pitch black. At the arranged hour, Kolya lay down between the rails. Five remaining boys who had taken the bet waited in the bushes on the railway embankment with sinking hearts, in fear, and with remorse. At last the sound of the train leaving the station could be heard in the distance. Two red lights appeared in the darkness, and the approaching monster roared.

“Run, run away from the rails!” the boys shouted to Kolya from the bushes in deadly fear, but it was already too late: the train came rushing up and flew on past. The boys went running over to Kolya: he lay there without moving. They began to shake him, to raise him up. All of a sudden he got up and walked away from the embankment in silence. When he climbed down, he announced that he’d intentionally remained there without moving to frighten them, but the truth was that he’d really lost consciousness, which he himself confessed to his mother later, long afterward. In this way his reputation as a “reckless character” was established forever.

He returned to the station white as a ghost. The next day he fell ill with a slight nervous fever, but he was feeling terribly carefree, happy, and content. The incident didn’t become widely known immediately, but when they returned to town, the news reached our gymnasium and soon made its way up to the administration. Then Kolya’s mother rushed in to implore the school administration on behalf of her son; it all ended when the respected and influential teacher Dardanelov intervened and stood up for the boy; the matter was ignored as if it had never happened.

This Dardanelov was a middle-aged bachelor who for many years had been passionately in love with Mrs. Krasotkina and who had once, about a year ago, most respectfully, with a sinking heart, taken the risk and offered her his hand; but she’d refused him point-blank, considering that if she consented, it would be a betrayal of her son, although Dardanelov, according to certain mysterious signals, even had, perhaps, a certain right to dream that he’d been found not entirely repugnant by the charming but indeed too chaste and tenderhearted widow. Kolya’s crazy prank seemed to have broken the ice, and in exchange for his protection, Dardanelov was given a hint that he might have hope, remote though it was, but Dardanelov himself was a pure and delicate creature, and that was sufficient to make him happy for the time being. He loved the boy, although he considered it humiliating to try to ingratiate himself with him, so in class he treated him severely and demandingly. But Kolya himself kept him at a respectable distance; he did his lessons faultlessly, was second in his class, behaved in a restrained manner with Dardanelov. The entire class believed that Kolya was so knowledgeable about world history that he’d “surpass” even his teacher. And, in fact, Kolya once posed this question to him: “Who founded Troy?” Dardanelov replied in general about movements, migrations, and nations, about the remoteness of the period, and about mythology, but as to the question of who founded Troy, that is, precisely who did it, he was unable to answer, and even considered the question futile and frivolous. Nevertheless, the boys remained convinced that Dardanelov simply didn’t know who founded Troy. Kolya, however, had read about the founding of Troy in Smaragdov, whose world history was among the books in his father’s bookcase. In the end all the boys took an interest in the question of who founded Troy, but Kolya didn’t reveal his secret, and his reputation for knowledge remained unshaken.

After the incident on the railway, a certain change took place in Kolya’s relationship to his mother. When Anna Fyodorovna (the widow Krasotkina) found out about her son’s exploit, she almost lost her mind from terror. She began to suffer from terrible attacks of hysteria, lasting for several days with brief respites, such that Kolya, seriously frightened at last, gave her his word of honor that he’d never repeat such a prank. He swore on his knees before the icon, and swore by his father’s memory, as Mrs. Krasotkina herself had demanded; then the “manly” Kolya burst into tears like a six-year-old child, from “emotions,” and all that day the mother and son would periodically rush to embrace each other and sob uncontrollably. The next day Kolya woke up “unemotional” as before, but he became more taciturn, more modest, stricter, and more pensive.

To be sure, a month and a half later Kolya wound up playing another prank, and his name even became known to our local justice of the peace, but this prank was entirely different, even amusing and ridiculous; it turns out that he didn’t pull it off himself, but was merely involved in it. But more about that later. His mother continued to tremble and suffer, while Dardanelov’s hopes grew as her anxieties increased. It must be stated that Kolya understood and guessed what was in Dardanelov’s heart and, naturally, despised him for his “feelings”; previously he’d lacked tactfulness and had hinted to his mother that he’d surmised what Dardanelov was hoping for. But after the incident on the railway, he changed his attitude on this score: he didn’t allow himself to drop any hints, even the most remote, and he began to speak more respectfully about the teacher in his mother’s presence, which the sensitive Anna Fyodorovna recognized at once and was deeply grateful for; but at the slightest, most casual remark about Dardanelov, even by some incidental guest, if Kolya was present to hear it, she’d suddenly blush in shame like a rose. During these moments, Kolya would either stare sullenly out the window, search for holes in his boots, or shout vehemently for Perezvon,[2] a shaggy, rather large, mangy dog that he’d suddenly acquired a month before, dragged into his house, and kept inside for some reason, without showing him to any of his schoolmates. He tyrannized terribly over the dog, taught him all sorts of tricks and artifices, and reduced the poor dog to the point where he would howl when the boy wasn’t there, when he’d gone off to school; and when he returned, the dog would whine in delight, race around as if he were half crazy, beg him, throw himself down on the floor pretending to be dead, so on and so forth; in a word, he would demonstrate all the tricks he’d been taught, not on command, but simply from the ardor of his eager and grateful heart.

By the way: I forgot to mention that Kolya Krasotkin is already known to the reader as the same boy stabbed in the thigh with a penknife by the son of the retired captain Snegiryov; Ilyusha had been standing up for his father when the schoolboys teased him and called him a “loofah.”

1 The phrase is quoted from Nikolai Nekrasov’s poem “Before the Rain” (1846).

2 The dog’s name means “ringing” or “peal” of bells.

II

THE KIDS

And so, on that frosty, cold November morning the boy Kolya Krasotkin was sitting at home. It was Sunday and there were no classes. But it was eleven o’clock and he absolutely had to go out “on some very important business”; meanwhile, he was all alone in the house and definitely its guardian. It happened that all of its elder residents had gone out on some unusual and urgent circumstance. In the house of the widow Krasotkina, across the passage from the apartment she occupied, there was another small apartment consisting of two little rooms rented to a doctor’s wife with two small children. She was the same age as Anna Fyodorovna, and her good friend; the doctor himself had gone away about a year ago, first to Orenburg and then to Tashkent;[1] half a year had passed since there had been any word from him, so that if it weren’t for the friendship with Mrs. Krasotkina, which had somewhat alleviated the grief felt by the abandoned woman, she really would’ve dissolved into tears. And now it happened that, adding to the blows of fate, the previous night, Saturday going on Sunday, Katerina, the single servant in the household, suddenly, and completely unexpectedly for her mistress, declared that she’d give birth to a baby by the following morning. It seemed almost a miracle that no one had noticed this possibility earlier. The astonished doctor’s wife decided, while there was still time, to move Katerina into an establishment in town run by an elderly midwife where just such emergencies were dealt with. Since she valued this servant very highly, she proceeded immediately with her plan, and remained there to take care of her. By morning, for some reason, it became necessary to get all the personal sympathy and assistance of Mrs. Krasotkina, who, in this case, was able to ask for something from someone and provide certain help.

Thus, both ladies were absent; Mrs. Krasotkina’s servant, Agafya, had gone out to the market, and thus Kolya was left for a while to protect and stand guard over the “kids,” that is, the doctor’s wife’s little boy and girl, who’d been left all alone. Kolya was not afraid to safeguard the household; besides, the dog Perezvon was with him; he’d been ordered to lie still, “without moving,” under the bench in the hall; every time Kolya happened to walk through the hall on his way to one of the rooms, the dog raised his head and gave two little ingratiating wags of his tail against the floor, but alas, the whistle to release him wasn’t forthcoming. Kolya glared sternly at the unfortunate dog, and the dog continued to lie still in obedient fear.

But if one thing concerned Kolya, it was the “kids.” Naturally, he regarded Katerina’s unfortunate adventure with the utmost scorn, but he loved the orphaned kids very much and had already brought them a children’s book. Nastya, the older girl, who was already eight, knew how to read, and the younger one, a seven-year-old boy named Kostya, loved to listen when Nastya read. It goes without saying that Krasotkin could have provided more amusing entertainment, that is, he could have placed them side by side and played soldiers with them or hide-and-seek throughout the house. He had done so before and wasn’t too proud to do it again, so that even at school a rumor had once spread that Krasotkin wasn’t above playing “horsies” with his little lodgers, prancing around with his head to one side like a racehorse. But Krasotkin proudly countered this accusation, saying that to play “horsies” with his peers, that is, thirteen-year-olds, would indeed be disgraceful in “this day and age”; but that he was doing it for the “kids” because he loved them, and no one had a right to make him account for his feelings. In return, the “kids” adored him.

But on this occasion he was in no mood for games. He had one very important item of business to attend to, something that was even a bit of a mystery. Meanwhile, time passed, and Agafya, with whom he could have left the children, had still failed to return from the market. Several times he crossed the passage, opened the door to the doctor’s wife’s apartment, and anxiously looked in on the “kids,” who, in line with his instructions, were sitting over a book, and each time he opened the door, they silently smiled broadly at him, waiting for him to enter and do something splendid and amusing. But Kolya was in a state of anxiety and didn’t go in.

At last it was eleven o’clock and he decided once and for all that if that “damned” Agafya wasn’t back in ten minutes, he’d leave the house, without waiting for her arrival—after, of course making the “kids” promise to be brave while he was away, not to get into any mischief, and not to cry from fear. With these thoughts in mind, he got dressed in his padded winter coat with a sealskin collar, tossed his sack over his shoulder, and, in spite of his mother’s repeated entreaties that in “such cold weather” he should always wear his galoshes, he glanced at them with contempt as he crossed the passage, and went out wearing only his boots. Perezvon, seeing him in his outdoor clothes, began wagging his tail forcefully against the floor, nervously shaking his whole body, and even emitting a plaintive whine; but Kolya, noticing his dog’s keen excitement, concluded that it violated his discipline, and kept him under the bench for another minute; after opening the door into the hall, he finally whistled to him. The dog leapt up like a madman and began jumping up and down in front of him in ecstasy.

Crossing the passage, he opened the door to check on the “kids.” They were both sitting at the table as before, but they were no longer reading; instead they were arguing heatedly about something. These children argued frequently about various inflammatory aspects of their life; Nastya, as the older child, always seemed to get her way. Kostya, if he didn’t agree with her, almost always went to call on Kolya Krasotkin, and Kolya’s decision was always regarded by both sides as the final verdict. This time their argument aroused Krasotkin’s interest and he paused in the doorway to listen. The children saw that he was listening and continued their squabble with even more fervor.

“Never, never will I believe,” Nastya muttered passionately, “that midwives find little babies in the garden, amid rows of cabbages. Now it’s winter, there aren’t any rows, and the old woman couldn’t have brought Katerina a daughter.”

“Whew!” Kolya whistled to himself.

“Or else it’s like this: they bring babies from somewhere, but only to those who’re married.”

Kostya looked intently at Nastya, listened, and pondered deeply.

“Nastya, you’re such a fool,” he said at last, decisively and unemotionally. “What sort of little baby can Katerina have if she’s not married?”

Nastya got terribly excited.

“You don’t understand a thing,” she blurted out irritably. “Maybe she had a husband, but he’s now in prison, and that’s how she gave birth.”

“But is her husband really in prison?” hopeful Kostya inquired solemnly.

“Or else, here’s how it is,” Nastya interrupted impulsively, having abandoned and forgotten her first hypothesis. “You’re right that she doesn’t have a husband, but she wants to get married; she began thinking about how to do it, she thought and thought, and then she wound up not with a husband, but a little child.”

“Well, perhaps,” agreed Kostya, completely defeated. “But you didn’t say that before, so how am I supposed to know?”

“Well, kids,” said Kolya, entering the room where they were, “you’re a dangerous lot, I see!”

“Is Perezvon with you?” Kostya asked with a grin; he began snapping his fingers and calling the dog.

“Kids, I’m in trouble,” began Krasotkin solemnly, “and you must help me. Agafya, of course, broke her leg: that’s why she still hasn’t made an appearance, that’s for sure. But I have to go out. Will you let me go or not?”

The children exchanged anxious glances with each other, and their smiling faces began to express unease. They still didn’t quite understand what was being asked of them.

“You’re not going to get into any mischief while I’m gone? You won’t climb on the cupboard and break your legs? And you won’t start crying because you’ve been left alone?”

The children’s faces expressed deep anguish.

“In return I can show you a little something, a copper cannon that can fire real gunpowder.”

The children’s faces brightened instantly.

“Show it to us,” Kostya said, beaming all over.

Krasotkin put his hand in his sack, took out a small bronze cannon, and put it down on the table.

“Show it to us, show it to us! Look, it’s on wheels,” Kostya said, and he rolled the cannon across the table. “And it can fire. It can be loaded with shot and fired.”

“And will it kill?”

“It’ll kill everyone, it only has to be armed,” Krasotkin answered, and he explained where to load the powder, where to roll in the shot, showed them the touchhole, and told them about the recoil. The children listened with great interest. Their imagination was especially struck by the idea of the recoil.

“Do you have any powder?” inquired Nastya.

“I do.”

“Show us the powder, too,” she entreated with a bright smile.

Krasotkin once again burrowed in his sack, then pulled out a small container in which there really was a little bit of gunpowder and a few pellets of shot wrapped in a piece of paper. He even uncorked the container and poured a little bit of gunpowder into his hand.

“There, be careful there’s no fire close by, or else it would explode and kill us all,” Krasotkin warned them, for effect.

The children examined the powder with deferential dread that merely intensified their pleasure. But Kostya liked the shot most of all.

“And does the shot burn?” he asked.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Give me a little bit,” he said in an imploring voice.

“I’ll give you some: here, take this, but don’t show it to your mother until I return, or else she’ll think it’s powder and may die of fright or lay into you.”

“Mama never whips us with birch rods,” Nastya inserted at once.

“I know; I only said that for the beauty of the style. And you should never deceive your mother; but this time—it’s only until I come back. And so, kids, can I leave or not? You won’t be scared and cry when I’m gone?”

“We . . . will . . . cry,” drawled Kostya, already getting ready to cry.

“We will, absolutely will!” Nastya said with frightened alacrity.

“Oh, children, children, how dangerous are your years![2] There’s nothing to be done, my little fledglings; I’ll have to stay with you I don’t know for how long. But time is passing, it really is!”

“Order Perezvon to pretend to be dead,” asked Kostya.

“There’s nothing else to be done; we’ll have to resort to Perezvon. Ici, Perezvon!”[3] Kolya called the dog, and he began performing all his tricks. He was a shaggy dog, an ordinary mongrel, with some sort of blue-gray fur. He was blind in his right eye, and his left ear was torn. He squealed and jumped, stood up and begged, walked on his hind legs, rolled over on his back, stuck all four legs in the air, and lay there without moving like a dead dog. During this last trick the door opened and Agafya, Mrs. Krasotkina’s overweight maid, a pockmarked woman of about forty, appeared on the threshold, having returned from the market with a bag of provisions in her hand. She stood there, balancing the bag, and began watching the dog. Kolya, in spite of the fact that he’d been waiting for her return, didn’t interrupt the performance; he let Perezvon play dead for some time, and finally whistled to him: the dog leapt up and began jumping for joy, having done his duty.

“Just look at that dog!” Agafya said approvingly.

“And you, you lowly female, why are you so late?” Krasotkin asked harshly.

“Female sex, you little runt!”

“Runt?”

“Yes, runt. Why do you care if I’m late? That means I had something to do,” muttered Agafya, fussing near the stove without a trace of indignation or anger in her voice; on the contrary, she seemed to be very pleased, as if enjoying the chance to make fun of the cheerful young master.

“Listen, you frivolous old woman,” Krasotkin began, getting up from the sofa, “can you swear to me by all that’s sacred in the world, and even more than that, that you’ll diligently watch over these kids in my absence? I’m going out.”

“Why do I have to swear?” laughed Agafya. “I’ll watch over them anyway.”

“No, you must swear on your eternal salvation. Otherwise I won’t go.”

“So don’t go. What do I care? It’s cold outside. Stay home.”

“Kids,” Kolya said, turning to the children. “This woman will stay with you until my return or until your mother comes back, because she was due home a long time ago. In addition, she’ll give you some lunch. Will you give them something to eat, Agafya?”

“That’s possible.”

“Good-bye, fledglings, I’m leaving and my heart’s at peace. And you, granny,” he said in a low, imposing voice as he passed her, “I hope you won’t spout your usual female foolishness about Katerina; spare their young age. Ici, Perezvon!”

“Well, good riddance to you,” Agafya snapped at him, now angry. “You funny boy! You deserve a whipping for those words, that’s what!”

1 Orenburg is a city in southwest Russia, near the border with Kazakhstan. Tashkent is the capital and largest city of Uzbekistan.

2 A quotation from the animal fable “The Cat, the Rooster, and the Young Mouse” (1802), as rendered by I. I. Dmitriev (1760–1837). It is a Russian translation of one of Aesop’s fables.

3 “Come here!” (Fr.).

III

THE SCHOOLBOY

But Kolya was no longer listening to her. He was finally able to depart. As he left the gates, he looked around, shrugged his shoulders, and muttered, “It’s freezing!” He headed for the street and then turned right, toward the market square. When he reached the next-to-last house before the square, he stopped at the gate, took a whistle out of his pocket, and blew it with all his might, as if giving an agreed-on signal. He had to wait less than a minute before a rosy-cheeked boy of about eleven emerged, also dressed in a warm, clean, even fashionable little coat. This was the boy Smurov, from the preparatory class (Kolya was two grades ahead of him), the son of a wealthy civil servant; it seemed he had been forbidden by his parents to associate with Krasotkin, since he was a well-known, inveterate prankster; therefore Smurov, obviously, had slipped out on the sly. This lad, if the reader hasn’t forgotten, was one of the group of schoolboys who, two months ago, had been throwing stones across the ditch at Ilyusha and who had first told Alyosha Karamazov about him.

“I’ve been waiting for you one whole hour, Krasotkin,” Smurov said with a resolute look, and the boys headed off to the square.

“I’m late,” replied Krasotkin. “There were certain circumstances. You won’t be spanked for socializing with me?”

“Well, really! They don’t spank me. Is Perezvon with you?”

“He is!”

“Are you taking him there, too?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Ah, if only it was Zhuchka!”[1]

“That’s impossible. Zhuchka doesn’t exist. Zhuchka disappeared into the darkness of obscurity.”

“But couldn’t we do this,” Smurov said and suddenly stood still. “Ilyusha says that Zhuchka was also shaggy and the same gray, smoky color like Perezvon. Can’t we say that this dog is really Zhuchka and maybe he’ll believe us?”

“Listen, schoolboy, you must spurn lies, that’s the first thing; even if it’s for a good reason, that’s the second thing. Above all, I hope you haven’t said anything there about my coming.”

“God forbid; after all, I understand. But Perezvon won’t console him,” Smurov said with a sigh. “You know his father, the captain, the loofah, told us that he was bringing him a new puppy today, a real mastiff, with a black nose; he thinks that it’ll console Ilyusha, but I don’t think so.”

“And how’s Ilyusha doing?”

“Not well, not well at all! I think he has consumption. He’s completely conscious, but his breathing—his breathing is very bad. The other day he asked to put his boots on so he could be led around the room; he started to walk but then almost fell. ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘I told you, Papa, that I had second-rate boots; I could never walk in them very well.’ He thought that he fell because of his boots, but he’s simply too weak. He won’t live out the week. Herzenshtube visits him. Now they’re rich again: they have plenty of money.”

“They’re rascals.”

“Who is?”

“Doctors, and all medical quacks, speaking generally, and, of course, individually. I reject medicine. It’s a useless institution. However, I’ll investigate all of it. But what sort of sentimentality have you organized? I hear you visit him with your entire class?”

“Not everyone, but about ten of us go to see him every day. It’s all right.”

“I’m surprised at the role Aleksey Fyodorovich Karamazov plays in all of this: his brother will be tried for such a serious crime tomorrow or the day after, yet he has so much time for sentimentality with schoolboys.”

“There’s no sentimentality involved here. You yourself are going over there to make peace with Ilyusha.”

“To make peace? That’s a ridiculous expression. However, I don’t allow anyone to analyze my actions.”

“Ilyusha will be so glad to see you! He never imagined that you’d come. Why, why did it take you so long?” Smurov exclaimed suddenly with passion.

“Dear boy, that’s my business, not yours. I’m going all on my own, because that’s what I want to do, while you were all dragged over there by Aleksey Karamazov—that’s the difference. And how do you know? I may not be going to make peace with him at all. It’s a ridiculous expression.”

“It’s not Karamazov, not him at all. It’s simply that our lads started going there on their own—at first, of course, with Karamazov. There’s been nothing of that kind, no foolishness at all. At first, just one, then another. The father was terribly glad to see us. You know he’ll simply go mad if Ilyusha dies. He understands that the boy will die. He’s so happy we made peace with Ilyusha. Ilyusha was asking about you, but didn’t say anything more. He asks and then falls silent. His father will either go mad or hang himself. Even before this, he was behaving like a madman. You know, he’s a noble man and that was all a mistake. It’s all the fault of that patricide, who beat him up then.”

“All the same, Karamazov remains a mystery to me. I could’ve made his acquaintance a long time ago, but in certain circumstances I prefer to retain my pride. Besides I formed a certain opinion about him, which I need to verify and clarify.”

Kolya fell into an imposing silence; Smurov did, too. Smurov, of course, worshipped Kolya Krasotkin, and didn’t dare compare himself to him. Now, however, he was terribly curious because Kolya was explaining that he was “going all on his own” to see Ilyusha, and he felt that there was certainly some mystery involved in the fact that Kolya had decided to go now, precisely today. They walked through the market square, on which this time there were many loaded carts from the country and a lot of live domestic birds. The market women in their booths were selling bagels, thread, and so forth. Such Sunday gatherings are naïvely called “fairs,” and they’re held frequently during the year. Perezvon was running in a most bouncy mood, finding things to sniff at first on one side, then the other. When he encountered other dogs, they smelled each other with unusual interest, all done according to rules of canine etiquette.

“I like to observe realism, Smurov,” Kolya suddenly began. “Have you ever noticed how dogs meet and sniff each other? There seems to be some general law of nature involved.”

“Yes, it’s somehow comical.”

“No, it’s not comical, that’s incorrect. In nature nothing is comical, no matter how it seems to man with all his prejudices. If dogs could reason and criticize, no doubt they’d find much that was comical, if not far more, in social relations among people, their masters—much more. I repeat this because I firmly believe that we possess far more comical aspects. This is Rakitin’s idea, a magnificent one. I’m a socialist, Smurov.”

“What’s a socialist?” asked Smurov.

“That’s when all people are equal, when property is owned in common, there are no marriages, whereas religion and all laws are whatever you like best, and all the rest of it. You’re not old enough for this yet. But it’s cold.”

“Yes. It’s twelve degrees of frost. Father just checked the thermometer.”

“Have you noticed, Smurov, that in the middle of winter, if there are twelve or even fifteen degrees of frost, it doesn’t seem as cold as it does now, at the beginning of winter, when there’s suddenly a frost of twelve degrees and there’s still very little snow. It means that we still haven’t gotten used to it. Everything’s habit with people, everything, even in official and political relations. Habit’s the prime mover. Look, what a funny-looking peasant.”

Kolya pointed to a tall peasant with a kind expression wearing a sheepskin coat; he was standing next to his wagon, clapping his hands together in their mittens because of the cold. His long fair beard was covered with hoarfrost.

“That peasant’s beard has frozen!” Kolya shouted in a loud, insulting voice as they went past him.

“Many beards are frozen now,” replied the peasant calmly and pointedly.

“Don’t provoke him,” said Smurov.

“It’s nothing; he won’t get angry; he’s a good fellow. Good-bye, Matvey.”

“Good-bye.”

“Are you called Matvey?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know?”

“No. I just guessed.”

“You don’t say so. You’re a schoolboy, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you ever get beaten?”

“Not often, but it happens.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Of course, it does.”

“Hey! That’s life!” the peasant said with a sigh from the bottom of his heart.

“Good-bye, Matvey.”

“Good-bye. You’re a nice boy, that’s what.”

The boys carried on.

“That’s a good peasant,” Kolya said to Smurov. “I love to converse with the common people and I’m always glad to do them justice.”

“Why did you lie to him and tell him that we were beaten?” asked Smurov.

“I said that to comfort him.”

“How?”

“You see, Smurov, I don’t like it when someone who doesn’t understand the first time asks the same thing again. Some things can’t be explained. The peasant thinks that schoolboys are beaten and that must be so: what sort of schoolboy would I be if I didn’t get beaten? If I suddenly tell him that we don’t get beaten, he’d be disappointed. However, you don’t understand this. One has to know how to converse with the common people.”

“But don’t provoke him, please, or else there’ll be trouble like there was with the goose.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Don’t laugh, Kolya—I swear to God, I’m afraid. My father will be furious. I’m strictly forbidden to be friends with you.”

“Don’t worry: this time nothing will happen. Hello, Natasha,” he shouted to one of the market women in a booth.

“What do you mean, ‘Natasha’? My name is Marya,” the woman, who was by no means old, replied loudly.

“It’s fine that it’s Marya. Good-bye.”

“Oh, you, pint-sized little rogue!

“I don’t have time for you; you’ll tell me next Sunday.” Kolya waved her away, as if she were the one who’d pestered him, and not the other way around.

“What will I tell you next Sunday? You’re the one who latched onto me, you little mischief-maker!” Marya went on anyhow, shouting back. “You deserve a spanking, that’s what: you’re a well-known pest, that’s what!”

Among the other women who were selling things on trays next to Marya came a burst of laughter, and then suddenly, from under the arcade of shops, for no reason at all, an irritated man jumped out; he looked like a shop clerk, but he wasn’t local; he came from elsewhere. He was wearing a long blue caftan and a cap with a brim; he was still young, with dark brown curls and a long, pale, pockmarked face. He was in a state of stupid agitation and immediately began to threaten Kolya with his fists.

“I know you,” he cried in annoyance. “I know you!”

Kolya looked at him intently. He couldn’t recall having had some sort of tiff with this man. But he’d engaged in so many quarrels on the street that he couldn’t remember them all.

“Do you know me?” Kolya asked sarcastically

“Yes, I do! I know you!” the craftsman kept repeating like a fool.

“Good for you! I have no time for you. Good-bye!”

“What mischief are you up to?” cried the craftsman. “Are you up to no good again? I know you! What mischief are you making?”

“That’s none of your business, friend, if I’m making mischief,” Kolya said, still staring at him.

“What do you mean, not my business?”

“Just that, not your business.”

“Whose is it? Then whose? Well, whose is it?

“Well, friend, it’s Trifon Nikitich’s business, and not yours.”

“What Trifon Nikitich?” the young man said, staring at Kolya in stupid surprise, but still as angry as before. Kolya took his measure with his gaze.

“Have you been to the Church of the Ascension?” Kolya suddenly asked him sternly and insistently.

“To what Church of the Ascension? Why? No, I haven’t been,” said the young man, somewhat taken back.

“Do you know Sabaneyev?” Kolya continued, even more sternly and insistently.

“What Sabaneyev? No, I don’t.”

“Well, may the devil take them after all!” Kolya suddenly snapped out; turning sharply to the right, he quickly went on his way, as if scorning further conversation with such an idiot, who didn’t even know Sabaneyev.

“Hey, wait! What Sabaneyev?” The young man came to his senses and began getting upset all over again. “What was he talking about?” he asked, suddenly turning to the market women, looking foolishly at them.

The women burst out laughing.

“What a tricky lad!” said one of them.

“What Sabaneyev was he talking about?” the young man kept repeating furiously, waving his right arm.

“It must be the Sabaneyev who worked for the Kuzmichovs, that’s who,” one of the women suddenly speculated.

The young man stared at her intently.

“Kuz-mi-chov,” said another woman. “What do you mean, he’s Trifon? He’s Kuzma, and not Trifon, and the boy called him Trifon Nikitich—therefore it’s not him.”

“But you see, his name’s not Trifon, nor is it Sabaneyev. It’s Chizhov,” chimed in a third woman, who’d been quiet up to now but had been listening carefully. “Chizhov, Aleksey Ivanovich.”

“That’s who it is: it’s Chizhov,” a fourth woman confirmed resolutely.

The overwhelmed young man looked first at one and then at the other.

“But why did he ask? Why did he ask, good people?” he cried, almost in despair. “Do you know Sabaneyev? The devil only knows who this Sabaneyev is!”

“You’re a slow-witted fellow; I’m telling you, it’s not Sabaneyev, it’s Chizhov, Aleksey Ivanovich Chizhov, that’s who!” one woman yelled to him imposingly.

“What Chizhov? Well, which one? Tell me, if you know.”

“He’s a tall, snot-nosed person who used to sit here in the market last summer.”

“The devil knows what I need your Chizhov for, good people, huh?”

“What do you need him for?”

“Who knows what you need him for,” put in another. “You yourself should know, if you’re making such a racket. He was talking to you, not to us, you foolish man. Or don’t you really know him?”

“Who?”

“Chizhov.”

“May the devil take him, Chizhov and you combined! I’ll give him a beating, that’s what! He was making fun of me!”

“You’ll give Chizhov a beating? Or will he give you one? You’re a fool, that’s what!”

“Not Chizhov, not Chizhov; you’re a wicked woman, spiteful; I’ll give that boy a beating, that’s what! Bring him here, over here, he was making fun of me!”

The women were guffawing. But by now Kolya was a long way off, with a triumphant expression on his face. Smurov walked next to him, glancing back at the boisterous group they’d left behind. He was also feeling very cheerful, although he was still worried about getting into some sort of trouble in Kolya’s company.

“What Sabaneyev were you asking him about?” he asked Kolya, anticipating his answer.

“How do I know? Now they’ll be arguing until evening. I love to stir up fools in all classes of society. There’s another lout over there, that peasant there. You know, they say, ‘There’s no one dumber than a dumb Frenchman,’ but a Russian face gives itself away. Well, isn’t it written on that peasant’s face that he’s a fool?”

“Leave him alone, Kolya, let’s keep going.”

“Not for anything; I’m just getting started. Hey, greetings, peasant!”

The hefty peasant, going by slowly, probably already drunk, with a plain, round face and a beard streaked with gray, raised his head and looked at the boy.

“Well, greetings, if you’re not joking,” he replied unhurriedly.

“And if I am?” Kolya asked with a laugh.

“If you are, then go ahead, and good for you. It’s all right; you can. You can always make jokes.”

“I’m sorry, friend, I was joking.”

“May God forgive you.”

“But what about you? Do you forgive me?”

“Yes, I do. Keep going.”

“I see you’re a clever peasant.”

“Cleverer than you,” replied the peasant unexpectedly and as impressively as before.

“Hardly,” said Kolya, somewhat taken aback.

“It’s the truth.”

“Perhaps it is.”

“It is, friend.”

“Good-bye, peasant.”

“Good-bye.”

“There are all sorts of peasants,” Kolya remarked to Smurov after a brief silence. “How could I know that I’d run into a clever one? I’m always ready to acknowledge intelligence in the peasant class.”

In the distance the cathedral clock struck half past eleven. The boys began to hurry, and they covered the rather long way to the house of the retired captain Snegiryov quickly and almost without talking. About twenty paces from the house Kolya stopped and ordered Smurov to go ahead and call Karamazov out.

“It’s necessary to sniff around first,” he remarked to Smurov.

“Why call him,” Smurov began to object. “Just go in; they’ll be terribly glad to see you. Why make his acquaintance out here in the cold?”

“I know very well why I want to make his acquaintance out here in the cold,” Kolya replied despotically (he loved to behave this way with these “little ones”). And Smurov ran ahead to carry out his order.

1 The dog’s name means “little bug” (diminutive of zhuk).

IV

ZHUCHKA

Kolya was leaning against the fence with a dignified expression on his face, waiting for Alyosha. Yes, he’d been wanting to meet him for a long time. He’d heard a lot about him from the other boys but up to now had always maintained an outward air of contemptuous indifference when his name was mentioned; he’d even “criticized” Alyosha after what he’d heard from them. But to himself he very, very much desired to make his acquaintance: there was something sympathetic and attractive in all the accounts he’d heard about him. Thus, the present moment was important; in the first place, he mustn’t disgrace himself and must demonstrate his independence: “Or else he might think I’m only thirteen years old and take me for a boy like the others. And just what are those boys to him? I’ll ask him when I get to know him. However, it’s too bad I’m so short. Tuzikov’s younger than I am, yet he’s half a head taller. However, I have a clever face; I’m not handsome, my face is gross, but I have an intelligent face. Also, I mustn’t talk too much, or else we’ll start off with embraces right away; maybe he’ll think. . . . Phooey, what a horrible thing if that’s what he comes to think!”

Thus did Kolya worry, trying his best to assume a most self-sufficient air. The main thing that tormented him was his short stature, not his “gross” face but his height. Last year, in a corner of one room at home, he had drawn a mark with a pencil, against which he measured himself; since then, every two months, he’d anxiously measure: how much had he managed to grow? Alas, he was growing very little, and at times that would drive him almost into despair.

As for his face, it wasn’t “gross” at all; on the contrary, it was rather pleasant, with fair, pale skin and freckles. His small, gray, but lively eyes had an animated look and frequently lit up with feeling. His cheekbones were somewhat broad, his lips small, not very thick, but very red; his nose was small and definitely turned up: “A regular pug nose, no doubt about it!” Kolya would mutter to himself when he looked in the mirror, and he’d always walk away from the mirror in indignation. “Maybe I really don’t have a clever face?” he thought sometimes, doubting even that fact. However, one mustn’t think he was constantly preoccupied with worries about his face and height. On the contrary, no matter how bitter the moments in front of the mirror, he quickly forgot about them, even for a long time, and “committed himself to ideas and to real life,” as he himself described his own pursuits.

Alyosha appeared soon and hastened over to Kolya; before he even reached him, Kolya could see that Alyosha looked joyful. “Is he really so glad to meet me?” Kolya wondered with pleasure. We’ll note here, by the way, that Alyosha had changed a great deal since we left him: he’d abandoned his cassock and now wore a well-cut suit and a soft round hat, and his hair had been cut short. All this was very becoming to him, and he looked like a very handsome young man. His charming face always had a cheerful expression, but now this cheerfulness was somehow gentle and serene. To Kolya’s astonishment, Alyosha came out to meet him in what he’d been wearing inside the room, without his coat; clearly he’d hurried out. He extended his hand to Kolya at once.

“Here you are at last; we’ve all been waiting for you.”

“There were circumstances, which you shall learn about in a minute. In any case, I’m glad to make your acquaintance. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity for a long time and have heard so much about you,” Kolya muttered, almost breathless.

“We should’ve met in any case; I’ve heard a great deal about you, too. But you’ve come here too late.”

“Tell me, how are things?”

“Ilyusha’s very bad; he’ll certainly die.”

“What are you saying? You must agree that medicine is base, Karamazov,” Kolya cried passionately.

“Ilyusha’s mentioned you frequently, very frequently, even in his sleep, you know, in his delirium. It’s clear you were previously very, very dear to him . . . up until that incident . . . with the penknife. There’s also another reason. . . . Tell me, is this your dog?”

“Yes, Perezvon.”

“But not Zhuchka?” Alyosha asked, looking Kolya sadly in the eye. “Is she lost forever?”

“I know that you all want it to be Zhuchka; I’ve heard all about it,” Kolya said with a mysterious grin. “Listen, Karamazov, I’ll explain the whole thing to you; the main reason I came and called you out was so I could explain ahead of time the whole unexpected turn of events before we go in,” he went on with animation. “You see, Karamazov, in the spring Ilyusha entered the preparatory class. Well, it’s widely known what that is: it’s little boys, young kids. They began to tease him immediately. I was two grades above, and naturally, I observed it from a distance, from the side. I saw a weak little boy who didn’t ever submit; he even fought with them; he was proud, with sparkling eyes. I love kids like that. And they teased him all the more. Above all, he wore shabby clothes; his trousers were much too short, and his boots had holes. They also went after him because of that. They would humiliate him. No, I don’t like that at all; I stepped in and turned up the heat on them. I beat them up, but they just adore me—do you know that, Karamazov?” Kolya bragged effusively.

“I love kids in general. I have two nestlings on my hands at home; they even detained me today. Then the schoolboys stopped beating Ilyusha up and I took him under my wing. I saw that he was a proud lad, I tell you that; he was very proud, but ended up slavishly submitting to me, carrying out my slightest orders; he listened to me as if I were a god, trying to imitate me. In the breaks between classes he used to come running to see me and we’d go out together. Sundays, too. The boys in the gymnasium make fun when an older boy associates with a younger one, but that’s just prejudice. Such was my desire and basta,[1] isn’t that right? I was teaching him, developing him. Tell me, why can’t I develop him if I feel like it? Well, Karamazov, you’ve taken up with all these fledglings; that means you want to influence the younger generation, develop them, make yourself useful. And I confess that it’s this trait in your character, which I heard about, that attracted me to you more than anything.

“But, to the matter at hand: I’ve observed that there’s some sensitivity, some sentimentality developing in the lad; but, you know, I’ve been totally opposed to such sloppy tenderness, from the day of my birth. In addition, there are contradictions within him: he’s proud, but slavishly devoted to me—slavishly, but then suddenly, his little eyes flash and he doesn’t want to agree with me; he argues and gets furious. Sometimes I’d voice different ideas: it’s not that he disagrees with them, but I see that he’s simply rebelling against me, because I answer his tenderness with callousness. To toughen him, the more tender he became, the more callous I became, intentionally so; that was my conviction. I had in mind to even his character, to whip him into shape, to make a man of him . . . well, besides . . . I’m sure you understood me before I uttered a word. Suddenly I noticed that for a day, two days, three days in a row, he was feeling downcast and dejected, not because of my callousness, but because of something else, something stronger, more important. I wondered, what sort of tragedy is this? I confronted him and found out what it was: in some way he’d befriended Smerdyakov, the lackey of your late father (who, at the time, was still alive), and he, the damn fool, had taught Ilyusha a nasty trick, that is, a brutal trick, a mean trick: to take a hunk of soft bread, and to insert a pin into it, and to toss it to some dogs in the courtyard; they’re so hungry, they’ll swallow any food without chewing, and he’d watch what happened. So they prepared a piece of bread like that and threw it to that shaggy dog Zhuchka, the subject of this incident. She was one of the courtyard dogs; no one fed her and she barked all day long. (Do you like that stupid barking, Karamazov? I can’t stand it.) So she rushed at the bread, swallowed it, and began whining, running in circles; then she ran away, running and howling, and finally disappeared—this is how Ilyusha himself described the scene. He confessed to me, crying and sobbing, embraced me, and was shaking: ‘The dog was running and howling, running and howling,’ he kept repeating, struck by that scene. Well, I saw his pangs of conscience. I took it seriously. I intended to teach him a lesson for this and other things, so I confess that I misled him, I pretended to be indignant. ‘You’ve done a nasty thing; you’re a scoundrel; of course I won’t tell on you, but for now I’m breaking off relations with you. I’ll think it over and will let you know through Smurov’—the same lad who just came with me and who’s ready to do anything for me—‘if I will resume relations with you in the future, or if I will forsake you forever, as a scoundrel.’ This upset him greatly. I admit that perhaps I treated him too severely, but what’s to be done? That was my decision at the time. The next day I sent word to him through Smurov that ‘I wasn’t talking to him’ anymore; that’s what we call it when two friends refuse to have anything more to do with each other. The truth is that I intended to give him the silent treatment only for a few days, and then, seeing his remorse, I’d extend my hand to him in friendship once again. This was my firm intention. But what do you think happened? He heard Smurov’s message and, all of a sudden, his eyes flashed. ‘Tell him,’ he cried, ‘tell Krasotkin from me that from now on I’ll feed all the dogs bread with pins, all of them!’ I decided: ‘I think he’d developed a little free spirit of his own. We have to smoke it out of him.’ So I began to treat him with maximum contempt, turn away from him at every encounter, or smile sarcastically.

“Then all of a sudden that incident with his father occurred, you remember, the ‘loofah’? You must understand that he was already fairly distraught and easy to provoke. The other boys, seeing that I’d forsaken him, pounced on him and teased him: ‘Loofah, loofah.’ That’s when his squabbles with them began, which I now regret terribly, because it seems they gave him a bad beating. Once after classes had ended he threw himself at all of them in the courtyard, and I stood there about ten paces away and watched. I swear that I don’t remember laughing at the time; on the contrary, I felt very, very sorry for him; a minute later, I’d have interfered to defend him. But he suddenly met my glance: I don’t know what he thought, but he grabbed his penknife out of his pocket, threw himself at me, and stabbed my right thigh. I didn’t move: I don’t mind confessing that I’m sometimes brave, Karamazov; I merely looked at him with contempt, as if saying with my glance: ‘If you want to do it again in return for all my friendship, I’m at your disposal.’ But he didn’t stab me again; he couldn’t stand it, got scared, threw down the knife, burst into tears, and ran away. It goes without saying that I didn’t squeal on him and made everyone else keep silent, so that word wouldn’t reach the authorities; I didn’t even tell my mother until the wound had healed; besides, the wound was only a little scratch. Then the same day I heard that he was throwing stones and bit your finger—you understand what sort of state he was in! But it can’t be helped; I behaved foolishly. When he fell ill, I didn’t go to forgive him, that is, to make peace with him; now I regret it. But I had special reasons. So that’s the whole story . . . it seems I did behave foolishly.”

“Ah, what a pity,” cried Alyosha with feeling, “that I didn’t know before about this relationship between you, or I’d have come to ask you to go see him with me. Would you believe it, when he was feverish and delirious, he talked about you. I didn’t know how dear you were to him! And were you really unable to locate that dog, Zhuchka? His father and all the boys have been searching all over town. Would you believe it, three times when he was ill he repeated to his father: ‘I’m ill, Papa, because I killed Zhuchka; God has punished me.’ One couldn’t get that idea out of his head! If only Zhuchka could be found now and we could prove that she hadn’t died, but is still alive, he’d be resurrected with joy. We were all relying on you.”

“Tell me, why were you hoping I could locate Zhuchka, that is, that I’d be the one to find her,” Kolya asked with extreme inquisitiveness. “Why were you counting on me and not on someone else?”

“There was a rumor that you were looking for her, and when you found her, you’d bring her here. Smurov said something of the sort. Mostly we’ve all been trying to convince Ilyusha that Zhuchka’s still alive, that she’s been spotted somewhere. The boys procured a live rabbit for Ilyusha; he looked at it, smiled, and then asked that the rabbit be let loose in the field. So that’s what we did. His father just this minute returned and presented him with a little mastiff puppy; he got it somewhere and thought that it might console Ilyusha; but it seems to have made things even worse.”

“Tell me, Karamazov: what’s his father like? I know him, but what do you think of him? Is he a buffoon or a clown?”

“Ah, no; there are some people who feel deeply but are somehow weighed down. Their buffoonery is a sort of wicked irony for those to whom they dare not speak the truth, as a result of long-term humiliating timidity in their presence. Believe me, Krasotkin, that kind of buffoonery is sometimes deeply tragic. His father’s entire life is now concentrated on Ilyusha: if his son dies, he’ll go mad or kill himself. I’m almost convinced of this when I look at him now!”

“I understand, Karamazov; I see that you do know the man,” Kolya added with heartfelt feeling.

“And when I saw you with a dog, I thought you were bringing Zhuchka.”

“Wait, Karamazov, perhaps we’ll still find her; but this dog is Perezvon. I’ll let him loose in the room now and perhaps it’ll cheer Ilyusha up more than that mastiff puppy. Wait a bit, Karamazov, you’ll find out a thing or two right away. Ah, my goodness, why am I detaining you?” Kolya cried impetuously. “You’re wearing just a suit in such cold and I’m delaying you. You see, you see, what an egoist I am! Oh, we’re all egotists, Karamazov!”

“Don’t worry; it’s true that it’s frosty, but I’m not susceptible to colds. Let’s go in. By the way, what’s your real name? I know that it’s Kolya, but the rest?”

“Nikolai, Nikolai Ivanov Krasotkin, or, as they say officially, Krasotkin the son,” Kolya said with a laugh, for some reason, but he added suddenly, “It goes without saying that I hate the name Nikolai.”

“Why’s that?

“It’s trivial, so official . . .”

“And you’re thirteen?”

“That is, fourteen, fourteen in two weeks, very soon. I admit in advance just to you, Karamazov, at our very first meeting, that I have one weakness, so you’ll understand my character all at once: I hate it when people ask my age, more than hate it. . . . Also, there’s some slander circulating about me that last week I played robbers with the boys in the preparatory class. It’s true that I was playing with them, but it’s not at all true that I was playing for my own amusement; that’s outright slander. I have reason to believe that you heard this rumor, but I wasn’t playing for myself; I was playing to amuse the kids, because they couldn’t think of anything else to do without me. The boys in school are always spreading such nonsense. This is a town of rumors, I can assure you.”

“Even if you were playing for your own amusement, so what?”

“Well, for myself. . . . You wouldn’t play horsies, would you?”

“But,” Alyosha said with a smile, “you should regard it in this way: grown-ups go to the theater, for example, and they’re also presented there with adventures of all sorts of heroes, sometimes robbers and battles, too; isn’t it the same thing, in its own way? As for young people’s games of soldiers or robbers played during their recreational time: that’s also art in its early stages. And sometimes these games are better made than presentations in the theater; the only difference is that people actually go to see actors in the theater, while in this case, it’s the young people themselves who’re the actors. But that’s only natural.”

“You think so? Is that your conviction?” Kolya asked, looking intently at him. “You know, you’ve just made a rather interesting observation. I’ll go home and ponder it. I confess, I expected that I might pick up something from you. I came to learn from you, Karamazov,” he concluded in an expansive and heartfelt voice.

“And I from you,” Alyosha said with a smile, shaking his hand.

Kolya was very pleased with Alyosha. What struck him most was that he was being treated to the utmost degree exactly like an equal, and that Alyosha was speaking with him as if he were a “grown-up.”

“I’ll show you a very neat trick in a moment, Karamazov, also a kind of theatrical presentation,” he said with a nervous laugh. “That’s why I came.”

“Let’s go first to the landlady on the left; all your friends leave their coats there, because it’s crowded and stuffy in the room,” said Alyosha.

“Oh, I’m here only for a moment. I’ll keep my coat on. Perezvon will stay out here in the passage and play dead: Ici, Perezvon, lay down and play dead! You see, he’s playing dead. I’ll go in first and survey the situation, and then, when necessary, I’ll whistle: ‘Ici, Perezvon!’ And you’ll see, he’ll come dashing in like a madman. Only Smurov mustn’t forget to open the door at that moment. I’ll make all the necessary arrangements, and you’ll see quite a trick . . .”

1 “Enough!” (Ital.).

V

AT ILYUSHA’S BEDSIDE

The room, already familiar to us, in which the family of our acquaintance the retired captain Snegiryov resided was at this time both stuffy and crowded, as a result of the large number of visitors. Several boys were sitting with Ilyusha, and although they were all, like Smurov, prepared to reject the idea that Alyosha had been the one who’d reconciled them with the boy, that was the truth. All his skill in this instance consisted in the fact that he brought them together, one at a time, without “sloppy sentimentality,” as though unintentionally and incidentally. This provided Ilyusha with enormous relief from his sufferings. After seeing the almost tender friendship and sympathy from these boys, his former enemies, he was very touched. Only Krasotkin was missing, and that absence lay like a heavy weight on Ilyusha’s heart. If among Ilyusha’s bitter memories there was one bitterest of all, it was precisely the incident with Krasotkin, his former only friend and defender, whom he had once attacked with a penknife. Clever little Smurov (the first to make peace with Ilyusha) thought this was the case. But Krasotkin himself, when Smurov hinted to him that Alyosha wanted to come and see him “about a certain matter,” immediately cut him short and rejected the approach, telling Smurov to let Karamazov know right away that he knew how to behave himself, that he wasn’t asking for any advice from anyone, and that if he went to see the sick lad, he would know when to do so, because he had his “own reasons.”

That was about two weeks before this Sunday. That’s why Alyosha had not gone to see him, as he’d intended. However, although he’d waited, he’d kept sending Smurov to Krasotkin again and again. Both times Krasotkin replied with a most impatient and forceful refusal, telling Alyosha that if he were to come for him on his own, he’d never go to see Ilyusha, and that he should stop bothering him. Up to the very last day, Smurov didn’t know that Kolya had decided to visit Ilyusha that very morning; only the night before, when bidding good-bye to Smurov, had Kolya suddenly declared to him that he’d expect him the following morning at home, since he was planning for them to go together to see the Snegiryovs, but he was not to divulge his intention to anyone, because he wanted to drop by offhandedly. Smurov did as he was asked. His dream that Krasotkin would return the missing Zhuchka occurred to Smurov as a result of a phrase Krasotkin had dropped: namely, that “they were all jackasses, unable to locate the dog, assuming she’s still alive.” When Smurov timidly, waiting for a chance, mentioned his surmise concerning Krasotkin’s dog, he suddenly became furious: “I’m not such a jackass as to search all over town for someone else’s dog, when I have my own dog Perezvon! And do you really imagine that a dog that’s swallowed a pin can remain alive? That’s sloppy sentimentality, nothing more!”

Meanwhile, for the last two weeks, Ilyusha had remained almost entirely in his bed under the icons in the corner. He hadn’t gone to school since the incident when he’d encountered Alyosha and had bitten his finger. However, from that day on he’d fallen ill; for a month he’d been able to walk around the room and in the passage, occasionally getting out of bed. But lately he’d become so weak that he was unable to move without his father’s help. His father was very worried about him, had even stopped drinking, had almost gone mad from fear that his boy would die, and often, especially after leading him around the room on his arm and returning him to his bed, he’d suddenly run out into the passage, into a dark corner, lean his forehead against the wall, and begin sobbing with some sort of shivering, shaking lamentation, trying to suppress his voice, so that his sobs would not be overheard by little Ilyushechka.

Returning to the room, he’d usually begin to amuse and console his beloved boy somehow, relate amusing stories, funny anecdotes, or else he’d mimic various funny people he’d happened to meet, and even imitate animals, how they howl or wail. But Ilyusha really didn’t like it when his father played the clown or buffoon. The boy tried hard not to show his feelings, but with an aching heart he was aware that his father had been humiliated in public; he’d recall that “terrible day” and the “loofah” obsessively.

Ninochka, Ilyusha’s gentle, quiet, lame sister, also didn’t like it when her father made a fool of himself (Varvara Nikolayevna had gone off to Petersburg some time ago to study at the university); on the other hand, the half-witted mother was extremely amused and laughed heartily when her husband began to mimic someone or imitate some comic gestures. That was the only thing that entertained her; otherwise she’d constantly cry and complain that everyone had forgotten her, no one respected her, everyone was insulting her, and so on and so forth. Recently, however, she’d also undergone a sudden change. She began looking frequently into the corner where Ilyusha lay and would become pensive. She became quieter, calmed down, and if she began crying, she did it softly, so no one would hear. The captain noticed this change in her with distasteful confusion. At first she didn’t like the schoolboys’ visits: they merely angered her; but then their merry shouts and stories began to amuse her, too, to such an extent that had the boys ceased their visits, she’d have felt very forlorn. When the boys told some story or began to play a game, she laughed and clapped her hands. She even called some of them over to her to kiss. She especially loved Smurov.

As for the captain, the appearance in his apartment of the children who’d come to cheer up Ilyusha had from the very beginning filled his soul with ecstatic joy and even hope that Ilyusha would stop his grieving, and perhaps start to recover sooner. He never doubted, even to the very last minute, in spite of all his fears for Ilyusha, that his boy would suddenly get better. The captain greeted the young guests with adoration; he’d stay close to them, serve them, was willing to carry them around on his back, and, in fact, had started to do so; but Ilyusha didn’t appreciate these games and they were soon abandoned. He began buying little treats for them, spice cakes and nuts; he would make them tea and sandwiches. It must be noted that he had plenty of money at the time. It was just as Alyosha had predicted: he’d accepted that two hundred rubles from Katerina Ivanovna. Then Katerina Ivanovna, after learning more about their circumstances and about Ilyusha’s illness, visited their apartment herself, made the acquaintance of the whole family, and even managed to charm the captain’s half-witted wife. Since then she didn’t stint on her help; the captain himself, oppressed by the thought that his little boy would die, forgot his previous honor and humbly accepted her assistance.

All this time Dr. Herzenshtube, at Katerina Ivanovna’s invitation, visited the patient punctually every other day, but very little good came from his visits; he filled Ilyusha full of medications. But on that day, that is, Sunday morning, the captain was expecting a visit of a new doctor from Moscow, one who enjoyed a great reputation there. Katerina Ivanovna had intentionally summoned him at great expense—not for Ilyushechka, but for another purpose, which will be revealed below in the appropriate place; but since he’d already arrived, she asked him also to visit Ilyushechka, about which the captain had been informed previously. He didn’t have the slightest idea that Kolya Krasotkin would also come, although he’d hoped for a long time that this boy, about whom Ilyusha was agonizing, would soon pay his son a visit.

At the very moment when Krasotkin opened the door and entered the room, everyone, the captain and the boys, was gathered around the patient’s bedside, examining the tiny mastiff puppy that had just been delivered, born only a day before, although the captain had ordered it a week earlier, to distract and amuse Ilyushechka, who was still grieving about the lost and probably dead Zhuchka. But Ilyusha, who’d heard and known for three days that he was to be given a new puppy, and not just any puppy, but a pureblood mastiff (a fact, of course, that was extremely important), although he pretended out of refined and delicate feeling that he was pleased with the gift, still everyone, his father and the boys, could see clearly that the new pup, perhaps, merely stirred up his heartfelt recollection of the unfortunate Zhuchka, tormented by him. The puppy lay next to him and squirmed, while he, smiling painfully, stroked it with his thin, pale, emaciated hand; it was even clear that he liked the new dog, but . . . Zhuchka no longer existed; this dog wasn’t Zhuchka; and if he could have both Zhuchka and this new puppy together, then he would have been totally happy!

“Krasotkin!” cried one of the boys suddenly, the first one to notice Kolya upon his entrance. There was a general commotion; the boys stood apart on each side of the bed so he could get a better view of Ilyushechka. The captain rushed eagerly to welcome Kolya.

“Welcome, please come in . . . my dear guest!” he muttered to him. “Ilyushechka, Mr. Krasotkin has come to see you . . .”

But Krasotkin, quickly offering his hand to him, in a moment showed his unusual grasp of social manners. He turned immediately and first of all to the captain’s wife; she was sitting in her armchair (she was at the time extremely dissatisfied and was grumbling that the boys had blocked Ilyusha’s bedside and prevented her from seeing the new puppy); he bowed his head very politely to her and then, turning to Ninochka, gave her, as a lady, a similar bow of the head. This polite action made an extremely pleasant impression on the ailing woman.

“There, you can see at once he’s a well-brought-up young man,” she said loudly, spreading her arms. “But the rest of our guests? They arrive one after another.”

“What do you mean, Mamochka,[1] ‘one after another’?” the captain muttered affectionately, but a bit afraid of Mamochka’s reaction.

“That’s how they come in. They climb up on each other’s shoulders in the entrance and come into a decent household on piggyback. What sort of guests are they?”

“But who came in like that, Mamochka? Who was it?”

“That one boy came riding in on top of this other boy today, and that one on this one . . .”

But Kolya was already standing at Ilyusha’s bedside. The sick boy visibly turned pale. He raised himself up in his bed and stared at Kolya very intently. Kolya hadn’t seen his former little friend in the last two months and suddenly stopped in front of him completely overwhelmed: he couldn’t have imagined that he’d behold such an emaciated, yellowish little face, such enormous, feverish, blazing eyes, such thin little hands. He observed with grief-stricken astonishment Ilyusha’s labored deep, frequent breathing and his dried-out lips. He took a step toward him, held out his hand, and, almost flabbergasted, said:

“Well, old man . . . how are you?”

But his voice broke off; his nonchalance didn’t last; his face suddenly shuddered, and something trembled around his lips. Ilyusha smiled at him painfully, still unable to utter a word. Kolya suddenly raised his hand and for some reason passed it over Ilyusha’s hair.

“It’s all right!” he muttered to him softly, not exactly to reassure him, not knowing why he’d said it. They were silent again for a moment.

“So you’ve got a new puppy?” Kolya asked in the most callous voice.

“Yes-s-s!” replied Ilyusha in a prolonged whisper, gasping for breath.

“A black nose: that means he’ll be ferocious, a good watchdog,” Kolya observed strikingly and firmly, as if the only thing that mattered was the new puppy and his black nose. Above all, he was trying with all his might to struggle with his feeling that he might start crying “like a little boy” and be unable to control it. “When he grows up, you’ll have to keep him on a chain, that much I know.”

“He’ll be enormous!” cried one of the boys from the crowd.

“That’s clear,” “He’s a mastiff,” “Enormous,” “This big,” “Like a calf,” little voices suddenly chimed in.

“As big as a calf, a real calf,” the captain said, jumping up. “I chose one like that on purpose, one of the fiercest breed; his parents are huge and very ferocious, they’re this tall. . . . Have a seat, right here on Ilyusha’s bed, or else on the bench. You’re welcome here, dear guest, our long-awaited guest. Did you come together with Aleksey Fyodorovich, sir?”

Krasotkin sat down on the bed at Ilyusha’s feet. Although perhaps along the way he’d prepared a casual beginning for the conversation, now he’d definitely lost the thread.

“No . . . I’ve come with Perezvon. . . . I have a dog now, Perezvon. It’s a Slavic name. He’s waiting outside. If I whistle, he’ll come running in. I have a dog, too,” he said, turning suddenly to Ilyusha. “Do you remember Zhuchka, old man?” He suddenly flung the question at him.

Ilyushechka’s little face became distorted. He looked at Kolya with an agonized expression. Alyosha, who was standing next to the door, frowned and tried to signal Kolya secretly, so that he wouldn’t talk about Zhuchka; but Kolya didn’t notice or didn’t want to.

“Where’s . . . Zhuchka?” Ilyusha asked in a strained voice.

“Well, friend, your Zhuchka—phew! She’s done for!”

Ilyusha said nothing, but once again he looked very intently at Kolya. Alyosha, catching Kolya’s eye, once more tried to signal him, but Kolya looked away again, pretending he hadn’t noticed.

“She ran off somewhere and vanished. What else could she do after a meal like that?” Kolya uttered pitilessly, meanwhile seeming a little breathless. “On the other hand, I have Perezvon. . . . It’s a Slavic name. . . . I brought him along . . .”

“I don’t want him!” Ilyushechka said suddenly.

“No, no, you do! You must see him. . . . You’ll be amused. I brought him on purpose . . . he’s so shaggy-haired, just like that one. . . . Will you allow me, madame, to call my dog in here?” he said, turning suddenly to Mrs. Snegiryova in some inexplicable excitement.

“No, don’t, don’t!” cried Ilyusha with a terrible strain in his voice. A reproach flashed in his eyes.

“Perhaps you’d better, sir,” said the captain, jumping up from the trunk by the wall where he’d been sitting. “You’d better, sir . . . at another time, sir . . .” he muttered, but Kolya, insisting and hurrying, suddenly called to Smurov: “Smurov, open the door!” And as soon as the door was open, he blew his whistle. Perezvon flew headlong into the room.

“Jump, Perezvon. Beg, beg!” shouted Kolya, jumping up from the bed, and the dog, standing on his hind legs, stood erect in front of Ilyusha’s bedside. Something happened that no one had expected: Ilyusha shuddered and all of a sudden lurched forward violently and, leaning over to Perezvon, as if frozen, looked at him very closely.

“It’s . . . Zhuchka!” he shouted suddenly in a voice that was breaking with both joy and suffering.

“And who did you think it was?” Krasotkin cried out in a resonant, happy voice with all his might; leaning over to the dog, he grabbed him and lifted him up to Ilyusha.

“Look, old man, you see: he’s blind in one eye and his left ear is torn, exactly the same as you described Zhuchka to me. I found him by looking for those traits! I found him straightaway. He didn’t belong to anyone, no one at all!” he explained, turning right to the captain, his wife, to Alyosha, and then back to Ilyusha again. “He used to live in the Fedotovs’ backyard, but they didn’t feed him; he was a stray and ran away from the village. . . . I found him. You see, old man, Zhuchka couldn’t have swallowed your piece of bread at that time. If she had, of course she’d have died, that’s for sure! That means, if she’s still alive, she’d managed to spit it out. You didn’t notice that. But the pin pricked her tongue, and that’s why she was squealing so terribly then. She ran away squealing, and you thought she’d swallowed the whole piece. She must have been squealing because the skin on a dog’s tongue is very tender, much tenderer than a human tongue!” Kolya cried rashly, his face flushed and glowing from enthusiasm.

As for Ilyusha, he was speechless. He looked at Kolya with his big eyes, almost popping out of his head, his mouth open, and pale as a ghost. If the unsuspecting Krasotkin had only known how disastrous and fatal the effect of this moment would be on the sick boy’s health, he certainly wouldn’t have played this trick on him. But in the room, the only person who understood that was Alyosha, perhaps. As far as the captain was concerned, he behaved like a little child.

“Zhuchka! So this is really Zhuchka?” he cried in a beatific voice. “Ilyushechka, this is Zhuchka, your Zhuchka! Mamenka, this is Zhuchka!” He was almost weeping.

“And I never guessed!” Smurov cried sadly. “Hurrah for Krasotkin. I said he’d find Zhuchka, and he really did!”

“He really did!” someone repeated joyfully.

“Well done, Krasotkin!” a third voice chimed in.

“Bravo, bravo!” cried all the boys, and they began applauding.

“Wait, wait!” Krasotkin tried to outshout everyone. “I’ll tell you how it happened; that’s the whole trick, and it’s nothing else! I found her, brought her home, and hid her at once, locked her up at home, and didn’t show her to anyone until the very last day. Only Smurov found out two weeks ago, but I assured him that this dog was Perezvon, and he didn’t guess that in the meantime I had taught Zhuchka all these tricks; just look at all the tricks she knows. That’s why I taught her, to bring her to you, old man, all trained and well nourished. ‘Here,’ I’d say, ‘old man, is your dog Zhuchka now!’ Would you perhaps have a small piece of meat? She’ll perform a trick and you’ll fall down laughing; a piece of meat, have you got some?”[2]

The captain rushed from the room to the landlady’s cottage, where their meals were prepared. Kolya, not wanting to lose valuable time, hurrying desperately, called to Perezvon: “Play dead!” And the dog instantly turned around and lay down on her back, lay perfectly still, all four paws in the air. The boys laughed, Ilyusha looked on with his previous excruciating smile, but “Mamenka” was the one who enjoyed the trick most of all. She burst out laughing at the dog and began snapping her fingers and calling:

“Perezvon, Perezvon!”

“He won’t get up for anything, not for anything,” Kolya cried in triumph, justifiably proud. “He won’t move for all the shouting in the world. But if I shout, he’ll come running. Ici, Perezvon!”

The dog jumped up and bounded around, yapping for joy. The captain returned with a piece of stewed beef.

“It isn’t hot, is it?” Kolya asked hastily and quickly, taking the meat. “No, it’s not, because dogs don’t like hot things. Look everyone, look, Ilyushechka, look at this, old man, why aren’t you looking? I brought him the dog but he’s not looking!”

The new trick consisted of making the dog stand still while placing the tasty bit of meat on the end of his nose. The poor dog had to stand there motionless, as long as his master desired, without budging or stirring, even as long as half an hour. But Perezvon was kept in that position for only a short time.

“Pille!”[3] cried Kolya and the piece of meat flew in an instant from his nose into her mouth. The audience, it goes without saying, expressed its enthusiastic astonishment.

“Did you really, really not come all this time because you were training the dog?” exclaimed Alyosha, with an involuntary reproach in his voice.

“Yes, exactly for that reason,” Kolya cried in an ingenuous manner. “I wanted to show him in all his glory!”

“Perezvon! Perezvon!” Ilyusha suddenly snapped his emaciated fingers, trying to lure the dog.

“What is it? Let him jump up on your bed! Ici, Perezvon!” Kolya patted the bed with his palm; like an arrow Perezvon jumped up to Ilyusha. Ilyusha threw both arms around the dog’s neck, and Perezvon instantly began licking his cheek. Ilyushechka hugged him, moved closer to him, and hid his face in his shaggy fur.

“Good Lord, good Lord!” the captain kept exclaiming.

Kolya sat down on the bed again, next to Ilyusha.

“Ilyusha, I can show you one more trick. I brought you the little cannon. Do you remember I told you about it and you said, ‘Oh, how I’d love to see it!’ Well, now I’ve brought it here.”

Kolya, hurrying, took his little bronze cannon out of his bag. He hurried because he himself was very happy; another time he’d have waited until the effect of Perezvon’s tricks had worn off, but now he hurried, forgoing all restraint: “If I’m so happy now, here’s something more to make you happy!” He himself was completely enraptured.

“I saw this little toy a long time ago, in the civil servant Morozov’s house—it’s for you, old man, for you. It stood there for no reason; he’d received it from his brother, and I traded him a book from my father’s bookcase: A Kinsman of Mahomet, or Salutary Folly.[4] The book’s a hundred years old and it’s an obscene book; it was published in Moscow before there was censorship. Morozov likes this kind of thing; you should have seen the way he thanked me for it . . .”

Kolya held the cannon in his hands for all to see and admire. Ilyusha sat up and, keeping his right arm around the dog’s neck, regarded the little toy with delight. The effect was even greater when Kolya announced that he’d also brought along some gunpowder and that he’d fire the cannon immediately, “if only the ladies won’t object.” “Mamenka” quickly asked that she be given a chance to examine the little toy more closely, which request was granted at once. She really liked the bronze cannon on wheels and began rolling it back and forth on her lap. She replied in the affirmative to the request to fire the cannon, without really understanding what was being asked of her. Kolya took out the powder and the shot. The captain, as a former military man, proceeded to load the cannon, taking a tiny bit of gunpowder and asking to postpone loading the shot to another time. They put the cannon on the floor, aimed the barrel at an empty place in the room; three grains of powder were crammed into the touchhole and a match was lit. The most magnificent explosion ensued. “Mamenka” was startled, but immediately began laughing from joy. The boys looked on with silent triumph, but most of all, the captain beamed as he gazed at Ilyusha. Kolya picked up the cannon and presented it to Ilyusha, together with the shot and the gunpowder.

“I brought this for you, for you! I’ve had it for a while,” he repeated again, feeling completely happy.

“Ah, give it to me! No, it’s better to give the little cannon to me!” Mamenka began begging suddenly, just like a little child. Her face expressed sorrowful anxiety from the fear that he wouldn’t give it to her. Kolya was confounded. The captain fidgeted nervously.

“Mamochka, Mamochka!” he said, jumping over to her. “The cannon’s yours, it’s yours, but let it be with Ilyusha, because they gave it to him, but it’s the same as if it were yours. Ilyushechka will always let you play with it, it will be yours and his together, together . . .”

“No, I don’t want it to be ours together, no, I want it to be all mine, and not Ilyusha’s,” Mamenka continued, on the verge of tears.

“Mama, take it yourself, here, take it!” cried Ilyusha suddenly. “Krasotkin, may I give it to her as a present?” he asked, turning suddenly to Krasotkin with an imploring look, afraid that he might be offended that he was giving his gift away to someone else.

“It’s perfectly all right!” Krasotkin agreed immediately, and taking the cannon from Ilyusha’s hands, he presented it to Mamenka with the politest of bows. She even began crying from tender emotion.

“Ilyushechka, dear, see how much he loves his mother!” she exclaimed tenderly, and once again set about rolling the little cannon back and forth on her lap.

“Mamenka, let me kiss your little hand.” Her husband jumped up at once and carried out his intention.

“And who else is the nicest young man of all, it is this kind lad!” said the grateful lady, indicating Krasotkin.

“I’ll bring you as much gunpowder as you want, Ilyusha. We can make the powder ourselves now. Borovikov found out how it’s done: twenty-four parts of saltpeter, ten of sulfur, and six of birch charcoal, all pounded together. Mixed with water, smoothed into a paste, and rubbed through a sieve: that’s how gunpowder is made.”

“Smurov told me about your powder already, but Papa says it’s not real gunpowder,” replied Ilyusha.

“Why isn’t it real?” Kolya said, blushing. “It burns. But I don’t really know . . .”

“No, sir, it’s not important, sir,” said the captain suddenly with a guilty look. “True, I said that’s not how real gunpowder is made, but it’s not important; it can be made that way, too.”

“I don’t know; you know better. We lit it in a stone jar for hair pomade, and it burned splendidly, completely, only a small bit of ash was left. But that was only the paste, and if you rub it through a sieve. . . . However, you know best, I don’t know. . . . But Bulkin’s father gave him a beating on account of our powder, did you hear?” he said, turning suddenly to Ilyusha.

“I did hear that,” replied Ilyusha. He was listening to Kolya with endless interest and pleasure.

“We prepared a whole bottle of gunpowder, and he kept it under his bed. His father saw it. He said it could explode, and gave him a beating then and there. He wanted to complain about me at the gymnasium. Now he doesn’t let him play with me; now no one’s allowed to play with me. Smurov isn’t allowed to either; I’ve got a bad name; they say that I’m a ‘desperate type,’ ” Kolya said with a derisive smile. “It all started with that incident on the railway.”

“Ah, we’ve heard about that affair!” cried the captain. “How did you manage to lie so still? Weren’t you the least bit afraid when the train passed over you? Wasn’t it scary, sir?”

The captain was fawning terribly on Kolya.

“N-not especially!” Kolya replied casually. “It was that cursed goose that did the most harm to my reputation here,” he said, turning to Ilyusha once again. Although he tried to affect a careless tone as he described the incident, he still couldn’t control himself and kept striking the wrong note.

“Ah, I heard about that goose, too!” Ilyusha said with a laugh, beaming. “They told me about it, but I didn’t understand. Did they really take you to court?”

“It was the most senseless thing, the most insignificant, making a mountain out of a molehill, as usual,” Kolya began casually. “Once I was walking through the market just as they had driven the geese through. I stopped and looked at them. Suddenly one local lad, Vishnyakov, who now works at Plotnikov’s shop as a delivery boy, looks at me and asks, ‘Why are you looking at the geese?’ I look at him: he has a stupid, round mug, a lad of about twenty years; you know, I never spurn the common people. I love talking to them. . . . We’ve fallen behind the people—that’s an axiom—I believe you’re laughing, Karamazov?”

“No, God forbid. I’m listening to you carefully,” Alyosha replied with the most openhearted look; the mistrustful Kolya was immediately reassured.

“My theory, Karamazov, is clear and simple,” he gladly hastened to add at once. “I believe in the common people and am always pleased to do justice to them, but I don’t spoil them at all, that’s a sine qua non.[5] But I was talking about that goose. So I turn to that fool and answer him: ‘I’m wondering what that goose is thinking.’ He regards me stupidly: ‘What the goose is thinking?’ ‘You see that cart with oats over there,’ I say. ‘The oats are spilling out of the sack, and the goose has stuck its head between the spokes of the wheel to gobble them up, do you see?’ ‘I see it very well,’ he says. ‘Well then,’ I say, ‘if that cart were to roll forward just a little, would it break the goose’s neck or not?’ ‘It would certainly break his neck,’ he says, and he grins broadly, melting in delight. ‘Well, lad,’ I say, ‘let’s try it.’ ‘Let’s,’ he says. And it didn’t take long to organize: he went and stood by the bridle without being noticed, and I stood alongside, to direct the goose. The peasant at the time stood gaping at something else, talking with someone or other, so that I didn’t even have to direct the goose at all: the goose stuck out his neck to get the oats from under the cart, right between the spokes. I winked at the lad and he tugged the bridle, and—c-c-crack, the goose’s neck was broken in half! And it just so happened that at that moment all the peasants saw us, and they all squawked at once: ‘You did that on purpose!’ ‘No, it wasn’t on purpose!’ ‘Yes, it was!’ Well, they squawked, ‘To the justice of the peace!’ They grabbed hold of me: ‘And you were there, too,’ they said. ‘You helped him. The whole market knows you!’ For some reason, the whole market does know me,” Kolya added proudly. “So we head off to the justice of the peace, and they bring the goose, too. I see that the peasant lad’s beginning to lose heart and starts howling, crying like a woman. The herdsman cries: ‘You can kill any number of geese that way!’ Well, needless to say, there are witnesses. The justice of the peace settles it in an instant: ‘You’ll pay the herdsman a ruble for the goose, and the lad can take the goose home.’ And he was warned not to engage in such pranks again. But the lad keeps hollering like a woman: ‘It wasn’t me,’ he says, ‘he put me up to it,’ and he points to me. I answer with complete composure that I didn’t put him up to it, that I merely stated a general proposition and was speaking hypothetically. Justice of the Peace Nefedov smiled and then was angry with himself for having smiled. ‘I shall complain,’ he says, ‘to your school authorities so that you won’t offer such hypothetical propositions again, instead of reading your books and studying your lessons.’ He didn’t complain to the authorities; that was just a joke. But news of the affair spread and reached the ears of the authorities; their ears are very long! The classics teacher Kolbasnikov[6] was particularly upset by it, but Dardanelov stood up for me again. Now Kolbasnikov is angry with all of us, like a green youth. Have you heard, Ilyusha, that he got married, received a dowry of a thousand rubles from the Mikhailovs, but his bride is a monstrosity of the first rank and last degree. The third graders composed an epigram at once:

“Amazing news has reached the class,

Kolbasnikov has been an ass.

“And the rest of it is very funny; I’ll bring it to you afterward. I won’t say anything against Dardanelov: he’s a learned man, unmistakably learned. I respect men like him, and not just because he stood up for me.”

“But you took him down a peg with the question of who founded Troy!” Smurov added suddenly, feeling particularly proud of Krasotkin at that moment. He really liked the story about the goose.

“Did you really take him down a peg, sir?” the captain asked in an obsequious manner. “The question was who founded Troy, sir? We heard that you took him down a peg. Ilyushechka told me about it at the time.”

“Oh, Papa, he knows everything, he knows more than all of us!” Ilyushechka chimed in. “He only pretends to be like that, but in fact he’s ahead in every subject . . .”

Ilyusha looked at Kolya with infinite happiness.

“All that stuff about Troy was nonsense, silly. I regard that question as trivial,” Kolya stated with arrogant modesty. He’d already managed to reestablish the tone, although he was, as a matter of fact, uneasy: he felt that he was too excited and had spoken about the goose with too much feeling; meanwhile, Alyosha had remained silent all during the story and was serious, while the touchy lad had already begun to feel a nagging anxiety: “Does he remain silent because he despises me, thinking I’m eager to win his praise? In that case, if he dares think that, I’ll . . .”

“I regard that question as trivial,” he declared proudly once again.

“And I know who founded Troy,” a boy who had not spoken a word before suddenly blurted out to everyone’s astonishment; he was reserved and evidently bashful, but very nice-looking, about eleven years old, named Kartashov. He was sitting near the door. Kolya looked at him with gracious astonishment. The point was this: the question “Who founded Troy?” had in all grades turned into a big secret, and to find out the answer, it was necessary to read Smaragdov’s history. But no one had a copy of the book, except for Kolya. Once the boy Kartashov, surreptitiously, when Kolya had turned his back, came across the book among Kolya’s belongings, hastily opened it, and found the passage about the founders of Troy. This had happened a while ago, but he’d been embarrassed and scared to reveal to everyone that he knew the answer, fearing what might happen and afraid that Krasotkin might disgrace him for it. But now, for some reason, he couldn’t restrain himself and had spoken. He’d wanted to do so for some time.

“Well then, who founded it?” Kolya said, turning to him conceitedly and condescendingly, already guessing from his face that he did in fact know the answer and that he was now ready to face all the consequences. There was in the general mood that which is called “dissonance.”

“Troy was founded by Teucer, Dardan, Ilius, and Tros,” the boy sputtered rapidly, and immediately blushed completely, so completely that it was pitiful to see. But all the schoolboys stared at him, for one entire minute, and then suddenly all these eyes instantly turned to look at Kolya. He continued to scrutinize the bold lad with contemptuous coldness.

“How exactly did they found it?” he finally deigned to ask. “And in general what does it mean to found a town or a state? What happened? Did they arrive and each one lay a brick, or what?”

Laughter broke out. The guilty boy turned from pale pink to dark crimson. He was silent and about to cry. Kolya kept him like that for another minute.

“To discourse on such historical events such as the founding of a nation, one must understand first of all what it means,” he rapped out sternly for the boy’s edification. “However, I don’t accord any of these old wives’ tales any credence, and in general I don’t respect world history very highly,” he suddenly added casually, turning to address everyone in general.

“Do you mean world history, sir?” the captain asked with some alarm.

“Yes, world history. It’s the study of a series of human follies, that’s all. I respect only mathematics and the natural sciences,” Kolya said, showing off and glancing fleetingly at Alyosha: his was the only opinion he feared. But Alyosha remained silent and serious as before. If he’d said something at the time, it would’ve ended the discussion, but Alyosha was silent, and “his silence could be contemptuous”; Kolya became fully agitated.

“Once more, take the classical languages we study: it’s pure insanity, and nothing further. . . . Once again, it seems you don’t agree with me, Karamazov?”

“No, I don’t,” Alyosha replied with a restrained smile.

“The classical languages, if you want to hear my opinion on the subject, are simply a repressive police measure; that’s the only reason they were introduced,” Kolya said and little by little suddenly began gasping for breath again. “They were introduced because they’re boring and because they dull the faculties. School was already boring, so how to make it even more boring? It was senseless, so how to make it even more senseless? Thus they came up with the classical languages. That’s my whole opinion, and I hope never to change it,” Kolya said, finishing abruptly. A blush of red had appeared on both of his cheeks.

“That’s true,” Smurov said in a ringing little voice, expressing his conviction; he’d been listening very closely.

“Yet he’s the best in Latin class!” one of the boys shouted suddenly.

“Yes, Papa, he says that, but he’s the best at Latin in our school,” Ilyusha echoed.

“So what of it?” Kolya considered it necessary to defend himself, although he was at the same time very pleased by the praise. “I cram Latin because I have to; I promised my mother that I’d finish the course, and in my opinion, if I set about it, I must do well, but in the depth of my soul I despise classicism and all that vileness. . . . Don’t you agree, Karamazov?”

“Why do you call it ‘vileness’?” asked Alyosha with a grin.

“Well, all the classical authors have been translated into all possible languages; therefore, it’s not for the study of the classics that Latin’s needed, but merely as a repressive police measure to dull students’ faculties. What’s that if not ‘vileness’?”

“Who taught you all this?” Alyosha exclaimed finally in surprise.

“In the first place, I myself can understand without being taught; and in the second place, know that what I just said about translated classics was uttered aloud to the entire third grade by the Latin teacher Kolbasnikov . . .”

“The doctor’s come!” cried Ninochka suddenly; she’d been silent up to now.

In fact, a carriage belonging to Madame Khokhlakova had arrived at the gates of the house. The captain, who’d been waiting all morning for the doctor, rushed at breakneck speed to meet him at the gates. Mamenka pulled herself together and assumed an air of importance. Alyosha went up to Ilyusha and began to adjust his pillow. Ninochka, from her wheelchair, watched as he rearranged the bed. The boys hurriedly began to take their leave, a few of them promising to return that evening. Kolya called Perezvon, and the dog jumped down from the bed.

“I’m not leaving, I’m not,” Kolya said hastily to Ilyusha. “I’ll wait in the hallway and come back after the doctor’s left and will bring Perezvon.”

The doctor was already entering—an impressive figure in a bearskin coat, with long dark sideburns and a smooth, clean-shaven chin. After crossing the threshold, he stopped suddenly, taken aback: it probably seemed to him that he’d come to the wrong house. “What’s this? Where am I?” he muttered, without removing his coat from his shoulders or the sealskin cap from his head. The crowd of people, the poverty of the room, the clothes hanging on a line in the corner—all of it confounded him. The captain was flustered before him.

“You’re here, sir, here, sir,” he muttered simple-heartedly, “you’re here, sir, in my house, sir, coming to see us, sir . . .”

“Sne-gi-ryov?” the doctor asked loudly and imposingly. “Mr. Snegiryov, is that you?”

“It is, sir!”

“Ah!”

The doctor looked around the room again squeamishly and tossed off his fur coat. Everyone noticed the prestigious medal displayed around his neck. The captain caught the coat on the fly, and the doctor took off his cap.

“So where’s the patient?” he asked loudly and insistently.

1 An affectionate diminutive of “mama.” Alternatives are mamenka and mamasha.

2 “Zhuchka” is the name of a female dog; “Perezvon,” of a male. Hence the mild confusion of pronouns.

3 “At him!” or “Take it!” (Fr.).

4 An account of a Frenchman’s amorous adventures in Constantinople; it was translated from French and published in Moscow in 1785.

5 A prerequisite (Lat.).

6 His surname is derived from the word kolbasnik, “sausage-maker.”

VI

PRECOCIOUS DEVELOPMENT

“What do you think the doctor will say?” Kolya asked hastily. “What a repulsive mug he has, doesn’t he? I can’t stand medicine!”

“Ilyusha will die. That seems certain,” replied Alyosha gloomily.

“Rascals! Doctors are rascals! However, I’m glad to have made your acquaintance, Karamazov. I’ve wanted to do so for a long time. It’s a pity only that we’ve met under such sad circumstances . . .”

Kolya very much wanted to say something even more heartfelt, more expansive, but something seemed to constrain him. Alyosha noticed this, smiled, and pressed his hand.

“Long ago I learned to respect you as a rare person,” Kolya muttered again, hesitating and going off course. “I heard that you’re a mystic and were in a monastery. I know you’re a mystic, but . . . that hasn’t stopped me. Contact with real life will cure you. . . . With natures like yours, it doesn’t turn out any differently.”

“What do you mean by ‘a mystic’? Cure me of what?” Alyosha asked, somewhat surprised.

“Well, God, and all the rest of it.”

“What, don’t you believe in God?”

“On the contrary, I have nothing against God. . . . Of course, God’s merely a hypothesis . . . but . . . I confess that He’s necessary to maintain order . . . for world order and so forth . . . if He didn’t exist, one would have to invent Him,” added Kolya, beginning to blush. He suddenly imagined that Alyosha would soon think he wanted to show off his knowledge and demonstrate how “grown-up” he was. “But I really don’t want to show off my knowledge in front of him,” Kolya thought with indignation. He suddenly felt terribly annoyed.

“I confess, I can’t stand entering into all these squabbles,” Kolya snapped. “After all, one can love humanity even if one doesn’t believe in God. What do you think? Voltaire didn’t believe in God, yet he loved humanity, didn’t he?” (“Again, again!” he thought to himself.)

“Voltaire believed in God, but, it seems, only a little, and he also loved humanity only a little,” Alyosha said quietly, with restraint, and completely naturally, as if talking to an equal, or even to an older person. Kolya was particularly struck by the uncertainty of Alyosha’s opinion of Voltaire, and that he seemed to be asking him, little Kolya, to resolve the matter.

“Have you read Voltaire?” Alyosha asked in conclusion.

“No, I haven’t exactly read him. . . . However, I’ve read Candide in a Russian translation[1] . . . in an old, monstrous translation, almost comical.” (“Again, again!”)

“Did you understand it?”

“Oh, yes, everything . . . that is, why would you think I wouldn’t understand? Of course, there’s much that’s salacious in it. . . . And I’m capable of understanding that it’s a philosophical novel and was written to promote an idea . . .” Kolya was becoming totally mixed up. “I’m a socialist, Karamazov, an incorrigible socialist,” he suddenly blurted out for no reason at all.

“A socialist?” Alyosha smiled. “When did you manage that? You’re still only thirteen years old, aren’t you?”

Kolya winced.

“In the first place, I’m not thirteen, but fourteen, in two weeks’ time,” he said, blushing angrily. “In the second place, I don’t understand at all what my age has to do with it. The important point is, what are my convictions, not what my age is, isn’t that true?”

“When you’re older, you’ll see what impact age has on one’s convictions. It also seemed to me that you weren’t using your own words,” Alyosha replied modestly and serenely, but Kolya interrupted him passionately.

“For pity’s sake, you want obedience and mysticism. You must agree, for example, that the Christian faith has only served the interests of the rich and powerful, so they could keep the lower class in slavery, isn’t that so?”

“Ah, I know where you read that, and someone must have taught you that!” exclaimed Alyosha.

“For pity’s sake, what makes you think I read it? And no one taught it to me. I can think for myself. . . . And if you want, I’m not against Christ. He was a perfectly humane personality; if He were living in our time, He’d undoubtedly join the revolutionaries and, perhaps, would play a prominent role. . . . That’s even for certain.”

“Well, where, oh where did you get that from? With what fool have you made friends?” cried Alyosha.

“For pity’s sake, you can’t conceal the truth. Of course, I happen to chat frequently with Mr. Rakitin, but. . . . They say that old man Belinsky said the same thing.”[2]

“Belinsky? I don’t recall. He didn’t write that anywhere.”

“If he didn’t write it, they say he said it. I heard this from a certain . . . but never mind.”

“And have you read Belinsky?”

“Don’t you see . . . no, I haven’t exactly read him, but I did read the part where he talks about Tatyana and why she failed to run off with Onegin.”[3]

“Failed to run off with Onegin? Surely you don’t understand that . . . already?”

“For pity’s sake, it seems you take me for the child Smurov,” Kolya said, smirking irritably. “However, please don’t think I’m such a revolutionary. I disagree with Mr. Rakitin very often. Although I just mentioned Tatyana, I’m not at all in favor of women’s emancipation. I admit that women are subordinate creatures and must obey. Les femmes tricotent,[4] as Napoleon maintained,” Kolya said and smiled for some reason. “At least I share the conviction on this question of that pseudo-great man. Also, for example, I consider that to leave one’s fatherland and run away to America is vile, worse than vile, it’s ridiculous. Why go to America when there’s so much good to be done for humanity right here? Now, in particular. A whole mass of fruitful activity. That’s how I replied.”

“What do you mean, you replied? To whom? Has someone invited you to leave for America?”

“I confess, they’ve urged me to go, but I’ve refused. Of course, this is just between us, Karamazov, you hear? Not a word to anyone. I’m telling only you. I’m not anxious to fall into the hands of the Third Department and take lessons near the Chain Bridge:[5]

“You’ll remember the building

Near the Chain Bridge![6]

“Do you remember? It’s magnificent! Why are you laughing? You don’t think I’ve been lying to you, do you?” (“What if he finds out that there’s only one issue of the Bell in my father’s bookcase and that I haven’t read any more of it?”[7] flashed through Kolya’s mind, causing him to shudder.)

“Oh, no, I’m not laughing, and I don’t think at all that you’ve been lying to me. That’s just it; I don’t think that, because, alas, all of it’s the absolute truth! Tell me, have you read Pushkin, Onegin. . . . You just mentioned Tatyana.”

“No, I haven’t read it yet, but I want to. I have no prejudices, Karamazov. I want to hear the other side. Why did you ask?”

“Just so.”

“Tell me, Karamazov, do you despise me terribly?” he blurted out suddenly and stood erect before Alyosha, as if he were taking a stand. “Do me a favor, tell me without beating around the bush.”

“Despise you?” Alyosha asked, staring at him with astonishment. “What on earth for? I’m only sad that such a splendid nature as yours, which has not yet begun to live, has already been corrupted by all this crude nonsense.”

“Don’t worry about my nature,” Kolya interrupted, not without smugness. “And the fact that I’m sensitive is true. I’m stupidly sensitive, crudely so. You just smiled, and it seemed to me that you . . .”

“I was smiling at something altogether different. Here’s what I was smiling at: I recently read an article by a certain German living in Russia about our young students today: ‘If you show,’ he wrote, ‘a map of the starry sky to a Russian schoolboy, one he’s never seen before, he’s sure to return it to you tomorrow with all his corrections on it.’ No knowledge and limitless conceit—that’s what the German wanted to say about Russian schoolboys.”

“Ah, yes, that’s definitely the case!” Kolya said suddenly with a laugh. “Verissimo![8] Precisely! Bravo to the German! But that stupid Kraut didn’t see the good side, don’t you think? Conceit’s all right; it comes from youth and will correct itself, if necessary; on the other hand, the independent spirit, almost from childhood on, boldness of thought and conviction, and not their spirit of sausage-making servility, groveling before authorities. . . . But that German said it very well! Bravo to the German. Although the Germans need to be strangled. They may be strong in the sciences; still they need to be strangled.”

“Why should they be strangled?” Alyosha asked with a smile.

“Well, perhaps I was talking nonsense, I agree. Sometimes I’m a terrible child, and if I’m glad about something, I don’t restrain myself and I’m ready to spout nonsense. Listen, you and I are chatting here about trifles, and for some reason that doctor is taking a long time. Perhaps he’s also examining mamasha and the lame Ninochka. You know, I liked that girl. She suddenly whispered to me as I was leaving, ‘Why haven’t you come before?’ There was a reproach in her voice! It seems to me she’s terribly kind and deserving of pity.”

“Yes, yes, you’ll visit often and you’ll see what she’s like as a person. It’s very useful for you to get to know that kind of being in order to appreciate what you learn from an acquaintanceship with them,” Alyosha observed with passion. “That will reshape you more than anything else.”

“Oh, how I regret and blame myself for not coming sooner!” Kolya exclaimed bitterly.

“Yes, it’s a pity. You yourself saw what a joyful impression you produced on the poor boy! How he’d suffered waiting for you!”

“Don’t tell me. You’re rubbing it in. However, it serves me right: I didn’t come because of my conceit, my egoistical conceit and base despotism, from which I’ve been unable to escape all my life, although I’ve been trying to break free from it. Now I see it: in many ways I’m a scoundrel, Karamazov!”

“No, you’re a delightful person, although you’ve been distorted; I understand all too well why you’ve been able to have such influence on this high-minded, morbidly impressionable boy!” Alyosha replied with feeling.

“And you say that to me!” cried Kolya. “Just imagine, I thought—several times since I’ve been here—that you despise me! If you only knew how I value your opinion!”

“But are you really so sensitive? At your age! Well, just imagine, as I was looking at you when you were telling your story in the other room, I thought that you must be very sensitive.”

“You thought so? What a sharp eye you have! I’ll bet it was the moment I was talking about the goose. That was when I thought you despised me deeply for rushing to show off; for a moment I hated you for it and began to spout nonsense. Then I imagined (here and now) that when I said, ‘If there were no God, He’d have to be invented,’ I was hurrying too much to display my education, all the more so since I’d read that phrase in a book. But I swear to you that I was hurrying not from vanity, but just so; I really don’t know why, as though from joy, although it’s a deeply shameful trait when a person throws himself at everyone’s neck from joy. I know that. On the other hand, now I’m convinced that you don’t despise me, and I thought all that up myself. Oh, Karamazov, I’m deeply unhappy. Sometimes I imagine all sorts of things, that everyone’s laughing at me, the whole world, and then I’m simply ready to destroy the entire order of things.”

“And you torment those around you,” Alyosha said, grinning.

“And I torment those around me, especially my mother. Karamazov, tell me, do I seem very ridiculous now?”

“Don’t think about that, don’t think about that at all!” cried Alyosha. “And what does ‘ridiculous’ mean? Isn’t everyone ridiculous or seems to be at some time? Besides, nearly all talented people today are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and that makes them miserable. Only it surprises me that you’ve begun to feel that way so early, although for some time I’ve been observing it, and not in you alone. Today even children have begun suffering from it. It’s almost insanity. The devil’s taken on the form of that vanity and has crept into an entire generation—it’s the devil precisely,” added Alyosha, now not grinning in the least, as Kolya noticed while staring at him. “You’re like everyone else,” concluded Alyosha, “that is, like many people, but you shouldn’t be like them, that’s what.”

“Even in spite of the fact that everyone’s like that?”

“Yes, in spite of that. You should be the only one who’s not like that. You really aren’t like everyone else: just now you weren’t ashamed to confess your bad, even ridiculous behavior. And today who’ll admit that? No one, and people have even stopped feeling the need to judge themselves. Don’t be like everyone else: even if you’re the only one not to be that way.”

“Splendid! I wasn’t mistaken about you. You know how to console a person. Oh, how I’ve longed to meet you, Karamazov! Is it possible that you also thought about me? You did say that you’ve thought about me before.”

“Yes, I’d heard about you and have also been thinking about you . . . and if it’s partly your vanity that made you ask me now, it really doesn’t matter.”

“You know, Karamazov, that our mutual declaration resembles a declaration of love,” said Kolya in a melting and bashful voice. “That’s not ridiculous, is it?”

“It’s not ridiculous at all; and even if it were, it doesn’t matter because it’s a good thing,” Alyosha said with a bright smile.

“You know, Karamazov, you must admit that you’re also acting a little embarrassed to be with me now. . . . I see it in your eyes,” Kolya said slyly, but almost with a sort of happiness.

“Why embarrassed?”

“Why did you blush?”

“You’re the one who made me blush,” Alyosha said with a laugh and really did blush deeply. “Yes, a little embarrassed, God knows why, I don’t . . .” he muttered, almost flustered.

“Oh, how I love and cherish you at this moment precisely because you’re also embarrassed by me! Because you’re just like me!” Kolya cried out in absolute ecstasy. His cheeks were aflame and his eyes were shining.

“Listen, Kolya: you, by the way, will be a very unhappy person in your life,” Alyosha said suddenly for some reason.

“I know, I know. How you know it all in advance!” Kolya confirmed at once.

“All the same, on the whole, you’ll bless life.”

“Exactly! Hurrah! You’re a prophet! Oh, we’ll become good friends, Karamazov. You know what gratifies me most is how you treat me as an equal. But we’re not equals: you’re above me! But we’ll become good friends. You know, all during this last month I’ve been saying to myself, ‘Either we’ll immediately become close friends forever, or else, from the first time, we’ll part and be enemies until the grave!’ ”

“And saying that, of course, you loved me!” Alyosha said with a joyful laugh.

“I did, I loved you terribly, loved you and dreamed of you! And how do you know everything in advance? Ah, here’s the doctor. Good Lord, what will he say? Just look at his face!”

1 Voltaire wrote his philosophical satire, Candide, or Optimism, in 1758.

2 Vissarion Belinsky (1811–1848) was a leading Russian critic and was the most influential of the Westernizers.

3 These characters from Pushkin’s famous novel in verse, Eugene Onegin (1824–30), appear in the ninth of Belinsky’s articles (1844–45) on the works of Pushkin.

4 “Women knit” (Fr.).

5 The Third Department (or Third Section) was the tsarist secret police.

6 Two lines from a widely known anti-government satire by D. D. Minayev. The headquarters of the secret police were located near the Chain Bridge.

7 The famous émigré periodical founded by Aleksandr Herzen and published in London. Actually, Minayev’s work was first published in the North Star (1861).

8 “Absolutely true” (Ital.).

VII

ILYUSHA

The doctor was coming back out of the cottage already wrapped in his fur coat, with his cap on his head. His face appeared almost angry and squeamish, as if he were afraid of getting dirty. He cast his eyes around the hall and looked sternly at Alyosha and Kolya. Alyosha waved to the driver from the doorway, and the carriage that had brought the doctor drove up to the door. The captain impatiently ran out after the doctor; bowing, almost scraping in front of him, he stopped him to hear the final verdict. The poor man looked broken and scared.

“Your Excellency, Your Excellency . . . is it really true?” he began, but he didn’t finish his thought; he merely clasped his hands in despair, even though he was looking at the doctor with imploring eyes, as if one word from him might still change the poor boy’s sentence.

“What’s to be done? I’m not God,” the doctor replied offhandedly, though in his usual imposing voice.

“Doctor . . . Your Excellency, will it be soon . . . soon?”

“Pre-pare your-self for an-y-thing,” said the doctor harshly, emphasizing every syllable; dropping his gaze, he was about to step over the threshold and head for the carriage.

“Your Excellency, for Christ’s sake!” The terrified captain stopped him again. “Your Excellency! Is there really nothing, nothing at all that can be done to save him?”

“It doesn’t de-pend on me now,” the doctor replied impatiently, “but, if you could, for example, send your patient im-me-di-ate-ly, right now, without delay”—the words “immediately” and “without delay” the doctor pronounced not just sternly, but almost angrily; as a result the captain even shuddered—“to Sy-ra-cuse, then . . . as a result of new be-ne-fi-cial cli-ma-to-lo-gi-cal conditions . . . perhaps, there might occur . . .”

“To Syracuse!” cried the captain, as if not understanding anything.

“To Syracuse—it’s in Sicily,” Kolya blurted out suddenly in explanation. The doctor looked at him.

“To Sicily! Sir, Your Excellency,” the captain said in consternation, “but you’ve seen us . . .” he said and spread his arms out, indicating his surroundings, “and Mamenka, and my family?”

“No, not the whole family to Sicily, but to the Caucasus in early spring . . . your daughter to the Caucasus, and your wife . . . after taking the waters in the Cau-ca-sus for her rheumatism . . . should immediately afterward de-part for Paris, to the clinic of Doc-tor of Psy-chi-a-try Le-pel-le-tier;[1] I could provide you with a letter to him. And then . . . perhaps, there might occur . . .”

“Doctor, Doctor! But don’t you see!” The captain suddenly spread his arms once more, indicating the bare wooden walls of his cottage in despair.

“That’s none of my business,” said the doctor with a grin. “I merely conveyed what me-di-cal sci-ence might say in reply to your question about the latest measures. As for the rest . . . unfortunately . . .”

“Don’t trouble yourself, medicine man, my dog won’t bite you,” Kolya snapped loudly, after noticing the doctor’s somewhat anxious glance at Perezvon, who was waiting on the threshold. There was an enraged note in Kolya’s voice. He had used the words “medicine man” instead of doctor intentionally, as he himself explained afterward, “to offend.”

“What’s that?” the doctor asked, throwing back his head and glaring at Kolya in surprise. “Who’s he?” he asked, turning suddenly to Alyosha, as if expecting him to explain.

“It’s Perezvon’s owner, medicine man; don’t worry about me,” Kolya rapped out again.

“Zvon?”[2] repeated the doctor, not understanding what Perezvon was.

“ ‘He hears the bell, but whence, he cannot tell.’ Farewell, medicaster, we’ll see each other in Syracuse!”

“Who’s that? Who, who?” The doctor flew into a terrible rage.

“He’s a local schoolboy, Doctor, a mischief-maker. Don’t pay him any attention,” said Alyosha rapidly with a frown. “Kolya, be quiet!” he shouted to Krasotkin. “Don’t pay him any attention, Doctor,” repeated Alyosha rather more impatiently.

“Flog him, flog him: he should be flogged!” roared the doctor, now stamping his feet in an enraged furor.

“You know, medicine man, my dog Perezvon really might bite you!” Kolya said with a quivering voice and flashing eyes, now very pale.

“Kolya, if you say even one more word, I’ll break off with you forever!” Alyosha cried commandingly.

“Medicaster, there’s only one being in the entire world who can order Nikolai Krasotkin, and it’s this man,” Kolya said, pointing to Alyosha. “I’ll obey him. Farewell!”

He darted away, opened the door, and quickly entered the room. Perezvon ran in after him. The doctor stood there stupefied for about five seconds, regarding Alyosha; then he suddenly spit and went to the carriage, repeating loudly: “This, this, this, I don’t know what this is!” The captain rushed to help him get seated. Alyosha followed Kolya into the room. He was already standing next to Ilyusha’s bed. Ilyusha was holding his hand and calling for his father. A moment later the captain returned.

“Papa, Papa, come here . . . we . . .” Ilyusha start muttering in extreme agitation, but apparently lacking the strength to continue, he suddenly flung his emaciated little arms forward and embraced both his father and Kolya firmly, as best he could, and joined them in one big hug close to himself. The captain immediately began shaking with silent sobs, and Kolya’s lips and chin began trembling.

“Papa, Papa! I feel so sorry for you, Papa!” Ilyusha moaned bitterly.

“Ilyushechka . . . my dear . . . the doctor said . . . you’ll recover . . . we’ll be happy . . . the doctor . . .” the captain began.

“Ah, Papa! I know what the new doctor told you about me. . . . I saw!” cried Ilyusha, and once again he firmly, with all his strength, hugged them both to himself, burying his face in his father’s shoulder.

“Papa, don’t cry . . . when I die, find a good boy, another one . . . choose one from among all, a good boy; name him Ilyusha and love him instead of me . . .”

“Be quiet, old man, you’ll get well!” Krasotkin cried suddenly, as if angry.

“But never forget me, Papa,” Ilyusha continued. “Come to visit my grave . . . here’s what, Papa . . . bury me near our large rock where we used to go for walks, and come to see me there with Krasotkin, in the evening. . . . And bring Perezvon. . . . I’ll be waiting for you. . . . Papa, Papa!”

His voice broke off; all three were embracing and silent. Ninochka was weeping softly in her wheelchair, and all of a sudden, seeing everyone in tears, Mama also burst out crying.

“Ilyushechka, Ilyushechka!” she kept exclaiming.

Krasotkin suddenly freed himself from Ilyusha’s embrace.

“Farewell, old man, my mother’s waiting for me with dinner,” he said rapidly. “What a pity I didn’t tell her! She’ll be very worried. . . . But after dinner I’ll come back to see you for the rest of the day and the whole evening: I have so much to tell you, so much to tell! And I’ll bring Perezvon, but for now I’ll take him home with me, because without me he’ll start howling and bother you. Good-bye!”

And he ran out into the hall. He didn’t want to burst into tears, but in the hall he started crying anyway. Alyosha found him in that state.

“Kolya, you must definitely keep your word and come back, or else he’ll be terribly miserable,” Alyosha said insistently.

“Absolutely! Oh, how I curse myself for not coming sooner,” Kolya muttered through his tears; now he was no longer embarrassed that he was crying. At this moment the captain came flying out of the room and closed the door behind him. His face was frenzied; his lips were trembling. He stood before both young people and raised his arms.

“I don’t want a good boy! I don’t want another boy!” he whispered in a bleak tone, clenching his teeth. “If I forget thee, O, Jerusalem, let my tongue cleave . . .”[3]

He didn’t finish, as if choking with emotion, and sank feebly to his knees in front of the wooden bench. Clasping his head with his fists, he began sobbing, wailing piteously, but trying with all his might to keep his cries from being heard in the next room. Kolya ran into the street.

“Farewell, Karamazov! Will you come back?” he cried abruptly and angrily to Alyosha.

“I’ll certainly come this evening.”

“What was he saying about Jerusalem. . . . What was that all about?”

“It’s from the Bible: ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,’ that is, if I forget all that’s precious to me, if I trade it for anything, may I be struck . . .”

“I understand, enough! Be sure to come! Ici, Perezvon!” he cried furiously to the dog and headed for home with large, rapid steps.

1 Almire René Jacques Lepelletier (1790–1880) was a well-known doctor and writer in Paris.

2 “Bell” (Rus.). This word will become the basis for a clever pun: zvon (“bell”) and Perezvon (“peal”).

3 Psalms 137:5–6.

BOOK ELEVEN

IVAN FYODOROVICH KARAMAZOV

I

AT GRUSHENKA’S

Alyosha headed toward Cathedral Square to see Grushenka at the widow Morozova’s house. She’d sent Fenya to him early that morning with an urgent request for him to call on her. After interrogating Fenya, Alyosha learned that her mistress had been in a state of great and particular anxiety the previous day. During the two months since Mitya’s arrest, Alyosha had often visited the home of the widow Morozova, both on his own accord and to carry out commissions for his brother Mitya. Some three days after Mitya’s arrest, Grushenka had fallen seriously ill and remained so for almost five weeks. For one week out of those five she was even unconscious. Her face had changed markedly, growing thin and sallow, though for almost the last two weeks she’d been well enough to go out. But in Alyosha’s opinion, her face now looked even more attractive; upon entering, he loved to meet her glance. A look of something strong and intelligent had taken possession of her appearance. It indicated a certain spiritual transformation in her; a steady, humble, but good and unshakable resolve had taken hold. On her forehead between her eyebrows a small vertical wrinkle had appeared, lending her charming face a look of concentrated thoughtfulness, something almost even stern at first glance. No trace was left of her former frivolity. Alyosha also found it strange that in spite of all the misfortune that had befallen the poor woman, the fiancée of a man who’d been arrested for a horrendous crime almost at the same moment when she’d agreed to be his fiancée, and in spite of her subsequent illness and the almost inevitable verdict of the court that loomed ahead of him, Grushenka had lost none of her former youthful gaiety. In her previously proud eyes there now shone some sort of serenity, although . . . although, those eyes still gleamed with the old malevolent fire whenever she was visited by a certain previous concern, one that had not only not diminished, but had even intensified in her heart. The object of this concern was always one and the same: Katerina Ivanovna, whom Grushenka, when she lay ill, kept mentioning even during her delirium. Alyosha understood that she was terribly jealous of her with regard to Mitya, the prisoner Mitya, in spite of the fact that Katerina Ivanovna hadn’t visited him even once during his confinement, even though she could’ve done so whenever she wished. All of this had turned into a difficult problem for Alyosha because he was the only person to whom Grushenka opened her heart and constantly asked for advice; on the other hand he was sometimes incapable of saying anything to her.

He entered the apartment feeling anxious. She was already at home: it was about half an hour after she’d returned from seeing Mitya, and from the hasty way she jumped up from her armchair behind the table to greet him when he entered, he concluded that she’d been waiting for him very impatiently. Cards were spread on the table: she’d laid them out for a game of “fools.” A bed had been made up on a leather sofa on the other side of the table; on it lay Maksimov, half-reclining, wearing a dressing gown and a cotton nightcap, evidently unwell and weakened, although he was smiling sweetly. This homeless little old man, ever since Grushenka had returned from Mokroye, some two months ago, had been staying in her house and was still there, inseparable from her. Arriving back that day in the rain and slush, drenched and frightened, he’d seated himself on the sofa and had stared at her in silence with a timid, imploring smile. Grushenka, who was in a state of deep grief and had begun suffering from a fever, busy as she was doing things, had almost forgotten about him during the first half hour after her arrival—and then she suddenly began staring at him intently: he giggled pitifully and helplessly to her face. She called Fenya and ordered her to give him something to eat. All that day he sat there, almost without stirring; when it became dark and they closed the shutters, Fenya asked her mistress:

“Well, madame, is he going to spend the night here?”

“Yes,” Grushenka replied, “make up a bed for him on the sofa.”

Questioning him further, Grushenka found out that he really had nowhere to go and that “Mr. Kalganov, my benefactor, declared without hesitation that he would not welcome me any longer and gave me five rubles as a gift.” “Well, God bless you, stay here,” Grushenka declared in her anguish, smiling at him compassionately. The old man winced at her smile and his lips began quivering with grateful tears. And so, the wandering sponger had been living with her from that time forward. Even during her illness, he didn’t leave her. Fenya and her mother, who was Grushenka’s cook, didn’t drive him out, but continued to feed him and make up his bed on the sofa. Subsequently, Grushenka even got used to him; returning from her visits to Mitya (whom she’d begin visiting even before she’d completely recovered from her illness), to chase away her grief, she would sit and begin chatting with “Maksimushka” about all sorts of things, just so she wouldn’t have to think about her sadness. It turned out that the old man knew how to tell stories and, as a result, he finally even became essential to her. Except for Alyosha, who would drop in to see her, but not every day, and always for a brief visit, Grushenka scarcely received anyone else. Her old merchant, Samsonov, lay desperately ill at the time, and “was on his way out,” as they said in town; in fact, he died about a week after Mitya’s trial. Three weeks before his death, sensing his impending finale, he finally summoned his sons upstairs to him, with their wives and children, and instructed them not to leave him again. From that moment on, he gave strict orders to his servants not to admit Grushenka; and if she were to come, they should tell her: “He wishes you a long and happy life and wants you to forget him entirely.” Grushenka, however, sent almost every day to inquire about his health.

“You’ve come at last!” she cried, tossing down the cards and greeting Alyosha joyfully. “Maksimushka’s been scaring me by saying that you wouldn’t come. Ah, how I need you! Sit down at the table; what would you like? Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” said Alyosha, sitting down at the table. “I’m very hungry.”

“Precisely; Fenya, Fenya, some coffee!” cried Grushenka. “It has been brewing for a long time and has been waiting for you; and bring some pirozhki,[1] and make sure they’re hot. No, wait a moment: Alyosha, we had a storm occur today over those pirozhki. I took him some in prison, and he, would you believe it, threw them back at me and refused to eat them. He threw one on the floor and stamped on it. So I said, ‘I’ll leave them with the guard; if you don’t eat them before evening, it means that your venomous spite is feeding you!’ And with that, I left. We quarreled again, would you believe it? Whenever I go there, we quarrel.”

Grushenka said all this in one breath, with agitation. Maksimov, suddenly feeling timid, smiled and dropped his eyes.

“What did you quarrel about this time?” asked Alyosha.

“I never expected it! Imagine, he’s jealous of ‘my former lover’: ‘Why, why are you keeping him? Have you begun supporting him?’ He’s jealous, always jealous of me! He sleeps and eats—and he’s jealous. Last week he was even jealous of Kuzma.”

“But didn’t he know about your ‘former lover’ before?”

“Can you believe it? He knew from the very beginning, and today he suddenly began abusing him. I’m ashamed to repeat what he said. What a fool! Rakitka arrived as I was leaving. Perhaps Rakitka’s inciting him, eh? What do you think?” she added distractedly.

“He loves you, that’s what; he loves you very much. And now he’s particularly agitated.”

“I’ll say, he’s agitated; the trial begins tomorrow. I went there today to say something about tomorrow because, Alyosha, I’m even afraid to think about what tomorrow will bring! You say he’s agitated, but so am I! And he’s worried about the Pole! What a fool! But he’s not yet jealous of Maksimushka.”

“My wife was also very jealous of me, ma’am,” Maksimov said, inserting his two cents.

“Jealous of you?” Grushenka said with an unintentional laugh. “Who was she jealous of?”

“The servant girls, ma’am.”

“Be quiet, Maksimushka. I’m not in the mood for laughter right now; I’m still feeling angry. Stop staring at those pirozhki: I won’t give you any; they’re not good for you. Nor will I give you any balzam.[2] I have to take care of him, too, just as if I were running a poorhouse,” she said with a laugh.

“I don’t deserve your good deeds; I’m of no use, ma’am,” Maksimov said in a tearful voice. “You’d do better to lavish your good deeds on those who are in greater need, ma’am.”

“Hey, everyone is useful, Maksimushka; how do we know who’s more useful? If only that Pole didn’t exist, Alyosha, and today he’s also decided to fall ill. I went to see him. So now I’m intentionally sending him some pirozhki; I hadn’t sent him any, but Mitya accused me of doing so, so now I will send him some on purpose! Ah, here comes Fenya with a letter! Well, so it is, from the Poles, asking for money!”

Pan Musiałowicz really had sent an extremely long and flowery letter, after his usual fashion, in which he begged for her to lend him three rubles. He’d enclosed a receipt with a promise to repay the loan within a period of three months; it was also signed by Pan Wróblewski. Grushenka had received many such letters with enclosed receipts from her “former lover.” It began during the two weeks of her convalescence. She knew, however, that both Poles had come to see her to inquire after her health when she was ill. The first letter she’d received was long, written on large-format paper, with a big family crest on the seal. It was terribly dark and flowery; Grushenka read only the first half and then tossed it away, having understood nothing. Besides, she had no interest in letters then. After this first letter there followed a second, one day later, in which Pan Musiałowicz begged for a loan of two thousand rubles for a very short term. Grushenka left this letter unanswered as well. There followed an entire series of letters, one a day, similarly grand and flowery, in which the sum of the requested loan kept getting lower, down to one hundred rubles, twenty-five, ten, until at last Grushenka suddenly received a letter in which the two Poles were requesting a loan of only one ruble, and attached was a receipt that both men had signed. Then Grushenka suddenly felt sorry for them; at dusk she went to see them. She found them in terrible poverty, almost penury, without food, without firewood, without cigarettes, and in debt to their landlady. The two hundred rubles that they’d won from Mitya in Mokroye had disappeared somewhere very quickly. Grushenka, however, was surprised that they met her with arrogant pomposity and self-reliance, extreme formality and overblown speeches. Grushenka merely laughed and gave her “former lover” ten rubles. Then, with a laugh, she told Mitya all about them; he was not jealous in the least. But since then the Poles had attached themselves to Grushenka and bombarded her every day with letters and requests for money; and each time, she sent them a small sum. And suddenly, that very day, Mitya had decided to become frightfully jealous.

“Fool that I am, I stopped in to see him for a minute when I was on my way to Mitya, because he too fell ill, my former Pole,” Grushenka began again, fussing and hurrying. “I was laughing as I told Mitya about it. ‘Just imagine,’ I said, ‘my Pole took it into his head to sing his old songs to me, while playing his guitar. He thought I’d be deeply moved and would marry him . . . ’ But Mitya suddenly jumped up, swearing. . . . Well then! I’ll send some pirozhki to the Poles! Fenya, is that little girl they sent still here? Give her three rubles and a dozen pirozhki wrapped in paper, and tell her to deliver them. And you, Alyosha, should definitely tell Mitya that I sent some pirozhki to the Poles.”

“I wouldn’t tell him for anything,” said Alyosha, smiling.

“Hey, do you think he’s suffering? Why, he’s jealous on purpose. And it’s all the same to him,” Grushenka said bitterly.

“What do you mean ‘on purpose’?”

“You’re a silly boy, Alyoshenka, that’s what; with all your intelligence, you still don’t understand a thing, that’s what. I’m not offended that he’s jealous of a girl like me; but I’d really be offended if he weren’t jealous at all. That’s how I am. I’m not offended by jealousy; I myself have a cruel heart, and I can be jealous. The only thing I’m offended by is that he doesn’t love at all and that now he’s jealous on purpose, that’s what. Am I blind? Don’t I see? He suddenly started talking about that other woman, about Katka: he said she was this and that, and that she’d sent for a doctor from Moscow for the trial to try to save him, and that she’d also sent for a lawyer, one of the best, a most erudite one. It means he loves her if he started praising her in front of me, with his shameless eyes! He’s guilty before me; he’s latched onto me to make me the guilty party and to blame it all on me: ‘You,’ he said, ‘were with the Pole before me, so I can’t be blamed for having been with Katka.’ That’s what it is! He wants to pile all the blame on me. He latched onto me on purpose, on purpose, I tell you, but I . . .”

Grushenka didn’t finish saying what she intended to do; she covered her eyes with her handkerchief and burst into terrible sobs.

“He doesn’t love Katerina Ivanovna,” Alyosha said firmly.

“Well, whether he loves her or not, I’ll soon find out myself,” Grushenka said with a threatening tone in her voice, removing the handkerchief from her eyes. Her face was distorted. Alyosha observed with sadness how all of a sudden her gentle, quiet, cheerful face became gloomy and spiteful.

“Enough of this foolish nonsense!” she suddenly snapped. “That’s not why I summoned you here. Alyosha, my dearest, tomorrow, what will happen tomorrow? That’s the question that’s tormenting me! I’m the only one who’s tormented by it! I look at everyone, and no one else thinks about it, no one cares about it at all. Are you thinking about it at least? The trial begins tomorrow! Tell me, how will they judge him? It was the lackey, the lackey who killed him! Good Lord! Will they really condemn him instead of the lackey and will no one intercede for him? They haven’t questioned the lackey at all, have they?”

“They interrogated him harshly,” Alyosha remarked thoughtfully. “But everyone concluded that it wasn’t him. Now he’s lying very ill—he’s been sick since he had an epileptic fit. He’s really sick,” added Alyosha.

“Good Lord, couldn’t you go to that lawyer yourself and tell him confidentially what really happened? He’s been summoned from Petersburg for three thousand rubles, they say.”

“The three of us put up three thousand rubles: brother Ivan, Katerina Ivanovna, and me; she paid two thousand more to bring the doctor from Moscow. The lawyer Fetyukovich would have charged more, but this case has received publicity throughout Russia; they write about it in all the newspapers and journals. Fetyukovich decided to come more for the renown, because it’s already become so notorious. I saw him yesterday.”

“Well, so? Did you tell him?” Grushenka asked hurriedly.

“He heard me out and made no reply. He did say that he’d already formed a definite opinion. But he promised to take my words into consideration.”

“What do you mean, ‘consideration’! Oh, those swindlers! They’ll destroy him! And what about the doctor? Why did she call a doctor?”

“As an expert. They want to prove that my brother Mitya was insane and that he killed him when he was not in control of his faculties,” Alyosha said softly. “But my brother won’t agree to this.”

“Ah, that would be true, if he’d killed him!” cried Grushenka. “He was out of his mind then, completely mad, and it was my fault, scoundrel that I am! But he didn’t kill him, he didn’t! Yet everyone thinks he did, the whole town. Even Fenya’s evidence seems to point to the fact that he killed him. And in that shop, and that official, and the people in the tavern heard him, too! Everyone’s against him, they’re all making such a clamor.”

“Yes, the evidence has proliferated terribly,” Alyosha observed gloomily.

“And Grigory, Grigory Vasilich, insists that the door was open; he swears that he saw it; you can’t convince him otherwise. I went to see him and talked with him myself. He just swears at me!”

“Yes, that’s perhaps the strongest piece of evidence against my brother,” said Alyosha.

“And as to whether Mitya was mad, he certainly seems so now,” Grushenka began suddenly with a particularly worried and mysterious look. “You know, Alyoshenka, I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a long time: I go to see him every day, and I’m simply astonished. Tell me what you think: what’s he on about now? He starts talking, talking—I can’t understand a thing; I think it might be something intellectual, and since I’m so dense, I can’t understand; he started to say something about a ‘babe,’ that is, some infant. ‘Why’ he asks, ‘is the babe so poor?’ He says, ‘Now I’ll go to Siberia for that babe; I didn’t kill him, but I have to go to Siberia!’ What’s all this about? What ‘babe’ does he mean? I didn’t understand a single thing. I merely burst into tears when he spoke, because he spoke so well; he was crying and I started crying, too; he suddenly kissed me and made the sign of the cross over me. What does it all mean, Alyosha? Tell me, who is that ‘babe’?”

“For some reason Rakitin’s gotten into the habit of visiting him,” Alyosha said with a smile, “however . . . this isn’t from Rakitin. I didn’t see him yesterday; today I will.”

“No, it’s not Rakitka; it’s your brother Ivan who’s been upsetting him; he’s been going to see him, that’s what . . .” Grushenka said and suddenly broke off. Alyosha stared at her as if astonished.

“Going to see him? Has he really gone to see him? Mitya himself told me that Ivan hadn’t visited him once.”

“Well . . . well, that’s who I am! Now I’ve let the cat out of the bag!” cried Grushenka in embarrassment, suddenly blushing. “Wait, Alyosha, be quiet; so be it, if I’ve blurted out a secret, I’ll tell the whole truth: he’s been to see him twice, the first time right after he arrived—when he’d rushed back from Moscow, before I fell ill; and he came a second time just a week ago. He told Mitya not to tell you about it, not at all; he said not to tell anyone—he came in secret.”

Alyosha sat there in deep reflection, considering something. The news evidently shocked him.

“Brother Ivan doesn’t discuss Mitya’s case with me,” he said slowly. “In general, he’s spoken very little with me all during these last few months; and when I used to go to see him, he always seemed dissatisfied that I’d come, so for the last three weeks I haven’t been visiting him. Hmm. . . . If he was there a week ago, then . . . a real change has occurred in Mitya during this last week.”

“There’s been a change, a real change!” Grushenka quickly confirmed. “They have a secret, they had an actual secret! Mitya told me it was a secret; and, you know, it was such a great secret that it gives Mitya no peace. He was cheerful before, and still is, but, you know, when he starts shaking his head and pacing around the room, and when he starts tugging at the hair on his temple with his right hand, then I know that there’s something troubling his soul. I just know it! Otherwise, he’s been cheerful; and today he was cheerful!”

“And you said he was worried?”

“Yes, worried, but cheerful. He’s worried for a moment, then cheerful; then he’s worried again. And, you know, Alyosha, I’m surprised at him: there’s this terrible thing hanging over him, yet he sometimes laughs at such trifles, as if he himself were a baby.”

“Is it true that he said not to tell me about Ivan’s visits? Is that what he said: ‘Don’t tell him’?”

“That’s what he said: ‘Don’t tell him.’ He’s most afraid of you, Mitya is. Because it’s a secret: he said so himself, it’s a secret. . . . Alyosha, my dear, go to him, and find out what this secret they have is, and then come and tell me,” Grushenka said, suddenly jumping up and beseeching him. “Settle it for me, poor woman, so I’ll know my accursed fate! That’s why I summoned you.”

“Do you think it’s something about you? Then he wouldn’t have mentioned having a secret in front of you.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he wants to tell me, but he doesn’t dare. He’s warning me. A secret, he says, there’s a secret; but what kind of secret—he didn’t say.”

“What do you yourself think it is?”

“What do I think? That it’s the end of me, that’s what I think. All three of them have prepared my end, because Katka’s one of them. It’s all her doing; it comes from her. ‘She’s this and that’; that means I’m not like her. He tells me that beforehand, as a warning. He’s preparing to give me up, that’s the whole secret! The three of them thought up this scheme—Mitya, Katka, and Ivan Fyodorovich. Alyosha, I’ve been meaning to ask you for a long time: a week ago he suddenly revealed to me that Ivan’s in love with Katka, because he often goes to see her. Was he telling me the truth or not? Tell me, on your conscience, speak the truth bluntly.”

“I won’t lie to you. Ivan isn’t in love with Katerina Ivanovna, that’s what I think.”

“Well, that’s what I thought, too. He’s lying to me, the shameless man, that’s what! And he’s acting jealous of me now, so he can blame me afterward. He’s a fool; he doesn’t know how to cover his tracks; he’s so honest. . . . But I’ll get him, I will! ‘You believe,’ he says, ‘that I killed him’—that’s what he said to me, to me. He reproached me with that! Let it be! But just wait: I’ll give Katka a hard time at the trial! I’ll say a little word or two there. . . . I’ll tell everything then!”

And once again she started crying bitterly.

“Here’s what I can state for certain, Grushenka,” said Alyosha, getting up from his place. “The first thing is, he loves you: he loves you more than anyone on earth, only you, believe me. I know this. I know it for certain. The second thing I’ll say is that I don’t want to try to flush out his secret from him; if he himself tells me today, I’ll say outright that I’ve promised to reveal it to you. Then I’ll come back later today and tell you. But . . . it seems to me . . . that Katerina Ivanovna is not involved, and that this secret is about something else. This much is certain. It doesn’t seem to be about Katerina Ivanovna at all. That’s how it seems to me. Good-bye for now!”

Alyosha shook Grushenka’s hand. She was still crying. He saw that she didn’t believe his consoling words very much, but at least she felt better that she’d given vent to her grief, and had had her say. He was sorry to leave her in such a state, but he was hurrying. He still had a great deal to do.

1 Small pies filled with meat, cabbage, etc.

2 An herbal liqueur, popular in Latvia, often used medicinally.

II

AN AILING LITTLE FOOT

The first of these tasks was at Madame Khokhlakova’s house; he hurried there to finish his business, so that he would not be late to visit Mitya. Madame Khokhlakova had been unwell off and on for the last three weeks: for some reason her foot had swollen, and although she hadn’t taken to bed, still, during the day, she lay on the sofa in her boudoir in charming, but proper déshabillé. Alyosha noted that in spite of her illness, Madame Khokhlakova was still somehow dressed fashionably: headdress, ribbons, and a loose jacket; he grasped why this was so, but dismissed those ideas from his mind as frivolous. During the last two months Mr. Perkhotin, the young civil servant, had begun visiting Madame Khokhlakova, along with her other guests. Alyosha hadn’t been there for the last four days; upon entering the house, he hastened in to see Liza because he wanted to speak with her; just yesterday she’d sent a maid to him with a message asking him to come at once to discuss “a very important circumstance” that would, for various reasons, interest him. But, as the maid was going in to announce Alyosha to Liza, Madame Khokhlakova had somehow already learned of his arrival and had immediately sent to invite him to look in on her, “only for a minute.” Alyosha decided that it was better to satisfy the mother’s request first, because otherwise she’d constantly be summoning him from Liza’s room during his visit with her. Madame Khokhlakova was lying on her sofa, dressed particularly fashionably, apparently in a state of extreme nervous agitation. She greeted Alyosha with cries of ecstasy.

“It’s been ages, ages, whole ages since I’ve seen you! An entire week, just imagine. However, you were here just four days ago, on Wednesday. I’m sure you’re here now to see Lise; you were hoping to slip into her room on tiptoes so I wouldn’t notice. Dear, dear Aleksey Fyodorovich, if you only knew how she worries me! But more about that later. Although that’s most important, we’ll talk about it later. Dear Aleksey Fyodorovich, I entrust you completely with my daughter, Lise. After Father Zosima’s death—God rest his soul!” (She crossed herself.) “I regard you as a monk, although you look very handsome in your new suit. Where did you manage to find such a good tailor here? But no, no, that’s not important now. Forgive me for calling you Alyosha; I’m an old woman, and everything’s allowed,” she said, smiling flirtatiously, “but more about that later. The important thing is not to forget what is important. Please, remind me yourself; every time I start talking, you say, ‘And what about the most important thing?’ Ah, how can I tell you what the most important thing is now? Since the time Lise took back her promise—her childish promise, Aleksey Fyodorovich—to marry you, you rightly understood that all this was merely the playful childish fantasy of a sick girl who’d been confined to her wheelchair for a long time—thank God she can walk now. This new doctor, whom Katya summoned from Moscow for your unfortunate brother, who tomorrow. . . . Well, why talk about tomorrow! I’m languishing at the thought of tomorrow! The main thing is, curiosity. . . . In a word, yesterday this doctor came to us to see Lise . . . I paid him fifty rubles for the visit. But that’s not important, again that’s not the point. . . . Don’t you see, now I’m all confused? I’m in such a rush. Why am I hurrying? I don’t know. Now I’ve stopped knowing. For me everything’s mixed up in some sort of jumble. I’m afraid that from boredom you’ll jump up and run away from me, and that will be all I see of you. Ah, my God! Why are we sitting here? First of all—coffee. Yuliya, Glafira, coffee!”

Alyosha thanked her at once and said that he’d just had some coffee.

“Where?”

“At Agrafena Aleksandrovna’s.”

“At . . . that woman’s house? Ah, it was she who ruined everyone; however, I don’t know; they say she’s become a saint, although it’s a bit late. It would’ve been better to have done so before, when it was necessary, but now, what good is it? Quiet, be quiet, Aleksey Fyodorovich, because there’s so much I want to say to you, and it seems like I won’t get to say anything. This awful trial. . . . I’ll definitely be there; I’m preparing to do so; they’ll carry me on a chair and I can certainly sit up. I’ll have servants to attend me. You know, don’t you, that I’ll be a witness. What will I say, what will I say? I don’t know what I’ll say. You have to swear an oath, don’t you?”

“You do, but I don’t think you’ll be able to attend.”

“I can sit up; ah, you’re confusing me! This trial, this wild act, and then everyone goes to Siberia, some marry, and so quickly, quickly, then everything changes, and, at last, there’s nothing; they’ll become old men on the verge of death. Well, so be it: I’m tired. This Katya—cette charmante personne[1] has destroyed all my hopes; now she’ll follow one of your brothers to Siberia; and another of your brothers will follow her and live in the next town, and they’ll all torment one another. This drives me mad; but the main thing is the publicity: all the newspapers of Petersburg and Moscow write about it a million times over. Ah, yes, just imagine: they also write about me, that I’m your brother’s ‘dear friend’; I don’t want to repeat their vile words; imagine, just imagine!”

“That can’t be! Where did they write it and what did they say?”

“I’ll show you at once. I received it yesterday—and I read it immediately. It’s right here in the Petersburg paper, Rumors.[2] This newspaper just began to be published this year; I dearly love rumors and I subscribed, so to speak, to my own misfortune: this is the kind of rumor they published. Right here, on this page: read it.”

She handed Alyosha the newspaper page lying under her pillow.

It wasn’t that she was distraught; she was somehow overwhelmed, and perhaps everything in her head really was mixed up in some sort of jumble. The story in the newspaper was extremely typical and must have had an upsetting effect on her; fortunately, perhaps, she was unable to focus on one particular point at a time; therefore, a moment later she was able to forget all about the newspaper and jump to something entirely different.

Alyosha was well aware that word of the awful trial had spread throughout Russia. Good Lord, he’d managed to read such wild stories and dispatches during the last two months, among other, more accurate accounts about his brother, about the Karamazovs in general, and even about himself. In one paper it even said that after the horror of his brother’s crime, he’d been so terrified that he became a schema monk and went into seclusion; another paper contradicted this account and wrote that, on the contrary, he and his late elder Zosima had broken into the treasury and had “absconded from the monastery.” The latest dispatch from that newspaper was entitled “The Karamazov Case from Skotoprigonevsk”[3] (alas, such is the name of our little town; I hid this fact for a long time). The article was brief, and there was no direct mention of Madame Khokhlakova; in general, all names were concealed. It merely stated that the criminal, whose approaching trial had become such a sensation, was a retired army captain, an arrogant fellow and a loafer, also a serf owner[4] who engaged in amorous intrigues and had a “special effect on bored ladies.” One such lady among these “bored widows,” youngish, although she had a grown daughter, had been charmed to such an extent that only two hours before the crime, she’d offered him three thousand rubles if he’d elope with her to the gold mines. But the villain preferred to kill his father and steal the three thousand, assuming he’d escape punishment, rather than drag this pining lady, with her forty-year-old charms, off to Siberia. This playful dispatch, as could be expected, concluded with an outburst of genuine indignation concerning the immorality of patricide and the institution of serfdom. After reading it with interest, Alyosha folded up the newspaper and handed it back to Madame Khokhlakova.

“Well, it has to be me,” she began, babbling again. “It’s me; almost an hour before, I proposed the plan about the gold mines, and all of a sudden, ‘forty-year-old charms’! Was that really my reason? He wrote it on purpose! May the Eternal Judge forgive him for writing about those forty-year-old charms, as I now forgive him. . . . But do you know who it is? It’s your friend Rakitin.”

“Perhaps,” said Alyosha, “although I didn’t hear a thing.”

“It’s him, him, there’s no ‘perhaps’ here! I drove him away. . . . Do you know the whole story?”

“I know that you asked him not to visit you anymore, but why precisely—that . . . from you at least, I haven’t heard.”

“Therefore, you heard it from him! And: does he abuse me? Abuse me terribly?”

“Yes, he does, but he abuses everyone. But I didn’t hear from him why you refuse to receive him. In general, I don’t see him very often. We’re not friends.”

“Well, then I’ll reveal the whole thing to you and, since there’s nothing else to be done, I’ll confess, because there’s one thing here that may be my own fault. But it’s small, a very small point, the smallest point, so perhaps it’s not true at all. You see, my dear”—Madame Khokhlakova suddenly assumed a playful expression, and a charming, though enigmatic little smile flickered across her lips—“you see, I suspect . . . but you must forgive me, Alyosha, I’m like a mother to you; no, no, quite the contrary: I’m speaking to you now as if you were my own father, because my mother doesn’t fit in here at all. . . . Well, it’s just like confessing to Father Zosima; and that’s most certain and fits very well. Earlier I called you a monk—well, this poor young fellow, your friend Rakitin (oh, God, I simply can’t get angry with him! I am angry with him, but just a little); well, in a word, this frivolous young man, just imagine, seems to have taken it into his head to fall in love with me. I suddenly observed this afterward, afterward, but in the beginning, about a month ago, he began visiting me more frequently, almost every day, even though we’d been acquainted before then. I don’t know a thing . . . suddenly it occurred to me, and I began to notice things in astonishment. You know, two months ago I began receiving that modest, charming, and worthy young man, Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin, a local official. You’ve met him here several times yourself. Isn’t it true that he’s a worthy and earnest man? He comes once every three days, not every day (though why not every day?) and he’s always so well dressed; in general, I love young people, Alyosha, talented, modest, just like you, and he almost has the mind of a statesman; he speaks so charmingly that I will definitely, definitely intercede on his behalf. He’s a future diplomat. He almost saved me from death on that frightful day, coming to see me that evening. Well, your friend Rakitin comes in wearing dirty boots and always stretches out his legs on the carpet . . . in a word, he’d even begun dropping hints; suddenly, one day as he was leaving, he shook my hand very firmly. My foot began to ache right after he shook my hand like that. He’d met Pyotr Ilyich here before, and would you believe it, he was constantly needling him, needling him, mumbling something at him for some reason. I simply look at the way they’re interacting, and laugh inwardly. Well, once I was sitting here alone and suddenly, but, no, I’d already gone to bed, I was lying there alone, when Mikhail Osipovich Rakitin comes in; just imagine, he’d brought some lines of verse, very brief lines, on the subject of my ailing foot; that is, he described my little foot in poetry. Wait, here it is:

“Oh, what a lovely little foot,

Though a bit swollen . . .[5]

“Or something like that—I can never remember poetry—I have the lines right here—I’ll show them to you later, it’s charming, charming, and it’s not only about my little foot; it’s also edifying, with a charming idea, but I’ve forgotten it; in a word, it’s perfect for my album. Well, of course I thanked him, and he was obviously flattered. I hadn’t even managed to thank him properly when suddenly Pyotr Ilyich came in, and Mikhail Osipovich suddenly frowned as dark as night. I could see that Pyotr Ilyich had interfered in some way, because Mikhail Osipovich had certainly wanted to say something after reciting his verse; I’d had a presentiment of it, and then Pyotr Ilyich walked in. So I suddenly showed him the lines and didn’t say who’d composed them. But I was certain, certain, that he guessed immediately, although he still doesn’t want to admit it and he maintains that he hadn’t guessed; but he did that intentionally. Pyotr Ilyich burst into laughter at once, and began to criticize the verse: it was a worthless little poem, written by some seminarian—but you know, he did it with such fervor, such fervor! Here your friend, instead of laughing, flew into a terrible rage. . . . Good Lord, I thought they might have a fight. ‘It was I,’ he says, ‘who wrote those lines. I wrote them as a joke, because I consider it demeaning to write poetry. . . . But it’s a good poem. They want to erect a monument to your Pushkin for writing about women’s little feet,[6] while I wrote with moral purpose, and you yourself,’ he says, ‘are in support of serfdom; you,’ he says, ‘have no humanity, and don’t share any enlightened feelings; progress hasn’t affected you; you’re a bureaucrat and you take bribes!’ That’s when I started to shout and implore them. Pyotr Ilyich, you know, is certainly not a timid fellow; he suddenly assumes the most charitable tone: he regards him mockingly, listens, and then begs forgiveness: ‘I didn’t know,’ he says. ‘Had I known,’ he says, ‘I’d have praised them. . . . Poets,’ he says, ‘are so prickly.’ In a word, he mocked him under cover of such a charitable tone.

“He himself explained to me later that it was all sarcastic, but I thought he was in earnest. So there I lay, just like now, and suddenly thought: would it be proper or not to drive Mikhail Osipovich away because he was shouting indecently at my guest in my own home? And then, would you believe it, I lay there, closed my eyes, and thought, would it be proper or not, and I couldn’t decide; I was anguished, anguished, and my heart was pounding: should I yell or not? One voice says, ‘Yell’ and the other one says, ‘No, don’t!’ And no sooner had the second voice spoken than I suddenly cried out and fainted. Needless to say, there was a great commotion. Suddenly I stood up and said to Mikhail Osipovich: ‘It’s very bitter for me to say this to you, but I don’t wish to receive you again in my house.’ And I drove him away. Ah, Aleksey Fyodorovich! I myself know it was the wrong thing to do; I was pretending all the time; I wasn’t angry with him at all, but suddenly, that’s the important thing, it was sudden, it seemed to me that this scene would be all right. . . . Would you believe that the scene was still natural because I even began weeping and cried for several days afterward; then suddenly, one day after dinner, I forgot all about it. It’s been two weeks since he came here, and I think: will he really not come at all? I was even wondering about this yesterday; then, all of a sudden, toward evening, the copy of Rumors arrived. I read it and gasped. Who could have written it? It was he; he went home, sat down, and wrote it; he submitted it and they published it. This was two weeks ago. Alyosha, it’s terrible how I keep talking, and I don’t say what’s really necessary. Ah, the words just keep coming!”

“Today it’s essential for me to see my brother on time,” Alyosha began muttering.

“Precisely, precisely! You’ve reminded me of everything! Listen, what does ‘fit of passion’ mean?

“What fit of passion?” asked Alyosha in surprise.

“ ‘A legal fit of passion.’[7] It’s an act for which everything is forgiven. No matter what you’ve done—you’re immediately acquitted.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Here’s what: this Katya . . . she’s a charming, charming creature, but I have no idea whom she really loves. She visited me recently, and I was unable to extract the answer from her. All the more so since she herself won’t talk to me about anything except on a superficial level; in a word, all about my health, and nothing more, and she even assumes a sort of tone, so that I simply say to myself, ‘Well, let it be. Good luck to her. . . .’ Ah, yes, I was talking about that fit of passion: the doctor’s come. Do you know that? Of course you do; he’s the only one who can recognize madmen; it was you who summoned him, no, not you, but Katya. It was all Katya’s doing. Well, do you see? A man might be sitting there, perfectly sane, but all of sudden he has a fit of passion. He’s conscious and knows what he’s doing; meanwhile, he’s having a fit of passion. Well, that’s what happened to Dmitry Fyodorovich; he probably had a fit of passion. They found out about it when the new law courts were opened.[8] This doctor came and questioned me about that evening and the gold mines: ‘How did he behave then?’ he asked. He must have been in a fit of passion at the time—he came and was shouting, ‘Money, money, three thousand, give me three thousand rubles’; then he left and suddenly killed his father. ‘I don’t want to kill him,’ yet he suddenly did. That’s why they’ll acquit him, that he didn’t want to do it, but he killed him anyway.”

“But he didn’t kill him,” Alyosha said, interrupting her somewhat abruptly. Anxiety and impatience were overpowering him more and more.

“I know it was that old man Grigory who killed him.”

“What? Grigory?” cried Alyosha.

“Yes, he did it, Grigory. After Dmitry Fyodorovich hit him, he lay there; then he gets up, sees that the open door, goes in, and kills Fyodor Pavlovich.”

“But why, what for?”

“He was suffering from a fit of passion. After Dmitry Fyodorovich struck him on the head, Grigory came to, then had a fit of passion: he went in and killed Fyodor Pavlovich. And the fact that he himself says that he didn’t do it, it’s that he may not recall doing the act. Only don’t you see? It would be better, much better, if it was Dmitry Fyodorovich who killed him. That’s how it must have been; though I said it was Grigory, it was really Dmitry Fyodorovich. Ah, it’s not better that a son killed his father, I don’t praise that; on the contrary, children should respect their parents; still, it’d be better if it was him, since you’d have nothing to cry about then, since he killed when he was unconscious, or, better to say, he was too conscious, but didn’t know what he was doing. No, let them acquit him; that’s more humane and would show the advantages of the new law courts; I knew nothing about it, but they say it was decided a long time ago; when I found out about it yesterday, it struck me so much that I wanted to send for you; and then, if they acquit him, he must come here right from the courtroom to have dinner at my house; I’ll invite my acquaintances and we’ll drink to the new law courts. I don’t think he’d be dangerous; besides, I’d invite many guests, so that he could always be led away if he did anything untoward; then he could be a justice of the peace in another town or something like that, because those who’ve experienced misfortune make the best judges. Besides, who isn’t suffering from a fit of passion—you, me, everyone has fits of passion; there are so many examples. A man is sitting and singing a song; suddenly he doesn’t like something; he takes out a gun and shoots someone, and then everyone forgives him. I read about this recently; and all the doctors confirmed it. Doctors confirm it: they confirm everything. Good heavens, my Lise’s suffering from a fit of passion; as a result I was weeping yesterday, and the day before, too, and today I realized that it was because she was having a fit of passion. Oh, Lise distresses me so much! I think she’s completely mad. Why did she summon you? Did she, or did you come to see her on your own?”

“Yes, she summoned me, and I’ll go straight in to see her.” Alyosha stood up decisively.

“Ah, dear, dear Aleksey Fyodorovich; perhaps that’s the main thing,” cried Madame Khokhlakova, suddenly bursting into tears. “God sees that I entrust Lise to you, and it doesn’t matter that she summoned you secretly without telling her mother. But forgive me, I can’t entrust my daughter to your brother Ivan Fyodorovich so easily, even though I continue to think of him as a most chivalrous young man. Just imagine, he suddenly came to visit Lise and I didn’t know anything about it.”

“How? What? When?” Alyosha was terribly surprised. He didn’t sit down again, but listened standing up.

“I’ll tell you; and that may be why I asked you to come, because I don’t even know why I summoned you here. Here’s what: after his return from Moscow, Ivan Fyodorovich visited me only twice. The first time he came as an acquaintance to pay a visit; the second time, not long ago, Katya was with me, and he dropped in when he found out she was here. Of course, I wasn’t counting on frequent visits from him, knowing how many concerns he has now, even without that—vous comprenez, cette affaire et la mort terrible de votre papa.[9] Then I suddenly found out that he was here again, only this time not to see me, but Lise; it was six days ago; he arrived, stayed five minutes, and then left. I found out about it three days later from Glafira, and it was a great shock to me. I sent for Lise at once, and she started laughing. ‘He,’ she says, ‘thought you were asleep and came to inquire about your health.’ Of course that’s what happened. But Lise, Lise, oh God, how she worries me! Imagine, all of a sudden one night, some four days ago, right after the time you came and left—she suddenly suffered a fit at night, shouting, shrieking, hysterics! How come I never have hysterics? Then a day later, she had another fit, and another the day after that, and yesterday, yesterday, this fit of passion. Suddenly she shouts at me, ‘I hate Ivan Fyodorovich, and demand that you not receive him here, nor let him into this house again!’ I was astounded to hear such unexpected words and countered: ‘On what grounds can I refuse to receive such a worthy young man—besides, one with such learning and misfortune?’ Because all of this really is a misfortune, isn’t it?

“She suddenly burst out laughing at my words; you know, it was very offensive. Well, I was glad, thinking that I’d amused her and that the fits would now subside, all the more so since I myself wanted to refuse Ivan Fyodorovich and his strange visits without my permission and to demand an explanation. Then this morning Lise awoke and got angry with Yuliya: just imagine, she slapped her across the face. This is monstrous: I’m always polite to my servants and address them formally. Suddenly, an hour later, she was embracing and kissing Yuliya’s feet. She sent me a message that she’d never come to see me again; I managed to limp in to see her, and she threw herself at me, kissing me and weeping; while kissing me, she pushed me out of the room without saying a word, so I couldn’t find out what was wrong. Now, dear Aleksey Fyodorovich, all my hopes rest on you; of course, my entire life is in your hands. I ask you merely to see Lise and find out everything from her, as only you know how to do, and then come and tell me—me, her mother, because I’ll die, I’ll simply die if all this continues, or else I’ll run away from home. I can’t take it anymore; I have patience, but I can lose it, and then . . . then something terrible can happen. Ah, my God, finally Pyotr Ilyich is here!” cried Madame Khokhlakova, suddenly glowing, seeing Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin coming in. “You’re late, you’re late! Well, sit down, speak, and decide my fate. What does the lawyer say? Where are you going, Aleksey Fyodorovich?”

“I’m going in to see Lise.”

“Ah, yes! Don’t forget, don’t forget what I asked you. It’s a matter of fate, my fate!”

“Of course, I won’t forget, if only it’s possible . . . but I’m so late,” muttered Alyosha, retreating rapidly.

“No, you must, you must come, not just ‘if possible,’ otherwise I’ll die!” Madame Khokhlakova shouted after him, but Alyosha had already left the room.

1 “That charming person” (Fr.).

2 A fictional name, although there was a newspaper called Molva (“Hearsay”) published in Petersburg from 1879 to 1881.

3 The name is derived from skotoprigonka (“stockyard” or “cattle yard”).

4 The institution of serfdom was abolished by Tsar Alexander II in 1861; hence, Dmitry is described as a retrograde landowner.

5 These lines are a parody of a parody of Pushkin, written by Minayev (see p. 686). The motif of “pretty little feet” is a recurrent one in Pushkin’s poetry.

6 A monument to Pushkin was unveiled in June 1880, and Dostoevsky delivered a significant address at the ceremony.

7 Also defined as “temporary insanity.”

8 After Tsar Alexander’s reforms of the legal system during the 1860s.

9 “You understand, this affair and the terrible death of your father” (Fr.).

III

A LITTLE DEMON

Going in to see Liza, he found her half-reclining in her wheelchair, which she still used when she was unable to walk. She didn’t come to greet him, but her sharp, penetrating glance was fixed on him. Her eyes were somewhat inflamed, and her face a pale yellow color. Alyosha was surprised how she’d changed in the last three days, even having grown thinner. She didn’t extend her hand to him. He himself touched her slender, long fingers, which were lying motionless on her dress; then he sat down opposite her in silence.

“I know you’re hurrying to the prison,” Liza said abruptly. “Mama kept you for two hours, and just now she told you about me and Yuliya.”

“How do you know?” asked Alyosha.

“I’ve been eavesdropping. Why are you staring at me like that? If I want to eavesdrop, I will; there’s nothing wrong with it. I’m not asking your forgiveness.”

“Are you upset about something?”

“On the contrary, I’m very glad. I’ve just been thinking for the thirtieth time: what a good thing it was that I refused to be your wife. You’re not fit to be a husband: if I were to marry you, and suddenly give you a note to take to the man I loved after you, you’d take it and certainly deliver it, and you’d even bring back an answer. Forty years would pass and you’d still be carrying such notes back and forth.”

She suddenly began laughing.

“There’s something spiteful and at the same time simple-hearted about you,” Alyosha said with a smile.

“What’s simple-hearted is that I don’t feel ashamed with you. What’s more, not only don’t I feel ashamed, I don’t even want to feel ashamed with you, just you. Why is it, Alyosha, that I don’t respect you? I love you very much, but I don’t respect you. If I did, I wouldn’t talk to you without feeling ashamed, would I?”

“No.”

“But do you believe I’m not ashamed with you?”

“No, I don’t.”

Liza laughed nervously once more; she spoke hastily, rapidly.

“I sent your brother Dmitry Fyodorovich some candy in prison. Alyosha, do you know what a cute-looking fellow you are? I’ll love you terribly for being so quick in allowing me not to love you.”

“Why did you send for me today, Liza?”

“I wanted to tell you one of my desires. I want someone to torment me, marry me, and then torment me, deceive me, and then leave me. I don’t want to be happy!”

“Have you fallen in love with disorder?”

“Yes, I want disorder. I keep wanting to set the house on fire. I imagine that I’ll come and set the house on fire secretly, definitely secretly. They’ll try to put it out, but it’ll burn. And I’ll know, but I’ll keep silent. Ah, what foolishness! And how boring!”

She waved her arm contemptuously.

“You live too comfortably,” Alyosha said softly.

“Is it better to be poor?”

“It is.”

“Your late monk told you that. It’s not true. Let me be rich, and everyone else poor; I’ll eat candy, drink cream, and I won’t share it with anyone. Ah, don’t say anything, nothing,” she said, waving her arm again, although Alyosha hadn’t even opened his mouth to speak. “You’ve told me all this before, and I know it all by heart. It’s boring. If I’m poor, I’ll kill someone; but if I’m rich, I might also kill someone—why just sit there? You know, I want to reap, reap the rye. I’ll marry you and you’ll become a peasant, a genuine peasant; we’ll keep a colt; do you want to? Do you know Kalganov?”

“I do.”

“He’s always walking around and dreaming. He says why live for real when it’s better to dream. One can dream the most pleasant things, but life’s a bore. He’s getting married soon, yet he’s confessed his love for me. Do you know how to spin tops?”

“I do.”

“Well, that’s him: he’s just like a top: you wind him up, let him loose, and then whip him, whip him, whip him with a little whip: I’ll marry him and all my life I’ll keep him spinning. Are you ashamed to be sitting here with me?”

“No.”

“You’re terribly angry because I’m not talking about holy things. I don’t want to be holy. What will happen to me in the next world if I’ve committed the greatest sin?[1] You must know the right answer.”

“God will judge you,” said Alyosha, looking directly at her.

“That’s just what I want. I’d arrive there, they would condemn me, and I’d suddenly burst out laughing right in their faces. I’d very much like to set fire to the house, Alyosha, our house; you still don’t believe me?”

“Why? There are even children, around twelve years old, who long to set fire to something, and they do so. It’s a kind of illness.”

“That’s not true, not true; there may be such children, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“You mistake evil for good: that’s a passing crisis. It’s your previous illness that may be responsible for that.”

“You still despise me! I simply don’t wish to do good; I want to do evil, and it’s not a question of illness.”

“Why do evil?”

“So that there’d be nothing left at all. Ah, how splendid it would be if there’d be nothing left! You know, Alyosha, I sometimes think about doing a great deal of evil, really mean things, and I would do so secretly for a long time, and then suddenly everyone would find out. Everyone would surround me and point their fingers at me, and I’d look at all of them. That’s very pleasant. Why is it so pleasant, Alyosha?”

“Just so. The need to demolish something good, or, as you said, to set fire to something. That also happens.”

“I’m not just talking about it; I’ll really do it.”

“I believe it.”

“Ah, how I do love you for saying you believe it. And you’re not lying, not lying at all. Perhaps you think I’m saying all this on purpose, just to provoke you?”

“No, I don’t think so . . . although perhaps there’s also some need to do that.”

“There’s a little bit. I’ll never lie to you,” she said, her eyes flashing with fire.

Alyosha was struck most of all by her solemnity: there was no trace of humor or jocularity in her face now, although previously cheerfulness and jocularity hadn’t deserted her even in her most “solemn” moments.

“There are moments when people love crime,” Alyosha said pensively.

“Yes, yes! You’ve expressed my thought; they love crime, love it, and always have loved it, not just at ‘moments.’ You know, it’s as if people agreed at some point to lie about it, and since then they’ve been lying. Everyone says they hate evil, but left alone, they all love it.”

“Do you still read vile books?”

“I do. Mama reads them and hides them under her pillow, and I steal them.”

“Aren’t you ashamed to destroy yourself?”

“I want to destroy myself. There’s a boy here who lay down under the rails so that a train would pass over him. What a lucky fellow! Listen, now your brother’s being tried for killing his father; everyone loves the fact that he killed his father.”

“They love that he killed his father?”

“Yes, they love it; they all love it! Everyone says it’s dreadful, but on their own, they love it terribly. I’m the first one who does.”

“There’s some truth in what you say about everyone,” Alyosha said softly.

“Ah, what ideas you have!” Liza shrieked in ecstasy. “And yet you’re a monk! You won’t believe how I respect you, Alyosha, for the fact that you never tell lies. I’ll tell you one of my droll dreams: sometimes I dream about devils. It’s nighttime and I’m in my room with only one candle; all of a sudden, there are devils in all the corners of the room, even under the table; the doors open, and behind the door there’s a crowd of them, and they want to enter my room and snatch me. They draw near and are just about to grab me. Suddenly I cross myself and they retreat; they’re afraid, but they don’t leave altogether; they stand behind the door and in the corners, waiting. All of a sudden I desperately want to abuse God and I begin to do so; once again a crowd of devils advances on me; they rejoice and are about to seize me again when suddenly I cross myself again—and they retreat once more. It’s terribly amusing, it takes one’s breath away.”

“I’ve had the same dream, too,” Alyosha said suddenly.

“Really?” cried Liza in surprise. “Listen, Alyosha, don’t mock me, this is terribly important: can two people have the very same dream?”

“Certainly.”

“Alyosha, I tell you, this is terribly important,” Liza continued, now with some extreme astonishment. “The dream isn’t important, but the fact that you could have the same dream as me. You never lie to me, so don’t lie now: Is it true? You’re not mocking me?”

“It’s true.”

Liza was terribly struck by something and remained silent for half a minute.

“Alyosha, come see me, come see me more frequently,” she said suddenly in an imploring voice.

“I’ll always, all my life, come to see you,” Alyosha replied decisively.

“You’re the only person I can tell things,” Liza began again. “I tell it to myself and to you. Only to you in the whole world. I tell you more easily than I tell myself. I’m not ashamed to talk to you. Alyosha, why am I not ashamed with you? Alyosha, is it true that at Passover Yids steal and cut up little children?”[2]

“I don’t know.”

“I have a book here, and I read about some trial where a Yid took a four-year-old child and first cut off all his fingers on both hands, then he crucified the boy on a wall, hammered nails into him, and crucified him; at the trial he said the boy died soon, in four hours. Is that ‘soon’? He said the boy moaned, kept moaning, and that he just stood there, enjoying it. That’s very good!”

“Good?”

“Good. Sometimes I think that I’m the one who crucified him. He’s hanging there moaning, and I’ll sit opposite him and eat pineapple compote.[3] I really love pineapple compote, don’t you?”

Alyosha looked at her in silence. Her pale yellow face suddenly became distorted and her eyes began flashing.

“You know, when I read about that Yid, I shook with tears all night. I imagined how the little child screamed and moaned (four-year-olds can understand); and the idea of pineapple compote haunts me. In the morning I sent a letter to a certain person, asking that he come to see me for certain. He came and I told him about the boy and the compote; I told him everything, everything, and I said it was ‘good.’ He suddenly started laughing and said it really was good. Then he stood up and left. He was here only about five minutes. Did he despise me? Did he? Tell me, Alyosha, did he despise me or not?” She sat up straight on the sofa, her eyes flashing.

“Tell me,” said Alyosha anxiously, “did you send for this man yourself?”

“I did.”

“You sent him a letter?”

“Yes. A letter.”

“Simply to ask about that, this child?”

“No, not about that at all. But when he came, I asked him about it right away. He replied, started laughing, stood up, and left.”

“This man behaved decently with you,” Alyosha said softly.

“Did he despise me? Did he laugh at me?”

“No, because he himself may believe in pineapple compote. Now he’s also very ill, Lise.”

“Yes, he does believe,” Liza said, her eyes flashing.

“He doesn’t despise anyone,” Alyosha continued. “But he doesn’t believe anyone. If he doesn’t believe them, then of course he despises them.”

“Therefore, he despises me, too?”

“You, too.”

“That’s good,” Liza said, seeming to grind her teeth. “When he left and began laughing, I felt that it was good to be despised. And the boy with his fingers cut off was good; it’s good to be despised . . .”

And she started laughing somehow maliciously and feverishly in Alyosha’s face.

“You know, Alyosha, you know, I’d like. . . . Alyosha, save me!” She jumped up suddenly from her wheelchair, rushed to him, and embraced him firmly with both arms. “Save me,” she almost groaned. “Is there anyone in the world that I could tell what I’ve just told you? I spoke the truth, the truth, the truth! I’ll kill myself, because it’s all so vile. I don’t want to live, because it’s all so vile! It’s all vile, vile! Alyosha, why don’t you love me at all, you don’t love me at all!” she concluded in a frenzy.

“No, I do love you,” Alyosha said warmly.

“Will you weep for me, will you?”

“I will.”

“Not because I didn’t want to become your wife, but simply weep for me?”

“I will.”

“Thank you! Only I don’t need your tears. Everyone else can punish me and crush me underfoot, everyone, everyone, not excluding anyone. Because I love no one. Do you hear? No one! On the contrary, I hate them! Leave, Alyosha, it’s time you went to see your brother!” she said and suddenly tore herself away from him.

“How can I leave you like this?” Alyosha asked, almost in distress.

“Go see your brother; they’ll close the prison soon; go, there’s your hat! Give Mitya a kiss for me, go, go!”

She almost pushed Alyosha forcibly out the door. He was regarding her with sad bewilderment when he suddenly felt a letter thrust into his right hand, a little note, folded tight and sealed. He glanced and read the address instantly: to Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov. He looked quickly at Liza. Her face became almost threatening.

“Give it to him, you must give it to him!” she ordered, frenzied and shaking. “Today, immediately! Or else I’ll poison myself! That’s why I summoned you!”

And she speedily slammed the door closed. The bolt clicked. Alyosha put the letter in his pocket and went down the stairs without stopping in to see Madame Khokhlakova, even forgetting about her. Meanwhile Liza, as soon as Alyosha had left, immediately unlocked the door, opened it a little bit, placed her finger in the opening, and slammed the door shut, crushing her finger with all her might. About ten seconds later, after releasing her finger, she slowly and quietly returned to her armchair, sat down, straightened up, and began staring intently at her blackened finger and the blood oozing from under her fingernail. Her lips trembled and she whispered to herself very quickly:

“I’m vile, vile, vile, vile.”

1 See Matthew 12:31: “But the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.”

2 Liza is asking about an infamous Russian and central European anti-Semitic canard, a particular so-called blood libel that maintained that Jews steal Christian children at Passover and use their blood for ritual purposes.

3 A rare delicacy in nineteenth-century Russia.

IV

A HYMN AND A SECRET

It was already quite late (after all, how long is a November day?) when Alyosha rang at the prison gates. It was beginning to grow dark. Alyosha knew, however, that he’d be admitted to see Mitya without any obstacles. Things are “arranged” in our little town as they are elsewhere. At first, of course, at the conclusion of the preliminary investigation, access to Mitya for relatives and certain other people was restricted by necessary formalities; subsequently these formalities were not exactly relaxed, but certain exceptions were made for at least some of Mitya’s visitors. Sometimes the meetings with the prisoner in a room set aside for that purpose were even conducted almost privately. Besides, the number of visitors was not very great: it included Grushenka, Alyosha, and Rakitin. But the captain of the police, Mikhail Makarovich, was well disposed toward Grushenka. The old man’s rough treatment of her at Mokroye troubled his conscience. Later, after he learned the whole story, he changed his mind about her completely. It was strange: even though he was firmly convinced that Mitya was guilty of the crime, from the time of his incarceration, the old man had come to regard him much more leniently. “He was a man with a good heart, but he came to grief like a Swede, from drunkenness and disorder.”[1] His previous horror was replaced in his heart by a kind of pity. As far as Alyosha was concerned, the police captain liked him very much and had been acquainted with him for some time; and Rakitin, who’d recently begun visiting the prisoner very frequently, was one of the closest acquaintances of the “police captain’s young ladies,” as he called them, and was to be found hanging around their house almost every day. Rakitin also gave lessons in the prison superintendent’s house; he was a kindhearted old man, although a seasoned trouper. Besides, Alyosha was the superintendent’s special, longtime acquaintance; he loved talking to Alyosha about “higher wisdom” in general.[2] The superintendent, for example, not only respected Ivan Fyodorovich, but stood in fear of him, primarily of his opinions, although he himself was a great philosopher, having gotten there “by his own intellect.” But he was somehow irresistibly drawn to Alyosha. In the last year the old man had undertaken a study of the Apocryphal Gospels[3] and constantly shared his impressions of them with his young friend. Previously he even used to visit him in the monastery and converse with him and other monks for hours at a time. In a word, even if Alyosha was late in getting to the prison, he only had to see the superintendent, and things were always “arranged.” Besides, all the guards at the prison, without exception, had become accustomed to Alyosha. The sentry, of course, didn’t interfere, as long as he had permission from the administration. From his cell, Mitya would always be taken downstairs, where there was a room designated for visits. Entering this room, Alyosha encountered Rakitin, who was just leaving Mitya. They were both speaking loudly. Mitya was laughing heartily about something as he was saying good-bye, and Rakitin was protesting. Especially as of late, Rakitin didn’t like meeting Alyosha; he hardly spoke with him, and even greeted him awkwardly. Spotting Alyosha coming in now, he frowned and looked away, as if he were entirely engaged in buttoning up his large, warm overcoat with a fur collar. Then he set about searching for his umbrella.

“God forbid I forget some of my belongings,” he muttered, just to have something to say.

“Make sure you don’t forget anyone else’s things either,” Mitya cracked and immediately started laughing at his own witticism. Rakitin blazed up instantly.

“You ought to recommend that to your own Karamazovs, a serf-owning brood, and not to Rakitin!” he shouted suddenly, shaking from fury.

“What’s wrong? I was joking!” cried Mitya. “What the devil! They’re all like that,” he said, turning to Alyosha, nodding toward Rakitin, who was quickly making his way out. “He was sitting here, laughing and cheerful, and all of a sudden he started seething! He didn’t even nod to you, not at all; have you quarreled with him? Why are you so late? It’s not just that I’ve been waiting for you: I’ve been craving you all morning. Well, it doesn’t matter. We’ll make up for it.”

“Why has he begun visiting you so often? Have you made friends with him or what?” asked Alyosha, nodding at the door through which Rakitin had just left.

“Made friends with Mikhail? No, not exactly. Why would I have? He’s a swine! He thinks I’m a . . . scoundrel. They also can’t understand jokes—that’s the main thing about them. They’ll never understand them. And their souls are dry, flat and dry; they remind me of the prison walls, just as I was being driven here. But he’s a clever man, very clever. Well, Aleksey, now I’m done for!”

He sat on a bench, and sat Alyosha down next to him.

“Yes, the trial starts tomorrow. Have you really lost all hope, brother?” Alyosha asked with timid feeling.

“What are you talking about?” Mitya asked, looking at him uncertainly. “Ah, you’re talking about the trial! Well, may the devil take it! You and I have been talking about all sorts of trivial things, all about the trial, but I’ve kept silent about the most important thing. Yes, the trial begins tomorrow, but I wasn’t talking about that when I said I’m done for. It’s not my head that will roll; it’s what’s sitting inside my head. Why are you looking at me so critically?”

“What are you talking about Mitya?”

“Ideas, ideas, that’s what! Ethics. What does that mean?”

“Ethics?” Alyosha asked in surprise.

“Yes, is it some kind of science?”

“Yes, there is such a science . . . only . . . I can’t explain what it is to you.”

“Rakitin knows. Rakitin knows a great deal, devil take him! He won’t become a monk. He plans to go to Petersburg. There, he says, he’ll write criticism, but with a noble tendency. Well, he might be of some use to humanity and establish his own career. Ugh, they’re masters at making careers! Devil take ethics! I’m done for, Aleksey, you man of God! I love you most of all. My heart trembles for you. Who was Karl Bernard?”

“Karl Bernard?” Alyosha asked, surprised yet again.

“No, not Karl; wait, I got mixed up. Claude Bernard.[4] What is he? Is that chemistry or what?”

“He must be some sort of scientist,” replied Alyosha, “but I confess, I can’t say much about him either. I’ve heard only that he’s a scientist, but I can’t say what kind.”

“Well, devil take him, I don’t know either,” Mitya swore. “He must be some sort of scoundrel, that’s most likely; they’re all scoundrels. But Rakitin will worm himself into a crack in the wall; he’s also a Bernard. Ah, those Bernards! They breed like rabbits!”

“What’s the matter with you?” Alyosha asked insistently.

“He wants to write an article about me, about my case, to initiate his own career in literature; that’s why he keeps coming to see me; he explained it all to me. He wants to write with a progressive tendency. He wants to argue that ‘I couldn’t help murdering my father; I fell victim to the environment,’ and so on and so forth. He kept explaining it to me. With a hint of socialism, he says. Well, devil take him with his hint. It’s all the same to me. He doesn’t like brother Ivan: he hates him. He doesn’t care for you either. Well, I don’t chase him away, because he’s a clever man. However, he’s very conceited. Just now I said to him, ‘The Karamazovs are not scoundrels: they’re philosophers, because all genuine Russians are philosophers; and although you’ve studied, you’re not a philosopher, you’re a piece of shit.’ He laughed in a malicious way. I said to him: ‘de thoughtibus non est disputandem.’[5] It’s a clever witticism, isn’t it? At least I’ve also become a classicist,” Mitya said and suddenly burst out laughing.

“Why are you ‘done for’? You just said so,” Alyosha interrupted him.

“Why? Hmm. In essence . . . if you take it as a whole . . . I feel sorry for God. That’s why.”

“What do you mean, you feel sorry for God?”

“Just imagine: it’s all there in the nerves, in the head, that is, the nerves in the brain (devil take them!) . . . they have these little tails, the nerves do; well, as soon as they start wiggling, that is, wiggling their little tails, when they start wiggling, an image appears, not immediately, but an instant, a second passes, and then there appears a moment . . . devil take this moment—but an image, that is, an object or an event, well, devil take it—and that’s why I contemplate and then I think . . . because of these little tails, and not at all because I have a soul and am made in the ‘image and likeness,’[6] and all that nonsense. Mikhail explained all this to me yesterday, and it seared me. It’s magnificent, Alyosha, this science! A new man’s arriving, that much I understand. . . . Still, I feel sorry for God!”

“Well, that’s good,” said Alyosha.

“That I feel sorry for God? It’s chemistry, brother, chemistry! There’s nothing to be done, Your Reverence; shove over a little, chemistry’s coming! Rakitin doesn’t like God, no, he doesn’t! That’s the sore spot with all of them! But they hide it. They lie. They pretend. ‘Will you expound these ideas in the department of criticism?’ I ask. ‘Well, clearly they won’t let me do it,’ he says, laughing. ‘Then what will become of man,’ I ask. ‘Without God and an afterlife? Therefore, everything will be permitted now, and one can do anything?’ ‘Didn’t you know?’ he asks, with a laugh. ‘A clever man’ he says, ‘is permitted to do anything; a clever man even knows how to catch crayfish, but you,’ he says, ‘have killed someone and now you’re rotting away in prison!’ He says that to me. He’s a real swine! I used to kick that sort of person out, but now I listen to them. He says a lot that makes sense. He also writes well. A week ago he began reading an article to me. I copied down three lines of it on purpose; wait a second—here it is.”

Mitya hastened to remove a piece of paper from his vest pocket and began reading aloud:

“ ‘In order to resolve this question, it is necessary first of all to place one’s personality in contradiction to one’s own reality.’ Do you understand that or not?”

“No, I don’t,” replied Alyosha.

He looked at Mitya and listened to him with interest.

“I don’t understand either. It’s obscure and unclear; on the other hand, it’s clever. ‘Everyone,’ he says, ‘writes like that now, because of the environment.’ They’re afraid of the environment. He also writes poetry, the scoundrel. He wrote in praise of Khokhlakova’s little foot, ha, ha, ha!”

“I’ve heard that,” said Alyosha.

“You did? And did you hear his doggerel?”

“No.”

“I have a copy. Here, I’ll read it to you. You don’t know the whole story, and I haven’t told you. The rascal! Three weeks ago he took it into his head to tease me: ‘You,’ he says, ‘have gotten into a mess like a fool because of three thousand rubles, but I’m going to grab a hundred and fifty thousand: I’ll marry a widow and buy myself a stone house in Petersburg.’ He told me that he was courting Khokhlakova, and that she hadn’t been all that clever in her youth, and now, nearly forty, she’d lost all the sense she’d had. ‘She’s very sentimental,’ he says, ‘and that’s the way I’ll get her. I’ll marry her, carry her off to Petersburg, and there begin to publish a newspaper.’ He had such obscene sensual drool on his lips—not for the widow herself, but for her hundred and fifty thousand. And he assured me, assured me: he comes to see me every day. ‘She’s succumbing,’ he says. He shone with happiness. And then, all of a sudden, they drove him away: Perkhotin, Pyotr Ilyich, gained the upper hand, the fine fellow! I’d love to kiss the nincompoop for driving Rakitin away! It was while he was coming to visit me that he wrote this doggerel. ‘It’s the first time,’ he says, ‘that I’ve soiled my hands by writing verse, to win her over, for a good cause. After getting my hands on the nincompoop’s capital, I can work for the common good.’ They have a civic justification for any despicable thing they do! ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘it’s much better than your Pushkin’s poetry, because I was able to insert civic sorrow into a humorous little poem.’ I understand what he’s saying about Pushkin. So what if he was a talented man, but wrote poems only about women’s little feet? And Rakitin was so proud of his doggerel! The vanity of these people, the vanity! ‘My subject is the convalescence of the ailing little foot’—that’s the title he thought up—the playful fellow!

“Oh, what a lovely little foot,

Though a bit swollen!

The doctors come to heal it,

Bandage it, and make it worse.

I don’t pine for little feet—

Let Pushkin sing their praises:

I grieve for her sweet little head,

Because it doesn’t understand ideas.

She began to understand a bit,

Until her little foot distracted her!

May her little foot recover,

So her little head will understand.[7]

“The swine, the pure swine, but it turned out he’s a playful scoundrel! And he really did insert a ‘civic’ theme. He got so angry when they turned him out. He was gnashing his teeth!”

“He’d already taken his revenge,” said Alyosha. “He wrote an article about Khokhlakova.”

Alyosha told him hastily about the article in the newspaper Rumors.

“That’s him, that’s his doing!” Mitya confirmed with a frown. “That’s him! Those articles . . . I know . . . the mean things he’s already written about Grusha, for example! And about the other one, too, Katya. . . . Hmm.”

He walked around the room anxiously.

“Brother, I can’t stay long,” Alyosha said after a pause. “Tomorrow will be an awful and momentous day for you: God’s judgment will be rendered on you . . . and I’m surprised that you’re walking around here talking about God knows what . . .”

“No, don’t be surprised,” Mitya interrupted heatedly. “Should I be talking about that stinking mutt, or what? About the murderer? You and I have said enough about him. I don’t want to talk about that stinking son of Stinking Lizaveta! God will slay him, you’ll see; hush!”

He went up to Alyosha excitedly and suddenly kissed him. His eyes flashed.

“Rakitin wouldn’t understand this,” he began, as if in some sort of ecstasy. “But you, you’ll understand it all. That’s why I longed to see you. You see, I’ve been wanting to express so much to you within these peeling walls, but I kept silent about the most important thing: it seemed the time had not yet come. I can wait no longer to pour out my soul to you. Brother, during these last two months I’ve discovered a new man in myself: a new man has arisen in me! He’d been confined in me and never would’ve appeared, had it not been for this thunderbolt. It’s terrible! And what do I care if I’ll spend twenty years wielding a hammer against the ore in the mines? I’m not afraid of that at all; something else is frightening me: that this newly arisen man might forsake me! It’s possible that I might even find there, in the mines, under the earth, next to me, in another convict and murderer, a human heart and make friends with him, because it’s also possible to live there, to love, and to suffer! Is it possible to revive and resurrect a moribund heart in that convict, might one nurture him for years, and at last release his lofty soul from the depths into the light, this suffering creature, to revive an angel, to resurrect a hero! And there are many of them, hundreds of them, and we’re all responsible for them.

“Why did I dream of the ‘babe’ at that moment? ‘Why is the babe poor?’ That was a prophecy to me at that moment! I’m going to Siberia for the ‘babe.’ Because everyone’s responsible for everyone. For all the ‘babes,’ because there are little children and big children. All are ‘babes.’ I’m going for everyone because it’s necessary that someone go for everyone. I didn’t kill my father, but I have to go. I accept it! This has all become clear to me here . . . here within these peeling walls. And there are many of them, hundreds of them, underground, with hammers in hand. Oh, yes, we’ll be in chains, and there won’t be any freedom, but then, in our great grief, we’ll be resurrected into joy, without which man can’t possibly live, nor can God exist, because God grants joy, that’s His privilege, a great one. . . . Oh, Lord, let man melt away in prayer! How could I survive there underground without God? Rakitin’s lying: if they drive God away from the earth, we’ll harbor Him underground! For a convict it’s impossible to be without God; it’s even more impossible than for a free man. Then, from the depths of the earth, we underground men will sing a tragic hymn to God, in Whom there is joy. Long live God and His joy! I love Him!”

Mitya was almost gasping for breath as he uttered this wild speech. He’d grown pale, his lips were trembling, and tears were flowing from his eyes.

“No, life is full; there’s life even underground!” he began again. “You won’t believe, Aleksey, how much I want to live now, what a thirst to exist and to be conscious has arisen in me within these peeling walls! Rakitin doesn’t understand this: all he wants to do is build a house and rent out rooms. But I was waiting for you. And what is suffering? I’m not afraid of it, even if it were immeasurable. Now I’m not afraid; previously I was. You know, perhaps I won’t even answer questions at the trial. . . . It seems that I have so much of this strength in me now that I could withstand any suffering, merely in order to say and repeat to myself every moment: I am! In a thousand torments—I exist, I’m tortured on the rack, but I am! I sit in a tower, but even there I exist, I see the sun, and I don’t see it, but I know I exist. And knowing that the sun is there—that’s all of life. Alyosha, you’re my cherub; these various philosophies are killing me, devil take them! Brother Ivan . . .”

“What about brother Ivan?” Alyosha tried to interrupt him, but Mitya didn’t hear him.

“You see, previously I didn’t have any of these doubts; but all this was concealed in me. Perhaps it was precisely because these unknown ideas were simmering in me that I used to get drunk, fight, and rage. To stifle them in myself, I struggled to subdue them, to smother them. Brother Ivan is no Rakitin: he’s hiding an idea. Brother Ivan is a sphinx and keeps silent, silent all the time. But the question of God is tormenting me. That’s the only thing that’s tormenting me. What if He doesn’t exist? What if Rakitin is right that God is an artificial idea devised by mankind? Then, if there’s no God, man is the master of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! But if there’s no God, how will he be virtuous? That’s the question! That’s what worries me. Because whom will he love then, man, that is? To whom will he be grateful, to whom will he sing a hymn? Rakitin laughs. He says it’s possible to love humanity even without God. But only a sniveling little shrimp can maintain that, whereas I can’t understand a thing. Life’s easy for Rakitin: ‘You,’ he said to me today, ‘should rather concern yourself with the expansion of man’s civic rights or keeping down the price of meat; by doing so you’ll demonstrate your love of humanity in a simpler and more straightforward way than by your philosophies.’ To this I fired back: ‘But you,’ I said, ‘without God, will raise the price of meat if you have the chance, and earn a ruble for every kopeck.’ That made him lose his temper. Because what is virtue? Answer me, Alyosha. I have one kind of virtue and a Chinaman has another—in other words, it’s all relative. Or not? Or else it’s not relative? That’s a tricky question. You won’t start laughing at me if I tell you that it’s been keeping me awake for the last two nights. I’m merely surprised now how people are continuing to live, yet think nothing about it. Vanity. Ivan has no God. He has an idea. It’s beyond me. But he keeps silent. I think he’s a Freemason.[8] I asked him—but he keeps silent. I wanted to drink from the springs of his soul, but he says nothing. Only once did he say a few words.”

“What did he say?” Alyosha probed quickly.

“I said to him, ‘If that’s so, then everything is permitted.’ He frowned. ‘Fyodor Pavlovich, our papa, was a suckling pig, but he reasoned correctly.’ That’s what he fired off. That’s all he said. That’s even better than Rakitin’s thinking.”

“Yes,” Alyosha confirmed bitterly. “When did he visit you here?”

“More about that later; now I want to talk about something else. I’ve said hardly anything to you about Ivan until now. I kept putting it off until the end. When my time here is over and they deliver a verdict, then I’ll tell you something, I’ll tell you everything. There’s something really terrible. . . . You’ll be the judge in this matter. But don’t start talking about that now, not a word. You talk about tomorrow, about the trial; but, would you believe, I know nothing about it.”

“Have you spoken with the lawyer?”

“The hell with the lawyer! I told him everything. He’s a spineless rogue from the capital. A Bernard! He doesn’t believe a word I say—not one bit. He believes that I killed him, just imagine—I see that. ‘Why,’ I ask, ‘in that case, have you come to defend me?’ I spit on them. They also summoned a doctor and want to show that I was insane. But I won’t allow it! Katerina Ivanovna wants to fulfill her ‘obligation’ to the end. What an effort!” Mitya grinned bitterly. “She’s a cat! With a cruel heart! But she knows that in Mokroye I said she was a woman ‘of great wrath’! They told her. Yes, the evidence has multiplied like the sands of the sea. Grigory stands firm; he’s honest, but a fool. Many people are honest because they’re fools. That’s Rakitin’s idea. Grigory’s my enemy. There are some people it’s better to have as enemies than as friends. I’m saying this about Katerina Ivanovna. I’m afraid, oh, I’m very afraid that at the trial she may say that I bowed down to the ground after those forty-five hundred rubles! She’ll pay it back to the ‘uttermost farthing.’[9] I don’t want her sacrifice! They’ll shame me at the trial! I’ll bear it somehow. Go to her, Alyosha, and ask her not to mention this at the trial. Or is that impossible? What the devil, it doesn’t matter, I’ll bear it! I don’t feel pity for her. She herself desires it. She gets what she deserves I’ll have my own say, Aleksey.” Once again he grinned bitterly. “Only . . . only there’s Grusha, Grusha. Oh, Lord! Why should she have to bear such suffering?” he cried suddenly, with tears. “Grusha’s killing me, the thought of her is killing me, killing! She was here just now . . .”

“She was telling me. She was very upset by you today.”

“I know. The devil take my character. It was jealousy! As I was letting her go, I repented and kissed her. But I didn’t ask her forgiveness.”

“Why not?” cried Alyosha.

Mitya suddenly started laughing almost cheerfully.

“God preserve you, my dear boy, from ever having to ask forgiveness from a beloved woman! Especially from a beloved woman, especially, no matter how much you were to blame before her. Because a woman is—devil knows what to make of them—at least I know something about that! Just try to confess your guilt to her: ‘I’m to blame,’ you say, ‘excuse me, forgive me.’ That unleashes a shower of reproaches. She’ll never forgive you simply and directly; she’ll grind you into dust, she’ll bring up things that never happened, she’ll take everything, forget nothing, add things of her own, and only then will she forgive you. And this pertains even to the best of them, the best. They’ll collect the last scraps and scatter them on your head—such cruelty resides in them, in each and every one of them, in these angels, without whom we find it impossible to live! You see, my dear, I’m speaking to you candidly and simply: every decent man must be under the heel of some woman. That’s my conviction: not a conviction, but a feeling. A man must be magnanimous, and that doesn’t disgrace him. It doesn’t even disgrace a hero. It doesn’t even disgrace Caesar! Well, don’t ever ask a woman forgiveness for anything: never, not for anything. Remember the rule: your brother Mitya, who’s come to ruin from women, taught you this. No, I’ll make it up to Grusha without asking her forgiveness. I adore her, Aleksey, I adore her! But she doesn’t see this, and thinks I love her too little. And she exhausts me, she exhausts me with her love. It’s not like before! Previously it was only those infernal curves of her body; now I’ve taken her entire soul into my own and have become a man through her! Will they marry us? Without that, I’ll die of jealousy. Every day I keep imaging something. . . . What did she tell you about me?”

Alyosha repeated all that Grushenka had said. Mitya listened carefully, asked to have many things repeated, and was content.

“So, she’s not angry that I’m jealous,” he cried. “A real woman! ‘I myself have a cruel heart.’ Ah, I love such cruel women, although I can’t stand anyone’s being jealous of me, I can’t stand it! We’ll fight over it. But I’ll love her, love her forever. Will they marry us? Can prisoners marry? It’s a question. I can’t live without her . . .”

Mitya frowned and walked across the room. It was almost dark inside. He suddenly became terribly anxious.

“So is there a secret, she asks, a secret? Are the three of us plotting against her, she asks, and is ‘Katka’ involved? No, my friend Grushenka, that’s not it. You’ve made a mistake, a foolish feminine mistake! Alyosha, my dear, hey, all right then! I’ll reveal our secret to you!”

He looked around, quickly moved close to Alyosha, who was standing in front of him, and started whispering to him with a mysterious look, even though, in truth, no one could hear what he was saying: the old sentry was dozing on a bench in the corner, and Mitya’s words couldn’t reach the soldiers on guard.

“I’ll reveal our entire secret to you!” Mitya whispered hurriedly. “I wanted to tell you later, because could I ever make up my mind to do something without you? You mean everything to me. Although I say that Ivan’s superior to us, you’re my cherub. Only your decision will really matter. Perhaps you’re the superior person, and not Ivan. You see, here it’s a matter of higher conscience—the secret is so important that I was unable to resolve it myself and postponed it until I could talk to you. Nevertheless, it’s still too early to decide, because we have to wait for the verdict: as soon as the verdict is rendered, then you’ll decide my fate. Don’t decide now: I’ll tell you immediately, you’ll listen, but you won’t decide. Stand there and remain silent. I won’t tell you everything. I’ll merely reveal the idea to you, without details, and you must keep silent. Not a question, not a movement, agreed? However, Lord, what shall I do with your eyes? I’m afraid your eyes will reveal your decision, even though you won’t say anything. Ah, I’m afraid! Alyosha, listen: brother Ivan’s suggesting that I escape. I won’t reveal the details: it’s all been thought out in advance; it can all be arranged. Not a word: don’t decide. I shall go to America with Grusha. You know I can’t live without her! What if they won’t let her follow me to Siberia? Do they allow convicts to marry? Brother Ivan says no. But without Grusha, how shall I live there underground in the mines with a hammer? I’ll merely smash my head with that hammer! On the other hand, what about conscience? I’d have run away from suffering! There was a sign, but I rejected it; there was a path to purification—but I turned away. Ivan says that in America ‘with good inclinations,’ I can be of more use than underground. And where will our underground hymn be sung? What’s America? America is vanity once again! I ran away from crucifixion! I’m telling you this, Alyosha, because you alone can understand it, no one else; to others, it’s idiocy, delirium, everything I told you about the hymn. They’ll say I’ve lost my mind or else that I’m a fool. But I haven’t lost my mind, and I’m not a fool. Ivan understands about the hymn, he does, but he doesn’t reply; he keeps silent. He doesn’t believe in the hymn. Don’t speak, don’t say a word: I can see how you look: you’ve already decided. Don’t decide it, spare me; I can’t live without Grusha. Wait for the trial!”

Mitya concluded like a man in a frenzy. He held Alyosha by the shoulders with both hands and fastened his yearning, feverish eyes on his brother’s.

“Do they allow convicts to marry?” he repeated for a third time, in an imploring voice.

Alyosha listened with extreme astonishment and was profoundly shaken.

“Tell me one thing,” he asked. “Is Ivan really insisting on it, and whose idea was it?”

“It was his, his idea: he’s insisting on it! For a long time he didn’t come to visit me; suddenly a week ago he came and began talking about it at once. He’s insisting on it terribly. He’s not asking, but ordering. He doesn’t doubt my obedience, even though I bared my whole heart to him, as I did to you, and told him about the hymn. He told me how he was arranging it; he’d gathered all the information, but more about that later. He wants to do it to the point of hysterics. The main thing is money: ten thousand, he says, for the escape, and twenty thousand for America; for ten thousand, he says, a splendid escape can be arranged.”

“And he told you not to tell me under any circumstances?” Alyosha asked again.

“Under no circumstances, no one, but the main thing, he said not to tell you: on no account tell you! He’s afraid, probably, that you’ll act as my conscience. Don’t tell him I told you. Oh, don’t tell him!”

“You’re right,” Alyosha decided. “It’s impossible to resolve before there’s a verdict. After the trial, you’ll decide the matter for yourself: then you’ll find a new man within yourself, and that new man will decide.”

“A new man or a Bernard, he’ll resolve it à la Bernard! Because, it seems, I’m a despicable Bernard myself!” Mitya said and grinned bitterly.

“But, brother, have you really, really lost all hope of being acquitted?”

Mitya shrugged his shoulders convulsively and shook his head.

“Alyosha, my dear, it’s time for you to go!” he said hastily. “The superintendent’s started shouting in the yard; he’ll be here soon. We’re late: it’s against the rules. Give me a quick hug, a kiss, make the sign of the cross over me for the cross I’ll have to bear tomorrow . . .”

They embraced and exchanged kisses.

“Ivan,” said Mitya suddenly, “proposed that I escape, but he himself believes I killed him!”

A gloomy grin appeared on his lips.

“Did you ask him if he believes it or not?” inquired Alyosha.

“No, I didn’t ask. I wanted to, but I was unable to; I lacked the strength. Nevertheless, I could tell by his eyes. Well, good-bye!”

They hurriedly exchanged kisses again, and Alyosha was just about to leave when, all of a sudden, Mitya called him:

“Stand there and face me, like that.”

Once more he grabbed firm hold of Alyosha’s shoulders with both his hands. His face suddenly became very pale, so that even in the darkness it was strangely noticeable. His lips became distorted, and he fixed his gaze on Alyosha.

“Alyosha, tell me the whole truth, as if you were before the Lord God: do you believe that I killed him or not? You, you yourself, do you believe it or not? The whole truth, don’t lie!” he shouted at him in a frenzy.

Everything seemed to sway before Alyosha, and he felt it deep in his heart, as if he were pierced by something sharp.

“That will do! What are you saying . . .” he began, babbling like a lost soul.

“The whole truth, all of it, don’t lie!” repeated Mitya.

“Not for one moment have I believed that you’re the killer,” suddenly broke from Alyosha’s breast in a trembling voice, and he raised his right hand in the air as if calling on God as a witness to his words. Bliss illuminated Mitya’s face momentarily.

“Thank you!” he said in a long, drawn-out breath, as if emitting a sigh after fainting. “Now you’ve given me new life. . . . Would you believe, up to now I’ve been afraid to ask you, you, even you! Well, go, now go! You’ve fortified me for tomorrow; may God bless you! Well, now go. Love Ivan!” was the last word that burst from Mitya.

Alyosha left completely in tears. Such a degree of suspicion, or such a degree of mistrust even for him, for Alyosha, suddenly opened before him such an abyss of hopeless grief and despair in the soul of his unfortunate brother, something he’d never suspected before. Profound, endless compassion suddenly overwhelmed and exhausted him instantaneously. His wounded heart ached terribly. “Love Ivan!” he suddenly recalled, Mitya’s last words. But he was going to see Ivan. Since that morning he’d really wanted to see him. No less than Mitya, he was worried about Ivan, and now, after his meeting with Mitya, he felt it more than ever.

1 The Swedes had been defeated by the Russians at the Battle of Poltava in 1709; subsequently Russians viewed Swedes as inebriated and debauched.

2 Most likely, a reference to the Holy Scriptures.

3 Accounts of Christ’s life and teachings not recognized as canonical by the church.

4 Claude Bernard (1813–1878) was a French physiologist and a philosophical positivist. His major work on experimental medicine was translated into Russian in 1866.

5 Mitya is parodying the well-known Latin aphorism De gustibus non est disputandum (“There is no arguing about tastes”). He “Latinizes” the Russian word for ideas, thoughts.

6 See Genesis 1:27.

7 A literal translation of Rakitin’s poem, which is an anti-parody of Minayev’s parody of Pushkin’s poem “City of luxury, city of poverty” (1828).

8 Freemasonry in Russia began in the eighteenth century. It pursued humanistic and educational aims but gave more attention to ethical issues.

9 Matthew 5:26.

V

NOT YOU, NOT YOU!

On the way to see Ivan he had to go past the house where Katrina Ivanovna lived. There was a light in the windows. He suddenly paused and decided to go in. He hadn’t seen Katerina Ivanovna in more than a week. But now it occurred to him that Ivan might be there with her, especially on the eve of such a momentous day. After ringing the bell and climbing the stairs, dimly lit by a Chinese lantern, he saw a man coming down from above; when they passed, he recognized him as his brother Ivan. He was just leaving Katerina Ivanovna.

“Ah, it’s just you,” said Ivan Fyodorovich dryly. “Well, good-bye. You’re going in to see her?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t recommend it; she’s ‘agitated’; you might make it worse.”

“No, no!” shouted a voice from above; she’d opened the door instantly. “Aleksey Fyodorovich, have you just come from visiting him?”

“Yes, I went to see him.”

“Did he send me a message? Come on up, Alyosha, and you, Ivan Fyodorovich, definitely, definitely come back. Do you hear?”

Such a commanding tone sounded in Katya’s voice that Ivan Fyodorovich, however, after hesitating a moment, decided to climb the stairs again together with Alyosha.

“She was eavesdropping!” he whispered irritably to himself, but Alyosha overheard it.

“Allow me to keep my coat on,” said Ivan Fyodorovich as he entered the hall. “I won’t sit down. I don’t intend to stay longer than a minute.”

“Sit down, Aleksey Fyodorovich,” said Katerina Ivanovna, remaining standing herself. She’d changed very little over this time, but her dark eyes were gleaming with malevolent fire. Alyosha remembered afterward that she looked extremely lovely at this moment.

“What did he ask you to tell me?”

“Only one thing,” said Alyosha, looking directly into her face. “That you should spare yourself and say nothing at the trial about . . .” he stumbled a bit, “nothing about what took place between you and him at your first meeting . . . in that town . . .”

“Ah, he means my bow down to the ground for that money!” she broke in with a bitter laugh. “Well, is he afraid for himself or for me? He said that I should spare—whom? Him or myself? Tell me, Aleksey Fyodorovich.”

Alyosha stared at her intently, trying to understand her.

“Both yourself and him,” he said softly.

“Exactly,” she spit out somehow maliciously and suddenly blushed. “You still don’t know me, Aleksey Fyodorovich,” she said threateningly, “and I don’t know myself either. Perhaps you’ll want to trample me underfoot after tomorrow’s interrogation.”

“You’ll testify honestly,” said Alyosha, “that’s all that’s needed.”

“Women are often dishonest,” she snarled. “An hour ago I still thought it horrible to touch that monster . . . as if he were a reptile . . . but no, he remains a human being to me! Did he kill? Was it he who killed?” she cried suddenly in hysterics, turning quickly to Ivan Fyodorovich. Alyosha understood instantly that she’d already posed that same question to Ivan Fyodorovich, perhaps only a minute before his arrival, and not for the first time, but for the hundredth, and that they’d ended up arguing.

“I’ve been to see Smerdyakov. . . . It’s you, you who convinced me that he’s the patricide. It’s only you I believed!” she continued, still addressing Ivan Fyodorovich. He gave her a strained smile. Alyosha shuddered, hearing her speak so informally.[1] He hadn’t expected such intimacy between them.

“However, that’s enough,” Ivan snapped. “I’m going. I’ll come again tomorrow.” He turned around immediately, left the room, and headed right for the stairs. Katerina Ivanovna, with an imposing gesture, suddenly seized Alyosha’s hands.

“Go after him! Catch up with him! Don’t leave him alone even for a minute,” she whispered hastily. “He’s mad! Don’t you know that? He has a fever, a nervous fever! The doctor told me; go on, run after him.”

Alyosha jumped up and ran after Ivan Fyodorovich. The latter hadn’t managed to get even fifty paces away.

“What do you want?” he said, turning to face Alyosha, seeing that he was catching up with him. “She ordered you to come after me because I’m insane. I know that by heart,” he added irritably.

“She’s mistaken, of course; but she’s right that you’re ill,” said Alyosha. “I was looking at your face just now; it looks unwell, very, very much so.”

Ivan kept walking without stopping. Alyosha followed him.

“Do you know, Aleksey Fyodorovich, how people go mad?” asked Ivan, his voice suddenly quiet, no longer irritated, with a trace of the simplest, unexpected curiosity.

“No, I don’t know; I suppose there are many different forms of insanity.”

“And can a person observe that he’s going mad himself?”

“I think it’s impossible to see oneself clearly in such a case,” Alyosha replied in surprise. Ivan was silent for half a minute.

“If you want to talk to me, please change the subject,” he said suddenly.

“Here, before I forget, here’s a letter for you,” Alyosha said timidly, taking Liza’s letter out of his pocket and handing it to him. They were approaching a streetlamp. Ivan knew the handwriting at once.

“Ah, it’s from that little demon!” he said, laughing maliciously, not even unsealing the envelope; he suddenly tore the letter into several parts and tossed them into the wind. The bits of paper scattered.

“She’s not even sixteen years old, and it seems she’s already offering herself!” he said contemptuously, and resumed walking along the street.

“What do you mean, ‘offering herself’?” cried Alyosha.

“It’s well known how wanton women offer themselves.”

“What are you saying, Ivan? How can you?” Alyosha said, rising to her defense sorrowfully and fervently. “She’s a child; you’re insulting a child! She’s ill; she herself is very ill; and she, too, may be losing her mind. . . . I had to give you her letter. . . . I’d hoped to hear something different from you . . . that you’d save her.”

“You won’t hear anything from me. If she’s a child, I’m not her nursemaid. Be quiet, Aleksey. Don’t go on. I’m not even thinking about that.”

They were both quiet for a minute.

“Now she’ll be praying all night to the Mother of God, asking her how to act at the trial tomorrow,” he began again, abruptly and spitefully.

“Are you talking about . . . Katerina Ivanovna?”

“Yes. Will she be Mityenka’s savior or his destroyer? She’ll be praying for light to be granted to her soul. She herself doesn’t know yet; you see, she hasn’t managed to prepare herself. She also takes me for a nursemaid, and wants me to sing her lullabies.”

“Katerina Ivanovna loves you, brother,” Alyosha said sorrowfully.

“That may be. But I’m not very fond of her.”

“She’s suffering. Why do you sometimes say . . . things that give her hope?” Alyosha continued with a mild reproach. “I know you’ve given her hope; forgive me for talking like this,” he added.

“I can’t behave with her as I should, break it off with her and tell her frankly!” Ivan said irritably. “It’s necessary to wait until the verdict is rendered on the murderer. If I break it off with her now, she’ll take revenge on me and destroy that scoundrel at the trial, because she hates him and knows she does. It’s all lies, lies upon lies! Now, while I still haven’t broken it off with her, she still has hope and won’t destroy that monster, knowing how I want to help him out of this mess. If only that damned verdict would hurry up and come!”

The words “murderer” and “monster” echoed painfully in Alyosha’s heart.

“How exactly can she destroy our brother?” he asked, pondering Ivan’s words. “What evidence can she provide that would destroy Mitya?”

“You still don’t know. She has in her possession a document, in his own hand, Mitya’s, that proves mathematically that he killed Fyodor Pavlovich.”

“That can’t be!” cried Alyosha.

“Why can’t it be? I read it myself.”

“There can’t be any such document!” Alyosha repeated with fervor. “There can’t be, because he’s not the murderer. He didn’t kill Father, it’s not he!”

Ivan Fyodorovich stopped suddenly.

“Who, in your opinion, is the murderer?” he asked somehow with apparent coldness; some sort of haughty note sounded in his voice.

“You yourself know who,” Alyosha replied quietly and with feeling.

“Who? That fairy tale about the crazy idiot, the epileptic? About Smerdyakov?”

Alyosha suddenly felt that he was trembling.

“You yourself know who,” broke from him helplessly. He was gasping for breath.

“Who, who?” Ivan cried almost ferociously. All his restraint had disappeared.

“I know only one thing,” Alyosha said, still almost in a whisper. “You didn’t kill Father.”

“ ‘Not me!’ What do you mean, not me?” Ivan was flabbergasted.

“You didn’t kill Father, it wasn’t you!” Alyosha repeated firmly.

The silence lasted half a minute.

“I myself know it wasn’t me. Why are you raving?” Ivan asked with a pale, distorted grin. He stared fixedly at Alyosha. They were both standing under a streetlight again.

“No, Ivan, you’ve told yourself several times that you killed him.”

“When did I say this? I was in Moscow. . . . When did I say it?” Ivan stuttered, completely at a loss.

“You told yourself that many times, when you were left alone during these last two terrible months,” Alyosha continued, as quietly and distinctly as before. But he was speaking as if he were beside himself, not by his own will, but obeying some vague command. “You blamed yourself and admitted that the killer was no one else but you. But you didn’t kill him, you’re mistaken, you’re not the murderer, do you hear me, it’s not you! God sent me to tell you that.”

They both fell silent. This silence lasted for one long whole minute. They both stood and continued looking directly at each other. They were both pale. Suddenly Ivan started shaking all over and grasped Alyosha tightly by the shoulder.

“You’ve been in my room!” he said in a grating whisper. “You came to my room at night when he was here. . . . Admit it. . . . You’ve seen him, you did.”

“Who are you talking about . . . about Mitya?” Alyosha asked in confusion.

“No, not about him, devil take that monster!” Ivan cried in a frenzy. “Do you know that he visits me? How did you find out? Tell me!”

“Who’s he? I don’t know who you’re talking about,” muttered Alyosha, becoming frightened.

“No, you do know . . . otherwise how could you. . . . It’s not possible that you don’t know . . .”

But suddenly he seemed to restrain himself. He stood there and seemed to be thinking about something. A strange grin distorted his lips.

“Brother,” Alyosha began again, his voice trembling. “I said this to you because you’ll believe my words; I know that. I say this to you once and for all: it’s not you! You hear? Once and for all. And it’s God who put this into my heart to tell you this, even if from this moment on you’ll hate me for it forever . . .”

But Ivan Fyodorovich, apparently, had already managed to regain control of himself.

“Aleksey Fyodorovich,” he said with a cold smile, “I can’t stand prophets and epileptics, especially messengers from God; you know that all too well. From this moment I break off all relations with you, probably forever. I ask you right now, at this crossroads, to leave me. This way leads to your apartment. Take particular care and don’t come to see me today! Do you hear?”

He turned and, striding firmly, continued straight ahead, without glancing back.

“Brother,” Alyosha shouted after him. “If anything happens to you today, think about me first of all!”

But Ivan made no reply. Alyosha stood at the crossroads under the streetlight, while Ivan disappeared into the darkness. Then he turned slowly and headed home along the lane. Both Alyosha and Ivan Fyodorovich were living separately in different lodgings; neither was willing to live in Fyodor Pavlovich’s deserted house. Alyosha rented a furnished room from a tradesman’s family; Ivan Fyodorovich lived somewhat far away and occupied a spacious and rather comfortable wing of a nice house that belonged to the well-off widow of a civil servant. His only servant in the wing was an ancient, completely deaf old woman, afflicted with rheumatism, who went to bed at six o’clock in the evening and woke up at six o’clock in the morning.

During these last two months Ivan Fyodorovich had become strangely undemanding and really preferred to remain alone. He even cleaned the one room of his apartment that he spent any time in; he rarely set foot in any of the other rooms. When he reached the gate of his house and had already taken hold of the handle of the bell, he stopped. He suddenly felt that he was still trembling with anger. Suddenly he let go of the bell, spit, turned back, and walked quickly in the opposite direction to the other end of town, about a mile and a half from his apartment, to the tiny, lopsided wooden house rented by Marya Kondratyevna, Fyodor Pavlovich’s former neighbor, who used to visit his kitchen for soup, and to whom Smerdyakov was singing his songs and playing his guitar. She’d sold her previous little house and now lived with her mother in a cottage, while the sickly Smerdyakov, who was almost dying, had settled in with them since Fyodor Pavlovich’s death. It was to see him that Ivan Fyodorovich was now heading, drawn by an unexpected and compelling consideration.

1 Katrina Ivanovna uses the informal pronoun ty (cf. the French tu).

VI

THE FIRST MEETING WITH SMERDYAKOV

This was now the third time Ivan Fyodorovich had gone to talk to Smerdyakov since he had returned from Moscow. The first time, after the catastrophe, when he saw him and spoke with him was the first day after his return; then he visited him some two weeks later. But after this second time, he stopped meeting with Smerdyakov, so it was now a little over a month since he’d seen him or heard anything about him. At that time Ivan Fyodorovich had returned from Moscow on the fifth day after his father’s death, so that he’d not even managed to see his coffin; the funeral had taken place the day before he’d returned. The reason for Ivan Fyodorovich’s delay was the following: Alyosha didn’t know Ivan’s exact address in Moscow and had to ask Katerina Ivanovna to send him a telegram; she was also unaware of his address and so telegraphed her sister and aunt, assuming that Ivan Fyodorovich would see them right after his arrival in Moscow. But he dropped in on them only on the fourth day after his arrival, and, after reading the telegram, he set off at breakneck speed to return to our town. The first to meet him was Alyosha, but, after talking to him, Ivan was very surprised that Alyosha was unwilling even to suspect Mitya, and immediately accused Smerdyakov of the crime, which was counter to all other opinions in town. After seeing the police captain and the prosecutor, and learning the details of the accusation and arrest, he was even more surprised at Alyosha, and ascribed his view to his extremely aroused fraternal feelings and his compassion for Mitya, whom he loved dearly, as Ivan knew.

By the way, we’ll add a word or two about Ivan’s feelings for his brother Dmitry Fyodorovich: he definitely didn’t like him and the most he felt for him on occasion was compassion, but even that was mixed with deep loathing, almost disgust. Mitya’s whole personality, even his entire appearance, was extremely hateful to him. Ivan regarded Katerina Ivanovna’s love for him with indignation. However, he’d also gone to see Mitya in prison on the first day after his return, and this meeting not only failed to weaken his belief in his brother’s guilt, but even strengthened it. He found his brother in a state of nervous agitation. Mitya was talkative, but absentminded and incoherent; he spoke very raucously, accused Smerdyakov, and was terribly confused. Most of all he spoke about those three thousand rubles, which his late father had “stolen” from him. “The money was mine, it was mine,” Mitya kept repeating. “Even if I’d stolen it, I’d have been right.” He didn’t even try to refute all the evidence against him; if he did try to interpret a fact in his favor, it was done in an inconsistent and absurd manner, as if in general not even trying to defend himself to Ivan or anyone else; on the contrary, he got angry, proudly ignored the accusations, and became excited and abusive. He merely laughed contemptuously at Grigory’s evidence concerning the open door and kept insisting that “the devil had opened it.” But he was unable to present any coherent explanation for that charge. He’d even managed to insult Ivan Fyodorovich during their first meeting, abruptly declaring that it was not right for people who maintained that “everything was permitted” to suspect and interrogate him. In general, this first encounter with Ivan Fyodorovich was very hostile. That same day, immediately after that meeting with Mitya, Ivan Fyodorovich headed out to see Smerdyakov.

While still on the train, on his way back from Moscow, he’d kept thinking about Smerdyakov and his last conversation with him the evening before his departure. There was much that troubled him and seemed suspicious. But when he presented his evidence to the investigator, Ivan Fyodorovich said nothing about that conversation, at least then. He postponed it until after he met with Smerdyakov, who was, at that time, a patient in the town hospital. Dr. Herzenshtube and Dr. Varvinsky, whom Ivan Fyodorovich had met in the hospital, in answer to Ivan’s insistent questions, replied decisively that Smerdyakov undoubtedly suffered from epilepsy, and they were even astonished by the question “Wasn’t he perhaps simulating a fit on the day of the catastrophe?” They had given him to understand that the attack was an extraordinary one; it continued and was repeated during the course of several days, so that the patient’s life was in definite danger, and only now, after the measures they had taken, could they confirm that he’d live, although it was certainly possible (added Dr. Herzenshtube) that his reason might be affected, “if not for his entire life, then for a significant time.” In reply to Ivan Fyodorovich’s impatient inquiry about whether, “therefore, was he insane?” they replied, “It was not yet the case, but certain abnormalities had been observed.” Ivan Fyodorovich decided to ascertain what those abnormalities were.

They welcomed him to the hospital at once to meet with Smerdyakov. He was housed in a separate room and was lying on a cot. Next to him there was another cot, occupied by a town tradesman who was quite ill, swollen from dropsy,[1] obviously about to die either tomorrow or the day after; he would not hinder their conversation. Smerdyakov grinned hesitantly upon seeing Ivan Fyodorovich, and at first even seemed somewhat timid. At least that’s how it seemed to Ivan Fyodorovich. But that was only for a moment; on the contrary, for the remainder of the time Ivan was almost struck by Smerdyakov’s composure. From his first glance, Ivan Fyodorovich was undoubtedly convinced of the complete and extreme nature of his illness: he was very weak, and he spoke slowly, as if moving his tongue with difficulty; he’d become much thinner, and his complexion was sallow. Throughout the interview, which lasted about twenty minutes, he complained of a headache and pain in his limbs. His eunuch-like, parched face seemed to have become so small, his side-whiskers were matted, and instead of his topknot, there stuck up only one thin strand of hair. But his little left eye, which was scrunched up and seemed to be implying something, betrayed the earlier Smerdyakov. “It’s always interesting to chat with a clever man,” Ivan Fyodorovich recalled at once. He sat down on a stool next to Smerdyakov’s feet. Smerdyakov shifted his position on the bed painfully, but was not the first one to speak; he remained silent and looked as if he wasn’t all that interested.

“Can you speak with me?” asked Ivan Fyodorovich. “I won’t exhaust you.”

“Yes, sir, I can,” Smerdyakov muttered in a weak voice. “Has your honor been back very long?” he added superciliously, as if encouraging his anxious visitor.

“I came back just today . . . to help clear up the mess you’re in here.”

Smerdyakov sighed.

“Why are you sighing? You knew all along?” Ivan Fyodorovich blurted out.

Smerdyakov maintained a stolid silence.

“How could I not have known, sir? It was clear in advance. But how could I know how it would turn out, sir?”

“How what would turn out? Don’t be evasive! Why, you even said you’d have a fit on the way down to the cellar. You even mentioned the cellar specifically.”

“Did you say that during your interrogation?” Smerdyakov inquired calmly.

Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly grew angry.

“No, I still haven’t, but I certainly will. You, my boy, must now explain a great deal to me, and you should know, my friend, that I won’t allow you to play games with me!”

“Why should I play games with you, sir, when all my hopes are pinned on you, just like in the Lord God, sir!” Smerdyakov said, still maintaining his serenity and closing his eyes only for a moment.

“In the first place,” began Ivan Fyodorovich, “I know that you can’t predict when you’ll have an epileptic fit. I’ve inquired, so don’t hedge. It’s impossible to predict the day and the hour. So how could you guess the day and the hour, and even mention the cellar? How could you possibly know in advance that you’d fall down into the cellar with a fit, if you didn’t intentionally fake it?”

“I had to go down to the cellar even without that, sir, several times a day, sir,” Smerdyakov drawled in an unhurried manner. “A year ago I fell down from the attic in exactly the same way. You’re absolutely right that you can’t predict the day and hour of a fit in advance, but you can always have a presentiment.”

“But you predicted the day and the hour!”

“In regard to my falling sickness, sir, you’d better consult the local doctors: whether the fit was genuine or not, I have nothing more to say to you about that.”

“And the cellar? How could you predict that it would happen in the cellar?”

“You’re obsessed with that cellar! At the time I was going down into the cellar, I was frightened and uncertain: what I was most frightened of was losing you and being left alone in the world without anyone to defend me. As I was going down to the cellar I was thinking: ‘Here it comes, it will hit me, will I fall down or not?’ And from that doubt my throat was seized by that same unavoidable spasm, sir, and I went flying down. All that and my conversation with you at the gate on the previous evening, sir, when I shared my fears about falling down the cellar stairs, I disclosed to Dr. Herzenshtube and to the investigator, Nikolai Parfyonovich, subsequently, and they wrote it all down in the record of the interrogation. And the local doctor, Mr. Varvinsky, insisted in front of everyone that just the thought of an epileptic fit brought it about, that is, from the very idea ‘Will I fall down or not?’ And it took hold of me. That’s what they wrote down, sir, and that’s what must have happened, from my fear alone, sir.”

After he said this, Smerdyakov drew a deep breath, as if he was worn out by weariness.

“So you said all this already in your deposition?” asked Ivan Fyodorovich, somewhat taken aback. He’d wanted to frighten Smerdyakov by revealing this conversation, but it turned out that he himself had already done so.

“What’s there to be afraid of? Let them record the whole truth,” Smerdyakov replied firmly.

“Did you also repeat every word of our conversation at the gate?”

“No, not every word of it, sir.”

“And did you tell them you could simulate epileptic fits, as you boasted to me at the time?”

“No, I didn’t tell them that either, sir.”

“Tell me now, why did you try to send me to Chermashnya then?”

“I was afraid that you’d go off to Moscow; after all, Chermashnya is closer, sir.”

“You’re lying. You yourself suggested that I leave: you told me to get out of harm’s way!”

“At the time I told you that simply out of friendship and heartfelt devotion to you, foreseeing a misfortune at home, sir, and feeling sorry for you. I only felt sorrier for myself than for you, sir. That’s why I kept saying, ‘Get yourself out of harm’s way!,’ so that you’d understand that there’d be trouble at home, and would stay there to defend your father.”

“You could’ve said it more directly, you fool!” Ivan Fyodorovich cried suddenly, flaring up.

“How could I have said it more directly? It was only fear that made me speak, sir, and you might have gotten angry. Of course, I might have feared that Dmitry Fyodorovich would create a scandal and steal that money, since he considered it to be his own, but who knew that it would end in such a murder? I thought he’d simply steal those three thousand rubles from under the master’s mattress, sir, in an envelope, sir, but he killed him, sir. How could you have guessed that would happen, sir?”

“So, if you yourself say that it was impossible to guess, how could I have guessed and decided to stay at home? Why are you mixing things up?” asked Ivan Fyodorovich, giving it some more thought.

“You might have guessed because I was sending you to Chermashnya instead of Moscow, sir.”

“How could I guess from that?”

Smerdyakov seemed completely exhausted and once again was silent for about a minute.

“You might, sir, have guessed, sir, from the fact that I asked you to go to Chermashnya instead of Moscow; that meant that I wished to have you closer, because Moscow’s a long way away, and if Dmitry Fyodorovich had known you were not far away, he might not have been so emboldened. And in case something happened, you might have returned quickly to defend me, because I’d already told you about Grigory Vasilievich’s illness and that I was afraid of having an epileptic fit. When I revealed those knocks to you, by means of which it’d be possible to enter the deceased’s room, and that Dmitry Fyodorovich had been made aware of them by me, I thought that you yourself might guess that he’d certainly do something, and so you wouldn’t even go to Chermashnya, but would stay home instead.”

“He’s speaking very coherently,” thought Ivan Fyodorovich, “although he’s muttering; what was the disorder of his faculties that Herzenshtube mentioned?”

“You’re eluding me, devil take you!” he cried in anger.

“But I must confess that I thought at the time you’d already guessed,” Smerdyakov parried with an air of simplicity.

“If I had, then I’d have stayed!” cried Ivan Fyodorovich, flaring up again.

“Well, sir, I thought that having guessed it completely, you decided to get out of harm’s way as quickly as possible, to run away somewhere and to save yourself from the fear.”

“You assumed that everyone’s as great a coward as you are!”

“Forgive me, sir, I thought you were like me.”

“Of course, I should’ve guessed,” Ivan said in agitation, “and I did guess that there was something vile on your part. . . . But you’re lying, once again, you’re lying,” he cried, suddenly recalling. “Do you remember how you approached the carriage and said to me, ‘It’s always interesting to chat with a clever man.’ In other words, if you praised me, you were glad I was leaving.”

Smerdyakov sighed and then sighed again. Color seemed to return to his face.

“If I was glad,” he muttered, gasping somewhat for breath, “it was only because you weren’t going to Moscow, but had agreed to go to Chermashnya. Because it’s closer; when I said those words to you it wasn’t to praise you, but to reproach you. You didn’t understand it then, sir.”

“Reproach me for what?”

“Because, foreseeing such a catastrophe, you deserted your own father, sir, and refused to protect me, because they might have arrested me at any time for stealing the three thousand, sir.”

“The devil take you!” Ivan swore again. “Wait, did you tell the investigator and the prosecutor about those special knocks?”

“I told them everything just as it was, sir.”

Ivan Fyodorovich was inwardly surprised again.

“If I had thought about it then,” he continued, “it was about some vileness exclusively on your part. Dmitry could kill him, but that he would steal—I didn’t believe that at the time. . . . But I was expecting such vileness from you. You yourself told me that you knew how to feign an epileptic fit; why did you say that?”

“It was simply a result of my simplicity. Never in my life have I faked a fit on purpose. I said it merely to boast to you. It was simple stupidity, sir. I really came to like you very much then and was being straightforward with you.”

“My brother accuses you openly of killing and stealing.”

“What else is there left for him to do?” Smerdyakov said with a bitter grin. “And who would believe him after all this evidence? Grigory Vasilievich saw that open door, sir, and after that, what else is there? Well, then, forget about him! He’s trembling, trying to save himself . . .”

He fell silent for a while; then suddenly, as if it had just occurred to him, he added:

“I mean, look here, sir, it’s the same thing over again: he wants to place all the blame on me, that it’s the work of my hands, sir—I’ve heard that already, sir—but as for my being a master at feigning an epileptic fit: would I have told you in advance that I know how to do it, if in fact I’d been plotting against your father? If I’d been planning such a murder, would I have been such a fool as to provide evidence against myself, and to his own son, at that? For pity’s sake! Is that very likely? As if that could be, sir; no, on the contrary, it could never happen, sir. Just as now no one can hear this conversation we’re having, except for Providence itself, sir; and if you told the prosecutor and Nikolai Parfyonovich, you might actually be defending me, because what sort of villain would be so honest beforehand? They would have to take all that into account.”

“Listen,” Ivan Fyodorovich said, standing up from his place, struck by Smerdyakov’s last conclusion and interrupting the conversation, “I don’t suspect you at all, and I even think it’s absurd to accuse you. . . . On the contrary, I’m grateful to you for relieving my mind. I’m going now, but I’ll drop by again. Meanwhile, good-bye; get well. Do you need anything?”

“I’m grateful for everything, sir. Marfa Ignatyevna doesn’t forget me, sir, and she provides anything I need, according to her kindness. Good people visit me daily.”

“Good-bye. I won’t mention the fact that you know how to feign epileptic fits . . . and I advise you not to mention it either,” Ivan suddenly said for some reason.

“I understand very well, sir. And if you don’t mention it, I won’t reveal our conversation at the gate at that time either.”

Then it happened that Ivan Fyodorovich left suddenly, and only when he’d gone about ten paces down the corridor did he suddenly feel that some offensive meaning was contained in Smerdyakov’s last words. He was about to go back, but that thought merely flashed through his mind, and as he muttered, “Nonsense,” he hurriedly left the hospital. The main thing was that he felt genuine relief that Smerdyakov wasn’t guilty, and that it was his brother Mitya, although it seemed that the opposite should’ve been true. Why that was so—he didn’t want to explore; he even felt repugnance at delving into his own feelings. Most of all, he felt as though he wanted to forget something as soon as possible.

In the following several days he became completely convinced of Mitya’s guilt, as he became better acquainted with the weight of the evidence against him. There was the testimony of some insignificant people, almost overpowering—for example, of Fenya and her mother, to say nothing of Perkhotin, the tavern, Plotnikov’s shop, or the witnesses at Mokroye. The main thing was, the details were disheartening. News of the secret “knocks” struck the investigator and the prosecutor almost to the same degree, as did Grigory’s testimony about the open door. Grigory’s wife, Marfa Ignatyevna, in answer to Ivan Fyodorovich’s questions, declared to him staunchly that Smerdyakov had been lying all night on the other side of the partition, and didn’t move even “three paces away from our bed,” and that although she slept very soundly, she awoke several times hearing his groans: “He kept moaning all night, moaning constantly.”

After speaking with Herzenshtube, and confiding to him his doubts about the fact that Smerdyakov didn’t seem mad to him at all, but only weak, Ivan merely elicited a subtle little smile from the old man. “Do you know how he spends his time now?” he asked Ivan Fyodorovich. “He’s learning lists of French vocabulary words he’s heard; he has a notebook under his pillow, and it contains a list of French words someone’s written down for him in Russian letters. Hee, hee, hee.”

Ivan Fyodorovich finally dismissed all of his doubts. He couldn’t even think about his brother Dmitry without loathing. One thing was strange, however: Alyosha continued to insist that it wasn’t Dmitry who killed but, “in all likelihood,” Smerdyakov. Ivan had always felt that Alyosha’s opinion mattered a great deal, and therefore he was truly perplexed. It was also strange that Alyosha didn’t make any attempts to talk to him about Mitya and never initiated any conversation; he merely replied to Ivan’s questions. Ivan Fyodorovich noticed this very strongly.

Besides, at the time he was very distracted by one completely tangential circumstance: the first days after his return from Moscow, he gave himself up entirely to his fiery and mad passion for Katerina Ivanovna. This is not the place to speak of Ivan Fyodorovich’s new passion, which subsequently left its mark on his entire life: this could serve as the outline of another story, another novel, one I don’t know whether I will ever undertake to write. Nevertheless, I can’t remain silent now about the fact that when Ivan Fyodorovich, upon leaving Katerina Ivanovna at night with Alyosha, as I’ve already described, said to him, “I’m not fond of her,” he was lying terribly at that moment: he was madly in love with her, although it’s true that at times he hated her so much that he might even have killed her. There were many reasons for this: profoundly shaken by what had happened to Mitya, she rushed to see Ivan Fyodorovich, who’d returned to her again, and welcomed him as if he were some kind of savior. She was insulted, offended, and humiliated in her feelings. And now the man had come back, the man who’d previously loved her so fervently—oh, she knew that—and whose intellect and heart she’d always placed so much above her own. But the stern young woman didn’t sacrifice herself entirely to this man, in spite of all the Karamazov recklessness of his passions and the fascination he had for her. At the same time, she was constantly tormented by remorse at having betrayed Mitya, and in moments of dread and her quarrels with Ivan (and there were many of them), she told him this very plainly. It was this, that in talking to Alyosha, he called “lies upon lies.” Here, of course, there really were many lies, and that angered Ivan Fyodorovich more than anything. . . . But more about that later.

In a word, for a time he almost forgot about Smerdyakov. However, two weeks after his first meeting with him, he began to be tormented by the same strange thoughts as before. It’s enough to say that he kept asking himself: why at the time, his last night before his departure, in Fyodor Pavlovich’s house, had he slunk out quietly onto the stairs, like a thief, and listened to what his father was doing downstairs? Why did he recall that moment afterward with such repulsion? And why, the next morning along the way, why had he suddenly felt so dejected, and why, when he’d arrived at Moscow, had he said to himself, “I’m a scoundrel”? And now, it had once occurred to him that as a result of all these tormenting thoughts, he might even forget all about Katerina Ivanovna, given that they had taken such complete possession of him again! It was just after he thought all this that he met Alyosha on the street. He stopped him at once and suddenly posed this question to him:

“Do you remember the time after dinner when Dmitry burst into the house and gave Father a beating, and then I told you in the courtyard that I reserved for myself ‘the right to desire’? Tell me, did you think at the time that I desired Father’s death or not?”

“I did,” Alyosha replied softly.

“That was true; there was no guessing about it. But didn’t you also think at the time that I hoped ‘for one reptile to devour the other’? That is, that Dmitry should kill Father, as soon as possible . . . and that I myself was not even opposed to being of further assistance?”

Alyosha turned slightly pale and looked into his brother’s eyes in silence.

“Tell me!” cried Ivan. “Above all I want to know what you were thinking at the time. I need to know the truth, the truth!” He took a deep breath and glared at Alyosha, already angry.

“Forgive me, I did think so at the time,” whispered Alyosha, and he fell silent, without adding one word of “extenuating circumstance.”

“Thank you!” Ivan retorted, and, deserting Alyosha, he continued on his way. From that time on, Alyosha noticed that brother Ivan somewhat abruptly began to distance himself from him and even seemed to have started to dislike him, so that he himself stopped going to see him. But at that minute, right after their meeting, Ivan Fyodorovich, without returning home, suddenly went to see Smerdyakov again.

1 An old term for the swelling of soft tissues due to the accumulation of excess fluid.

VII

THE SECOND VISIT TO SMERDYAKOV

By that time, Smerdyakov had been discharged from the hospital. Ivan Fyodorovich knew his new quarters: he lived in that lopsided little wooden house divided into two dwellings by a hall. On one side was Marya Kondratyevna with her mother, and on the other, Smerdyakov lived alone. God knows on what basis he’d settled there: was he living free of charge or paying rent? Afterward it was supposed that he’d settled there as Marya Kondratyevna’s fiancé and was living there without paying. Both the mother and the daughter respected him greatly and regarded him as a man superior to them.

Ivan Fyodorovich knocked and entered the hall; according to Marya Kondratyevna’s instructions, he proceeded to the left side, into the “white hut,” the one occupied by Smerdyakov. In it stood an extremely hot tile stove. Blue wallpaper covered the walls: true, it was torn in many places; and there were numerous brown cockroaches swarming in the cracks under the wallpaper, creating a constant rustling sound. The furniture was insignificant: two benches along the walls and two chairs next to a table. The table, although it was made simply of wood, was covered with a tablecloth with pink designs on it. There was a pot with geraniums on each of the two small windowsills. There was a case in the corner holding icons. A small dented copper samovar stood on the table, as well as a tray with two cups. Smerdyakov had already had his tea and the samovar had gone out . . .

He himself was sitting on a bench at the table, looking at a notebook, drawing something slowly with a pen. There was a bottle of ink nearby, as well as a short iron candlestick, though with a stearin candle. Ivan Fyodorovich guessed at once from Smerdyakov’s face that he’d recovered completely from his illness. His face was fresher and fuller, his topknot was in place, and his side-whiskers were oiled. He was wearing a motley quilted dressing gown, which, however, was very worn and frayed. On his nose were a pair of glasses that Ivan Fyodorovich had never seen before. This trivial circumstance suddenly seemed even to redouble Ivan Fyodorovich’s anger: “A creature like that and he’s wearing spectacles!” Smerdyakov slowly raised his head and stared through his glasses at the entering visitor; then he slowly removed them and rose from the bench, but somehow not very respectfully, instead rather lazily, merely to observe a minimal amount of necessary courtesy, without which it’s almost impossible to get along. All of this flashed into Ivan’s head; he took it in and noted it, and the main thing was—Smerdyakov’s glance, decidedly malicious, unwelcoming, and even arrogant, as if to say: “We spoke about everything last time. Why have you come to pester me again?” Ivan Fyodorovich could hardly restrain himself:

“It’s hot in here,” he said, still standing, and unbuttoned his coat.

“Take it off, sir,” Smerdyakov offered.

Ivan Fyodorovich took off his coat and tossed it on a bench; with trembling hands he took a chair, placed it next to the table, and sat down. Smerdyakov had managed to sit down on a bench before he did.

“First of all, are we alone?” Ivan Fyodorovich asked sternly and swiftly. “Can they hear us from in there?”

“No one can hear a thing, sir. You yourself saw the hall.”

“Listen, my friend: what was it you asked me then, when I was leaving you in the hospital, about my keeping silent concerning your tremendous ability to feign fits, and how, in return, you wouldn’t tell the investigator everything about our conversation at the gate? What did you mean by that everything? What did you mean by that? Were you threatening me, or what? Have I entered into some sort of deal with you? Do you think I’m afraid of you?”

Ivan Fyodorovich said all this in a complete fury, apparently and intentionally letting it be known that he despised any subterfuge or indirection, and that he intended to show all his cards. Smerdyakov’s eyes shone angrily, his left eye was twitching, and immediately, with his usual composure and restraint, he delivered his answer: “You want it pure and simple? Well, then here it is, pure and simple.

“What I meant and why I said that to you: knowing in advance about the murder of your father, you left him to his fate, and that as a result people shouldn’t conclude anything wicked about your feelings or, perhaps, about anything else—that’s what I promised not to tell the authorities at that time.”

Smerdyakov spoke without hurrying and was apparently in control of himself, but even so, in his voice could be heard something determined and insistent, angry and arrogantly defiant. He stared brazenly at Ivan Fyodorovich, who was even dazed at first.

“How? What? Are you in your right mind or not?”

“I’m completely in my right mind, sir.”

“Do you think I knew then about the murder?” cried Ivan Fyodorovich at last, banging his fist down firmly on the table. “What do you mean, ‘about anything else’? Tell me, you scoundrel!”

Smerdyakov kept silent and continued staring at Ivan Fyodorovich with the same impudent look.

“Tell me, you stinking rascal, what’s that ‘anything else’?” he yelled.

“By that ‘anything else’ I meant at the time that you, too, perhaps were very much desiring your father’s death.”

Ivan Fyodorovich jumped up and struck Smerdyakov’s shoulder with all his might, so that he fell back against the wall. In a single instant Smerdyakov’s face was bathed in tears and he said: “You should be ashamed, sir, to strike a weak man!” He suddenly covered his eyes with his soiled, blue-checked cotton handkerchief, and sank into quiet weeping. A minute or more passed.

“Enough! Stop!” Ivan Fyodorovich commanded at last, sitting back down on his chair. “Don’t make me lose all my patience.”

Smerdyakov removed the rag from his eyes. Every feature of his wrinkled face reflected the insult he’d just suffered.

“So you, you scoundrel, thought at the time that I was in a pact with Dmitry Fyodorovich to kill my father?”

“I didn’t know your thinking at the time, sir,” Smerdyakov replied in an offended voice. “And that’s why I stopped you at the time when you were entering the gate, to test you on that very point, sir.”

“To test me? What?”

“Exactly that circumstance: did you or did you not wish your father to be murdered?”

His insistent, arrogant tone, which he refused to drop, was what infuriated Ivan Fyodorovich most of all.

“You’re the one who killed him!” he cried suddenly.

Smerdyakov grinned contemptuously.

“You yourself know for certain that I didn’t kill him. I’d have thought that a clever man would have nothing more to say about that.”

“But why, why did you form such a suspicion of me at the time?”

“As you know, it was from fear alone, sir. Because I was in such a state, shaking from fear, and suspected everyone. I decided to test you, too, because if you wanted the same outcome as your brother, that would be the end of this entire affair, and I would also be crushed like a fly.”

“Listen, that’s not what you were saying two weeks ago.”

“I meant the same thing when I spoke with you in the hospital, but I supposed that you’d understand without needless words, and that as a clever man, you wouldn’t want to talk about it explicitly, sir.”

“Is that so? But answer me, answer me, I insist: what could I have done, what was it that put such vile suspicion of me into your mean soul?”

“As for killing him, sir, you never could’ve done that yourself, and you didn’t want to; but as for wishing that someone else would kill him, that you wanted.”

“How calmly, how calmly he says it! Why should I have desired it? Why the hell would I have wanted it?”

“What do you mean, ‘why the hell,’ sir? What about the inheritance, sir?” Smerdyakov replied maliciously and somehow vindictively. “After your father’s death, each of you three brothers could receive about forty thousand rubles, perhaps even more, sir; but if he were to marry that woman, sir, Agrafena Aleksandrovna, after the wedding she’d have all the capital transferred to herself, since she’s not a fool, sir, and you three brothers wouldn’t have received even two rubles each after your father’s death. And was there much time left before their wedding? Just a hairsbreadth, sir: all that lady had to do was wiggle her little finger at him and he’d have gone running to the church after her, with his tongue hanging out.”

Ivan Fyodorovich restrained himself with considerable exertion.

“All right,” he said at last, “you see I didn’t jump up, haven’t thrashed you, haven’t killed you. Go on: so according to you, I’d put Dmitry up to it and was counting on him to do it?”

“How could you not count on him, sir? If he killed him, he’d forfeit all his rights as a gentleman, his rank and property, and would be sent into exile, sir. Then his share of the money left by your father would come to you and your brother Aleksey Fyodorovich, equally, sir, and that means no longer forty thousand, but about sixty thousand rubles would pass to each of you, sir. There’s no doubt that you were counting on Dmitry Fyodorovich then!”

“What I put up with from you! Listen, you ingrate: if, at the time, I was counting on anyone, it was you, of course, and not Dmitry, and, I swear, I was even expecting some sort of vile act from you . . . then . . . I remember my impression!”

“And I also thought then, for one minute, that you were counting on me,” Smerdyakov said with a sarcastic grin, “so that way you exposed yourself to me even more, because if you were expecting something from me and, at the same time, you left, that means it was as if you were saying to me: ‘You can go ahead and murder my father, I won’t hinder you.’ ”

“You scoundrel! So that’s how you took it!”

“All because of that same Chermashnya, sir. For mercy’s sake! You were planning to go to Moscow and refused all requests from your father to go to Chermashnya, sir! Yet after just one simple word from me, you suddenly agreed to go, sir! Why did you agree to go to Chermashnya? If you went there for no good reason instead of to Moscow, just because of my word alone, then you must have been expecting something from me.”

“No, I swear I didn’t!” howled Ivan, grinding his teeth.

“What do you mean ‘no,’ sir? You should have, on the contrary, because of my words at the time to you, the son of your father, you should have taken me to the police or punched me in the face; but you, for pity’s sake, didn’t even get angry. At my foolish urging, you went away at once and good-naturedly did everything I’d said, whereas you should’ve stayed to protect your father’s life. . . . How could I help not drawing that conclusion?”

Ivan sat there frowning, convulsively grinding both fists into his knees.

“Yes, it’s a pity that I didn’t punch you in the face,” he said with a bitter smile. “I couldn’t have hauled you off to the police at that time: who would have believed me and what evidence could I have produced against you? And as for a punch in the mug . . . ugh, pity that I didn’t think of that. Although such punches are forbidden, I’d have ground your ugly mug into kasha.”

Smerdyakov looked at him almost with enjoyment.

“In the ordinary circumstances of life,” he said in the same self-satisfied, sententious tone in which he’d once argued with Grigory Vasilievich about the nature of faith and had teased him while standing at Fyodor Pavlovich’s table, “in the ordinary circumstances of life, today it’s really forbidden by law to punch people in the mug, and beatings have ceased, sir, well, but in certain exceptional situations of life, not only here in Russia, but everywhere in the world, even in the French Republic itself, people still continue to give beatings, as in the time of Adam and Eve, sir, and they will never stop doing so, sir, but you, even in such an exceptional case, sir, didn’t dare, sir.”

“Why are you studying French vocabulary words?” Ivan nodded toward the notebook lying on the table.

“Why shouldn’t I study, sir, to further my education, thinking that one day I might get to visit those fortunate places in Europe?”

“Listen, you monster,” Ivan said, his eyes flashing and his body trembling. “I’m not afraid of your accusations; you can testify against me all you want, but if I haven’t beaten you to death right now, it’s only because I suspect you of committing that crime and I will drag you into court. I’ll still expose you!”

“In my opinion, it’s better to keep silent, sir. Because how can you accuse me, considering my utter innocence, and who would believe you? And if you begin to do so, I’ll have to reveal everything, sir, to defend myself.”

“Do you think now I’m afraid of you?”

“Even if the court doesn’t believe all I’ve just said to you, the public will, and you’ll be ashamed.”

“In other words, it’s again: ‘It’s interesting to have a chat with a clever man,’ eh?” uttered Ivan, gnashing his teeth.

“You’ve hit the mark, sir. So be clever, sir.”

Ivan Fyodorovich stood up, trembling with indignation, put on his coat, and, without replying to Smerdyakov, not even looking at him, swiftly left the hut. The fresh evening air revived him. The moon shone brightly in the night sky. A terrible nightmare of thoughts and sensations seethed in his soul. “Should I go at once and accuse Smerdyakov? But accuse him of what? He’s innocent, nevertheless. On the contrary, he’ll accuse me. Why did I really go to Chermashnya then? Why? What for?” asked Ivan Fyodorovich. “Yes, of course, I expected something, he’s right . . .” And for the hundredth time he recalled once more how that last night he’d stood on the stairs listening to his father; but this time he remembered it with such suffering that he actually stopped and stood still on the spot, as if he’d been stabbed: “Yes, I expected it then, that’s true! I wanted the murder! Did I want it? Smerdyakov should be killed! If I don’t dare kill him, life isn’t worth living!”

Ivan Fyodorovich didn’t go home; he went directly to see Katerina Ivanovna and frightened her by his appearance: he was like a madman. He related to her his entire conversation with Smerdyakov, every word of it. He couldn’t calm down, no matter how much she tried to soothe him; he kept pacing the room, speaking strangely and incoherently. Finally he sat down, rested his elbows on the table, lowered his head into his hands, and uttered this strange aphorism:

“If it wasn’t Dmitry who killed Father, but Smerdyakov, then of course I’d be an accomplice, because I put him up to it. Did I put him up to it—I still don’t know. But if it was he who killed him, and not Dmitry, then of course, I’m a murderer, too.”

After hearing this, Katerina Ivanovna silently got up from her seat, went over to her desk, opened a wooden box, took out a sheet of paper, and placed it in front of Ivan. This paper was the very same document that Ivan Fyodorovich later shared with Alyosha, consisting of “mathematical proof” that brother Dmitry had killed their father. It was a letter to Katerina Ivanovna written by Mitya when he was drunk, later on the evening when he’d met Alyosha in the field as he was leaving the monastery, after the scene at Katerina Ivanovna’s during which Grushenka had insulted her. At that time, after parting from Alyosha, Mitya had rushed to see Grushenka; it was not known whether he saw her or not, but toward evening he turned up in the Capital City tavern, where he drank a great deal. Drunk, he demanded pen and paper, and he wrote a document that was to have great importance for him. It was a frenzied, verbose, incoherent letter, in fact, a “drunken” letter. It was like when a drunken man, returning home, begins to tell his wife or one of his servants, with great enthusiasm, how he was just insulted, what a scoundrel that person is, and how he, on the contrary, is such an excellent fellow, and how he’ll get back at the man who insulted him. And the man relates all of this at very great length, incoherent and agitated, banging his fist on the table, with drunken tears. The paper for the letter that he’d been given at the tavern was a soiled piece of ordinary stationery, of the worst sort; on the back of it was scribbled some sort of tally. There was evidently insufficient space for his drunken verbosity, and Mitya not only filled the margins, but even wrote the last lines across what was already there. The contents of the letter are as follows:

Fateful Katya!

Tomorrow I will get the money and return your three thousand rubles and bid you farewell, oh, woman of great wrath; but farewell, also, to my love! Let us end it! Tomorrow I will procure the money from everyone, and if I can’t, then I give you my word of honor that I’ll go to my father, break his skull, and take the money from under his pillow, right after Ivan leaves. I’ll go to prison, but I’ll return the three thousand. And farewell to you. I bow down to the ground before you, because I’ve been a scoundrel to you. Forgive me. No, it’s better not to forgive me: it’ll be better both for me and for you! It’s better to go to prison than to have your love, because I love another, one whom you got to know all too well today, so how can you forgive? I’ll kill the man who robbed me! I’ll go east, away from all of you, so I won’t know anyone. Her, too, for you’re not my only tormentor, she is, too. Farewell!

P.S. I’m writing a curse, but I adore you! I feel it in my breast. One string is left and it still vibrates. It’s better that my heart be rent asunder. I’ll kill myself, but first of all, I’ll kill that mongrel. I’ll tear the three thousand out of him and toss it to you. Although I’m a scoundrel before you, I’m not a thief! Wait for the three thousand. The mongrel has it under his mattress, tied with a pink ribbon. I’m not a thief, but I’ll kill my thief. Katya, don’t regard me contemptuously: Dmitry’s not a thief, but he’s a murderer! He killed his father and ruined himself, in order to stand up and not be a victim of your pride. And not to love you.

P.P.S. I kiss your feet. Farewell!

P.P.P.S. Katya, pray to God that someone will give me the money. Then I won’t be covered in blood; but if they don’t, then I will be! Kill me!

Your slave and enemy,

D. Karamazov

After Ivan had read this “document,” he became convinced. In other words, his brother, and not Smerdyakov, had killed his father. And if not Smerdyakov, then not him, not Ivan. The letter suddenly became mathematical proof in his eyes. There could be no further doubts for him of Mitya’s guilt. By the way, suspicions of the possibility that Mitya might have killed his father in concert with Smerdyakov never occurred to him; it didn’t fit with the facts. Ivan was completely reassured. The next morning, he thought with contempt about Smerdyakov and his ridicule. In a few days he was even surprised that he’d been so terribly distressed by his accusations. He resolved to despise and forget him. A month passed. He didn’t ask anyone about Smerdyakov, but he heard in passing, twice, that he was very ill and not in his right mind. “He’ll end up mad,” said the young Dr. Varvinsky, and Ivan remembered that.

During the last week of that month, Ivan himself began feeling unwell. He went to consult the doctor who’d been summoned from Moscow by Katerina Ivanovna before the trial. And it was precisely at this time that his relations with Katerina Ivanovna became strained to the extreme. They were like two enemies who were in love with each other. Katerina Ivanovna’s “returns” to Mitya, momentary, but powerful, were driving Ivan into an absolute fury. It’s strange, but until that very last scene described above, when Alyosha came from Mitya’s to see her, he, Ivan, had heard no doubts from her concerning Mitya’s guilt during the whole month, in spite of all her “returns” to him, which he hated so much. It’s also noteworthy that he, feeling that he hated Mitya more and more with each passing day, understood, at the same time, that it wasn’t because of Katya’s “returns” that he hated Mitya, but precisely because he’d killed their father! He both felt this and was completely conscious of it. Yet, about ten days before the trial, he went to see Mitya and proposed a plan of escape to him—a plan that he’d obviously thought about well before. Here, in addition to the main reason prompting him to propose such a step, a certain sore spot in his heart was to blame, left by a remark of Smerdyakov’s, to the effect that it was to his, Ivan’s, advantage that his brother was being accused of the crime, because the sum of money he’d receive as his inheritance from his father would increase for him and for Alyosha from forty to sixty thousand rubles. He resolved to sacrifice thirty thousand on his part to arrange Mitya’s escape. Returning from seeing him then, he was feeling terribly gloomy and confused: he began to feel that he was eager for Mitya’s escape, not merely to heal the sore spot by sacrificing thirty thousand rubles, but also for some other reason. “Is it because in my soul I’m also a killer?” he began wondering. Something very distant, but burning, stung his heart. Above all, throughout that month, his pride suffered most of all. More about that later . . .

When, after his conversation with Alyosha, with his hand on the bell pull at his own apartment, Ivan suddenly decided to go to see Smerdyakov, he obeyed one particular impulse of indignation that had boiled up suddenly in his breast. He recalled suddenly how Katerina Ivanovna had only just exclaimed to him in Alyosha’s presence, “It’s you, only you who assured me that he (that is, Mitya) is the killer!” Recalling this, Ivan was even stunned: never in his life had he assured her that Mitya was the killer; on the contrary, he’d suspected himself after he’d returned from seeing Smerdyakov. Quite the opposite, it was she, she who had produced that “document” and proved his brother’s guilt! And now she was suddenly exclaiming, “I went to see Smerdyakov myself!” When did she go? Ivan knew nothing at all about that visit. In other words, she was not entirely convinced of Mitya’s guilt! And what could Smerdyakov have told her? What, what exactly did he say to her? Terrible anger blazed up in his heart. He didn’t understand how, just a half hour ago, he’d let those words pass without crying out at the time. He released the bell pull and headed back to see Smerdyakov. “Perhaps this time I’ll kill him,” he thought along the way.

VIII

THE THIRD AND FINAL MEETING WITH SMERDYAKOV

When he was halfway there, a biting, dry wind arose, the same kind as earlier that morning, and a powdery, thick, dry snow began to descend. The snow fell to the earth but didn’t stick; the wind whipped it about, and soon it became a real snowstorm. In the part of town where Smerdyakov lived, there were hardly any streetlamps. Ivan Fyodorovich walked in darkness, unaware of the snowstorm, finding his way by instinct. He was suffering from a headache and felt a painful throbbing in his temples. He could feel cramps in his wrists. A little before he reached Marya Kondratyevna’s little house, he suddenly came upon a solitary, drunken little peasant, wearing a patched homespun coat, walking in a zigzag, muttering and cursing; all of a sudden he stopped cursing and began singing in his hoarse, drunken voice:

“Ah, Vanka’s gone to Piter,[1]

I won’t wait for his return.”

But he broke off every time after this second line and began cursing again; then he’d start singing once more. Ivan Fyodorovich had already been feeling an intense hatred for him, even before he began thinking about him, and he suddenly became aware of it. He immediately felt an overwhelming urge to knock him down with his fist. Just at that moment he drew even with him, and the little peasant, swaying forcefully, bumped into Ivan with all his might. Ivan shoved him away violently. The little peasant went flying, collapsed like a block of wood onto the frozen ground, and emitted just one moan, “O-oh!,” and then fell silent. Ivan walked over to him. He was lying on his back, absolutely still, unconscious. “He’ll freeze to death!” thought Ivan and resumed his journey to see Smerdyakov.

While he was still in the hall, Marya Kondratyevna came running out to open the door, holding a candle; she whispered to him, “Pavel Fyodorovich (that is, Smerdyakov) is very ill, sir; not that he’s in bed, sir, but he seems to have lost his reason, sir”; she added that he’d even ordered her to take away the tea and said he didn’t want to drink any.

“Is he making a big fuss, or what?” Ivan Fyodorovich asked rudely.

“No, not at all. On the contrary, he’s very quiet, sir. But don’t spend too long talking to him, sir,” Marya Kondratyevna implored.

Ivan Fyodorovich opened the door and walked into the cottage.

It was heated much the same as it had been the last time, but some changes had been made to the room. A bench on one of the two walls had been removed, and in its place was a large, leather-covered mahogany sofa. On it a bed had been made up with some rather clean white pillows. Smerdyakov was sitting on the bed wearing the same dressing gown as before. The table had been moved over in front of the bed, and it felt very crowded in the room. On the table lay a thick book wrapped in yellow paper, but Smerdyakov wasn’t reading it; he seemed to be sitting there doing nothing. He met Ivan Fyodorovich with a long, silent gaze, and seemed not to be surprised at all by his arrival. A great change had taken place in his face: it was much thinner and had become sallow. His eyes were sunken, and his lower eyelids had turned blue.

“So, are you really ill?” Ivan Fyodorovich stopped short. “I won’t keep you long and won’t even take off my coat. Where can one sit down?”

He went around to the other side of the table, moved a chair forward, and sat down.

“Why are you looking at me saying nothing? I’ve come with only one question, and I swear I won’t leave until I get an answer: did the young lady Katerina Ivanovna come to see you?”

Smerdyakov was silent for a long time, regarding Ivan quietly as before, but suddenly he waved his arm and turned his face away.

“What’s wrong?” cried Ivan.

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

“Well, she was here, but it’s no business of yours. Leave me alone, sir.”

“No, I won’t! Tell me, when was she here?”

“In fact, I’d forgotten all about her,” Smerdyakov said with a contemptuous grin; he suddenly turned his face to Ivan again and stared at him with a look of frenzied hatred, the same look he’d given him when they’d met a month ago.

“You yourself seem ill; you’ve grown thin and you look awful,” he said to Ivan.

“Never mind about my health; tell me what I asked you.”

“Why do your eyes look so jaundiced? Even the whites have turned yellow. Are you suffering a great deal?”

He grinned contemptuously and suddenly burst out laughing.

“Listen, I said I wouldn’t leave until I got an answer!” Ivan shouted in terrible agitation.

“Why do you keep pestering me, sir? Why are you tormenting me?” Smerdyakov asked with a look of suffering.

“What the devil! I’ll have nothing to do with you. Answer the question and I’ll leave immediately.”

“I have no answer for you!” Smerdyakov said again, lowering his eyes.

“I swear that I’ll make you answer!”

“Why are you so upset?” Smerdyakov asked, staring at him suddenly, not exactly with contempt, but almost with disgust. “Is this all because the trial starts tomorrow? Nothing will happen to you, you can finally believe that! Go home, go to bed, and don’t be afraid of anything.”

“I don’t understand you. . . . What do I have to fear tomorrow?” Ivan asked in surprise; all of a sudden a cold fear did indeed blow on his soul. Smerdyakov measured him with his eyes.

“You don’t un-der-stand?” he drawled out reproachfully. “It’s strange that a clever man like you should choose to play such a farce!”

Ivan stared at him in silence. Just the unexpected tone with which the former lackey now addressed him, something quite unprecedented and arrogant, was simply extraordinary. He hadn’t assumed such a tone during their last meeting.

“I tell you, you have nothing to fear. I won’t testify against you: there’s no evidence. Look how your hands are trembling. Why are your fingers wiggling? Go home. You didn’t kill him.”

Ivan shuddered; he recalled Alyosha’s words.

“I know I didn’t . . .” he started to mutter.

“You do?” Smerdyakov started in again.

Ivan jumped up and grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Tell me everything, you viper! Tell me everything!”

Smerdyakov was not the least bit afraid. He only fixed his eyes on Ivan with insane hatred.

“Well, in that case, it really was you who killed him,” he whispered furiously.

Ivan sank into the chair, as if he’d caught on to something. He laughed spitefully.

“You’re still talking about what happened then? The same as last time?”

“You were standing in front of me at the time and understood it all, just as you do now.”

“I understand only that you’re insane.”

“Aren’t you tired of saying that? We’re sitting here face-to-face now, so what’s the use of trying to fool each other or playing a farce? Or do you still want to blame me alone, straight to my face? You killed him; you’re the real murderer; I was only your stooge, your faithful servant Licharda,[2] and I did it following your words.”

“You did it? Did you really kill him?” Ivan asked, turning cold.

Something seemed to shake loose in his brain, and he began trembling with little cold shivers. Now Smerdyakov regarded him in surprise: he was probably stunned by the sincerity of Ivan’s horror.

“You really didn’t know anything about it?” he muttered uncertainly, looking into Ivan’s eyes with a warped grin.

Ivan kept staring at him; he seemed to have lost his tongue.

“Ah, Vanka’s gone to Piter,

I won’t wait for his return,”

echoed suddenly in his mind.

“You know what: I’m afraid that you’re a dream, a phantom sitting in front of me,” he muttered.

“There’s no phantom here at all, sir, just the two of us, sir, and a third one, too. Undoubtedly, he’s here now, that third one, he’s here between the two of us.”

“Who? Who’s here? Who’s the third?” Ivan Fyodorovich asked fearfully, glancing around, looking for someone in all the corners of the room.

“The third one is God, sir, Providence itself, sir. He’s the third one between us now, sir, but don’t look for him, because you won’t find him.”

“It’s a lie that you killed him!” Ivan howled madly. “You’re either insane or you’re teasing me, as you did last time!”

As before, Smerdyakov wasn’t frightened at all and observed Ivan warily. He was unable to overcome his disbelief; it still seemed to him that Ivan “knew everything,” and was only pretending that he was trying to “unload it all onto him, right to his face.”

“Wait a moment, sir,” he said in a weak voice; and suddenly bringing his left leg out from under the table, he slowly began rolling up his trousers. His leg was in a long white stocking and slipper. Without hurrying, Smerdyakov removed the garter and thrust his hand into his stocking. Ivan Fyodorovich stared at him and suddenly started trembling with uncontrollable fear.

“You’re insane!” he cried, quickly jumping up from his chair, bumping against the wall, and seeming to stick to it; he stood up straight and stiff. He regarded Smerdyakov with mad horror. Smerdyakov, taking no notice of Ivan’s fright, continued to fumble in his stocking, as if trying to find something and to pull it out. Finally he grabbed hold of it and tugged. Ivan Fyodorovich saw that it was some kind of paper, or perhaps a packet of papers. Smerdyakov removed it and placed it on the table.

“Here, sir!” he said softly.

“What?” Ivan asked, still shaking.

“Be so good as to look, sir,” Smerdyakov said just as softly.

Ivan approached the table, picked up the packet, began to unwrap it, but suddenly pulled his fingers away, as though he’d touched some repulsive, dreadful reptile.

“Your fingers are still trembling, sir, in spasms, sir,” observed Smerdyakov; without hurrying, he himself unwrapped the packet. Under the wrapper were three packets of rainbow-colored hundred-ruble notes.

“It’s all here, sir, three thousand, no need to count it. Take them, sir,” he invited Ivan, nodding at the money. Ivan sank down onto his chair. He was white as a sheet.

“You frightened me . . . with that stocking . . .” he said with a strange grin.

“Did you really not know up to now?” Smerdyakov asked once again.

“No, I didn’t know. I thought it was Dmitry. Brother! Brother! Ah!” All of a sudden he grabbed hold of his head with both hands. “Listen: did you kill him alone? Without my brother or with him?”

“It was only with you, sir; I killed him with you, sir; Dmitry Fyodorovich is innocent, sir.”

“All right, all right. . . . We’ll talk about me later. Why am I still trembling? I can’t get a word out.”

“You were daring then, sir: you kept saying, ‘Everything is permitted,’ sir, and now see how frightened you are!” Smerdyakov muttered in astonishment. “Would you like some lemonade? I’ll order some immediately. It’s very refreshing. But first we have to hide this, sir.”

And he nodded at the packet once again. He was just about to get up and go to the door to call Marya Kondratyevna, to ask her to make some lemonade and bring it to them, but, looking for some way to hide the money so she wouldn’t see it, he first pulled out his handkerchief; however, since it was used and very dirty, he picked up the thick yellow book that had been lying on the table, the one that Ivan had noticed upon entering the room. He placed the book on top of the money. The title was The Sayings of Our Holy Father Isaac the Syrian.[3] Ivan Fyodorovich managed to make out the title mechanically.

“I don’t want any lemonade,” he said. “We’ll talk about me later. Sit down and tell me: how did you do it? Tell me everything . . .”

“You ought to take off your coat, sir, you’ll get overheated.”

Ivan Fyodorovich, as if he’d just thought of it now, took off his coat and tossed it onto the bench, without stirring from his chair.

“Tell me, please, speak!”

He seemed to calm down. He waited, quite sure that Smerdyakov would now tell him everything.

“About how it was done, sir?” Smerdyakov said with a sigh. “It was done in the most natural way, sir, following your very own words . . .”

“We’ll talk about my words later,” Ivan interrupted again, no longer shouting as he had before; he uttered these words decisively, as if now in complete control of himself. “But tell me in detail how you did it. Everything in order. Don’t forget a thing. Details, above all, details. I beg you.”

“You went away and then I fell down in the cellar, sir . . .”

“In an genuine fit, or did you feign one?”

“I feigned one, of course, sir. I feigned all of it. I went downstairs steadily, sir, to the very bottom, and then calmly lay down, sir; as soon as I did, I began screaming. I was writhing until they carried me out.”

“Wait! All that time, and afterward, in the hospital, were you still feigning?”

“Not at all, sir. The next day, in the morning, before I got to the hospital, I suffered a genuine, very sound attack, more intense than I’d had in years. I was completely unconscious for two days.”

“All right, all right. Go on.”

“They placed me on this bed, sir, and I knew they would, behind a partition, sir, because whenever I was ill, Marfa Ignatyevna would keep me there in her room. She’s always been kind to me ever since I was born, sir. I moaned during the night, sir, but softly. I kept waiting for Dmitry Fyodorovich to come.”

“What do you mean, to see you?”

“Why to see me? I was expecting him to come to the house; I had no doubt whatever that he’d come that night. For having been deprived of me and not having any information, he’d definitely be forced to come and climb over the fence, sir, as he knew how to do, and do whatever he intended.”

“And if he hadn’t come?”

“Then nothing would’ve happened, sir. I’d never have dared to do it myself.”

“All right, all right. Speak more intelligibly. Don’t hurry, and the main thing is—don’t leave anything out!”

“I was expecting him to kill Fyodor Pavlovich, sir . . . that’s for certain, sir. Because I’d prepared him to do it . . . in the last few days, sir. . . . Above all, he knew about the knocks. With all his rage and suspicion accumulated over time, and using those signals, he was sure to sneak into the house, sir. That’s for certain. I was expecting him, sir.”

“Wait,” Ivan interrupted. “If he’d killed him, he would’ve taken the money and run off; you must have realized that. Then what would you have gained? I don’t see it.”

“He’d never have found the money, sir. It was I who told him that the money was under the mattress. But that wasn’t true, sir. Before it had been placed in a box, and that’s how it was, sir. Afterward I suggested to Fyodor Pavlovich, since I was the only person he trusted, that he hide the money in the corner behind the icons, because no one would guess it was there, especially if they were in haste. So that’s where the packet was, in the corner behind the icons, sir. It would have been ridiculous to keep it under the mattress; at least the box could be locked. But everyone here came to believe that it was under the mattress. What absurd reasoning, sir. So if Dmitry Fyodorovich had committed this murder and hadn’t found anything, he’d have run away hastily, sir, fearing every sound, as all murderers do, or he’d have been arrested, sir. So, the next day, or even later that night, I could always have gone behind the icons and taken the money, sir, and the murder would’ve fallen upon Dmitry Fyodorovich. I could always count on that.”

“What if he hadn’t killed him, but had only beaten him up?”

“If he hadn’t killed him, I’d never have dared take the money, and it would have all been in vain. But I presumed he’d beat him senseless, and I’d have time to take the money, and then I’d later report to Fyodor Pavlovich that it was none other than Dmitry Fyodorovich who’d beaten him and carried off the money.”

“Wait . . . I’m getting confused. So this means it was Dmitry who killed him and you only took the money?”

“No, sir, it wasn’t he that killed him. I could tell you even now that he was the murderer . . . but I don’t want to lie to you now because . . . since you haven’t really understood anything up to now, as I see, and you’re not pretending so as to throw all your guilt directly in my face, then you’re still to blame for everything, sir, because you knew about the murder, and entrusted me to do it, while you, knowing everything, decided to go away. Therefore I want to prove to you this very evening, right to your face, that you, sir, are the real murderer in this entire affair; I’m not the principal figure, even though I’m the one who killed him. You’re the lawful murderer!”

“Why, why am I the murderer? Oh, God!” Ivan cried, finally unable to restrain himself, having forgotten that they’d postponed talking about him until the end of the conversation. “Are you still referring to Chermashnya? Wait: tell me why you needed my consent, if you took my decision about Chermashnya as giving my consent? How do you explain that now?”

“Certain of your consent, I’d have known that upon your return, you wouldn’t have raised an uproar about those lost three thousand rubles, if for some reason the authorities suspected me instead of Dmitry Fyodorovich, or thought I was his accomplice; on the contrary, you’d have defended me from the others. . . . And when you received your inheritance, you could’ve rewarded me for the rest of your life, because you’d have received it through me, or else, had he married Agrafena Aleksandrovna, you wouldn’t have received a damn thing.”

“Ah! So you were intending to torment me my whole life!” Ivan sneered. “What if instead of leaving, I’d informed against you?”

“But what could you have informed about? That I’d encouraged you to go to Chermashnya? But that’s ridiculous, sir. Besides, after our conversation, you still could’ve either gone or stayed. If you’d stayed, nothing would’ve happened; I’d have known that you didn’t want it to happen, and I wouldn’t have carried it out. And if you’d gone, that meant you wouldn’t dare testify against me at a trial and would forgive me for having taken the three thousand. You couldn’t have prosecuted me afterward because I’d have divulged it all at the trial, that is, not that I stole the three thousand rubles or killed him—I wouldn’t have said that, sir—but that you’d prompted me to rob and kill, and I merely had agreed to do it. That’s why I needed your agreement then, so you couldn’t incriminate me for anything afterward, sir, for what proof could you have had? I could always implicate you, sir, revealing your thirst for your father’s death, and mark my words—the public would’ve believed it and you’d have been covered in shame for the rest of your life.”

“Did I really have that desire, did I?” Ivan sneered again.

“Undoubtedly you did, sir, and by your consent, you silently endorsed this affair, sir,” Smerdyakov said, staring intently at Ivan. He was very weak and spoke softly and wearily, but something internal and secret inspired him; apparently he had some deeper motive. Ivan had a presentiment of it.

“Go on,” he said to him, “tell me about that night.”

“What more is there? I was lying there listening and thought I heard the master cry out. Before that Grigory Vasilievich suddenly got up and went out and began shouting; then everything was quiet and dark. So I lay there, waiting; my heart was pounding; I could hardly bear it. At last I got up and also went out, sir; I saw that the window on the left into the garden was already open, and I moved to the left, sir, to see if he was alive, sitting there listening; I heard the master stirring and sighing; therefore, he was still alive, sir. ‘Hey!’ I thought. I went up to the window and shouted to the master, ‘It’s me!’ And he said, ‘He’s been here, here, and he ran away!’ That is, Dmitry Fyodorovich was here, sir. ‘He’s killed Grigory!’ ‘Where?’ I whispered to him. ‘There, over in the corner of the garden,’ he said, pointing. He was also whispering. “Wait a bit,’ I said. I went to the garden to see, and there I stumbled upon Grigory Vasilievich lying near the wall, all covered in blood, unconscious. Therefore the thought flashed through my mind that Dmitry Fyodorovich had certainly been there, and on the spot I suddenly decided to finish with it all, sir, since even if Grigory Vasilievich were still alive, he was lying there unconscious and couldn’t see anything. The only risk, sir, was if Marfa Ignatyevna suddenly woke up. I felt that at that moment, but a desire to get it done came over me, and I was breathless. I went back to the master’s window and I said, ‘She’s here, she’s come: Agrafena Aleksandrovna’s come and she wants to come in.’ He trembled like a child. ‘Where is she? Where?’ he gasped, still not believing it. ‘Over there,’ I said, ‘open up!’ He looked out the window at me, half-believing, half-doubting; he was afraid to open up—I think he was even afraid of me. It was comical: all of a sudden I thought about those knocks on the window frame we’d agreed on as signals that Grushenka had come; so, right before his very own eyes, when he seemed not to believe my words, I began knocking, and he ran at once to open the door. He opened it. I would’ve entered, but he was standing in my way and preventing me from going in. ‘Where is she? Where?’ he asked, looking at me, trembling. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘if he’s so scared of me, that’s a bad thing!’ And then even my legs felt weak from fright that he wouldn’t let me into the room, or that he’d shout, or Marfa Ignatyevna would come running in, or something else might happen, I don’t recall now, but I must have been standing there in front of him looking pale. I whispered to him, ‘There, there she is under the window; how is it,’ I ask, ‘that you didn’t see her?’ ‘Bring her here, over here!’ ‘She’s afraid,’ I say, ‘frightened by the shouting; she’s hiding in the bushes. Go call her from the study.’ He ran to the window and placed a candle on the windowsill. ‘Grushenka,’ he shouts, ‘Grushenka, are you here?’ Even though he was calling her, he didn’t want to lean out the window and didn’t want to move away from me; he was so scared, because he was even frightened of me, but didn’t dare move away. ‘There she is,’ I say (moving up to window and leaning all the way out), ‘she’s in the bushes; she’s smiling at you, don’t you see?’ He suddenly believed me, started shaking all over, he was so much in love with her, sir, and he leaned all the way out the window. That’s when I grabbed the iron paperweight from the table—do you recall it, sir—it weighs about three pounds, and I swung my arm down and struck him on top of his head with a corner of it. He didn’t even scream. He only sank down suddenly and I struck again, for a second time, and then a third. The third time I felt that I shattered his skull. He suddenly rolled over onto his back, faceup, covered in blood. I checked to see if there was any blood on me, if it had splattered; I wiped off the paperweight and put it back; I went over to icon case, took the money from the packet, and tossed the packet on the floor, along with the pink ribbon. I went out to the garden, trembling all over. Right over to that apple tree with the hollow in it—you know that hollow. I’d noted it sometime before and had left a rag and some paper in it. I wrapped the money in the paper, and then in the rag, and thrust it way into the hollow. It stayed there for about two weeks, the very same sum, sir, and I took it out after my stay in the hospital. I went back to bed, lay down, and thought, ‘If Grigory Vasilievich was killed, then it’d be very bad for me; but if he’s not dead and if he recovers, then it may turn out all right, because then he’ll testify that Dmitry Fyodorovich had come, and that, therefore, it was he who killed him and stole the money,’ sir. I began groaning from insecurity and impatience, hoping to wake Marfa Ignatyevna as soon as possible. She finally got up, rushed to me, but when she suddenly saw that Grigory Vasilievich wasn’t there, she ran outside and started screaming in the garden. Well, sir, then it continued all night and I felt calm.”

The narrator stopped. All the while Ivan had been listening to him in deathly silence, without stirring or taking his eyes off him. As Smerdyakov had been speaking, he’d glanced at him only occasionally, but mostly averted his eyes. After finishing his story, he was visibly agitated and was breathing heavily. Perspiration stood out on his face. It was, however, impossible to guess whether he was feeling any remorse or not.

“Wait,” Ivan began, after a moment’s reflection. “What about the door? If he only opened the door for you, then how could Grigory have seen it open before? Because Grigory saw it before you went.”

It’s noteworthy that Ivan was asking in the most composed manner, even in a completely different tone, not at all angry, so that if anyone had opened the door now and glanced in from the threshold, he certainly would’ve concluded that they were sitting and conversing calmly about some ordinary but interesting subject.

“Concerning this door and the fact that Grigory Vasilievich says he saw it open, he only imagined that,” Smerdyakov said with a wry smile. “After all, I tell you he’s not really a person, but a stubborn mule. He didn’t see it, he imagined it—and you can’t convince him otherwise, sir. We’re lucky that he got this idea into his head, because they’ll undoubtedly convict Dmitry Fyodorovich in the end after they hear that.”

“Listen,” said Ivan Fyodorovich, becoming confused again and trying hard to focus. “Listen . . . there’s a great deal I wanted to ask you, but I’ve forgotten. . . . I keep forgetting things and getting confused. . . . Yes! Tell me just one thing: why did you unwrap the packet and leave it there on the floor? Why didn’t you simply take it away? When you were presenting your account, it seemed to me that it was the right way to act, but why that was—I can’t understand.”

“I did that for a certain reason, sir. If a person had known all about it, as I did, for instance, and had seen the money before, and might even have put the money in the envelope, and had seen the envelope sealed and addressed, and if that person had committed the murder, then what would have made him tear open the envelope after the murder, especially since he was acting in such great haste, knowing for certain that the money was lying right there in that envelope, sir? On the contrary, sir, if the robber had been someone like me, for example, he’d simply have put the envelope into his pocket without opening it, and would’ve fled speedily, sir. But it would be quite different with Dmitry Fyodorovich: he’d merely heard about the packet; he hadn’t seen it himself, and if he’d found it under the mattress, for instance, he’d have torn it open immediately to find out whether it really contained the money. And he’d have tossed the envelope onto the floor, without considering that it might be used as evidence against him, because he wasn’t a regular thief, sir, but a born nobleman, sir, and he’d never stolen anything before; if he’d decided to steal now, it wasn’t really to steal, but only to reclaim what was his, for he’d told the entire town that he meant to do that; he’d even boasted that he’d go and take back what was rightfully his from Fyodor Pavlovich. I didn’t state this openly to the prosecutor when I was being interrogated: I merely hinted at it, as if I didn’t quite understand it myself, so that he’d come up with that idea himself; I didn’t suggest it, sir—and Mr. Prosecutor’s mouth was watering from this same hint, sir.”

“But did you really come up with all this then, on the spot?” cried Ivan Fyodorovich, beside himself in astonishment. He was watching Smerdyakov again in alarm.

“For pity’s sake, is it possible to think that up in such a rush? It was all thought out beforehand.”

“Well . . . well, the devil himself must have helped you!” cried Ivan Fyodorovich again. “No, you’re not stupid; you’re much smarter than I thought . . .”

He stood up with the evident intention of walking across the room. He was in terrible distress. But since the table hindered his path, and he’d have to squeeze between it and the wall, he merely turned around and sat down again. The fact that he was unable to pass, perhaps, suddenly irritated him so that he almost screamed in fury once again:

“Listen, you wretched, contemptible man! Don’t you understand that if I haven’t killed you up to now, it’s only because I’m saving you until you’ve testified at the trial tomorrow. God sees,” Ivan said, raising his hand, “perhaps I was also to blame, perhaps I did have a secret desire . . . that my father die, but I swear to you, I’m not as much to blame as you think, and perhaps I didn’t incite you at all. No, no, I didn’t! Nevertheless, I’ll testify against myself, tomorrow, at the trial, I’ve decided! I’ll tell everything, everything. We’ll both go there together! Whatever you say against me tomorrow, whatever you testify—I’ll take it and won’t be afraid of you; I’ll corroborate it all myself! But you must also confess at the trial! You must, you must; we’ll go together! That’s how it’ll be!”

Ivan uttered this solemnly and energetically, and it was evident from his flashing eyes alone that it would be like that.

“You’re ill, I can see that, sir, very ill, sir. Your eyes are yellow, sir,” said Smerdyakov, but without sarcasm, even as if sympathizing with him.

“We’ll go together!” repeated Ivan. “And if you don’t go, I’ll go myself and confess.”

Smerdyakov was silent, as though considering.

“Nothing of the sort will happen, sir, and you won’t go, sir,” he stated at last, unconditionally.

“You don’t understand me!” Ivan cried reproachfully.

“You’ll be much too ashamed, sir, if you confess it all. Even worse, it’ll be useless, absolutely useless, sir, because I’ll deny that I ever said anything of the sort to you, and I’ll say that you’re either ill (and it certainly seems so), or that you feel sorry for your brother and have decided to sacrifice yourself and implicate me, because all your life you’ve regarded me as no more than an insect, not as a human being. And who’ll believe you, and what single piece of evidence do you have?”

“Listen, you showed me that money just now, of course, to convince me.”

Smerdyakov removed Isaac the Syrian from on top of the money and laid it aside.

“Take this money, sir, and carry it away,” Smerdyakov said with a sigh.

“Of course I’ll take it! But why are you giving it to me, if that’s why you killed him?” Ivan asked, regarding him in great astonishment.

“I don’t need it at all, sir,” Smerdyakov said with a trembling voice, waving his arm dismissively. “I did have the idea before, sir, of starting a new life with that money, in Moscow or, better still, abroad; I dreamed of it, sir, and mostly because ‘everything is permitted.’ That’s the truth you taught me, sir, because you said many things to me then: because if there’s no infinite God, then there’s no such thing as virtue, and we don’t really need it at all. It was true what you said. That’s what I thought, too.”

“Did you come to that conclusion on your own?” Ivan asked with a wry smile.

“With your guidance, sir.”

“And now, therefore, since you’re giving me the money, you must have come to believe in God?”

“No, sir, I didn’t,” whispered Smerdyakov.

“Then why are you giving it to me?”

“Enough . . . there’s no need, sir!” Smerdyakov said, with another wave of his arm. “You yourself kept saying that everything was permitted, so why are you so upset now, sir? You even want to go testify against yourself. . . . But that won’t happen! You won’t go to give evidence!” Smerdyakov stated again with firm conviction.

“You’ll see!” replied Ivan.

“That can’t be. You’re very clever, sir. You love money, sir, that much I know; you also love respect, because you’re very proud; you love women’s charms too much; and most of all, you want to live in undisturbed comfort and not bow down to anybody—that’s what you love most of all, sir. You don’t want to ruin your life forever, taking such disgrace on yourself. You’re like Fyodor Pavlovich, the most like him, sir, more than any of his children; you have the same soul, sir.”

“You’re not stupid,” Ivan said, seeming to be greatly impressed; the blood rushed to his face. “I used to think you were stupid. But you’re serious now!” he observed, looking at Smerdyakov with fresh eyes.

“Your pride made you think I was stupid. Take the money, sir.”

Ivan took all three packets of bills and put them in his pocket without wrapping them up in anything.

“I’ll show them the money at the trial tomorrow,” he said.

“No one will believe you there, sir; you have plenty of money of your own; you took it out of your own case and brought it into court, sir.”

Ivan stood up.

“I repeat, if I haven’t killed you yet, it’s simply because I need you tomorrow. Remember that and don’t forget it.”

“Well, kill me, sir. Go on, kill me now,” Smerdyakov said suddenly in an unexpected manner, looking at Ivan strangely. “You won’t dare do that either, sir,” he added with a bitter grin. “You won’t dare do anything, sir—you who used to be so brave, sir.”

“See you tomorrow!” shouted Ivan and was about to leave.

“Wait . . . show it to me once more.”

Ivan took out the money and showed it to him. Smerdyakov looked at it for about ten seconds.

“Well, go on,” he said, with a wave of his arm. “Ivan Fyodorovich!” he suddenly shouted after him.

“What is it?” Ivan turned without stopping.

“Farewell, sir!”

“See you tomorrow!” Ivan cried again and left the cottage.

The snowstorm was still raging. He took his first steps boldly, but then he suddenly seemed to start swaying. “It’s something physical,” he thought with a grin. Some sort of joy now flooded into his soul. He felt within himself some endless determination—an end to the vacillation that had been tormenting him of late. His mind was made up, and “now it won’t be changed,” he thought with happiness.

At that very moment he suddenly stumbled against something and almost fell. Stopping, he identified at his feet the same little peasant he’d knocked down before, still lying there in the same place, unconscious and immobile. The storm had almost covered his whole face in snow. Ivan suddenly grabbed him and started carrying him. Seeing a light in a little house on the right, he approached it, knocked on the shutters, called the owner, and asked for help to carry the little peasant to the police station, promising to give him three rubles if he did. The man got ready and came out. I won’t describe in detail how Ivan Fyodorovich succeeded in achieving his goal, getting the peasant to the police station, arranging for him to be seen by a doctor, and providing generously for “all expenses.” I’ll merely say that this whole affair took almost an hour. But Ivan Fyodorovich was very satisfied. His thoughts were proliferating and his mind was working.

“If I hadn’t made such a firm decision about tomorrow,” he thought with pleasure, “I wouldn’t have spent a whole hour taking care of the little peasant, but would’ve passed him by and merely ignored him as he was freezing to death. . . . However, I’m very capable of observing myself,” he thought at the same time with great satisfaction, “while they’ve decided that I’m losing my mind!”

Just as he reached his own house, he suddenly stopped short and posed a surprising question to himself: “Shouldn’t I go to the prosecutor right now and tell him everything?” He resolved this question by turning once more in the direction of his own house: “Tomorrow I’ll do it all together!” he whispered to himself, and, strange to say, almost all the joy, all the self-satisfaction, vanished in a single moment.

When he entered his room, something icy suddenly took hold of his heart, like a recollection or, more accurately, a reminder of something tormenting and repulsive, located precisely in his own room now, at that moment, and it had been there before. Exhausted, he sank down on his sofa. The old woman brought in a samovar; he brewed some tea, but didn’t touch it; he sent the old woman away for the night. He sat on the sofa and felt his head spinning. He knew that he was ill and weak. He started to fall asleep, but immediately got up anxiously and walked across the room, trying to drive sleep away. At times, it seemed to him that he was delirious. But it wasn’t illness that was upsetting him most of all; after sitting down again, he began glancing around sporadically, as if looking for something. This happened several times. Finally his glance settled directly on one place. Ivan grinned, but an angry flush flooded his face. He sat in the same place for a long time, his head propped up on his arms, fixing his eyes on that same spot, at the sofa standing against the opposite wall. Something over there was irritating him, some sort of object was disturbing him, tormenting him.

1 “Vanka” is a diminutive form of Ivan, and “Piter” is an affectionate diminutive for Petersburg.

2 See above, p. 319.

3 See above, p. 117.

IX

THE DEVIL. IVAN FYODOROVICH’S NIGHTMARE.

I am not a doctor myself, but I feel that the time has come when it’s essential that I give the reader at least some idea of the nature of Ivan Fyodorovich’s illness. In anticipation of what is to come, I’ll say only one thing: he was now, that very evening, on the verge of an attack of brain fever, which had finally taken full possession of his organism, although his health had long been affected and he’d been stubbornly resisting for quite some time. Knowing nothing about medicine, I will nevertheless hazard the suggestion that through a terrific exertion of willpower, he had managed to delay the onset of the illness for a while, hoping, of course, to overcome it completely. He knew that he was unwell, but he despised the idea of being ill at this time, when he was anticipating the most fateful moments of his life; then he would need to be fully in possession of himself to declare boldly what he had to say, and to “vindicate himself to himself.”

He had, however, once consulted the new doctor summoned from Moscow as a result of that whimsical idea of Katerina Ivanovna’s that was mentioned earlier. After hearing him out and examining him, the doctor concluded that he was suffering from something like a disorder of the brain; he wasn’t the least bit surprised by a particular admission that Ivan made to him with some disgust. “In your condition, hallucinations are very likely,” the doctor pronounced, “although it would be best to have them evaluated . . . in general it’s essential to begin serious treatment at once, without losing a minute, or else your illness will get even worse.” But Ivan Fyodorovich, upon leaving the doctor, didn’t follow this sage advice and scorned all treatment. “I’m still on my feet, I still have my strength, if I drop—then it’ll be a different story; I’ll let anyone treat me who wants to,” he said, dismissing the matter.

And so, almost conscious that he was suffering from delirium, as I’ve already said, he was sitting and was staring intently at some object on the sofa placed along the opposite wall. Suddenly someone appeared to be sitting there, though God knows how he’d entered the room, because he hadn’t been there before, when Ivan Fyodorovich had returned from seeing Smerdyakov. He was some sort of gentleman, or, more precisely, a sort of Russian “gentleman,”[1] no longer young—qui frisait la cinquantaine,[2] as the French say—with quite long, thick, dark hair streaked slightly with gray, and a short pointed beard. He was dressed in a brown jacket, evidently fashioned by a good tailor, but now a little worse for the wear, at least three years old and completely out of fashion, such that no well-to-do man of the world had worn anything like it in the past couple of years. His shirt and necktie—as long as a scarf—were like those worn by people striving to be stylish; but his shirt, on closer inspection, appeared none too clean, and his wide scarf was almost threadbare. The visitor’s checked trousers fit him splendidly, but they were too bright in color and a bit too narrow to suit the current fashion, just as his downy white felt hat was inappropriate for the season. In short, he gave the appearance of a gentleman who had limited means. He looked like someone who belonged to that class of idle landowners who had flourished during the period of serfdom; and it was clear that having seen the world and been in polite society, with good connections he perhaps still retained, he had enjoyed a merry youth and a comfortable life, but that after serfdom was abolished, he had gradually fallen into poverty and had turned into something like a sponger of the best class. He wandered from one old acquaintance to another, and they continued to receive him in their homes because of his polished manners and accommodating character, as well as the fact that he was still a decent man, one who could be awarded a place at anyone’s dinner table, although, of course, not a place of honor. Such hangers-on, agreeable gentlemen who know how to tell stories and can make a fourth at cards, and who don’t care to have any responsibilities assigned to them, are usually solitary creatures, bachelors or widowers; some of them may perhaps even have children, but their children are always brought up far away by some aunt or other, and are rarely mentioned by these gentlemen in genteel society, as if they might feel a bit ashamed of this relationship. A gentleman like this gradually loses sight of his children altogether, although from time to time he received from them some name-day or Christmas greetings, and occasionally even answers.

The face of the unexpected guest was not exactly good-natured, but, as noted, it was agreeable and ready to assume a polite expression that would suit any occasion. He did not wear a watch, but possessed a tortoiseshell lorgnette on a black ribbon. A massive gold ring with an inexpensive opal adorned the middle finger of his right hand. Ivan Fyodorovich maintained an angry silence and held back from speaking. The guest waited, sitting there like some hanger-on who’d just come down from his assigned room to keep his host company for tea, but who now sat in patient silence, observing that his host was frowning, obviously preoccupied with something. But he was ready to make polite conversation, as soon as his host chose to initiate it. And all at once, this guest’s face expressed concern.

“Listen,” he began, addressing Ivan Fyodorovich familiarly.[3] “Please excuse me, but I’d just like to remind you: you went to see Smerdyakov to find out about Katerina Ivanovna, but you left without finding out a thing about her. You probably forgot . . .”

“Ah, yes!” Ivan burst out, and his face darkened with anxiety. “Yes, I forgot about that. . . . However, it doesn’t matter now, until tomorrow,” he muttered to himself. “And you,” he said, turning to his guest with irritation, “in another minute I would have remembered that myself, because that was exactly what was tormenting me! Why did you interrupt—so I’d think you prompted me and didn’t remember it on my own?”

“All right, don’t believe it then,” the gentleman said, grinning cordially. “What’s the use of believing anything against your own will? When it comes to beliefs, no proofs are of any use, especially material proofs. The apostle Thomas believed not because he witnessed the resurrected Christ, but because he’d wanted to believe before that. Look at the spiritualists, for example . . . I’m very fond of them . . . just imagine, they suppose that they’re useful to faith, because devils from the other world show them their horns. ‘Aha,’ they say, ‘that’s material proof that there exists another world.’ Another world and material proof—and really, what will come next? And in the end, if you show that there’s a devil, have you proven that God exists? I want to join an idealistic society and lead the opposition: I’ll say I’m a realist and not a materialist, hee, hee!”

“Listen,” Ivan Fyodorovich said, standing up from the table suddenly. “I seem to be delirious now. There’s no doubt, I am delirious . . . spread whatever lies you like, it couldn’t matter less to me! You won’t drive me into a fury, the way you did last time. But somehow I feel ashamed of something. . . . I want to walk around the room. . . . Sometimes I don’t see you or even hear your voice as I did last time, but I can always guess what nonsense you’re talking, because it’s me. I’m the one doing the talking, and not you! Except I don’t know whether I was sleeping last time, or whether I was awake when I saw you. Here, I’ll soak this towel with cold water and hold it to my head and perhaps you’ll vanish into thin air.”

Ivan Fyodorovich went over to the corner, picked up a towel, did as he’d said he would, and began walking back and forth in the room with a wet towel on his head.

“It pleases me that we can speak to each other so familiarly,” the guest began again.

“You fool,” said Ivan, laughing. “Do you suppose that I’d address you formally? I’m feeling quite all right now, but I do have a pain in my temple and at the top of my head. So please don’t talk philosophy, as you did last time. If you’re not going to leave, then talk about something amusing. Share some gossip: since you are a hanger-on, you can certainly share some gossip. What a nightmare this is! But I’m not afraid of you. I’ll overcome you. Nobody’s going to take me to the madhouse.”

“C’est charmant, a hanger-on.[4] That’s just what I am! For what on earth am I except a hanger-on? Incidentally, as I listen to you I’m a bit surprised: so help me God, you’re starting to accept me as something real, rather than just some fantasy of yours, the way you insisted last time . . .”

“Never for a moment have I taken you as the real truth,” Ivan shouted, even in a sort of rage. “You’re a lie, only my illness, nothing but a specter. I just don’t know how to destroy you; I see that I’m compelled to suffer for a certain time. You’re my particular hallucination. You’re an incarnation of myself, but only one side of me . . . my thoughts and feelings, but the most vile and stupid of them. From that point of view you might actually be of some interest to me, if I only had the time to waste on you . . .”

“Excuse me, just a minute, I’ve caught you now: earlier this evening, under the streetlamp, when you turned on Alyosha and yelled at him, ‘You found out from him! How do you know that he visits me?,’ weren’t you referring to me? So for at least one brief instant you actually believed that I exist,” the gentleman said with a quiet laugh.

“Well, yes, that was a moment of weakness . . . but I couldn’t possibly believe in you. I don’t know if I was asleep or awake the last time. Maybe I was only dreaming, and you weren’t really there at all . . .”

“But why were you so harsh with Alyosha just a little while ago? He’s a sweet lad; I feel rather bad that I gave him such a hard time over his Father Zosima.”

“Shut up about Alyosha! How dare you, you pathetic flunky!” Ivan said, starting to laugh again.

“You’re insulting me, but you’re laughing—that’s a good sign. And you’re being so much nicer to me today than you were the last time, and I can understand why: it’s that great decision you’ve made . . .”

“Shut up about my decision!” Ivan screamed in fury.

“I understand, I really do, c’est noble, c’est charmant;[5] tomorrow you’re going to court to defend your brother and sacrifice yourself . . . c’est chevaleresque.”[6]

“Shut up, or I’ll give you a good kick!”

“That would give me some pleasure, because I will have accomplished my aim: if you kick me, that means you believe in my reality, because you can’t very well give a specter a good kick. Joking aside: it’s all the same to me if you berate me, if you like; still, it would be better to be just a little more polite, even to me. ‘Fool,’ ‘flunky’—what language you use!”

“In attacking you, I’m attacking myself!” Ivan said, laughing once again. “You are me, me, only with a different mug. You just say exactly what I’m thinking . . . and you can’t say anything new to me!”

“If our thoughts happen to agree, that does me honor,” the gentleman observed with tact and dignity.

“But you pick only my vilest thoughts and, what’s more, the stupidest ones. You’re stupid and vulgar. You’re terribly stupid. No, I won’t put up with you! What am I going to do? What am I to do?” Ivan said, clenching his teeth.

“My friend, no matter what, I still want to behave like a gentleman and for you to treat me as such,” began the guest in a burst of some sort of purely accommodating and self-deprecating pride, typical of a hanger-on. “I’m poor, but . . . I can’t say I’m very honest, but . . . in society it’s generally accepted as an axiom that I’m a fallen angel. So help me God, I can’t imagine that I was ever an angel. If I was, then it was such a long time ago that forgetting it would hardly be a sin. Now what matters to me most is merely maintaining the reputation of a respectable man and living as best I can, trying to make myself agreeable. I sincerely love people—oh, I’ve been slandered in so many ways! Here, when I stop by to visit you from time to time, my life comes to seem almost real, and I like that most of all. Just like all of you, I suffer from a preoccupation with the fantastic, so I love your plain, down-to-earth realism. Down here everything is clearly defined; you have formulas and geometry, while we have nothing but indeterminate equations! Here I wander around and dream. I love to dream. And more than that, on earth I become superstitious. Please don’t laugh: I like it when I become as superstitious as you all are. Here I accept all of your habits—just imagine, I love going to the public baths. I love sitting in the steam alongside merchants and priests. My dream is to incarnate myself once and for all, irrevocably, as some sort of fat merchant’s wife, weighing two hundred and fifty pounds, and to believe in everything she believes. My dream is to go to church and light a candle in simple-hearted faith, so help me God. That would be the end of my suffering. I’ve also come to like going to the doctor: last spring there was an outbreak of smallpox, and I went to a foundling hospital and got myself vaccinated; if you only knew how satisfied I was with myself that day—I donated ten rubles to the cause of our brother Slavs.[7] But you’re not listening. You know, you’re not really yourself today,” the gentleman said, pausing for a moment. “I know you went to see that doctor yesterday. . . . Well, how is your health? What did the doctor say?”

“Damned fool!” Ivan snapped.

“You, on the other hand, are very clever. Are you insulting me again? I wasn’t asking out of any concern for you, merely for the sake of conversation. You don’t need to answer. Now this rheumatism of mine has been acting up again . . .”

“Damned fool,” repeated Ivan.

“You can say what you like, but the fact is that last year I had such an attack of rheumatism that the memory of it is still fresh.”

“The devil had rheumatism?”

“Why not, if on occasion I assume bodily form. When I do, I suffer the consequences. Satan sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto.[8]

“What? What? Satan sum et nihil humanum . . . for the devil, that’s quite clever!”

“I’m glad I managed to please you at last.”

“But you didn’t get that from me,” Ivan said, stopping suddenly, seeming to be struck by this. “That idea never entered my head, and that’s strange. . . .”

“C’est du nouveau, n’est-ce pas?[9] This time I will be honest and explain it to you. Listen: in dreams and particularly in nightmares, from indigestion or something of that sort, a man sometimes sees such artistic visions, such complex actualities, such events—even a whole world of events—woven into such a plot, full of such astonishing details, connected by such intrigue, with such unexpected details, from the most sublime matters and down to the last cuff button, that I swear to you, not even Leo Tolstoy himself could have invented them. And such dreams are seen not only by writers, but sometimes by the most ordinary people—officials, journalists, priests. . . . Apropos of that, this is a complete enigma: one government minister even confessed to me that all his best ideas come when he’s asleep. Well, that’s how it is now. Though I am your hallucination, just as in a nightmare, I can say original things that have never entered your mind before, so I’m not simply repeating your own thoughts. But I’m only your nightmare—nothing more.”

“You’re lying. You want to convince me that you exist, and not just in my nightmare, and that’s why you yourself are now claiming that you’re nothing but a dream.”

“My dear friend, today I’ve been trying out a special method; I’ll explain it to you later. Wait, where was it that I stopped? Ah yes, then I caught a cold, not here among you, but while I was still back there . . .”

“Where is ‘back there’? Tell me, are you going to stay here much longer? Won’t you just leave?” cried Ivan, almost in despair. He stopped his pacing, sat down on the sofa, once again rested his elbows on the table, and held his head with both hands. He took the wet towel off his head and tossed it aside in annoyance: obviously, it did no good.

“Your nerves are all worked up,” observed the gentleman in a casual, offhand, and entirely amicable manner. “You’re even angry with me just because I can catch a cold; though that happened in the most natural manner. I was hurrying off to a diplomatic evening at the house of a Petersburg society lady who was angling to secure some official influence. So, a tailcoat, white tie, gloves, though I was still God knows where, and to reach you on earth, I had to fly through space . . . of course, that took only a moment, but a ray of light from the sun takes eight minutes to reach the earth, and here I am, just imagine, wearing just a tailcoat and an open vest. Spirits don’t freeze, but once they’ve taken on bodily form, then . . . in a word, I didn’t think before I set off, and in the ether and the waters ‘which were above the firmament,’[10] there’s such a frost that it’s wrong even to call it that. Just imagine: one hundred and fifty degrees below zero! You know that game the village girls play: when it’s thirty below they invite an innocent lad to lick an ax, his tongue instantly freezes to it, and the oaf tears the skin right off and leaves his tongue bleeding; and that’s when it’s only minus thirty, so imagine at one hundred and fifty below—just put your finger on the ax and it would fall off, if . . . if only there happened to be an ax up there . . .”

“And could there be an ax up there?” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly interrupted him distractedly and in disgust. He was struggling with all his might not to believe his present delirium and not to sink into complete insanity.

“An ax?” repeated the guest in surprise.

“Yes, what would become of the ax in space?” Ivan Fyodorovich cried suddenly with fierce and insistent obstinacy.

“What would become of the ax in space? Quelle idée![11] If it were to fall far enough, it would, I think, begin flying around the earth, without knowing why, in the form of a satellite. Astronomers would calculate the rising and setting of the ax. Gattsuk would put the information into his calendar, and that would be that.”[12]

“You are really stupid, terribly stupid!” Ivan said sullenly. “You’ll have to lie more cleverly, or I won’t listen. You want to overpower me with realism, to convince me you exist, but I don’t want to believe that you do! I won’t believe it!”

“But I’m not lying; it’s all true; unfortunately, the truth is almost always really quite dull. I can see you’re waiting for me to come up with something grand, perhaps even beautiful. That’s a pity, because I can only do what I can . . .”

“Don’t begin philosophizing now, you ass!”

“What sort of philosophy can it be when my whole right side is numb and I’m moaning and groaning. I’ve been to all the doctors: they can diagnose brilliantly, they have all your symptoms at their fingertips, but they haven’t any idea how to cure you. There was an enthusiastic little medical student here. ‘If you should die,’ he says, ‘you’ll know perfectly well what disease you died from!’ And then they have a way of referring you to specialists. ‘We,’ they say, ‘only diagnose, but you must go to such and such a specialist, and he’ll be the one to cure you.’ The old sort of doctor, who cured all sorts of diseases, has completely disappeared; now there are only specialists, and they all advertise in the newspapers. If your nose hurts, they send you to Paris. ‘There,’ they say, ‘is a European specialist who treats noses.’ So you go to Paris; he examines your nose. He says, ‘I can cure only your right nostril, but I don’t treat left nostrils; that’s not my specialty; after seeing me, you must go to Vienna, where there’s a specialist who treats only left nostrils.’ What are you going to do? I’ve gone back to folk remedies; one German doctor advised me to rub myself with honey and salt in the bathhouse. I went just to get an extra bath: I rubbed myself all over, but it was no use. In despair I wrote to Count Mattei in Milan. He sent me a book and some drops, God bless him. And just imagine: Hoff’s malt extract did the trick! I bought it by accident, drank a bottle and a half of it, and I could’ve danced; my symptoms cleared up entirely. I decided to place a letter of appreciation to him in the newspapers; a feeling of sincere gratitude prompted me, and imagine, that led to another whole story: not a single editor would accept my letter! ‘It would be much too reactionary,’ they say, ‘no one will believe it. Le diable n’existe point.’[13] They told me, ‘You should publish it anonymously.’ Well, what’s the point of an anonymous letter of thanks? I have a good laugh with the office workers. ‘I know that in our time it’s reactionary to believe in God,’ I say, ‘but I’m the devil, after all, and you can believe in me.’ ‘We understand,’ they say, ‘who doesn’t believe in the devil? Still, it’s impossible for us to print this; it could harm our reputation. Perhaps you may want to publish it as a joke?’ As a joke, I thought, it wouldn’t be very clever. So they didn’t publish it. And would you believe it, to this day I’m still annoyed about that. My finest feelings—such as gratitude, for example—are officially denied to me simply because of my social position.”

“You’ve started in again on philosophy!” said Ivan contemptuously, gnashing his teeth.

“God help me, but at times it’s impossible not to complain. I’m a man who’s constantly been subjected to slander. Take you, for example—every few minutes you tell me I’m stupid. It shows just how young you are. My friend, it’s not only a matter of intelligence. By nature I have a good, cheerful heart; ‘I also write all sorts of little vaudevilles.’[14] You seem to take me for a Khlestakov grown old and gray; my particular fate, however, is much more serious. Before time existed, by some decree, which I was never able to understand, I was predestined to be the one to ‘negate’ everything, but I am genuinely good-natured and caring, and not at all capable of negation. ‘No, go ahead and negate. Without any nay-saying there would be no criticism, and what’s a journal without a ‘department of criticism’? Without criticism, there’d be nothing but ‘hosannas’ of praise. But ‘hosannas’ alone aren’t enough to support life; it’s necessary for the ‘hosannas’ to be tempered in the crucible of doubt, and so on, in much the same manner. By the way, I don’t get involved with that; it wasn’t me that created it, so I can’t be held responsible for it. Still, they had to have a scapegoat, so they compelled me to write for the criticism section, and the result was life. We both understand this comedy: for example, I demand simply and directly that I should be annihilated. ‘No,’ they say, ‘go on living, because without you there’d be nothing. If everything on earth was reasonable, nothing would ever happen. Without you there’d be no events, and there must be events.’ So I serve reluctantly, so that there will be events, and I supply the irrational on command. For all their indisputable intelligence, people accept this utter farce as something serious, and that is their tragedy. They suffer, of course, but . . . still they live, live in reality, not in fantasy; because to live is in fact to suffer. Without suffering, what would be the pleasure in life? Everything would turn into an endless church service: it would be holy, but really quite a bore. And as for me—I suffer, but still I don’t live. I’m the unknown quantity in an indeterminate equation. I’m some sort of phantom of life who’s lost track of all ends and beginnings, and in the end has even forgotten his own name. You’re laughing . . . no, you aren’t laughing, you’re angry again. You are forever angry; all you care about is intellect, but I repeat to you once more, I’d give away my entire existence in the empyrean, all my ranks and honors, if only I could take on the body of a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound merchant’s wife who lights candles to God.”

“So even you don’t believe in God?” asked Ivan with a smile full of hatred.

“Well, if you’re asking the question seriously, how can I put this . . .”

“Does God exist or not?” shouted Ivan again with fierce insistence.

“Ah, so you are being serious. My dear, I really don’t know, so help me God—there, now I’ve gone and said it.”

“You don’t know, but you see God? No, you don’t exist on your own; you are me myself, and nothing more! You’re just rubbish: a figment of my imagination!”

“Well, if you like, I do have the same philosophy as you: that would be fair. Je pense, donc je suis,[15] that I know for sure. As for all the rest, all these worlds, God and even Satan himself—to my mind none of this has been proven. Does it exist in and of itself, or is it merely an emanation of myself, the logical development of myself, which alone has existed before time and by itself. . . . But I had better stop here, because it looks as though you’re ready to jump up and hit me.”

“I’d rather you told me some amusing anecdote,” Ivan said, with an expression of misery.

“There is an old joke and it’s on this very subject; that is, it’s not an anecdote, but a legend of sorts. You reproach me for unbelief—‘You see, but you yourself don’t believe.’ But, my friend, I’m not the only one like that. All of us out there are confused now, and it’s all because of your sciences. Just a little while ago there were still only atoms, five senses, four elements, and everything fit together more or less. There were atoms even in the ancient world. But then we learned that you’d discovered the ‘chemical molecule,’ ‘protoplasm,’ and the devil knows what else—and so we had to hang our tails between our legs. What ensued was simply chaos: above all—superstition, scandalous gossip; there’s as much scandal among us as among you, perhaps even a little more, and finally came the denunciations; we even have a department where particular denunciations may be submitted.

“Well, this wild legend dates back to our Middle Ages—not your Middle Ages, but ours—and among us no one believes it except for merchants’ wives weighing two hundred and fifty pounds—once again, not your merchants’ wives, but ours. Everything you have, we have, too: I’m revealing this secret to you out of friendship, even though it’s forbidden. The legend I am going to relate is about paradise. There was, they say, among you on earth, a certain wise man and philosopher who ‘rejected everything, laws, conscience, faith,’[16] and, especially, any future life. He died, expecting to go directly into darkness and death, but lo and behold, there lay before him—a future life. He was utterly surprised and indignant: ‘This,’ he says, ‘contradicts all my beliefs.’ And that’s exactly what he was punished for . . . that is, you see, forgive me, but I’m just repeating what I’ve heard, and it’s only a legend. . . . He was punished and condemned to walk a quadrillion kilometers in the darkness (we’ve adopted the metric system, you know); and when he’d finished walking that distance, they’d open the heavenly gates for him and all would be forgiven . . .”

“And tell me just what other kinds of tortures do you have in that world, besides the quadrillion kilometers?” Ivan interrupted him with unusual eagerness.

“What tortures? Ah, I wish you hadn’t asked. In the past it would be this and that, but now it’s more of a moral punishment—‘pangs of conscience’ and all that nonsense. We got all that from you, from the ‘mellowing of your manners.’[17] Well, and who wins from this? Only those who have no conscience: how can they be tortured by pangs of conscience when they don’t have a conscience? On the other hand, decent people have suffered, those who still had a conscience and a sense of honor. . . . That’s the damage that reforms can inflict on ground that hasn’t been prepared for them—especially if they’re plagiarized from foreign institutions! The ancient hellfires were a lot better. Well now, this man who was condemned to walk the quadrillion kilometers stood still, looked around, and lay down in the middle of the road: ‘I won’t to go on; I won’t continue, on grounds of principle!’ Take the soul of an enlightened Russian atheist and mix it with the soul of the prophet Jonah,[18] who sat around brooding for three days and three nights in the belly of a whale—and you get the character of this thinker who lay down in the middle of the road.”

“What is it that he had to lie down on there?”

“There must have been something for him to lie on. You’re not joking about this, are you?”

“Well done!” cried Ivan, still with the same strange energy. Now he was listening intently with surprising curiosity. “So, is he still lying there?”

“That’s the whole point: he’s not. He lay there for almost a thousand years and then he stood up and got back on the road again.”

“What an ass!” cried Ivan, laughing nervously and still seeming to be turning something over in his mind. “Isn’t it all the same—whether he lies there forever or walks a quadrillion kilometers? After all, that’s a billion years of walking.”

“It’s actually a lot more than that, but I don’t have paper and pencil to figure it out now. But he got there a long time ago, and that’s when this little anecdote begins.”

“What do you mean, he got there? Where did he get the billion years needed to do that?”

“Oh, you’re still thinking about our current earth! Our current earth, perhaps, has been repeated a billion times: it’s had its day, become extinct, it froze over, shook, broke apart, and fragmented into its component elements, then once again, the ‘waters above the firmament,’ another comet, the sun, and then from it, the earth again—the whole event perhaps repeating, and always in the same form, in every detail. It’s unbearably boring . . .”

“Well, what happened when he got there?”

“They just let him into paradise; he just entered, and before two seconds had passed—that’s by the clock (but in my view, the pocket watch he carried must have fragmented into its component parts somewhere along the way)—and before two seconds had gone by, he exclaimed that those two seconds were worth walking not just a quadrillion kilometers, but a quadrillion quadrillion, raised to the quadrillionth power! In a word, he burst into hosannas, and he overdid it to such an extent that some people there, those with a loftier mentality, weren’t even willing to shake hands with him at first: he’d become a reactionary much too quickly, they said. Now, that’s the Russian character for you. I repeat: this is only a legend. I tell it to you for what it’s worth. These are the sorts of ideas we have even now, concerning such matters.”

“I’ve caught you now!” cried Ivan with an almost childish glee, as if he’d finally succeeded in remembering something. “That anecdote about a quadrillion years—I invented it myself! I was seventeen at the time, a student in the gymnasium. . . . I made up that anecdote and told it to a schoolmate: his name was Korovkin, and it was in Moscow. . . . The anecdote was so unique and characteristic that I couldn’t have taken it from anywhere. I thought I’d forgotten it . . . but I must have recalled it unconsciously—I’ve recalled it myself, not because you’ve been telling it to me! Like the thousands of things a person sometimes recalls unconsciously as he’s being led out to be executed. . . . It’s come back to me in a dream. You are that dream! You are a dream and you do not exist!”

“To judge from the vehemence with which you deny my existence,” said the gentleman with a laugh, “I’m convinced that you must still believe in me!”

“Not in the least! I don’t believe even in a hundredth part of you!”

“But you do believe in a thousandth part. Homeopathic doses may be the strongest medicine. Confess that you do believe, even if it’s just one ten-thousandth part . . .”

“Not for one instant!” Ivan cried furiously. “But I’d like to believe in you,” he suddenly added strangely.

“Aha! That’s quite an admission! But I’m a good fellow, and I’ll be happy to help you out. Listen: I’m the one who caught you, not the other way around. I intentionally told you that anecdote of yours that you’d forgotten, so that you could absolutely stop believing in me.”

“You’re lying! The goal of your visit here is to convince me that you exist!”

“Precisely. But hesitations, apprehensions, the struggle between belief and disbelief—all that is sometimes such torture for a conscientious person like you that it’s better just to hang oneself. Knowing that you believe in me, if only just a little, I included that anecdote to bolster your disbelief conclusively. I’m leading you from belief to disbelief one turn at a time, and in doing so I have my own special motive. It’s a new method, old fellow: for when you disbelieve in me completely, then you’ll begin to offer your assurance, right to my face, that I’m not a dream, that in fact I do exist. I know you, after all. At that point I’ll have achieved my goal. My aim is a noble one. I’ll plant only a tiny seed of faith in you, and it will grow into an oak tree—such a tree that, sitting on its branches, you’ll long to enter the ranks of ‘hermit monks and chaste women,’[19] because that’s exactly what you want—very, very much. You’ll feed on locusts and wander in the wilderness to save your soul!”[20]

“Then it’s for the salvation of my soul you’re working, you vile swindler!”

“One must do a good deed every once in a while. You’re awfully angry, out of sorts now, that I can see!”

“You ridiculous joker! Tell me, have you ever tried to tempt those who were feeding on locusts and praying in the barren wilderness for seventeen years, until they were covered in moss?”

“My dear fellow, I’ve done nothing but that. You forget this whole world and every other world, and resolve to stick to a saint like that because he’s a very precious diamond: one such soul is sometimes worth an entire constellation—that’s the sort of arithmetic we use. A victory of that kind is priceless! And souls like that, so help me God, are hardly inferior to you in culture, although you won’t believe it: they can contemplate such depths of belief and disbelief simultaneously that sometimes it seems that they’re within a hairsbreadth of being ‘turned upside down,’ as the actor Gorbunov puts it.[21]

“Well, did you wind up getting your nose pulled?”

“My friend,” the guest pointedly observed, “it’s better to get off with your nose pulled than to lose your nose altogether, as a certain seriously indisposed marquis (no doubt he’d been treated by a specialist) recently put it in his confession to his spiritual father, a Jesuit. I was present—it was simply captivating. ‘Give me back my nose!’ he said, beating his chest. ‘My son,’ replied the priest, ‘everything is accomplished in accordance with the inscrutable decrees of Providence, and what might seem to you to be a misfortune can yield extraordinary, although as yet unseen, benefits. If stern fate has deprived you of a nose, it’s to your advantage in that never in your life can anyone dare to say that you’ve had your nose pulled.’ ‘Holy Father, that’s no consolation!’ exclaimed the desperate marquis. ‘On the contrary, I’d be delighted to have my nose pulled every day of my life, if only it were put back in its proper place!’ ‘My son,’ said the priest with a sigh, ‘you can’t expect to have every blessing at once; that would be complaining against Providence, which even in this instance hasn’t forgotten you; because if you persist in complaining as you are doing now, insisting that you’d be glad to have your nose pulled for the rest of your life, your wish has already been fulfilled: for in having lost your nose, you were, so to speak, in fact having your nose pulled.’ ”

“Ugh, how stupid can you be?” cried Ivan.

“My friend, I merely wanted to amuse you; but I swear, this is genuine Jesuitical casuistry, and, I swear, all this took place word for word, exactly as I’ve told you. The incident occurred recently and gave me a lot of trouble. The unfortunate young man, after returning home, shot himself that very same night; I was there with him until the very last moment. . . . As for those little Jesuit confessionals—these are really my most diverting moments, especially at times when I am feeling a little down. Here’s another case for you, one that happened just a few days ago. A blond girl comes to see an aging priest; she’s French, from Normandy, around twenty years old. A real beauty, shapely and well endowed; she’d make your mouth water. She bends over and whispers her sin to the priest through the little grate in the confessional. ‘What is wrong with you, my daughter, can it be that you have fallen again so soon?’ exclaims the priest. ‘Oh, Sancta Maria, what am I hearing? And not even with the same man. How long will this go on? Have you no shame?’ ‘Ah, mon père,’[22] replies the sinner, with tears of penitence, ‘ça lui fait tant de plaisir et à moi si peu de peine!’[23] Just imagine such an answer! Even I had to withdraw at this point: this was the cry of nature itself and, if you like, even better than innocence! I absolved her sin on the spot and was just about to leave, but was forced to turn back immediately: I could hear through the grate that the priest was arranging a rendezvous for that very evening, even though he was so old and as obstinate as flint: he fell in an instant! It was nature, truly, nature that had asserted its right! What, are you turning up your nose again, getting all angry once more? I’m really at a loss to know how to satisfy you . . .”

“Leave me alone, you’re battering my brain like an unending nightmare,” Ivan moaned in pain, helpless before his vision. “I’m bored with you, this is agonizing and intolerable! I’d give anything to be rid of you!”

“I repeat, moderate your expectations—don’t demand from me ‘everything great and beautiful,’ and you’ll see how cordially we’ll get along,” the gentleman declared with an air of authority. “In truth, you’re angry with me for not having appeared to you in a sort of red glow, ‘with thunder and lightning,’[24] with scorched wings,[25] but instead I’ve come to you in such a modest and unassuming form. In the first place, this offends your aesthetic sense, and in the second place, it also wounds your pride: after all, how could such an utterly common and vulgar devil visit a great man like you? Yes, there’s still a romantic streak in you of the sort that was so ridiculed even by Belinsky. Well, what’s to be done, young man? When I was preparing to visit you, I decided that as a joke, I might appear in the guise of a retired state councillor who’d served in the Caucasus, with the star of the Lion and the Sun on my frock coat[26]—rather than decorating myself at least with the Polar Star or Sirius.[27] You keep saying that I’m stupid. But my God, I make no pretension of trying to equal you in intelligence. Mephistopheles, who appeared to Faust,[28] attested to the fact that he desired evil but did only good. Well, that’s all right for him, but it’s just the opposite with me. In fact, I may be the one person in all of nature who loves truth and sincerely wants to do good. I was there when the Word, Who died on the cross, ascended into heaven, bearing on His bosom the soul of the repentant thief who was crucified at His right hand; I heard the joyful cries of the cherubim, singing and wailing ‘hosanna!’—and the thunderous raptures of the ecstatic seraphim, which shook heaven and all creation. Then here, I swear by all that’s holy, I wanted to join the choir and shout ‘Hosanna!’ with all the rest. The word had almost escaped my lips, it was bursting forth from my bosom, for as you well know, I’m extremely sensitive and highly susceptible to aesthetics. But common sense—a most unfortunate trait in my character—restrained me within the proper limits, and I let the moment pass! Because I wondered at that moment what exactly would have happened after my ‘hosanna’? Everything on earth would have come to an end and there would have no longer been any events at all. And so, solely out of a sense of duty and the demands of my social position, I was compelled to suppress the good moment in myself and to stick to my dirty work. Someone else takes all the credit for being good, while all I’m left with is the dirty work. I’m not eager to have the honor of living the life of a sponger; I’m not ambitious. Why, among all the creatures on earth, am I the only one condemned to be cursed by all decent people and to be routinely kicked by their boots? Why, once I take on human form, am I obliged to suffer such indignities? I know that there’s some secret hidden here, but they don’t want to reveal it to me for anything, because then, having guessed the meaning of it, I might shout ‘hosanna,’ and the indispensable minus would vanish instantly, and good sense would rule supreme throughout the world; and with that would come the end of everything, even newspapers and journals, because who would be left to subscribe to them? I know that if all things came to an end, I would be reconciled; I, too, would walk my quadrillion kilometers and at least learn the secret. But until that happens, I’ll continue to sulk and reluctantly fulfill my vocation: to destroy thousands in order to save one. Just consider, for example, how many souls had to be destroyed and how many honest reputations had to be ruined for the sake of that one righteous man Job, who they used to toy with me back in days of old? No, until the secret is revealed, only two truths exist for me: one, their truth, is of that other place, and at this point is still unknown to me; the other truth is mine. And there is still no way of knowing which will turn out to be better. . . . Have you fallen asleep?”

“How could I not?” Ivan groaned angrily. “Everything that’s stupidest in me, all that I’ve gone through over and over again, all that I’ve turned over endlessly in my brain, tossed aside like dead carrion—this is what you present to me as if it were new!”

“There’s just no way of pleasing you! I thought I might be able to win you over with my literary style: this ‘hosanna’ in heaven really wasn’t all that bad, was it? And my sarcastic tone just now, à la Heine,[29] eh?”

“No, I was never that kind of flunky! How could my soul have possibly given birth to a flunky like you?”

“My dear friend, I know a splendid, most attractive young Russian gentleman: a real thinker and a great admirer of literature and fine things, the author of a promising poem entitled ‘The Grand Inquisitor.’ . . . I was only thinking of him!”

“I forbid you to talk about ‘The Grand Inquisitor,’ ” cried Ivan, turning red with shame.

“Well, and ‘The Geological Cataclysm’? Do you recall it? Now, that was quite a little poem!”

“Shut up or I’ll kill you!”

“You’ll kill me? No, excuse me—I will have my say. I came here to treat myself to that pleasure. Oh, I love the dreams of my ardent young friends, quivering with such eagerness for life! ‘There are new men,’ you determined last spring, when you decided to make your way here, ‘they propose to destroy everything and start over, beginning with cannibalism.’ Stupid fellows! They didn’t bother to ask my advice! I maintain that nothing need be destroyed, that we need only destroy the idea of God in man: it’s on that we have to set to work. That’s where we need to begin. Oh, blind race of men who have no understanding! As soon as all men have denied God—and I believe that new era, just like a geological period, will soon come to pass—the old conception of the universe will fall apart on its own, without any cannibalism, and what’s more, the old morality will collapse, too, and then everything will begin anew. Men will join together to take from life all it can give, but only seeking joy and happiness for everyone in the present world. Man will be lifted up with a spirit of divine titanic pride and the man-god will appear. From hour to hour extending his conquest of nature infinitely by his will and his science, as each day passes man will experience such joy and exaltation in his accomplishment that it will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of heaven. Everyone will acknowledge that he’s mortal and will accept death proudly and with serenity, like a god. His pride will teach him that there’s no point in complaining that life lasts just a moment, and he’ll love his brother without any need of reward. Love will suffice only for that moment of life, but the very consciousness of its momentariness will intensify its fire, which is now dissipated in dreams of eternal love beyond the grave’ . . . and so on and so forth in the same vein. Charming!”

Ivan sat there, staring at the floor, his hands covering his ears, but his whole body began to tremble. The voice continued:

“The question now, my young thinker then reflected, is whether it is really possible that such a period will ever come? If it will, then everything’s been decided, and mankind will finally arrive at its apotheosis. But, in view of mankind’s inveterate stupidity, this won’t occur for at least a thousand years—and everyone who recognizes the ultimate truth now is allowed to order things for himself just as he pleases, according to the new principles. In this sense, ‘everything is permitted’ to him. What’s more: if this period never comes to pass, since there’s no God and no immortality, in any case, the new man may become the man-god—even if he’s the only one in the whole world, of course, who recognizes his new rank; now, with a light heart, he can overstep all the previous moral boundaries of the old slave man, if necessary. There’s no law for God! Wherever God is, that place is holy! Where I stand will be the preeminent place . . . ‘everything’s permitted’ and that’s that! This is all very nice; but if you really want to engage in swindling, why do you need to have moral authorization? That’s our contemporary Russian for you: without proper moral authorization, he can’t even decide to swindle—he’s so much in love with the truth . . .”

The guest kept on talking, obviously carried away by his own eloquence, raising his voice more and more, and casting ironic glances at his host. But he didn’t manage to finish: Ivan suddenly grabbed a glass from the table and flung it at the speaker with all his might.

“Ah, mais c’est bête enfin!”[30] the guest exclaimed, jumping up from the sofa and shaking the drops of tea off himself. “So you remembered Luther’s inkwell![31] You say you’re convinced that I’m a dream and then you throw your glass at me! Just like a woman! I suspected you were only pretending to cover your ears, but you were really listening . . .”

A loud, insistent knocking was suddenly heard at the window. Ivan Fyodorovich jumped up from the sofa.

“Do you hear that? You’d better open up. It’s your brother Alyosha with the most unexpected and interesting news. I guarantee it!”

“Shut up, you deceiver. I knew it was Alyosha before you said it. I had a premonition that he’d come, and, of course, he wouldn’t come for no reason; of course he’s bringing news!” cried Ivan in a fury.

“Open up, let him in; there’s a blizzard going on outside, and he’s your brother. Monsieur, sait-il le temps qu’il fait? C’est à ne pas mettre un chien dehors . . .”[32]

The knocking continued. Ivan wanted to rush to the window; but something seemed to be holding down his arms and legs. With all his might he tried to break his restraints, but it was no use. The knocking at the window grew louder and louder. At last, breaking free, Ivan Fyodorovich jumped up from the sofa. He glanced around wildly. Both candles had almost burned down, the glass he’d just hurled at his guest still stood before him on the table, and there was no one sitting on the sofa opposite. Although the knocking at the window continued insistently, it was not as loud as it had seemed to him in his dream; on the contrary, it was notably subdued.

“It wasn’t a dream! No, I swear, it wasn’t a dream; it all happened!” cried Ivan Fyodorovich. He rushed to the window and opened the vent.

“Alyosha, I told you not to come!” he cried out fiercely to his brother. “In two words, what is it that you want? In just two words, do you hear?”

“An hour ago Smerdyakov hanged himself,” replied Alyosha from the courtyard.

“Go around to the staircase; I’ll open the door for you,” said Ivan, and he went to let Alyosha in.

1 The first word is the neutral Russian word gospodin; the second is a European borrowing, zhentelmen, which has an ironic or pejorative ring.

2 “Who was pushing fifty” (Fr.).

3 The gentleman addresses Ivan using the familiar pronoun ty. Ivan responds similarly.

4 “That’s charming” (Fr.).

5 “That’s noble, it’s delightful” (Fr.).

6 “It’s chivalrous” (Fr.).

7 The Russo-Turkish wars were a series of twelve wars fought between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries.

8 “I am Satan and believe that nothing human is alien to me” (Lat.). An adaptation of the line from Terence beginning, Homo sum . . . (“I am a man . . .”).

9 “That’s something new, isn’t it?” (Fr.).

10 Genesis 1:7.

11 “What an idea!” (Fr.).

12 A. A. Gattsuk (1832–1891) published a journal and calendar in Moscow during the 1870s and 1880s.

13 “The devil doesn’t exist any longer.” (Fr.).

14 A quotation from Gogol’s Revizor (1836; translated as The Government Inspector), uttered by the protagonist, Khlestakov, in act 3, scene 6.

15 “I think, therefore I am” (Fr.): René Descartes’s (1596–1650) famous aphorism (Cogito, ergo sum).

16 A quotation from Alexander Griboedov’s famous comedy The Misfortune of Being Clever, act 4, scene 4.

17 The phrase is derived from Voltaire and quoted in M. Ye. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s Unfinished Conversations, iii (1875).

18 Jonah 1:1–17.

19 The first line of a poem by Pushkin (1836), which, in turn, was inspired by a Lenten prayer by Ephrem the Syrian, a fourth-century theologian.

20 See Matthew 3:4.

21 I. F. Gorbunov (1831–1896), an actor and writer, was also a friend of Dostoevsky’s.

22 “My father” (Fr.).

23 “It gives him so much pleasure, and causes me so little trouble” (Fr.). Based on an anonymous epigram about a French actress.

24 This phrase may originate in an apocryphal text.

25 From Lermontov’s narrative poem “The Demon” (1829–39).

26 A medal of this chivalric order, originally a Persian decoration.

27 Two puns: the Polar Star was a Swedish decoration, as well as the name of a radical journal in Petersburg; Sirius was also a military decoration and a reference to Voltaire’s novella Micromégas (1752).

28 Mephistopheles utters these words in Goethe’s Faust, Part 1.

29 Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) was a German poet and critic, known for his irony.

30 “Ah, but that’s stupid after all” (Fr.).

31 Martin Luther (1483–1546) is said to have had visions of the devil; after one of them, he threw his inkwell at him.

32 “Does the gentleman know what the weather’s like? You wouldn’t let a dog out in it” (Fr.).

X

“IT’S HE WHO SAID THAT!”

Upon entering, Alyosha told Ivan Fyodorovich that Marya Kondratyevna had come running to find him a little more than an hour before and had informed him that Smerdyakov had taken his own life. “I went in to clear away his samovar and there he was, hanging from a nail on the wall,” she said. In reply to Alyosha’s question about if she had informed the proper authorities, she replied that she had told no one but “had rushed right over to see him, and run all the way.” She was like a madwoman, Alyosha recounted, and was trembling all over like a leaf. When he went running with her back to the cottage, they found Smerdyakov still hanging there. A note was lying on the table: “I’m destroying my life by my own will and desire—no one else is to blame.” Alyosha left the note on the table and went straight to the police, told them everything, “and from there I came straight to you,” he ended, staring intently into Ivan’s face. As he was speaking, Alyosha didn’t take his eyes away, as if he were struck by something in Ivan’s expression.

“Brother,” he cried suddenly, “you must be terribly ill! You’re looking at me, but you seem not to understand what I’m saying.”

“It’s good you came,” Ivan said, lost in thought, seeming not to have heard Alyosha’s exclamation. “I knew that he’d hanged himself.”

“From whom did you know?”

“I don’t know from whom. But I knew. Did I know? Yes, he told me. He was just telling me now . . .”

Ivan stood in the middle of the room and was still speaking distractedly, looking at the floor.

“Who’s he?” asked Alyosha, instinctively looking around.

“He just slipped away.”

Ivan raised his head and smiled gently:

“He got frightened of you, you little dove. You are ‘a pure cherub.’[1] Dmitry calls you that. ‘A cherub.’ The thunderous raptures of the ecstatic seraphim! What is a seraph? Maybe an entire constellation. And perhaps that constellation’s only a chemical molecule. There’s a constellation of the Lion and the Sun. Do you know it?”

“Sit down, brother!” Alyosha said in alarm. “For God’s sake, sit down here on the sofa. You’re delirious; lay your head down on this cushion, like that. Would you like a wet towel for your head? Perhaps it’ll help.”

“Give me the towel: it’s on the chair; I just tossed it over there.”

“It’s not there. Don’t worry, I know where it is: it’s over here,” said Alyosha, finding a clean towel, folded and unused. Ivan looked at it strangely; for that moment his memory seemed to return to him.

“Wait,” he said, getting up from the sofa. “Just an hour ago I took that towel and soaked it in water. I wrapped it around my head and then tossed it down. How can it be dry? There was no other.”

“You placed that towel on your head?” asked Alyosha.

“Yes, and I walked around the room, an hour ago. . . . Why have the candles burned down? What time is it?”

“Almost twelve.”

“No, no, no,” cried Ivan suddenly. “It wasn’t a dream! He was here. He was sitting over there. I threw a glass at him, there on the sofa. When you started knocking on the window, I threw a glass at him . . . this one. . . . Wait. I was asleep before, but this dream wasn’t a dream. It’s happened before. I have dreams now, Alyosha . . . but they’re not dreams, I’m awake. I walk and talk, and I can see . . . yet I’m asleep. But he was sitting here, on this very sofa. . . . He’s terribly stupid, Alyosha, terribly stupid.” Ivan suddenly started laughing and began pacing around the room.

“Who’s stupid? Whom are you talking about, brother?” Alyosha asked again anxiously.

“The devil. He’s begun visiting me. He’s been here twice, maybe three times. He teased me because he said I was angry that he’d appeared as an ordinary devil, and not as Satan with scorched wings, in thunder and lightning. But he’s not Satan; he was lying. He’s an impostor. He’s simply a devil, a trivial, low-life devil; he goes to the public baths. If you strip off his clothes, you’ll surely find a tail, a long tail, like a Great Dane’s,[2] a yard long, brown. . . . Alyosha, you look as if you’re freezing; you were out in the snow. Would you like some tea? What? Is it cold in here? Shall I have some tea brewed for you? C’est à ne pas mettre un chien dehors . . .”[3]

Alyosha quickly ran over to the washbasin, wet a towel, persuaded Ivan to sit down again, and placed the wet towel around his head. He sat down next to his brother.

“What were you telling me before about Liza?” Ivan began again. (He was becoming very talkative.) “I like Liza. I said something nasty about her to you. I was lying; I like her. . . . I’m afraid about Katya tomorrow, I’m more afraid of her than I am of anything. Regarding the future. Tomorrow she’ll throw me over and walk all over me. She thinks I’m destroying Mitya out of jealousy on her account. Yes, that’s what she thinks! But that’s not the case at all! Tomorrow—the cross, but not the gallows. No, I’m not going to hang myself. You know that I could never take my own life, Alyosha! Is that because I’m just too base for that? I’m not a coward. Is it because of my hunger for life? How is it that I knew Smerdyakov had hanged himself? Yes, it was he who told me . . .”

“Are you quite sure that someone was sitting here?” asked Alyosha.

“Over there on that sofa, in the corner. You’d have driven him away. You did drive him away: he disappeared as soon you arrived. I love your face, Alyosha. Did you know I love your face? As for him—he is myself, Alyosha, me myself. All that is base within me, all that’s mean and despicable! Yes, I’m a ‘romantic’—he noticed that . . . although that’s also slanderous. He’s terribly stupid, but puts it to his advantage. He’s full of cunning, animal cunning, and he knew just how to infuriate me. He kept taunting me, saying I believed in him, and by saying that, he made me listen to him. He tricked me like a little boy. Still, he told me many things about myself that were true. I’d never have said those things to myself. You know, Alyosha, you know,” Ivan added in terrible earnestness and as if in confidence, “I very much wish that it really were him, and not just me!”

“He’s exhausted you,” said Alyosha, regarding his brother with compassion.

“He taunted me! And you know, so skillfully, very skillfully: ‘Conscience! What’s conscience? I make it up for myself. So why should I be tormented? Out of habit. From the universal habit of mankind for the last seven thousand years. All right, so we’ll get over the habit and become gods.’ That’s what he said—he’s the one who said it.”

“And not you, not you?” Alyosha couldn’t keep himself from shouting, looking directly at his brother. “Well, never mind about him; leave him alone and forget about him! Let him take away all that you curse now, and may he never return!”

“Yes, but he’s wicked. He was laughing at me. He was utterly impudent, Alyosha,” Ivan said with a shudder of outrage. “But he slandered me, a great deal. He lied to me, about me, right to my face: ‘Oh, you’re going to perform an act of heroic virtue: you’ll declare that you killed your father, that the lackey killed your father at your instigation . . .”

“Brother,” Alyosha interrupted, “hold on: you didn’t kill him. That’s not true!”

“That’s what he says, and he knows it. ‘You’re going to perform an act of heroic virtue, yet you don’t even believe in virtue—and that’s what is torturing and enraging you: that’s why you’re so vindictive.’ That’s what he told me about myself, and he knows what he’s talking about . . .”

“That’s you speaking, and not him!” Alyosha exclaimed sadly. “And you’re saying it because you’re ill, delirious, just tormenting yourself!”

“No, he knows what he’s saying. ‘You,’ he says, ‘are going out of pride; you’ll stand there and announce: “It was I who killed him—why are you grimacing in horror? You’re lying! I despise your opinion, despise your horror.” ’ He’s saying this about me and suddenly he says, ‘Do you know that you want them all to praise you: “He’s a criminal,” they’ll say, “a murderer, but what generous feelings he has; he wants to save his brother and so he’s confessed to the crime!” ’ That’s a lie, Alyosha!” cried Ivan suddenly, his eyes flashing. “I don’t want the stinking mob to praise me! He lied, Alyosha, he lied, I swear to you! That’s why I threw a glass at him and it shattered against his ugly mug.”

“Calm down, brother, stop it!” Alyosha pleaded.

“Yes, he knows how to torment one; he’s very cruel,” Ivan continued, not listening. “I’ve always had a premonition why he keeps coming. ‘Let’s say you went there out of pride, but you were hoping that Smerdyakov would be convicted and sent to prison, that Mitya would be acquitted, and you’d be condemned only morally’ (do you hear? He was laughing at this point!), ‘and you’re thinking that some people might even praise you. But now Smerdyakov’s dead, hanged himself, and at the trial who’ll believe you by yourself? But you’re going, you are, you’re going all the same; you’ve decided to go. Now, why are you going after this?’ It’s terrible, Alyosha, I can’t stand such questions. Who dares to ask me such questions?”

“Brother,” Alyosha interrupted. His heart was sinking with fear, but he was still hoping to bring Ivan back to his senses. “How could he tell you about Smerdyakov’s death before my arrival, when no one knew about it yet and there wasn’t even time for anyone to find out?”

“He told me,” Ivan said decisively, dismissing any doubts. “That was all he talked about, when you come right down to it. ‘And it would be good if you believed in virtue,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter if they don’t believe me; I’m going out of principle. But you’re a little piglet like your father, Fyodor Pavlovich, and what do you care about virtue? Why are you dragging yourself there if your sacrifice will serve no purpose? You’re doing it and you yourself don’t know why you’re going! Oh, you’d give a great deal to know why! Have you really made up your mind yet? You still haven’t decided. You’ll sit here all night trying to decide: shall I go or not? But you’ll still go; you know that you will; but whatever you decide, the decision won’t depend on you. You’ll go because you don’t dare not to. Why don’t you dare not go—you must guess the answer for yourself. There’s a riddle for you!’ He got up and left. You came and he left. He called me a coward, Alyosha! Le mot de l’énigme[4] is that I’m a coward! ‘An eagle answering to this particular description is hardly suited to soar above the earth!’ He added that, he did! And Smerdyakov used to say the same thing. He must be killed! Katya despises me; I’ve seen that during the last month, and even Liza will begin to despise me! ‘You’re going so they’ll praise you’—that’s a beastly lie! And you, too, despise me, Alyosha. Now I’ll start to hate you again. And I hate that monster: I hate him! I don’t want to save that monster; let him rot in prison! He’s begun singing a hymn! Oh, tomorrow I’ll go, stand right in front of them, and spit in their faces!”

He jumped up in a frenzy, threw away the towel, and began pacing around the room again. Alyosha recalled what he had said a little while before: “It’s as if I am sleeping awake . . . I walk and talk, and I can see, but I’m asleep.” It seemed to be just like that now. Alyosha didn’t leave him. The thought of running to fetch a doctor flashed through his mind, but he was afraid to leave his brother alone: there was no one to whom he could entrust him. In time Ivan gradually began to lose consciousness completely. He continued talking, talking incessantly, but it was all incoherent. He even articulated the words badly, and all of a sudden he staggered violently. Alyosha managed to hold him up, and Ivan let his brother lead him to bed. Somehow Alyosha was able to undress him and get him to lie down. He himself sat watching over him for the next two hours. The sick man fell into a deep sleep, not moving, breathing quietly and evenly. Alyosha took a pillow and lay down on the sofa without getting undressed.

As he was falling asleep, he prayed both for Mitya and Ivan. He began to understand Ivan’s illness better: “The anguish of proud resolution; a deep conscience!” God, in Whom he did not believe, and His truth, were asserting their power over his heart, which still refused to submit. “Yes,” passed through Alyosha’s head as he lay down on the pillow, “yes, if Smerdyakov’s dead, no one will believe Ivan’s testimony; but he’ll go and testify anyway.” Alyosha smiled gently. “God will prevail!” he thought. “Ivan will either rise up in the light of truth or . . . he’ll perish in hatred, taking vengeance on himself and everyone else for having served a cause in which he doesn’t believe,” Alyosha added bitterly, and once again he prayed for Ivan.

1 A phrase from Lermontov’s poem “The Demon.”

2 Constance Garnett originally mistranslated the dog’s breed as “dachshund.”

3 “It’s not fit to put a dog outside” (Fr.).

4 “The answer to the riddle” (Fr.).

BOOK TWELVE

A JUDICIAL ERROR

I

THE FATEFUL DAY

The following day, after the events I’ve just described, at ten o’clock in the morning, the session of our district court was opened and the trial of Dmitry Karamazov began.

I’ll say in advance, and say it with emphasis: I’m far from considering myself capable of conveying everything that transpired at that trial, not only with proper completeness, but even in the correct order. It still seems to me that if one were to recall and explain everything appropriately, it would require an entire book, and a thick one at that. Therefore, let there be no complaints that I’ve conveyed only what struck me personally and what I recall specifically. I may have taken something secondary as being of primary importance, and may have even omitted the most salient and essential details. . . . However, I see that it’s better not to apologize. I’ll do what I can and the readers will understand that I did the best I could.

First of all, before we even enter the courtroom, I’ll mention what surprised me most that day. Moreover, as it later turned out, I wasn’t the only one to be surprised—everyone was. That is to say: everyone knew that this affair had interested too many people, that they all burned with impatience for the beginning of the trial; in our society many people had been talking, surmising, exclaiming, and dreaming about it for the last two months. Everyone knew that this trial had also attracted attention throughout Russia, but they hadn’t imagined that it had aroused such feverish, irritating interest, not only in our town, but everywhere, as it turned out at the trial that day. Visitors had come not only from our local provincial town, but also from several other Russian towns, even from as far away as Moscow and Petersburg. Lawyers arrived, as did several notable people, also some ladies. Every admission ticket had been snatched up. For the most distinguished and important individuals, a special table had been positioned behind the judges: a row of armchairs had been placed there, something that had never been allowed before. There was a particularly large number of ladies present, both from our own town and visitors; I think not less than half the entire public. There was such a large crowd of lawyers arriving from everywhere that they didn’t even know where to seat them, since all the tickets had already been dispensed, solicited, and entreated. I myself saw how, at one end of the hall, behind the platform, a special temporary partition had been hastily erected, behind which all visiting lawyers were admitted; they considered themselves very fortunate that they could even remain standing, because the chairs had been removed from this area to make more room; as a result, a crowd stood packed shoulder to shoulder during the entire trial.

Some of the ladies, especially among the out-of-town visitors, appeared in the gallery exceedingly dressed up, but the majority had even forgotten about their outfits. Their faces revealed hysterical, greedy, almost morbid curiosity. One of the particular characteristics of the entire crowd gathered in the chamber—as established subsequently by many observers—was that almost all of the ladies, at least the large majority of them, were on Mitya’s side and were hoping for an acquittal. Perhaps this was primarily a result of his reputation as a conqueror of women’s hearts. They knew that two rivals were due to appear at the trial. One of them, Katerina Ivanovna, interested them in particular; a very large number of extraordinary tales were being told about her and her passion for Mitya, even in spite of his crime. Particular mention was made of her pride (she’d called on hardly anyone in town) and of her “aristocratic connections.” It was said that she intended to petition the officials to allow her to accompany the prisoner into exile and to marry him somewhere underground in the mines. The appearance of Grushenka, Katerina Ivanovna’s rival, was anticipated with no less excitement. The public was looking forward to the meeting of the two women with morbid curiosity—the proud aristocratic young woman and the “hetaera.” Grushenka was a more familiar figure to our ladies than Katerina Ivanovna. The ladies had already seen the “woman who’d ruined Fyodor Pavlovich and his unfortunate son” before, and all of them, almost to a person, were surprised at how both the father and son could be so enamored of this “most ordinary, even most unattractive Russian woman of the lower middle class.”

In brief, there was a great deal of talk. I knew for a fact that in our town there were even several serious family disagreements over Mitya. Many ladies quarreled passionately with their spouses over differences of opinion concerning this whole awful case, and it was only natural that these ladies’ husbands appeared in the courtroom not only ill-disposed toward the accused, but even prejudiced against him. In general, it is absolutely possible to state that as opposed to the female audience, the male contingent was inclined against the accused. Among them were many stern, frowning faces, some even malicious, and this constituted the majority. It was also true that Mitya had managed to offend many of them personally during his stay in our town. Of course, some of the visitors were even almost cheerful and extremely indifferent to Mitya’s fate, though they were all interested in the outcome of the trial itself; they were all hoping that the accused would be condemned, except for the lawyers, who were more interested in the modern legal aspects of the case than its moral dimension.

The arrival of the celebrated Fetyukovich was a cause of elation for everyone at the trial. His talent was renowned everywhere, and this wasn’t the first time he’d appeared in a provincial town to defend a controversial criminal case. After his defense, such cases always would become known throughout Russia and remembered for a very long time. Several stories also circulated about our prosecutor and the chairman of the court. It was said that our prosecutor trembled before his meeting with Fetyukovich; that they’d been old enemies since Petersburg, back at the beginning of their careers; and that our own vain Ippolit Kirillovich, considering himself constantly offended by someone since his days in Petersburg, because his talent hadn’t been properly appreciated, had now found himself resurrected by the Karamazov case; he dreamed of reviving his fading career as a result—except that he was afraid of Fetyukovich. Concerning his trembling before Fetyukovich, these stories were not quite fair. Our prosecutor was not one of those who lose heart in the face of danger; on the contrary, he was someone whose vanity would increase and take wing with the onset of danger. In general, one must mention that our prosecutor was altogether too passionate and excruciatingly impressionable. In certain cases he would put his entire soul to work as if his whole fate and all his property depended on the outcome. In the world of jurisprudence this was the cause of some ridicule, because as a result of this trait, our prosecutor had earned some renown, if not universal, then more than could be expected in view of his modest position in our court. People laughed, especially, at his passion for psychology. In my opinion, they were all mistaken: our prosecutor, as a decent man and a person of character, was much more serious than many people thought. But this sickly man had been unable to establish himself at the beginning of his career, or even afterward, for the rest of his life.

As for the chairman of our court, one can only say that he was an educated man, humane, who knew the practical aspects of his work and was familiar with the most progressive ideas. He was rather proud, but not all worried about his career. The main goal of his life was to be a progressive man. Besides, he was a man of connections and considerable property. As it turned out later, he felt rather passionately about the Karamazov case, but only in a general sense. He was interested in it as a phenomenon, its classification, as a product of our social principles, as typical of the Russian element, and so on and so forth. As for the personal aspect of the case, its tragedy, as well as the personalities of the participants, beginning with the accused, he was rather indifferent and theoretical, as, perhaps, might even have been appropriate.

Long before the judge appeared, the room was packed full. Our courtroom is the best hall in town: spacious, lofty, and resonant. To the right of the judges, who sat up on a raised platform, there was a table with two rows of armchairs ready for the jury. To the left there was a place for the accused and his defense attorney. In the center of the hall, near the judge’s platform, stood a table holding the “material evidence.” On it were Fyodor Pavlovich’s white silk bloodstained dressing gown, the fatal brass pestle with which the alleged murder was supposed to have been committed, Mitya’s shirt with a bloodstained sleeve, his frock coat stained with blood behind the pocket into which he’d stuffed his handkerchief, the handkerchief itself, which was now hardened with yellowish dried blood, the pistol loaded at Perkhotin’s with the possibility of suicide in mind, slyly confiscated by Trifon Borisovich at Mokroye, the envelope with the inscription in which three thousand rubles had been placed for Grushenka, the slender pink ribbon with which it had been tied, and many other items that I can’t remember. At a certain distance away, in the depths of the hall, were seats for the public. But before the balustrade there were several armchairs for the witnesses, who would remain in the courtroom after giving their evidence.

At ten o’clock the three judges arrived, including the chairman, another judge, and an honorary justice of the peace. Naturally the prosecutor appeared soon afterward. The chairman was a solid, stocky man of below-average height, with a hemorrhoidal face, some fifty years old, with dark hair turning gray, cut short, and wearing a red ribbon—with an order on it that I don’t recall. The prosecutor seemed to me, and not only me, but everyone there, as somehow very pale, with an almost greenish face; it also seemed for some reason that he’d grown thinner, perhaps in the course of one night, because I’d seen him looking his normal self only a few days ago. The chairman began by asking the court if all the members of the jury were present . . .

I see, however, that I can’t continue like this, because there were some things I didn’t hear, others I didn’t understand, and some I simply forgot, but primarily because, as I noted above, I lack both the time and the space to record everything that was said and done. I know merely that neither side, neither the prosecution nor the defense, challenged many members of the jury. I do recall its composition: four of our officials, two merchants, and six peasants and artisans of our town. I remember that long before the trial began, questions were continually being asked with astonishment, especially by the ladies: “Would such a subtle, complicated, psychological affair really be left to a decision by a group of officials and peasants?” “What can an official or, even more so, a peasant possibly understand?” As a matter of fact, all four of these officials who found themselves on the jury were unimportant, low-ranking, and gray-haired—only one was somewhat younger. Little known in our society, they’d managed to exist on pitiful salaries and must have had elderly, unpresentable wives and a slew of children, perhaps even barefooted; they spent their leisure playing cards somewhere, and had never read a single book. The two merchants at least had a respectable appearance, but they were strangely silent and slow; one of them was clean-shaven and dressed like a German; the other had a little gray beard and wore some sort of medal on a red ribbon around his neck. There’s not much to be said about the peasants and artisans. Our Skotoprigonevsk artisans are almost the same as peasants, and they even plow the earth. Two of them also wore German-style clothes, and for that reason appeared to be dirtier and more unsightly than the other four. As a result, it might occur to someone, as it did to me, to wonder, for example, as soon as I saw them: “What could such men understand in such an affair?” Nevertheless, their faces produced some strangely commanding, almost threatening impression: they were stern and sullen.

At last the chairman announced the opening of the case of the murder of the retired titular councillor Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov—I don’t recall exactly how he put it that day. The bailiff was ordered to bring in the prisoner, and then Mitya appeared. Everyone fell silent in the hall; you could hear the buzzing of a fly. I don’t know how others reacted, but Mitya’s appearance made a most unpleasant impression on me. First of all he looked like a dandy, dressed in a brand new frock coat. I learned later that he’d ordered himself a new coat from Moscow for this occasion, from a tailor who still had his measurements. He was wearing brand-new black kid gloves and sparkling linen. He walked in with his yard-long strides, looking directly ahead of himself, and sat down in his assigned place with a most nonchalant air. His defense attorney, the renowned Fetyukovich, appeared immediately afterward, and a kind of restrained hum passed through the courtroom. He was a tall, lean man, with long, thin legs, and with extremely long, pale, slender fingers; he had a clean-shaven face, with modestly brushed, rather short hair, and thin lips sometimes curled into something between a sneer and a smile. He appeared to be about forty years old. His face would’ve been pleasant if it hadn’t been for his eyes, small and unexpressive, and set remarkably close together, separated only by the thin bone of his elongated, slender nose. In a word, there was something remarkably birdlike about his face that struck me. He wore a tailcoat and white tie.

I remember Mitya’s first interrogation by the chairman, that is, concerning his name, rank, and so forth. Mitya replied abruptly, but somehow in an unexpectedly loud voice, so that the chairman was startled and regarded the prisoner with surprise. Then they read a list of the people to be called to testify, that is, witnesses and experts. The list was long—four of the witnesses weren’t present: Miusov, who was already in Paris, but whose testimony had been provided in the preliminary inquiry; Madame Khokhlakova and the landowner Maksimov, by reason of illness; and Smerdyakov, because of his sudden death, but the official statement about his death was presented by the police. News about Smerdyakov elicited strong stirring and whispering in the hall. Of course, among the public, many people still didn’t know about this sudden case of suicide. But what was particularly striking was Mitya’s unexpected outburst; as soon as they reported Smerdyakov’s death, from his place at the table he suddenly shouted out to the entire hall:

“A dog’s death for a dog!”

I recall how his defense counsel rushed up to him and how the chairman turned to him and threatened to take stern measures if such an outburst were to be repeated. Mitya nodded his head brusquely, but showed no regret, and several times said to his lawyer:

“I won’t, I won’t! It just escaped me! I won’t do it again!”

Of course, this brief episode failed to work in his favor in the opinion of the jury and the public. His character had been displayed and had spoken for itself. The indictment was read by the secretary of the court under the impact of this outburst.

It was rather short, but detailed. Only the principle reasons were stated as to why he’d been arrested, why he must be tried, and so on. Nevertheless, it made a very strong impression on me. The secretary read it plainly, clearly, and loudly. The entire tragedy was suddenly revealed to everyone clearly, in concentrated form, lit by a fateful, implacable light. I recall that as soon as the indictment had been read, the chairman of the court asked Mitya loudly and imposingly:

“Defendant, how do you plead?”

Mitya suddenly stood up from where he sat.

“I plead guilty to drunkenness and depravity,” he exclaimed in some sort of unexpected, almost frenzied voice, “to laziness and debauchery. At that second I wanted to become an honest man forever, just when I was mowed down by fate! But of the death of the old man, my enemy, my father, I am not guilty! No, no, I’m not guilty of robbing him, and I couldn’t be guilty of that: Dmitry Karamazov is a scoundrel, but he’s no thief!”

After shouting this, he sat down again, obviously trembling all over. The chairman turned to him once more with a brief but menacing warning to answer only the questions posed, and not to launch into irrelevant and frenzied exclamations. Then he ordered the case to proceed. They brought in all the witnesses to swear an oath. It was then that I got to see them all together. However, the defendant’s brothers were allowed to testify without taking an oath. After the admonition by the priest and the chairman, the witnesses were led away and seated separately, as much as possible. Then they began calling them to testify one at a time.

II

DANGEROUS WITNESSES

I don’t know whether the witnesses for the prosecution and the defense were separated into groups by the chairman or in what order they were to be called to testify. But there must have been some order. I know only that the witnesses for the prosecution were the first to be called. I repeat: I don’t intend to describe all the interrogations one by one. Besides, my description would seem partially superfluous, because in the final speeches by the prosecution and the defense, when they began their summations, the entire course and meaning of all the testimony provided was combined into a whole and illuminated with clear and particular light; and these two noteworthy speeches, or at least parts of them, I’ve recorded in full and will present in due course, as well as one extraordinary and completely unexpected incident in the trial, which took place unexpectedly before the final summations, and undoubtedly influenced its terrible and fateful outcome.

I’ll only note that from the very first minutes of the trial, one particular aspect of this “case” stood out, noted by everyone, namely: the extraordinary strength of the prosecution compared with the arguments for the defense. Everyone understood it from the first moment, when in that dreadful hall the facts, in concentrated form, were assembled and all the horrors and bloody aspects were gradually revealed. Everyone, perhaps, began to understand from the very first steps that the outcome of this case was beyond dispute, that there were no doubts at all, that no discussion was even necessary, but would be presented as a matter of form, and that the defendant was guilty, clearly guilty, definitely guilty.

I think that even all the ladies, down to the last one, who were so impatiently desiring the acquittal of the “interesting” defendant, were at the same time absolutely convinced of his outright guilt. What’s more, it seems to me that they’d even be embittered if his guilt had not been so firmly established, because then there wouldn’t have been such an effect at the denouement, when and if the defendant were to be acquitted. That he would be acquitted, strange to say, all the ladies were conclusively convinced, almost to the very last moment: “He’s guilty, but they’ll acquit him out of humaneness, in accordance with the new ideas, the new emotions that have lately become fashionable,” and so on and so forth. And that’s exactly why they had crowded into the courtroom with such impatience.

As for the men, they were more interested in the battle between the prosecutor and the renowned Fetyukovich. Everyone was surprised and wondering what a talent such as Fetyukovich could make out of this hopeless case, which really wasn’t worth a wooden nickel. Therefore, they’d follow his exploits step by step with rapt attention. But until the very end, until his final speech, Fetyukovich remained an enigma. Experienced people had a premonition that he had his own system, some predetermined method, and that he was working toward some goal, but it was almost impossible to guess what that was. His confidence and self-reliance, however, were patently obvious. Besides, everyone had noticed with pleasure right away that after such a short stay among us, some three days perhaps, he’d managed to become so well acquainted with the case “that he’d become completely familiar with all the fine points.” For example, people described with delight how he’d managed to “put down” the witnesses for the prosecution at the proper time, and, as much as possible, to lead them astray, and to tarnish their moral reputations, thereby compromising their testimony. It was supposed, however, that he did this primarily for the sport of it, so to speak, for some judicial brilliance, in order not to omit any of the lawyerly strategies for the defense. Everyone was convinced that he couldn’t gain any substantial advantage by tarnishing the testimony, and that probably he himself knew this better than anyone, having in reserve some idea of his own, some concealed weapon of the defense, that he would suddenly reveal, when the time was right. But for the time being, aware of his own strength, he seemed to be playing and amusing himself.

Thus, for example, when Grigory Vasilyev, Fyodor Pavlovich’s former servant, was being interrogated, he who’d presented such damning evidence about “the open door into the garden,” the defense attorney latched onto him when it came time to pose his questions. It must be noted that Grigory Vasilievich entered the hall with a serene, almost stately air, embarrassed neither by the majesty of the court nor the size of the audience. He presented his evidence with such confidence, as if he were conversing one-on-one with his own Marfa Ignatyevna, but only more respectfully. It was impossible to confuse him. At first the prosecutor asked him many details regarding the Karamazov family. The family portrait emerged in shocking color. It was to be seen and heard that the witness was innocent and impartial. With all his deepest respect for his former master, he still maintained, for instance, that Fyodor Pavlovich had been unfair to Mitya and “had failed to raise his children properly. Without me, the boy would’ve been devoured by lice,” he added, describing Mitya’s childhood. “Nor was it fair of the father to ill-treat his son over his own mother’s property.” In reply to the prosecutor’s question about what right he had to assert that Fyodor Pavlovich had wronged his son concerning money, Grigory Vasilievich, to everyone’s amazement, didn’t present any proof, though he insisted that the settlement with the son had been “unjust,” and that “he should have paid him several thousand rubles more.” By the way, I’ll mention that this question, “whether Fyodor Pavlovich should’ve paid Mitya more money,” was one that the prosecutor pursued with particular doggedness with all the witnesses, including both Alyosha and Ivan Fyodorovich, but he didn’t receive accurate information from any of them; they all replied that no one was able to furnish explicit proof. After Grigory had described the scene at the dinner table when Dmitry Fyodorovich had burst in and struck his father, threatening to return and kill him—a depressed feeling settled on the entire courtroom, especially because the old servant spoke calmly, without unnecessary words, in his own language, yet it sounded terribly eloquent. He said that he was not angry with Mitya, who at the time had struck him in the face and knocked him down, and that he’d long since forgiven him. Concerning the deceased Smerdyakov, he said, crossing himself, that he’d been a lad with ability, but he was stupid and afflicted by illness; even worse, he was an atheist, and it was Fyodor Pavlovich and his eldest son that had made him one. But he defended Smerdyakov’s honesty almost heatedly, and related how he, Smerdyakov, had once found some of the master’s money lying in the courtyard, and, instead of hiding it, he’d brought it to his master, who rewarded him with a “gold piece,” and then began trusting him with all things. He stubbornly insisted that the door to the garden had been open. But he was asked so many questions that I can’t recall all of them.

At last the defense attorney started to cross-examine him. He began to ask about the packet of money that was “supposed” to contain three thousand rubles, hidden away by Fyodor Pavlovich for “a certain person.” “Did you see it yourself—you, who for so many years was so close to your master?” Grigory replied, saying no, he hadn’t seen it and hadn’t heard about the money from anyone “until the time that everyone started talking about it.” On his part, Fetyukovich also posed this question about the packet to every witness who could’ve known about it, just as the prosecutor had asked about the division of property; he received one and the same answer: that no one had actually seen the packet, although many people had heard about it. From the beginning, everyone noticed the defense attorney’s persistence with this question.

“Now, with your permission, I’d like to pose one more question to you,” Fetyukovich said suddenly and completely unexpectedly. “What were the ingredients of the balsam or, so to speak, the tincture which, that evening and before you went to bed, as we know from the preliminary investigation, you rubbed into your painful lumbago, hoping it would cure you?”

Grigory stared blankly at his interrogator; after a brief pause, he muttered:

“It was made of sage.”

“Only sage? Do you remember anything else?”

“Also plantain.”

“And pepper, perhaps?” inquired Fetyukovich.

“And pepper.”

“And so on. And all of this in vodka?”

“In pure alcohol.”

A faint laugh echoed through the courtroom.

“Well, so you see, pure alcohol. After rubbing it on your back, you drank what was left in the bottle, after reciting a certain pious prayer, known only to your wife; isn’t that so?”

“I did.”

“Did you drink a lot of it? About how much? A full shot glass? Another?”

“About a tumbler full.”

“Even a tumbler full. Perhaps it was a tumbler and a half?”

Grigory fell silent as if he suddenly understood something.

“A tumbler and a half of pure alcohol—that’s not bad, is it? One might see ‘the door of heaven open,’[1] not only the door to the garden.”

Grigory kept silent. Again laughter spread through the courtroom. The chairman stirred.

“Do you know for sure,” asked Fetyukovich, sticking his dagger in further and further, “whether you were asleep or awake when you saw the open door into the garden?”

“I was standing up.”

“That’s still no proof that you were not asleep.” (More and more laughter in the hall.) “Could you have answered at that time if anyone had asked you a question—for example, what year it is?”

“That I don’t know.”

“And what year is it, Anno Domini, since the birth of Christ?”

Grigory stood there looking confused, staring at his tormentor. It seemed strange that he really didn’t know what year it was.

“Perhaps, however, you know how many fingers you have on your hands?”

“I’m just a servant,” Grigory said suddenly in a loud, clear voice. “If the authorities seek to make fun of me, I must suffer it.”

Fetyukovich seemed a little taken aback, but the chairman intervened and instructed the defense attorney to ask more relevant questions. After listening to him, Fetyukovich bowed with dignity and announced that he was finished with his cross-examination. Of course, both the public and the jury were left with a little worm of doubt about the testimony of a man who might have seen “the door of heaven open” while undergoing a certain medicinal treatment and, besides, one who didn’t even know what year it was, Anno Domini; thus, the defense had still achieved its goal. But just before Grigory left, another incident occurred. The chairman, turning to the defendant, asked whether he had anything to say about the evidence just presented.

“Aside from the door, everything he said was true,” Mitya cried loudly. “For combing lice off me—I thank him; for forgiving the blows I landed on him—I thank him; the old man was honest all his life and as faithful to my father as seven hundred French poodles.”

“Prisoner, choose your words more carefully,” the chairman said sternly.

“I’m no poodle,” Grigory muttered.

“All right, then I’m a poodle!” cried Mitya. “If he’s offended, I take it on myself, and ask his forgiveness: I was a beast with him and acted cruelly! I was cruel to Aesop, too.”

“With what Aesop?” the chairman asked again sternly.

“Well, with Pierrot . . . with my father, Fyodor Pavlovich.”[2]

The chairman warned Mitya again and again, commandingly and harshly, to be more careful in his choice of words.

“You’re harming yourself in the opinion of your judges.”

The defense attorney was just as skillful in dealing with the interrogation of the witness Rakitin. I’ll mention that he was one of the most important witnesses and one whom the prosecutor valued highly. It turned out that he knew everything, an astonishing amount; he’d been to see everyone, understood everything, talked to everyone, was extremely familiar with every detail of Fyodor Pavlovich’s biography and the whole Karamazov clan. It’s true that he’d also heard about the packet with the three thousand rubles only from Mitya himself. On the other hand, he described in great detail Mitya’s feats in the Capital City tavern, and with all the compromising words and gestures, he related the story of Captain Snegiryov’s “loofah.” However, concerning the particular point of whether Fyodor Pavlovich still owed any money to Mitya in the calculations of the estate, even Rakitin himself could say nothing at all, and he managed to get off with general remarks of a contemptuous nature: “Who,” he asked, “could tell which of them was to blame, and who owed what to whom, in the face of all that ridiculous Karamazov nonsense, which no one could understand or make heads or tails of?” He depicted the whole tragedy of the case being tried as the product of the antiquated habits of serfdom and the suffering of disorderly Russia.

In a word, he was allowed to have his say. This was the first time Rakitin declared himself and became noticed; the prosecutor knew that the witness was preparing an article for publication about this present case, and he was already quoting in his speech some of his own ideas from the article (as we shall see later); in other words, he was already familiar with it. The picture drawn by the witness was somber and fateful, and strongly supported the “accusations.” In general, Rakitin’s speech engrossed the public with its independence of thought and the extraordinary nobility of its ideas. There were even two or three sudden bursts of applause, precisely in those places where he spoke about serfdom and the suffering of disorderly Russia. But Rakitin, still being a young man, committed a small blunder, one the defense attorney was able to turn to his advantage. While replying to certain questions about Grushenka, distracted by his own success, of which he was of course aware, and the height of his own lofty feelings and how high he had soared, he allowed himself to refer to Agrafena Aleksandrovna somewhat contemptuously as “the merchant Samsonov’s kept woman.” He’d have given a great deal afterward to be able to take back his own words, because it was exactly on those words that Fetyukovich caught him at once. And this was all because Rakitin hadn’t expected that, in such a short time, the lawyer could have acquainted himself so intimately with all the details of the case.

“Allow me to inquire,” began the defense attorney with a most good-natured and even respectful smile, when it was his turn to ask questions, “you are, of course, the very same Mr. Rakitin whose pamphlet The Life of the Deceased Elder, Father Zosima, published by the diocesan authorities, full of profound religious reflections, with an excellent and pious dedication to the bishop, I had the recent pleasure of reading?”

“I wrote it not for publication . . . it was published afterward,” muttered Rakitin, as if suddenly taken aback almost with shame.

“Oh, that’s splendid! A thinker like you can, and indeed must, concern himself with every social phenomenon in the broadest possible manner. With the patronage of the bishop, your most useful brochure has sold out and has been of considerable service. . . . But this is the main thing I wanted to ask you: you just indicated that you’re extremely closely acquainted with Miss Svetlova?” (Nota bene: Grushenka’s surname turned out to be Svetlova. I learned this for the first time on this day, during the course of the trial.)

“I can’t answer for all my acquaintances . . . I’m a young man . . . and who can answer for all the people he meets?” cried Rakitin, blushing all over.

“I understand, I understand all too well,” cried Fetyukovich, as if embarrassed himself, and as though trying to excuse himself. “You, just like anyone else, might well be interested in an acquaintance with a beautiful young woman who eagerly receives the flower of local youth, but . . . I only want to find out: we know that two months ago Svetlova was particularly eager to make the acquaintance of the youngest Karamazov, Aleksey Fyodorovich, and she promised you twenty-five rubles if you would bring him to visit her in his monastic robe. And it’s known that this event took place on the evening of that fateful day that concluded with the tragedy, which is the subject of the present case. You brought Aleksey Fyodorovich to Miss Svetlova and—you received a reward of twenty-five rubles from Svetlova; that’s what I wanted to have you confirm.”

“That was a joke. . . . I don’t see why that could interest you. I took the money as a joke . . . and planned to give it back later . . .”

“Then you did take it. But you haven’t given it back up to now, or have you?”

“That’s of no importance . . .” muttered Rakitin. “I can’t answer this sort of question. . . . Of course I’ll give it back.”

The chairman intervened, but the defense attorney announced that he’d finished with his questions for Mr. Rakitin. Rakitin left the witness stand somewhat tarnished. The impression of lofty nobility produced by his speech had been ruined, and Fetyukovich, as he watched him leave, seemed to be saying to the public: “There goes one of his noblest accusers!” I recall that this episode didn’t pass without an outburst from Mitya: enraged by the tone adopted by Rakitin when speaking about Grushenka, he suddenly cried out from his place: “You Bernard!” When the chairman, after the end of Rakitin’s cross-examination, asked the accused if he had anything to say, Mitya shouted shrilly:

“He’s been trying to borrow money from me, even since I’ve been a prisoner. He’s a despicable Bernard and a careerist, and he doesn’t believe in God; he tricked the bishop!”

Mitya, of course, was reprimanded again for his violent language, but Mr. Rakitin had been polished off.

Captain Snegiryov’s testimony wasn’t very successful either, but for a completely different reason. He appeared in tattered, dirty clothes and muddy boots, and, in spite of all the precautions and a preliminary “expert inspection,” he suddenly turned out to be totally drunk. In reply to questions about the abuse inflicted on him by Mitya, he abruptly refused to reply.

“God be with him, sir. Ilyushechka told me not to speak. God will repay me there, sir.”

“Who told you not to speak? What are you talking about?”

“Ilyushechka, my little boy: ‘Daddy, Daddy, he humiliated you!’ He told me that next to the stone. Now he’s dying, sir . . .”

The captain suddenly burst into tears and fell down on his knees before the chairman. They led him away quickly, amid the public’s laughter. The impression intended by the prosecutor didn’t materialize at all.

The defense attorney continued to use all possible means and caused greater and greater astonishment through his familiarity with the most trivial details of the case. Thus, for example, the testimony of Trifon Borisovich made a very deep impression and was extremely detrimental to Mitya. Namely, he calculated, almost using his fingers, that Mitya, on his first visit to Mokroye, a month before the catastrophe, couldn’t have spent less than three thousand rubles, “or very close to it. Just think of how much he wasted on those gypsy girls alone! As for our lousy peasants, it wasn’t like he threw them a few kopecks here and there; he must have given them at least twenty-five rubles each, no less. And how much money was simply stolen from him, sir! And the one who stole from him certainly didn’t provide a receipt. How could one catch him, the thief, that is, if he himself was throwing his money away? Our peasants are all thieves; they don’t worry about their souls. How much was squandered on our girls, our village girls! They all grew rich since then, though they were poor before.” In a word, he recalled every item of expense and added it all up. Thus, the idea that Mitya had spent only fifteen hundred rubles, and had stashed the other half away in a little incense bag, became untenable. “I myself saw it, I saw the three thousand in his hands, clear as a kopeck, I saw it with my own eyes, and I think that I know how to calculate money, sir,” Trifon Borisovich exclaimed, trying with all his might to please the authorities.

But when Fetyukovich stepped up to cross-examine him, he didn’t even attempt to refute Trifon Borisovich’s testimony; he suddenly began asking him about an incident that had occurred during Mitya’s first spree at Mokroye, a month before the arrest, when the driver Timofey and another peasant, Akim, found a hundred rubles on the floor in the entrance hall, dropped there by Mitya in his drunken state, and gave it to Trifon Borisovich, after which each received a ruble for it.

“Well, did you return that hundred rubles to Dmitry Karamazov or not?”

Trifon Borisovich, no matter how much he dithered, after the interrogation of the two peasants, finally had to answer; he said that he’d received the hundred rubles and had returned it religiously to Dmitry Fyodorovich, “in perfect honesty, only because he was so drunk, sir, that he could scarcely recall it.” But since he’d denied the incident with the hundred rubles until the peasant witnesses had testified, his testimony as to the return of the hundred rubles to the drunken Mitya was of course subject to great wariness. Thus, one of the most dangerous witnesses presented by the prosecution left the stand completely discredited.

The same thing happened with the Poles: they appeared proud and self-confident. They testified loudly that in the first place, they both “served the crown,” and that “Pan Mitya” had offered them three thousand rubles to buy their honor, and they themselves had seen a large amount of money in his hands. Pan Musiałowicz kept inserting a large number of Polish words into his sentences, and after seeing that this only increased his importance in the eyes of the chairman and the prosecutor, now definitely elated in spirit, he began speaking entirely in Polish. But Fetyukovich also caught them in his snare: Trifon Borisovich was recalled and prevaricated again, but he had to admit that Pan Wróblewski had substituted another pack of playing cards for the one he’d provided, and that Pan Musiałowicz had cheated while keeping the bank. Kalganov confirmed this, when his turn came to testify, and both Poles left the witness stand with a certain amount of shame, even accompanied by laughter from the public.

Almost the same thing happened with all the other most dangerous witnesses. Fetyukovich managed to cast a moral smear on each and every one of them and dismiss them with a certain degree of humiliation. His followers and fellow lawyers admired his performance, only they didn’t quite understand what good and what purpose all this could serve, because, I repeat, everyone felt that the case for the prosecution grew stronger and stronger with every passing minute. But from the self-confidence of this “great magician,” they could see that he was completely calm, and they waited: “such a person” hadn’t come from Petersburg in vain; he was not a man who would return home empty-handed.

1 Revelation 4:1.

2 See above, p. 101.

III

MEDICAL EXPERTISE AND A POUND OF NUTS

The medical expert also failed to support the accused. Fetyukovich himself, it seems, hadn’t counted on his testimony very much, as it turned out later. In essence, it occurred solely as a result of Katerina Ivanovna’s insistence; she had summoned a famous doctor from Moscow intentionally. Of course, the defense had nothing to lose; in the best case, it might have won something. However, it turned out, there was even an element of comedy about the medical testimony, namely as a result of some disagreement among the doctors. The medical experts were: the celebrated doctor from Moscow, our own Dr. Herzenshtube, and, finally, the young Dr. Varvinsky. The two last men also figured as simple witnesses at the trial, called by the prosecution.

The first to be called in his capacity as an expert was Dr. Herzenshtube. He was a seventy-year-old man, gray and balding, of medium height and solid build. He was highly valued and respected in our town. He was a conscientious doctor, a splendid and devout man, a Herrnhuter or a Moravian brother[1]—I don’t know for sure. He lived among us for some time and behaved with extraordinary dignity. He was kind and humane, would treat indigent patients and peasants for free, would visit them in their hovels and huts, and would leave them some money for their medicine; on the other hand, he was stubborn as a mule. It was impossible to disabuse him of an idea, once it had taken root in his head. By the way, almost everyone in town was aware that the celebrated doctor from Moscow, during his twoor three-day stay among us, had allowed himself several extremely offensive remarks about Dr. Herzenshtube’s talents. The fact was that although the Moscow doctor would ask no less than twenty-five rubles for a visit, several people in town were delighted with his arrival and rushed to consult him in spite of the cost. All of these patients had of course been treated previously by Dr. Herzenshtube; the celebrated doctor criticized his treatment harshly. Toward the end, he began asking his patients, “Well, who has been making a mess of you then, Dr. Herzenshtube? Ha, ha!” Of course, Dr. Herzenshtube found out about all of this. Now the three doctors appeared in court one after another for their interrogation.

Dr. Herzenshtube declared bluntly that “the abnormality of the defendant’s mental faculties was manifest.” Then, after presenting his reasons, which I will omit here, he added that this abnormality was displayed primarily not only from many of the defendant’s previous actions, but even now, at this very moment; when they asked him to explain how it was manifest at this very moment, the old doctor, with all his artless directness, pointed to the fact that the defendant, as he’d entered the hall, “had an unusual air, unsuitable to the circumstances; he strode ahead like a soldier and focused his eyes forward, staring, when it would have been more natural for him to look to the left, where the ladies were seated in the audience, because he was a great admirer of the fair sex, and had to be thinking about what the ladies would say about him afterward,” concluded the doctor in his own peculiar language.

I must add that he spoke Russian liberally and willingly, but somehow every sentence he used came out in the German manner, which, however, did not deter him, because all his life he had the weakness of regarding his own use of Russian as exemplary, and “even better than the Russians”; he loved to resort to Russian proverbs, assuring his listeners every time that Russian proverbs were the best and most expressive sayings in the world. I shall also note that in conversation, he would often forget, from some absentmindedness, the most ordinary words, those he knew perfectly well, but that for some reason had slipped from his mind. The same thing would happen when he was speaking German, and when it did, he would always wave his hand in front of his face, as if trying to grab hold of the word that was escaping him; no one could make him continue until he found the missing word. His remark that upon his entrance to the courtroom the defendant should have looked at the ladies elicited spirited whispering among the public. All of our ladies were very fond of the old doctor; they also knew that all his life he’d been a bachelor, religious and virtuous, who regarded women as sublime and ideal creatures. Therefore his unexpected remark seemed very odd to everyone.

The Moscow doctor, when his turn to be questioned came, abruptly and insistently declared that he considered the accused’s mental condition abnormal, “even to the highest degree.” He spoke a great deal and cleverly about “affect” and “mania,” and concluded from all the facts gathered that the accused had for several days before his arrest definitely been in a state of abnormality, and that if he’d committed a crime, even if he’d been conscious of it, but almost involuntarily, he wouldn’t have had the strength to overcome the morbid moral impulse that was controlling him. In addition to this abnormality, the doctor also spoke about his mania, which presaged in advance, in his words, a direct path to complete insanity. (N.B.: I’m relating all this in my own words; the doctor expressed himself in extremely learned and professional language.) “All his actions were in contradiction to common sense and logic,” he continued. “I’m not talking about something I didn’t see, that is, the crime itself and the entire catastrophe, but even two days ago, during his conversation with me, he possessed an inexplicable, immobile look in his eye. There was unexpected laughter when it was most inappropriate. He manifested inexplicable, constant irritation, and uttered strange words: ‘Bernard! Ethics!’ and others, which were unnecessary.” But the doctor diagnosed the mania especially in the fact that the accused was unable even to speak about the three thousand rubles of which he considered himself cheated without some extraordinary irritation, while he would talk and reminisce about all his other failures and offenses, and recount them quite easily. Finally, according to all accounts, he flew into some sort of fury; meanwhile, other people had testified that he was unselfish and not greedy.

“Concerning the opinion of my learned colleague,” the Moscow doctor declared ironically, as he was concluding his testimony, “that the accused, upon entering the courtroom, should have looked at the ladies, and not straight ahead of him, I can state merely that besides the levity of similar conclusions, it is, in addition, radically erroneous; because even though I’m in complete agreement that the accused, upon entering the room in which his fate would be decided, shouldn’t have looked straight ahead of him in that fixed way, and that this could really be considered a symptom of his abnormal spiritual condition at that time, still, at the same time I can assure you that he shouldn’t have glanced to the left, at the ladies, but to the right, looking for his defense attorney, on whose assistance all his hopes rest, and on whose defense his fate now depends.”

The doctor expressed his opinion forcefully and insistently.

But the unexpected conclusion of Dr. Varvinsky, who testified after the others, added a special comic element to the disagreement between both of the expert medics. In his opinion, the accused, both now and in the past, was in a completely normal condition; although he really must have been in a nervous and extremely agitated state just before his arrest, this could have been the result of many evident factors: jealousy, rage, his constant drunkenness, and so on. But this nervous condition couldn’t have involved mental “aberration,” which had just been mentioned. As far as whether he should have glanced to the left or the right upon entering the courtroom, in his “humble opinion, the defendant should have looked directly ahead of himself upon entering, as in fact he did, because the chairman of the court and the judges, on whom his fate depended, were seated in front of him, and thus he displayed a perfectly normal state of mind at that moment.” The young doctor concluded his “modest” testimony with a certain amount of passion.

“Bravo, Doc!” cried Mitya from where he sat. “That’s precisely right!”

They admonished Mitya, of course, but the young doctor’s opinion had a decisive impact on the court, as well as on the public, because, as it turned out later, everyone agreed with it. However, Dr. Herzenshtube, when called as a witness, suddenly and unexpectedly proved to be of great use to Mitya. As an old inhabitant of the town who had known the Karamazov family for a very long time, he provided some facts of great value for the “prosecution,” and all of a sudden, as if remembering something, he added:

“However, this poor young man might have had a comparatively better fate, for he possessed a good heart both in his childhood and afterward, and I know this for a fact. But as the Russian proverb states: ‘If a man has one head, it’s a good thing; and if another clever man comes to visit, that’s even better, for then there’ll be two heads, and not just one . . . ’ ”

“One head is good, but two are better,” the prosecutor injected impatiently, knowing the old man’s penchant for speaking slowly and at great length, regardless of the impression he was making, forcing everyone to wait for him; on the other hand, he highly valued his own flat, heavy, always joyfully self-satisfied German wit. The little old man loved to be witty.

“Oh, yes, that’s just what I’m saying,” he continued stubbornly. “One head is good, but two are much better. But another person with a good head didn’t come to meet him, and he even lost his own head. . . . How’s that? Where did he lose it? I’ve forgotten that word, where he lost his own head,” he continued, waving his hand in front of his eyes. “Ah, yes, spazieren.”[2]

“To take a stroll?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. His head went to take a stroll and fell into a deep hole and got lost. Meanwhile, he was a grateful and sensitive young man; oh, I remember him very well as a child, abandoned by his father in the backyard, where he ran around barefoot wearing trousers fastened by only one button.”

Some sort of emotional and poignant note was suddenly heard in the honest old man’s voice. Fetyukovich was startled, as though sensing something, and instantly latched onto it.

“Oh, yes. I was still a young man at the time. I was . . . well, yes, I was forty-five years old, and had just come here. I felt sorry for the lad and asked myself: why couldn’t I buy him a pound of . . . well, yes, a pound of what? I forget the word . . . a pound of something children really like. What is it? What?” The doctor waved his hands again. “It grows on a tree; people collect them and give them away . . .”

“Apples?”

“Oh, no-o-o! A pound, a pound, not a dozen apples, not a pound . . . no, there are lots of them and they’re very small; you put them in your mouth and cr-r-rack!”

“Nuts?”

“Yes, that’s it, nuts, that’s what I’m saying,” the doctor affirmed in the calmest way, as if he hadn’t even been searching for the word. “I bought him a pound of nuts, because no one had ever given the lad a pound of nuts, and I raised my finger and I said to him: ‘Boy! Gott der Vater.’[3] He started laughing and muttered, ‘Gott der Vater—Gott der Sohn.’ He kept laughing and muttered, ‘Gott der Sohn—Gott der heilige Geist.’ And I left. Two days later, I went past his house and he shouted to me all on his own: ‘Uncle, Gott der Vater—Gott der Sohn; only he forgot Gott der heilige Geist. But I reminded him and I felt very sorry for him. But he was taken away and I didn’t see him again. And now twenty-three years have passed, I was sitting in my study one morning, my hair had turned white, and suddenly in walks a young man in his prime, raises his finger, and says, laughing, ‘Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn, und Gott der heilige Geist! I’ve just arrived in town and have come to thank you, because no one had ever bought me a pound of nuts, but you bought me some.’ Then I recalled my own happy youth and the poor lad running barefoot in the backyard; my heart skipped a beat and I said, ‘You’re a grateful young man; all your life you remembered that pound of nuts I brought you in your childhood.’ I embraced him and blessed him. Then I started weeping. He laughed, but he was also crying . . . because a Russian often laughs when he should be crying. But then he did weep, and I saw it. But now, alas!”

“And I’m weeping now too, you German, I’m weeping now, you godly man!” Mitya cried suddenly from where he sat.

In any case, the little anecdote made a rather pleasant impression on the public. But the main effect in Mitya’s favor was the testimony provided by Katerina Ivanovna, to which I will now turn. And in general, when the witnesses à décharge,[4] called by the defense, that is, began to testify, then all of a sudden fate even seemed to smile deeply on Mitya and—what’s most remarkable—even on the counsel for the defense. But even before Katerina Ivanovna, they questioned Alyosha, who suddenly recalled one particular fact that seemed to provide positive evidence about one of the most important aspects of the prosecutor’s case.

1 A Protestant sect active in Russia since the eighteenth century.

2 “To take a stroll” (Ger.).

3 “God the Father” (Ger.), followed by “God the Son” and “God the Holy Ghost.”

4 “For the defense” (Fr.).

IV

FORTUNE SMILES ON MITYA

This came as something of a surprise even for Alyosha himself. He was summoned without taking the oath, and from the first words of his interrogation both sides treated him with the utmost kindness and sympathy. It was evident that his good reputation preceded him. Alyosha testified modestly and with restraint, but his warm sympathy for his unfortunate brother was clearly in evidence in his testimony. In reply to one question about his brother’s character, he described him as a man who, though given to violence, and carried away by his passions, was also noble, proud, and generous, even ready to make any sacrifice, if it were demanded of him. He confessed, however, that lately his brother, as a result of his passion for Grushenka and the rivalry with his father, had been in an untenable situation. But he rejected with indignation the suggestion that his brother could kill in order to rob, although he agreed that in Mitya’s mind the three thousand rubles had turned into some sort of obsession, that Mitya considered the money to be his own inheritance, stolen from him by his father’s deceit, and although he was generally unconcerned with money, he couldn’t even mention that three thousand without fury and wrath. As for the rivalry of these two “individuals,” as the prosecutor expressed it, that is, between Grushenka and Katya, Alyosha replied evasively and even preferred not to answer one or two questions.

“Did your brother tell you at least that he intended to kill his father?” asked the prosecutor. “You don’t have to answer that question if you choose not to,” he added.

“He never said so directly,” replied Alyosha.

“Do you mean that he did so indirectly?”

“One time he spoke about his personal hatred for Father and said he was afraid that . . . in an extreme moment . . . a moment of loathing . . . that, perhaps, he would be capable of killing him.”

“And when you heard this, did you believe him?”

“I’m afraid to say that I did. But I was always convinced that some higher feeling would manage to save him at the fateful moment, as in fact it did, because it wasn’t he who killed my father,” Alyosha concluded decisively in a loud voice heard throughout the hall. The prosecutor shuddered like a warhorse hearing the call of a trumpet.

“You may be assured that I believe entirely in the complete sincerity of your conviction, without regarding it at all as a result of, and without assimilating it with, your affection for your unfortunate brother. Your unique view of the whole tragic episode played out in your family is already well known to us from the preliminary investigation. I won’t conceal from you the fact that it is highly individual and contradicts all the other evidence gathered by the prosecution. Therefore I find it necessary to ask you at this time with insistence: precisely which facts led you to this belief in your brother’s innocence, and, on the contrary, to the guilt of another person, against whom you testified at the preliminary investigation?”

“At the preliminary investigation I merely answered the questions,” Alyosha said quietly and calmly, “and didn’t come to personally cast blame on Smerdyakov.”

“Yet you pointed to him?”

“I pointed to him because of what my brother Dmitry said. Before my interrogation I was told about what occurred at his arrest and that he himself accused Smerdyakov. I believe fully in my brother’s innocence. And if it wasn’t he that killed my father, then . . .”

“Then Smerdyakov did it? But why precisely Smerdyakov? And why precisely are you so firmly convinced of your brother’s innocence?”

“I can’t help believing my brother. I know that he wouldn’t lie to me. I could tell by his face that he wasn’t lying to me.”

“Only by his face? Is that all your proof?”

“I have no other proof.”

“And your belief in Smerdyakov’s guilt is also based solely on your brother’s words and on the expression of his face?”

“Yes, I have no other proof.”

At this point the prosecutor ended his questioning. Alyosha’s answers produced almost a reaction of extreme disappointment on the public. There had been talk among us about Smerdyakov before the trial: someone had heard something, someone had pointed out something else; it was rumored that Alyosha had assembled some extraordinary evidence in his brother’s favor that would cast blame on the lackey, and yet—there was nothing, no proof except for some moral convictions, so natural in his position as a brother of the accused.

But then Fetyukovich began to cross-examine him. In reply to a question about when precisely the accused told him, Alyosha, about his hatred of his father, and that he could kill him, and whether he had heard that from him, for example, at their last meeting before the catastrophe, Alyosha, in reply, suddenly seemed to shudder, as if he remembered something and had come to understand it only now.

“I now recall one circumstance that I’d completely forgotten, that was unclear to me at the time; while now . . .”

And Alyosha eagerly related, evidently just recalling the idea at this moment, how, at his last meeting with Mitya, in the evening, along the path to the monastery, near the tree, striking his own chest, “the upper part of his chest,” Mitya had repeated several times that he had the means to restore his honor, and that those means were located right here, on his chest. . . . “I thought then that when he was striking his chest, he was talking about his heart,” continued Alyosha, “about the fact that he could find the strength in his heart to escape some terrible disgrace awaiting him, about which he dared not confess even to me. I admit that at the time I believed that he was talking about our father and that he was shuddering at the thought of going to Father and committing some violent act; meanwhile, he seemed to be pointing to something on his chest, so that, I recall, the idea flashed through my mind that the heart is not located in that part of the chest, but lower, and that he was striking himself much higher up, here, just below the neck, and kept pointing at this place. My idea seemed foolish at the time, but perhaps he was pointing at the little incense bag in which he’d stashed his fifteen hundred rubles.”

“Precisely!” shouted Mitya suddenly from his place. “That’s right, Alyosha, that’s right, I was hitting the bag with my fist!”

Fetyukovich hastily rushed to Mitya, entreating him to calm down, and, at the same time, he latched onto Alyosha. Carried away by his own recollection, Alyosha passionately repeated his suggestion, namely, that the disgrace, most likely, consisted of the fact that, possessing the fifteen hundred rubles, which he could have returned to Katerina Ivanovna, though he had only half of what he owed her, he’d nevertheless decided not to repay half the debt, but to spend it on something else, that is, to elope with Grushenka, if she’d agree . . .

“That’s it, that’s it precisely,” Alyosha kept exclaiming with sudden excitement. “My brother cried at that time that half, half the disgrace (he repeated the word ‘half’ several times!) he could wipe away at once, but he was so unhappy with the weakness of his own character that he wouldn’t do it . . . he knew in advance that he couldn’t and wouldn’t have the strength to do it!”

“And do you clearly and confidently recall that he struck his chest precisely in that place?” Fetyukovich kept inquiring avidly.

“Clearly and confidently, because at the time I wondered why he was striking his chest so high up when the heart is located farther down, and that’s when the thought seemed so foolish to me . . . I remember that it seemed foolish . . . that idea flashed through my mind. That’s the reason I recalled it now. How could I have forgotten that until now? It was that little incense bag he was pointing to, showing that he had the means, but that he wouldn’t repay that debt of fifteen hundred rubles! But at his arrest at Mokroye he cried out—I know this because I was told it afterward—that he considered it the most disgraceful thing in his life that, possessing the means to repay half his debt (precisely half!) to Katerina Ivanovna, and to become someone other than a thief in her eyes, he still preferred not to repay her but to remain a thief, rather than part with the money! How he was tormented, really tormented by that money!” exclaimed Alyosha in conclusion.

Of course, the prosecutor also intervened. He asked Alyosha to describe once again how all this had taken place, and he asked, insisting several times: had the defendant, striking his chest, been pointing to something? Perhaps he’d merely been striking his chest with his fist?

“Not with his fist!” cried Alyosha. “He pointed with his fingers, and he pointed here, very high up. . . . But how could I have forgotten this until this very moment?”

The chairman turned to Mitya and asked if he had anything to add about the last testimony. Mitya confirmed that it was all true, that he really had been pointing at the fifteen hundred rubles that were in a little bag on his chest, just below his neck, and that of course this was a disgrace, “a disgrace which I can’t deny, the most disgraceful act of my entire life!” Mitya exclaimed. “I could’ve repaid the money, but I didn’t. I preferred to remain a thief in her eyes, but I didn’t repay the loan, and the greatest disgrace of all was that I knew in advance that I wouldn’t! Alyosha’s right! Thank you, Alyosha!”

That was how Alyosha’s cross-examination ended. It was significant and characteristic that one fact at least had been revealed, the smallest piece of evidence, almost just a hint of proof, but one that still provided a drop of evidence that the little incense bag had really existed, and that it had contained fifteen hundred rubles, and that the defendant hadn’t lied about it during the preliminary investigation when he’d declared at Mokroye that the fifteen hundred rubles “were his.” Alyosha was glad; he was flushed all over and returned to his assigned seat. For a long time he continued to repeat to himself, “How did I forget that? How could I have forgotten that? And how did I suddenly remember it now?”

Katerina Ivanovna’s interrogation began. As soon as she appeared, something unusual happened in the courtroom. The ladies raised their lorgnettes and binoculars, while the men stirred, some standing up from their seats to get a better look. Everyone maintained afterward that Mitya suddenly turned white “as a ghost” as soon as she entered. Dressed all in black, she approached the designated place modestly and almost timidly; it was impossible to guess from her face that she was agitated, but determination gleamed in her dark, gloomy gaze. We must note, and afterward many people insisted, that she looked astonishingly attractive at that moment. She spoke softly but clearly, for the entire courtroom. She expressed herself with extreme composure, or she tried hard, at least, to appear composed. The chairman began his questions carefully, very respectfully, as if fearing to touch upon “certain strings,” and appreciating her great misfortune. But Katerina Ivanovna herself, from her very first words, declared in reply to one of the questions posed that she’d been previously engaged to the defendant, “until such time as he left me,” she added softly. When she was asked about the three thousand rubles entrusted to Mitya to send to her relatives by post, she replied firmly: “I didn’t give him the money merely to have him send it off; I had the premonition that he was in great need of money . . . at the time. . . . I gave him the three thousand on the condition that he’d send it, if he wanted to, within a month’s time. Later he tormented himself in vain as a result of that debt.”

I’m not conveying all of the questions and all of her answers in detail; I’m merely providing the substance of her testimony.

“I was firmly convinced that he’d always manage to dispatch the three thousand, as soon as he received money from his father,” she continued, answering the questions. “I was always sure of his unselfishness and his honesty . . . his noble honesty . . . in matters concerning money. He was completely certain that he’d receive three thousand rubles from his father; he mentioned that to me several times. I knew that he’d had disagreements with his father, and I was always convinced, and remain so, that he was wronged by him. I don’t recall any threats he made against his father. In my presence, at least, he never said anything, made no threats. If he’d come to me at that time, I’d have relieved his anxiety regarding the loan of that wretched three thousand, but he didn’t come to see me anymore . . . and I myself . . . I was put in such a position . . . that I couldn’t summon him to come. . . . I had no right to be demanding of him regarding that debt,” she added suddenly, and something definitive sounded in her voice. “I myself was once indebted to him for financial assistance, even greater than three thousand, and I accepted it, in spite of the fact that I couldn’t foresee ever being in a position to repay my debt . . .”

There seemed to be a note of challenge in her voice. It was precisely at this moment that Fetyukovich began his questioning.

“This occurred elsewhere, at the beginning of your acquaintanceship?” Fetyukovich asked, proceeding cautiously, instantly sensing something favorable. (I’ll note in parentheses that even though he’d been summoned from Petersburg partly by Katerina Ivanovna herself, he still knew nothing about the episode involving the five thousand rubles provided by Mitya in that other town, or about her “bow down to the ground.” She hadn’t told him about that and had concealed it! That fact was astonishing. One can assume with certainty that she herself, up to the very last minute, didn’t know whether she would talk about this episode at the trial or not: she was awaiting some sort of inspiration.)

No, I can never forget those moments! She began speaking; she told everything, the entire episode that Mitya had already related to Alyosha, the “bow down to the ground,” and the reasons for it, about her own father, and her visit to Mitya; she did not say a word or give a single hint about the fact that Mitya, through her sister, had himself first suggested that “they send Katerina Ivanovna to him for the money.” That part she kindly concealed, and she wasn’t ashamed to make it seem that she herself, on her own impulse, had gone to see the young officer hoping for something . . . to ask him for the money. This was something heart wrenching. Listening to her, I turned cold and began trembling; the hall fell silent, trying to catch every word. It was something unprecedented. Even from such a willful and contemptuously proud young woman like her, it was almost impossible to expect such absolutely candid testimony, such sacrifice, such self-immolation. And for what? For whom? To rescue the man who’d betrayed and insulted her, to assist, even in some small degree, in his salvation by leaving a favorable impression of him! And, as a matter of fact: the image of the officer giving away his last five thousand rubles—everything he had left in his life—and bowing respectfully to the innocent young woman emerged in an extremely sympathetic and attractive light, but . . . my heart sank painfully! I felt that some slander might ensue afterward. (And it did, it really did!) Subsequently it was repeated all over town, with malicious laughter, that the story was perhaps not quite true, especially where the officer had allowed the young woman to leave with only so much as “a respectful bow.” It was hinted that something had been “omitted” from the story. “And even if nothing had been left out, even if it was all true,” even our most respected ladies repeated, “even then it’s still not known: was it right for a young lady to behave in that way, even if she was trying to save her father?” And can it really be true that Katerina Ivanovna, with her intelligence, and her morbid perspicacity, hadn’t sensed in advance that people would start to talk? She’d definitely sensed it, and yet she had decided to tell everything! Naturally, all these nasty little doubts about the veracity of her story emerged only afterward; in the first moments everyone was profoundly flabbergasted by it all. As far as the members of the court were concerned, they heard Katerina Ivanovna out in reverent, so to speak, even embarrassed silence. The prosecutor didn’t allow himself to ask even one more question relating to this topic.

Fetyukovich bowed deeply to her. Oh, he was almost triumphant. Much ground had been gained: a man giving away, with a noble impulse, his last five thousand, and then that same man killing his father at night with the goal of robbing him of three thousand rubles—this was something that really didn’t make sense. Fetyukovich felt that at least the charge of robbery could now be eliminated. “The case” was suddenly illuminated with a new light. Some sympathy had developed in Mitya’s favor. As for Mitya . . . it was said afterward that while Katerina Ivanovna was testifying, he once or twice seemed about to jump up from his place, but then he sank down on the bench and covered his face with his hands. But when she finished, he suddenly cried out in a sobbing voice, stretching his arms to her:

“Katya, why have you ruined me?”

His sobs filled the entire courtroom. However, he regained control of himself in a minute and once more cried out:

“Now, I’m doomed!”

Then he seemed to grow rigid where he sat, his teeth clenched, and his arms folded across his chest. Katerina Ivanovna remained in the hall, taking up the seat assigned to her. She was pale and sat with her head lowered. Those who were near her said that she was shivering all over as if in a fever. Grushenka was called to testify.

I’m approaching the catastrophe, which, when it suddenly occurred, was perhaps the real reason for Mitya’s ruin. Because I’m convinced, and so is everyone else—all the lawyers said so afterward—that if it hadn’t been for this incident, the prisoner would at least have been shown some mercy. But more about that later. First, a few words about Grushenka.

She also appeared in the courtroom dressed all in black, with her splendid black shawl draped over her shoulders. She approached the balustrade smoothly, with her inaudible gait, swaying slightly, the way plump women sometimes walk. She stared fixedly at the chairman, without ever glancing to the left or the right. In my opinion she looked very attractive at that moment, not pale at all, as our ladies alleged afterward. They also maintained that she had a sort of concentrated and malicious expression. I think she was merely irritated and was aware of the contemptuous and curious glances of our public, eager for some scandal. She was proud and couldn’t tolerate any contempt; she was one of those who, as soon as they sense any contempt, immediately flare up in anger and become eager to strike back. There was, of course, also timidity, and inward shame at her own timidity, such that her conversation was uneven—sometimes she was angry, then contemptuous and extremely rude; at other times, there was suddenly a sincere note of self-condemnation, self-blame. On the other hand, she’d sometimes speak as if she were about to fall into some abyss: “It doesn’t matter what happens, I’ll say it anyway . . .”

Concerning her acquaintance with Fyodor Pavlovich, she remarked brusquely, “It’s all nonsense; am I to blame if he latched onto me?” Then, a minute later, she added: “I’m to blame for everything; I was laughing at both of them, the old man and his son—and led them both to this. It was because of me that all this happened.” Somehow Samsonov was brought into it. “What business is that of anyone?” she retorted with some haughty insolence. “He was my benefactor; I was barefoot when he took me in, when my family kicked me out.” The chairman, though very polite, reminded her that she must answer the questions directly, without going into unnecessary detail. Grushenka blushed, and her eyes flashed.

She hadn’t seen the packet with the money, but had merely heard from the “villain” that Fyodor Pavlovich had prepared some sort of envelope with three thousand rubles. “But that was all foolishness; I was laughing, and wouldn’t have gone there for anything . . .”

“To whom were you referring as the ‘villain’?” asked the prosecutor.

“The lackey Smerdyakov, the one who killed his master, and who hanged himself yesterday.”

Of course, they asked her at once: on what basis was she able to make such a definitive accusation? But it turned out that she also had no basis whatever.

“Dmitry Fyodorovich told me himself, and you should believe him. The woman who came between us has ruined him; she’s the reason for it all, that’s what,” Grushenka added, seeming to shudder from hatred, while a spiteful note rang out in her voice.

They inquired again about to whom was she referring.

“To the young lady, to Katerina Ivanovna. She summoned me to her, treated me to chocolate and wanted to beguile me. She has very little shame, that’s what . . .”

At this point the chairman interrupted her sternly, asking her to moderate her language. But the jealous woman’s heart was already inflamed, and she was ready to rush headlong into the abyss . . .

“At the time of the arrest in Mokroye,” the prosecutor said, reminding her, “everyone saw and heard you come running out of the other room shouting, ‘I’m to blame for everything; we’ll go into exile together!’ Therefore, you must have already been convinced that he was a patricide?”

“I don’t recall my feelings at the time,” replied Grushenka. “Everyone was hollering that he’d killed his father; I felt that I was to blame and that he’d killed him because of me. But when he said that he was innocent, I believed him at once and still believe him now, and I always will believe him: he’s not the sort of man who lies.”

It was Fetyukovich’s turn to ask questions. Among other things, he asked about Rakitin and about the twenty-five rubles he’d been promised “if he brought Aleksey Fyodorovich Karamazov to see you.”

“There was nothing surprising about his taking the money,” Grushenka said, with a contemptuous and spiteful smile. “He always came to me when he wanted to scrounge some money; he would get about thirty rubles a month, mostly for extravagances: he had enough to eat and drink even without me.”

“Why were you so generous to Mr. Rakitin?” asked Fetyukovich, in spite of the fact that the chairman was looking restless.

“Why, he’s my cousin. My mother and his mother were sisters. But he was always entreating me not to tell anyone; he was very ashamed of me.”

This new fact turned out to be completely unexpected for everyone; until now, no one in town had known about this relationship, even in the monastery; even Mitya didn’t know. They say that Rakitin’s face turned deep red from shame as he sat down. Before her entrance into the hall, Grushenka had somehow found out that he’d testified against Mitya, and that’s why she was livid. All of Mr. Rakitin’s previous words, all his nobility, his outbursts about serfdom, political disorder in Russia—all of this was conclusively canceled and destroyed in the eyes of the public. Fetyukovich was pleased: once again it was a godsend. In general, Grushenka was not questioned for very long, and of course she couldn’t add anything especially new to the case. She left an extremely unpleasant impression on the public. Hundreds of contemptuous glances were trained on her when, having finished her testimony, she sat back down in the courtroom, rather far from Katerina Ivanovna. All the while she was being questioned, Mitya was silent, as though he’d turned into stone; he sat with eyes lowered to the floor.

Ivan Fyodorovich was called to the witness stand.

V

A SUDDEN CATASTROPHE

I’ll mention that he’d been summoned before Alyosha. But the bailiff reported to the chairman that, as a result of sudden illness or some sort of fit, the witness was unable to appear then, but as soon as he recovered, he was ready to testify. No one seemed to have heard this news, and they found it out only later.

His appearance at first was hardly noticed: the primary witnesses, especially the two rivals, had already been questioned; the public’s curiosity had been satisfied for the time being. The public was even experiencing fatigue. There were a few witnesses remaining to be heard, people who would probably add nothing new to the evidence, given all that had already been stated. Time was running out.

Ivan Fyodorovich approached the witness stand extremely slowly, glancing at no one, even hanging his head as if considering something, and scowling. He was dressed irreproachably, but his face made a painful impression, on me at least: something, as if it were, touched by the earth, something like the face of a dying man. His eyes were clouded; he raised them and slowly glanced around the courtroom. Alyosha was suddenly about to jump up from his seat and moaned, “Ah!” I remember this, but that moment was caught by almost no one else.

The chairman began by informing him that he was a witness without an oath, and that he could testify or remain silent, but that, of course, all of his testimony should be according to his conscience, etc., etc. Ivan Fyodorovich listened and looked at him blankly; suddenly his face began to relax into a smile, and just as soon as the chairman, who was now regarding him with astonishment, stopped speaking, he burst into laughter.

“Well, and what else?” he asked loudly.

Everyone fell silent in the hall; there was a strange sense of foreboding. The chairman grew uneasy.

“Perhaps . . . you’re still not well enough?” he began, his eyes looking everywhere for the bailiff.

“Don’t worry, Your Excellency; I’m well enough and can tell you a thing or two of interest,” replied Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly, completely calmly, and respectfully.

“Do you have something in particular that you wish to convey to the court?” the chairman continued, still distrustfully.

Ivan Fyodorovich dropped his head, hesitated for a few moments, then, lifting his head again, answered as though stuttering:

“No . . . I don’t. I have nothing in particular.”

They began to ask him questions. He seemed to reply reluctantly, with extreme brevity, even with some repugnance, which continued to grow, even though he still responded sensibly. To many questions he said that he didn’t know the answer. He didn’t know anything about the financial dealings between his father and Dmitry Fyodorovich. “I didn’t take an interest in this,” he declared. He’d heard about the threats to kill his father from the defendant. He’d heard about the money in the packet from Smerdyakov.

“It’s all the same thing over and over again,” he answered, interrupting the questioning with a weary look. “I have nothing in particular to tell the court.”

“I see that you’re unwell, and I understand your feelings,” began the chairman.

He was about to turn to both sides, to address the prosecutor and the defense counsel, inviting them, if they considered it necessary, to interrogate the witness, when all of a sudden Ivan Fyodorovich made a request in an exhausted voice:

“Release me, Your Excellency, I feel very ill.”

And with these words, not waiting for permission, he suddenly turned and was about to leave the courtroom. But after taking a few steps, he stopped, as if suddenly reconsidering, grinned softly, and returned to his previous place.

“Your Excellency, I’m like that peasant girl . . . you know how it is: ‘If I want to—I’ll jump; if I don’t—I won’t.’ They follow her with a sarafan[1] or a wedding dress, so she’ll jump up and they’ll take her to church to be married. It’s in some sort of book on folklore . . .”

“What do you mean by that?” the chairman asked sternly.

“Here.” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly took out a packet of money. “Here’s the money . . . the very bills that were in that packet.” He tossed it onto the table with the other material evidence. “It’s the money for which Father was killed. Where should I put it? Mr. Bailiff, pass it on.”

The bailiff took the whole packet and handed it to the chairman.

“How in the world did this money turn up in your possession, if it’s the same money?” the chairman asked in astonishment.

“I received it from Smerdyakov, the murderer, yesterday. I visited him before he hanged himself. He was the one who killed Father, not my brother. He killed, but I was the one who taught him to do it. . . . Who doesn’t desire one’s father’s death?”

“Are you in your right mind or not?” the chairman blurted out involuntarily.

“That’s just it, I am in my right mind . . . completely in my right mind, just like you are, and all these . . . ugly mugs!” he said, turning suddenly to face the public. “They killed my father and pretend to be appalled,” he snarled with furious contempt. “They put on airs in front of one another. Liars! They all desire their fathers’ death. One reptile devours another. . . . If there hadn’t been a patricide—they would’ve all been angry and dispersed in a rage. Spectacle! ‘Bread and circuses!’[2] However, I’m one to talk. Do you have any water? Give me a drink, for Christ’s sake!” He suddenly clutched his head.

The bailiff approached him at once. Alyosha suddenly jumped up and shouted, “He’s ill; don’t believe him; he’s delirious!” Katerina Ivanovna stood up impetuously from where she was sitting, now immobile with horror, and looked at Ivan Fyodorovich. Mitya also stood up, looked greedily at his brother, and listened to him with a wild, twisted grin.

“Calm down; I’m not insane, I’m merely a murderer!” Ivan began again. “You can’t expect eloquence from a murderer,” he added suddenly with, for some reason, a twisted laugh.

The prosecutor, in evident confusion, leaned over to the chairman. The members of the court whispered to one another in agitation. Fetyukovich pricked up his ears as he listened. The hall fell silent in expectation. The chairman suddenly seemed to collect himself.

“Witness, your words are unintelligible and impossible here. Calm down, if you can, and continue speaking . . . if indeed you have something to say. How can you confirm such a confession . . . if you’re not just delirious?”

“That’s just it: I don’t have any witnesses. That cur Smerdyakov won’t send any proofs from the other world . . . in a packet. All you think about is packets; one is enough. I don’t have any witnesses. . . . Except for one.” He grinned wistfully.

“Who is your witness?”

“He has a tail, Your Excellency, it will be out of order! Le diable n’existe point![3] Don’t pay him any attention; he’s a trivial, petty devil,” he added, as if confidentially, suddenly ceasing to laugh. “He’s probably here somewhere, under this table of material evidence; where should he be if not there? You see, listen to me: I told him that I didn’t want to remain silent, while he spoke about the geological cataclysm . . . such stupidity! Well, liberate the monster . . . he started singing a hymn, and that’s because he feels so good! It’s just like a drunken scoundrel in the street bawling about ‘how Vanka went to Petersburg’—I’d give a quadrillion quadrillion for two seconds of joy. You don’t know me! All this business is so stupid! Well, take me instead of him! I came here for some reason. . . . Why, why is everything here so stupid?”

And once again he began looking slowly and pensively around the hall. By now the court was in disarray. Alyosha rushed toward him, but the bailiff had already grabbed Ivan Fyodorovich by the arm.

“What’s all this about?” Ivan Fyodorovich screamed, staring into the bailiff’s face, then suddenly seizing him by the shoulders and flinging him violently to the floor. But the police arrived, grabbed him, and he began howling in a loud voice.[4] All the time he was being removed from the hall, he was screaming and yelling incoherently.

Turmoil ensued. I don’t remember the order in which things happened; I myself was agitated and couldn’t follow it all. I only know that afterward, when everything had calmed down and everyone understood what was wrong, the bailiff was reprimanded, even though he explained levelheadedly to the authorities that the witness had been well, that he had seen the doctor an hour before, that he’d been feeling a little faint, but that until he’d entered the courtroom, he’d been coherent, and that it had been impossible to foresee what would happen; on the contrary, he himself had insisted and had very much wanted to testify. But before everything had settled down and everyone had recovered, following immediately upon this scene, another one unfolded: Katerina Ivanovna had an attack of hysterics. She started screeching loudly, sobbing, but refused to leave; she struggled and begged them not to remove her, and suddenly shouted to the chairman:

“I must communicate one more piece of evidence, immediately . . . immediately! Here’s a paper, a letter . . . take it and read it at once, at once! It’s a letter from that monster, that one, over there.” She pointed at Mitya. “He’s the one who killed his father, you’ll see right away; he writes to me how he’d do it! The other one is ill, very ill, and delirious! For the last three days I’ve seen him delirious!”

She kept crying out and was beside herself. The bailiff took the piece of paper that she was holding out to the chairman, and she sank down onto her chair, covered her face, and began sobbing convulsively and inaudibly, shaking all over and stifling every sound for fear that she’d be ejected from the courtroom. The paper she’d offered was the very same letter that Mitya had written in the Capital City tavern, the one Ivan Fyodorovich had called “mathematical proof.” Alas! It was acknowledged to be of mathematical import and, if it weren’t for this letter, Mitya might not have been ruined, or at least might not have suffered such a drastic fate. I repeat, it was hard to follow all the details. Even now it seems very confusing to me. It must have been that the chairman passed the document along to the judges, the prosecutor, the counsel for the defense, and the jury. I only remember how they began to question the witness. To the question posed to her gently, about whether she had calmed down, Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed impetuously:

“I’m ready, I’m ready! I’m completely capable of answering you now,” she added, evidently still very afraid that she might be prevented from presenting her evidence. She was asked to explain in greater detail what this letter was all about and under what circumstances she’d received it.

“I received it the evening before the crime was committed, but he’d written it the day before that in the tavern; therefore, it was two days before the actual crime—look, it was written on the back of some bill!” she cried, gasping for breath. “He hated me at that time, because he’d done a bad deed and gone running after that creature . . . and because he still owed me those three thousand rubles. . . . Oh, he was ashamed of that three thousand on account of his own baseness! This is how it was with that three thousand—I beg you to hear me out: one morning some three weeks before he killed his father, he came to see me. I knew that he needed money, and I knew what it was for—it was precisely in order to lure that creature away and carry her off. I already knew then that he’d betrayed me and wanted to desert me; but I offered him the money then, and asked him to send it to my sister in Moscow. When I gave it to him, I looked him in the eye and said that he could send it whenever he wanted, ‘even a month from now.’ How, how could he have failed to understand that I was telling him to his face: ‘You need the money to betray me with that creature; so here it is, I’m giving it to you myself; take it if you’re so dishonorable!’ I wanted to expose him; and what happened? He took it, he did, carried it away, and squandered it in one night on that creature sitting over there. . . . But he understood, he did, that I knew everything, I assure you; he understood then that in giving him the money, I was testing him: would he be that dishonorable to take it from me or not? I looked into his eyes, and he looked into mine, and he understood everything, everything; and he took it, he did, and he carried away my money!”

“It’s true, Katya!” Mitya cried suddenly. “I looked into your eyes and I understood that you were dishonoring me and still I took your money! Despise me as a scoundrel, despise me, all of you; I deserve it!”

“Defendant,” cried the chairman, “one more word and I’ll have you thrown out of court.”

“That money tormented him,” Katya continued, hurrying feverishly. “He wanted to repay me, it’s true, he wanted to, but he needed the money for that creature. So he killed his father, but he still didn’t pay me back; instead he went off with her to that village where he was arrested. There, once again, he squandered the money that he’d stolen from his murdered father. And a day before he killed him, he wrote me this letter, in a drunken state, and I saw at once that he’d written out of spite, knowing, certainly knowing, that I wouldn’t show the letter to anyone, even if he’d really killed him. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have written it. He knew that I wouldn’t want to take revenge on him and ruin him! But read it, read it attentively, please, more carefully, and you’ll see that in the letter he described everything in advance: how he would kill his father and where the money was stashed. Look, please don’t overlook one phrase: ‘I’ll kill him as soon as Ivan leaves.’ That means he planned how he’d kill him beforehand,” Katerina Ivanovna pointed out to the court, maliciously and venomously. Oh, it was clear that she’d studied every single word of that fateful letter and had grasped its every meaning. “If he hadn’t been drunk, he’d never have written it; but just look, it’s all described in advance, exactly how he killed him, the whole scheme.”

That’s what she kept exclaiming, beside herself, regardless, of course, of all the consequences, although, naturally, she might have foreseen them even a month ago, because even then, shaking with rage, she had perhaps been wondering: “Shouldn’t I perhaps read this letter at the trial?” Now she’d taken the fatal leap. I seem to recall that the letter was read aloud by the secretary of the court and produced an overwhelming impression. They turned to Mitya and asked if he remembered writing this letter.

“It’s mine, it’s mine!” cried Mitya. “If I hadn’t been drunk, I wouldn’t have written it! We hated each other for many reasons, Katya, but I swear, I swear, I loved you even while I hated you, but you didn’t love me!”

He sank back into his place, wringing his hands in despair. The prosecutor and the defense counsel began to cross-examine her, chiefly to find out what had possessed her to conceal the document and to present her evidence before in such a very different spirit and tone.

“Yes, yes, I lied before; it was all lies against my honor and my conscience, but then I wanted to save him because he hated and despised me so much,” Katya exclaimed like a madwoman. “Oh, he despised me terribly, always despised me, and you know, you know, he despised me from the moment I bowed down to him for that money. I saw it. . . . I felt it immediately at the time, but I didn’t believe it myself for a long time. How many times did I read in his eyes: ‘You came to me of your own will.’ Oh, he didn’t understand, he didn’t understand anything at all, why I came running to him at the time; he’s only capable of suspecting baseness! He measured me by himself; he thought everyone was like him,” Katya snarled furiously, now in a perfect frenzy. “He wanted to marry me simply because I’d received that inheritance, that’s why, that’s why! I always suspected that was the reason! Oh, that beast! All his life he was sure I’d tremble before him with shame for having come to him then, and that he could despise me forever for it, and therefore he could hold it over me—that’s why he wanted to marry me! That’s the truth, the whole truth! I tried to conquer him with my love, my unlimited love; I was even willing to tolerate his infidelity, but he understood nothing, nothing at all. But is he capable of understanding anything? He’s a monster! I received this letter the following evening: it was brought to me from the tavern, and only that morning, that very morning, I’d wanted to forgive him for everything, everything, even for his betrayal!”

Of course the chairman and the prosecutor tried to calm her down. I’m sure that they were both even ashamed about exploiting her frenzy and hearing such revelations. I recall that I heard them say to her, “We understand how difficult it is for you, believe us, we’re able to sympathize,” and so on and so forth—nevertheless they’d extracted the evidence from the frenzied woman in hysterics. At last she described with extraordinary clarity, which so often, although only for a moment, shines forth even in minutes of such strain, how Ivan Fyodorovich almost lost his mind during the last two months, trying to save his brother, “that monster and murderer.”

“He tormented himself,” she kept exclaiming, “he wanted to minimize his brother’s guilt, confessing to me that he himself didn’t love his father either, and perhaps had even desired his father’s death. Oh, that deep, deep conscience of his! He tortured himself with that conscience! He revealed everything to me, everything; he came to me every day and talked with me as if I were his only friend. I do have the honor of being his only friend!” she cried suddenly, as if with defiance, her eyes flashing.

“He went to see Smerdyakov twice. Once he came to me and said, ‘If Mitya didn’t kill my father, and Smerdyakov had committed the crime’ (because everyone here was saying that Smerdyakov had done it), ‘then perhaps I’m also guilty, because Smerdyakov knew I didn’t love my father, and perhaps he thought that I desired my father’s death.’ Then I took out this letter and showed it to him, and he was utterly convinced that his brother had killed the old man, and that completely overwhelmed him. He couldn’t bear the thought that his own brother was a patricide! A week ago I noticed that he was unwell as a result of all this. During the last few days he’s been sitting with me and raving. I saw that his mind was disturbed. He’s been going around raving; he’s been seen out in the streets. The doctor from Moscow, at my request, examined him two days ago and told me that he was close to the onset of brain fever[5]—all because of him, because of that monster! And yesterday he learned that Smerdyakov had died—it was such a shock that he lost his mind—and it’s all because of that monster, all because he was trying to save that monster!”

Oh, of course, one can speak like that and confess only once in a lifetime—at the hour of one’s death, on the way to the scaffold. But Katya was completely in character at this moment. This was the very same impetuous Katya who’d thrown herself on the mercy of the young debaucher, to save her father; the very same Katya who, previously, before the public, proud and chaste, had sacrificed herself and her maidenly modesty by relating “Mitya’s noble deed,” in order to mitigate somewhat the fate awaiting him. And now in just the same way she was sacrificing herself, but for another person; and perhaps only now, at this moment, she was feeling for the first time, realizing completely, how dear this other person was to her! She sacrificed herself in fear for him, suddenly imagining that he’d ruined himself with his testimony of his having killed the old man, saying that it was not his brother, in order to save him, his good name, and his reputation! However, a terrible idea flashed through our minds: had she been lying about her former relations with Mitya—that was the question. No, no, she hadn’t been slandering him intentionally when she’d shouted that Mitya had despised her for bowing down to him! She herself believed this; she’d been deeply convinced, perhaps from the time of that bow, that the simple-hearted Mitya, who’d adored her even then, was now laughing at her and despising her. Had she perhaps attached herself to him with a love that was flawed and hysterical as a result of her wounded pride? Had this love resembled revenge, rather than real love? Perhaps this flawed love might have grown into real love; perhaps Katya had longed for nothing else, but Mitya had insulted her to the depths of her soul by his betrayal, and her soul didn’t forgive him. The moment of revenge had occurred unexpectedly; everything that had been accumulating for so long and so painfully in the heart of this offended woman had suddenly, once again unexpectedly, burst forth. She’d betrayed Mitya, but she’d also betrayed herself! Of course, she’d managed to utter a only few words when the tension broke and she was overcome with shame. Her hysterics began again; she fell down on the floor, sobbing and screaming. They carried her out of the courtroom. Just as they were taking her away, Grushenka rushed up to Mitya with a loud wail, before they were able to prevent her.

“Mitya!” she began. “Your snake has ruined you! Now she’s shown you who she really is!” she shouted to the judge, shaking with rage. At a sign from the chairman, they took hold of her and began to lead her out of the hall. She didn’t submit; she fought and struggled to get back to Mitya. Mitya started wailing and also tried to get to her. They overcame him.

Yes, I suppose that our women spectators were satisfied. The spectacle had been a rich one. Then I recall the appearance of the visiting doctor from Moscow. It seems that the chairman had previously sent the bailiff to arrange for medical assistance for Ivan. The doctor informed the court that the sick man was suffering from a very serious attack of brain fever, and that he should be taken away at once. In reply to questions from the prosecutor and the defense counsel, he confirmed that the patient had been to see him two days ago, and he’d warned him of an imminent attack, but he had refused to undergo treatment. “He was definitely not in a normal state of mind. He confessed that he was seeing visions when awake, was meeting various people on the street who’d already died, and that Satan came to visit him every night,” the doctor concluded. After presenting his testimony, the renowned doctor withdrew. The letter that Katerina Ivanovna had produced was added to the material evidence. After some deliberation, the judges decided to continue with the trial, and to add the two unexpected testimonies (Katerina Ivanovna’s and Ivan Fyodorovich’s) to the record of the proceedings.

But I won’t describe in detail the remainder of the judicial investigation. Besides, in the testimony of the remaining witnesses there was only repetition and confirmation of what had already been said, although each person spoke with his own peculiarities. But, I repeat, it was all brought together in the prosecutor’s summation, to which I shall now turn. Everyone was excited, everyone was electrified by the recent catastrophe, awaiting with impatience the speeches from each side and the verdict. Fetyukovich was visibly shaken by Katerina Ivanovna’s testimony. But the prosecutor was triumphant. When the testimony concluded, the court was adjourned for almost an hour. At last the chairman opened the session. It seems it was exactly eight o’clock in the evening when our prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovich, began his speech for the prosecution.

1 A Russian peasant’s long tunic dress.

2 The Roman emperors provided “bread and circuses” to the people to keep them content.

3 See above, p. 742.

4 See Acts 8:7.

5 A medical term invented by doctors to explain a phenomenon they were unable to understand. The modern equivalent would be a nervous breakdown.

VI

THE PROSECUTOR’S SPEECH. CHARACTER SKETCHES.

Ippolit Kirillovich began his speech trembling with nervousness, with cold sweat on his forehead and temples, his body alternately feeling chilly and feverish. He himself described this feeling afterward. He considered this speech to be his chef d’oeuvre, the masterpiece of his entire life, his swan song. It’s true, he died from rapid consumption nine months later, so that it turned out that he really could compare himself to a swan singing its last song, as if he’d had a premonition of his own impending demise. He poured all of his heart into this speech and as much intellect as he possessed, and he demonstrated unexpectedly that he had both civic concern and a command of the “accursed” questions, at least as much as our poor Ippolit Kirillovich could comprehend them. Above all, his speech succeeded because of its sincerity: he honestly believed in the guilt of the defendant; he was bringing charges not merely out of duty and calling for “vengeance”; he was actually quivering with a desire to “save society.” Even the women in the audience, although remaining hostile to him, acknowledged, however, that he’d made an extraordinary impression on them. He began in a cracked, broken voice, but very soon his voice grew stronger and began resonating throughout the hall, and that continued until the end of his speech. But as soon as he finished, he almost collapsed in a dead faint.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” began the prosecutor, “the present case has reverberated throughout all Russia. What’s so astonishing about that? What’s so horrifying? For us, for us especially? After all, we’re very accustomed to such things! That’s just what’s so horrendous—that such grim affairs have almost stopped horrifying us! That’s what should really horrify us: the fact that we’re used to such things, and not just an isolated crime of this or that individual. What are the reasons for our indifference, our almost lukewarm attitude to such events, to such signs of the time, prophesying an unenviable future? Is it because of our cynicism, or the premature exhaustion of the intellect and imagination of still such a youthful society, that we’ve become so decrepit before our time? Have our moral principles been shaken to the core, or is it the fact that perhaps we even lack moral principles altogether? I won’t resolve these questions, even though they’re tormenting; every citizen not only should, but must suffer through them. Our nascent, still timid press has already served the public well, because without it, we’d never have known in such detail about those horrors of unbridled liberty and moral degradation that the press conveys on its pages to everyone, not only to those who visit the new jury trials, granted to us by the current regime.[1] And what do we read almost every day? Oh, we read about things all the time that make the present case pale in comparison and seem like something ordinary. But most important is that the majority of our Russian national criminal acts bear witness to something universal, a general misfortune that has taken root among us, and with which, like with all general evil, it’s difficult to contend.

“One day we see a brilliant young officer of high society, barely at the beginning of his life and career, who vilely, in secret, without any pangs of conscience, murders a low-ranking civil servant, who was in part his benefactor, and his servant, in order to swipe his own promissory note as well as what money he could find on him: ‘It will be useful for my amusements in society and for my career in the future.’ After killing both of them, he places a pillow under the head of each corpse and leaves.

“And there’s a young hero decorated with medals for his bravery who, like a brigand, kills the mother of his superior and benefactor along the highway, then urges his comrades to join him, assuring them that she loves him like her own son, will follow all his advice, and won’t take any precautions.’ Given that he’s a monster, still, right now, in our age, I dare not say that he is the only monster. Even if another one doesn’t kill, he thinks and feels the same way in his soul, and is just as dishonorable. In secret, alone with his conscience, perhaps he asks himself: ‘What is honor anyway and isn’t murder just a prejudice?’

“Perhaps people will protest and say I’m unwell, hysterical, and I’m slandering monstrously, raving, exaggerating. Let them, let them say so—good Lord, I’d be the first to be glad if they did so! Oh, don’t believe me, consider me sick; nevertheless, remember my words: if only a tenth, or even a twentieth of my words were true, then it would still be terrible! Look, gentlemen, look at how our young people are committing suicide: oh, without at least asking Hamlet’s question ‘What will I find beyond?’ and with no sign of such questions, as if all that concerns the soul and what awaits us beyond the grave has long ago been canceled in their nature, buried under sand. Finally, look at our debauchery, at our sensualists. Fyodor Pavlovich, the unfortunate victim in the present case, was almost an innocent child compared with some of them. Yet we all knew him: ‘he lived among us . . .’[2]

“Yes, one day perhaps the leading minds of Russia and Europe will study the psychology of Russian crime, because this subject is well worth it. But this study will take place sometime after, at leisure, when all the tragic topsy-turvydom of the present moment will have receded into the distant past, so that it’s possible to examine it more intelligently and impartially than people like myself, for example, can do. Now, however, we’re either horrified or pretend to be so, while, on the contrary, we savor the spectacle like devotees of strong and eccentric sensations, which excite our cynically pampered indolence, or, at least, like little children, we turn aside from terrible ghosts and hide our heads in our pillows, until the terrifying vision disappears, and forget it later in fun and games. But at one time or another we must begin to lead life in sober seriousness, we must look at ourselves as a society, we must comprehend something of our social position, or at least we must start moving in that direction.

“A great writer of an earlier era, at the end of his greatest work, personifies Russia in the form of a bold, dashing Russian troika galloping toward an unknown destination, and he exclaims: ‘Ah, troika, birdlike troika, who conceived of you?’[3] and he adds with proud ecstasy that all the nations of the world stand aside and give way respectfully to the troika. That may be the case, gentlemen, that they all stand aside, respectfully or not, but in my sinful view, the brilliant writer concludes his book this way either in an outburst of childish and naïve optimism or simply fearing the censorship of that time. Because if the troika were being drawn by his own heroes, the Sobakeviches, Nozdryovs, and Chichikovs, it would be unable to reach any worthwhile goal, no matter who was driving it! And those are merely horses of the previous era, which were much inferior to the horses of today . . .”

Here Ippolit Kirillovich’s speech was interrupted by applause. The liberalism of his depiction of the Russian troika was appreciated. True, the applause was brief, so the chairman didn’t even consider it necessary to turn to the public with a threat to “clear the hall,” and merely glanced sternly in the direction of the claqueurs.[4] But Ippolit Kirillovich was encouraged: he’d never been applauded before! All his life no one had ever wanted to listen to him speak; now suddenly he had a chance to speak to all Russia!

“As a matter of fact,” he continued, “what is this Karamazov family, which has suddenly gained this sad notoriety even throughout all of Russia? Perhaps I’m exaggerating excessively, but it seems to me that certain common fundamental features of our contemporary educated society can be glimpsed in the portrait of this little family—oh, not all the features, and only in microscopic fashion, ‘like the sun in a little drop of water,’[5] but still reflected nonetheless, expressed nevertheless. Look at this unfortunate, intemperate, depraved old man, this ‘paterfamilias’[6] whose existence ended so miserably. Born as a nobleman, beginning his career as an impoverished sponger, he came into a small capital from a dowry in an accidental and unexpected marriage; a petty knave and a smooth-tongued buffoon, with the rudiments of mental ability, sufficient, however, to become a moneylender. With the years, that is, with the growth of his small capital, he grew bolder. His submissive and ingratiating traits disappeared, leaving only his derisive and malicious cynicism. His spiritual side was not fully formed, while his thirst for life was extraordinary. In the end he saw nothing in life but sensual pleasures, and that’s what he taught his children. There were no paternal, spiritual obligations. He made fun of them; he raised his little ones in the backyard, and was glad when they were taken away from him. He even forgot about them completely. The old man’s only moral principle was après moi, le déluge.[7] He was an example of everything opposite to the concept of a citizen, a most complete, even hostile separation from society: “Let the whole world go up in flames, as long as I’m all right.”[8] And he was all right; he was completely content; he was even eager to live the same way for another twenty or thirty years. He fleeced his own son, and with his money, using his inheritance from his mother that he refused to hand over to him, he tried to steal away his lover. No, I don’t want to leave the accused’s defense completely to my highly talented colleague from Petersburg. I will also tell the truth; I understand the enormous amount of resentment that he built up in his son’s heart.

“But, enough, enough about this miserable old man: he has his reward.[9] Let us recall, however, that he was a father, and one of our contemporary fathers. Do I offend society by saying that he is one of our many contemporary fathers? Alas, so many contemporary fathers don’t speak as cynically as he did, because they’re better brought up, better educated, but in essence, they share almost the same philosophy as he had. But even if I’m a pessimist, so be it. We’ve already arranged that you’ll forgive me. Let us agree in advance: you won’t believe what I say, you won’t believe me, you won’t; I’ll speak and you won’t believe me. But allow me to have my say, and don’t forget a thing or two of what I say.

“But now, to the children of this old man, this paterfamilias: one, the defendant, sits here on the bench; the rest of my speech will deal with him; but I’ll say a few words about the others in passing. Of the two, the elder brother is one of the younger generation with a brilliant education, a rather fine mind, who, however, doesn’t believe in anything now; he’s denied, rejected, and negated too much in life, just as his father did. We’ve all heard him; he was cordially received in our society. He didn’t conceal his opinions, even did the opposite, the complete opposite, which gives me the right to speak about him now rather candidly, not about him as an individual, but only about him as a member of the Karamazov family.

“Another person closely connected with this case died yesterday by suicide, at the edge of town, Smerdyakov, a stricken idiot, a former servant, and, perhaps, the illegitimate son of Fyodor Pavlovich. At the preliminary inquiry he told me, through hysterical tears, how this young Karamazov, Ivan Fyodorovich, had horrified him with his spiritual fearlessness. ‘Everything,’ he said, ‘is permitted in this world; nothing should be forbidden in the future; that’s what he kept teaching me.’ It seems that on the basis of this theory, which he’d been taught, the idiot finally lost his mind; of course, the epileptic fits from which he suffered and the terrible catastrophe that befell this house had a major impact on his mental faculties. But that idiot happened to let slip a very interesting observation, one that would do honor even to a more intelligent observer; that’s why I even mention it here. ‘If,’ he said to me, ‘there is one son most like Fyodor Pavlovich in character, it’s he, Ivan Fyodorovich!’

“With this observation I’ll interrupt my sketch of his character, feeling it unseemly to continue. Oh, I don’t wish to draw any further conclusions and croak only ruin, like a raven, over the young man’s fate. We saw in this hall earlier today that the spontaneous power of truth still lives in that young heart and that the feeling of family relationship has yet to be submerged in disbelief and moral cynicism, acquired more by inheritance than through genuine mental anguish.

“Then there’s the other son—oh, he’s still a youth, devout and modest, as opposed to his brother, with his gloomy, corrupted worldview; he seeks to cling to the so-called principles of the people, or to what is referred to by that clever name in certain quarters of our thinking intelligentsia. As you can see, he latched onto the monastery: he himself almost became a monk. He seems to have unconsciously and rashly betrayed the timid despair that leads so many in our poor society, fearing cynicism and depravity, and mistakenly ascribing all this evil to European enlightenment, to throw themselves, as they say, into their ‘native soil,’[10] so to speak, and into the maternal embrace of their native land, like children frightened of ghosts who yearn to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother and there to sleep forever, avoiding their terrifying horrors. For my part, I wish the kind and talented youth all the best; I hope that his childlike idealism and aspiration toward those principles of the people won’t turn into obscure mysticism on the moral side, as so often occurs, or into chauvinism on the civic side—two elements that portend evil to this nation even more than the premature decay caused by European enlightenment falsely understood and needlessly acquired, from which his elder brother suffers.”

Two or three claqueurs began to applaud again at the mention of chauvinism and mysticism. Of course, Ippolit Kirillovich had been carried away, and all this had very little to do with the present case, to say nothing of the fact that it had been expressed imprecisely; but this consumptive and embittered man wanted to have his say at least once in his life. Later it was said that in the character sketch of Ivan Fyodorovich he gave way to an emotion that was unseemly, because Ivan had once or twice publicly taken him down a peg or two in arguments, and Ippolit Kirillovich, remembering this, wanted to get back at him. I don’t know whether this was true. In any case, all of this was just the introduction; then his speech proceeded to the case at hand.

“But, now to come to the third son of this contemporary father,” continued Ippolit Kirillovich, “who’s sitting on the bench of the accused before us. We also have his life, his deeds, and his actions to consider: the time has come and everything has been uncovered, everything has been revealed. As opposed to his two brothers’ ‘Europeanism’ and ‘principles of the people,’ he seems to depict Russia directly—oh, not all of it, not all Russia; God save us if that were true! However, here she is, our dear mother Russia, her own scent and smell. Oh, we’re spontaneous, we’re an astonishing combination of good and evil, we’re lovers of culture and of Schiller, and at the same time we brawl in taverns and we pluck out the beards of our drinking partners. Oh, we can be good and splendid, but only when things are good and splendid for us. On the contrary, we can get carried away—swept off our feet—by the noblest ideals, but only on the condition that they come of their own accord, as if they’d dropped from the heavens, and, mainly, if they’re free and we don’t have to pay for them. We dislike paying for anything; on the other hand, we like to get things for free, and that includes everything. Oh, give us, give us every possible good in life (precisely all of it; we wouldn’t be happy with any less), and, in particular, don’t put any obstacles in our way; then we’ll prove that we, too, can be good and splendid. We’re not greedy, no, but give us some money, more, more, as much as possible, and you’ll see how generously, and with what scorn of contempt for filthy lucre, we can squander it in one night of unrestrained indulgence. And if they won’t give us any money, we’ll show how we can obtain it when we really want to. But about that, later; we’ll deal with all this in order.

“First of all there stands before us a poor, abandoned child, ‘running barefoot around the backyard,’ as our esteemed and respected fellow citizen, a foreigner, expressed it recently! I repeat once more—I won’t yield to anyone in defense of the accused. I’m a prosecutor, but I’m also a counsel for the defense. We are people, human beings, and we can weigh how the first impressions of childhood and the impact of one’s home can influence character. But the boy grows up, becomes a young man, then an officer, and, because of his reckless conduct and a duel, they send him to one of the remote frontier towns of our blessed Russia. He serves there, goes on sprees, and, of course—‘a great ship requires deep water.’ He needs money, sir, money above all else; after many arguments, he settles with his father for his last six thousand rubles, and it’s sent to him. Notice, he signed a document, and a letter exists in which he almost renounces his claim to the rest, and settles his claim against his father with the payment of this six thousand.

“Then he meets a young woman of lofty character and education. Oh, I can’t repeat it in detail—you’ve just heard it all: honor, self-sacrifice, and I’ll pass that by. The image of the young man, frivolous and depraved, but bowing before true nobility, before a noble ideal, flashed before us in an extremely sympathetic light. But suddenly after this, in this very courtroom, there followed, completely unexpectedly, the other side of the coin. Once more, I don’t surmise the reasons why it happened and will refrain from analysis. However, there were reasons. This same person, dissolved in tears of long-standing indignation, informs us that he, he of all men, had despised her for her incautious, reckless perhaps, but still her lofty, magnanimous impulse. And he, the girl’s fiancé, regarded her with a mocking smile, which she couldn’t bear coming from him. Knowing that he’d already betrayed her (betrayed her in the conviction that she’d endure anything from him, even betrayal), knowing this, she intentionally offers him three thousand rubles, and clearly, all too clearly, she lets him know that she is offering him the money to betray her: ‘Well, will you take it? Will you be that cynical?’ she says to him silently with her judgmental and accusatory eyes. He looks at her, understands her thoughts entirely (he himself admitted here before you that he understood everything), and he appropriates the three thousand and squanders it in two days on the new object of his affections!

“What should we believe? The first legend of the young officer, his noble generous impulse, giving away his last means for livelihood and prostrating himself before virtue, or the other side of the coin, which is so repulsive? Usually in life, one has to search for the truth between these two contradictory extremes; in the present case, that is literally not true. Most likely, in the first instance he was sincerely magnanimous, but in the second instance, he was just as sincerely vile. Why? Here’s why: we possess broad natures, Karamazov natures—and that’s where I’m heading—we’re capable of combining all possible contradictions and simultaneously contemplating both abysses at the same time, the abyss above, that of lofty ideals, and the abyss below, that of the most vile and stinking degradation. Recall the brilliant thought expressed earlier by the young Mr. Rakitin, after profoundly and intimately observing the entire Karamazov family: ‘A feeling of their own degradation is just as essential for these unbridled, unrestrained natures as a sense of their lofty nobleness.’ And this is true: this unnatural mixture is precisely what’s constantly needed by them and without interruption. Two abysses, two abysses, gentlemen, at the same time—without that, we’re unhappy and unsatisfied, our existence is incomplete. We’re broad, broad, like our own mother Russia; we accommodate everything and cope with everything!

“By the way, gentlemen of the jury, we just touched on the matter of the three thousand rubles, so I’ll allow myself to jump ahead a little. Just imagine that he, this character, after receiving this money in such a manner, at the price of such shame, such disgrace, and such absolute degradation—imagine that on that very day he was capable of dividing the money in two and sewing half into a little incense bag, and that he then had the strength to carry it around his neck for a whole month, in spite of all temptation and his extreme need! Neither in his drunken sprees in taverns, nor when he was rushing away from town and trying to procure, from God knows where, the funds necessary to carry away his beloved from being tempted by his rival, his father—does he dare to touch the money in that incense bag. Even if only not to leave his beloved to seduction by the old man of whom he was so jealous, he should have opened that little bag and stayed home to keep relentless watch over his beloved, waiting for the moment when she would say to him, ‘I’m yours!’ and he could flee somewhere with her far beyond their fatal present surroundings.

“But no, he didn’t touch his talisman, and what was the reason? The primary reason, as I’ve said, was that once he was told, ‘I’m yours, take me away wherever you want,’ he’d have the means to do so. But this first reason, according to the words of the accused himself, paled before the second reason. ‘As long as I carry around that money,’ he says, ‘I’m a scoundrel, but not a thief, because I can always go to my offended fiancée and place the sum I’ve falsely appropriated before her and say, “You see, I squandered half your money and this proved that I’m an immoral man, and, if you like, a scoundrel’ ” (I’m using the words of the defendant himself); he can say, ‘Yet although I’m a scoundrel, I’m not a thief, because if I were, I wouldn’t have brought you the other half of the money, but would have appropriated it as I did the first half.’ What an astonishing explanation of the facts! This frantic but weak man couldn’t refrain from the temptation to accept three thousand rubles at the risk of such a disgrace—and this same man now suddenly feels the most stoic determination, and carries around thousands of rubles without daring to touch them! Does that correspond at all to the character sketch we have presented? No, and I’ll attempt to present how the real Dmitry Karamazov would’ve behaved in such a case, if he’d actually decided to sew that money into his little incense bag.

“At the very first temptation—for instance, to entertain the woman he’d chosen as his new beloved again, with whom he had squandered the first half of this money—he’d have torn open his little bag and taken from it first one hundred rubles, because why should he have to bring back the exact sum, that is, fifteen hundred rubles; it would be sufficient to return fourteen hundred: he could still claim that he was a scoundrel, but not a thief, if he returned fourteen hundred, while ‘a thief would have appropriated all of the money for himself and returned none of it.’ Then, after a little while, he’d have taken from the bag another hundred, and then a third, and a fourth, and so on, until by the end of the month he’d have taken out the next-to-last hundred; he would tell himself that he’d return the hundred rubles, because it would still show that ‘he was a scoundrel, but not a thief.’ He’d have squandered twenty-nine hundred rubles, and still returned one hundred, whereas ‘a thief wouldn’t have repaid anything at all.’

“Finally, having squandered this next-to-last hundred, he’d have looked at the last hundred-ruble bill and said to himself, ‘There’s no reason to give back this last hundred—I’ll squander it as well!’ That’s how the real Dmitry Karamazov, whom we know well, would’ve behaved! The legend of the incense bag—it’s in such contradiction to reality that we can hardly imagine it. One can imagine anything, but not that. But we’ll return to this later.”

After specifying in order all that was known from the preliminary interrogation concerning the financial quarrels and about the relations between father and son, and once again reaching the conclusion that, according to the known facts, there was not the least possibility of determining who’d cheated whom, Ippolit Kirillovich brought up the medical opinions concerning the three thousand rubles owed to him that had taken root in Mitya’s mind.

1 Jury trials were a part of Alexander II’s judicial reforms of 1864.

2 The first line of a lyric (1834) by Pushkin dedicated to the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz.

3 A reference to Nikolai Gogol’s comic novel, Dead Souls (1842). Ippolit Kirillovich misrepresents the original: Gogol never says “respectfully.”

4 Hired clappers (Fr.).

5 A quotation from a famous ode entitled “God” (1784) by the eighteenth-century poet Gavrila Derzhavin (1743–1816).

6 “Father of a family” (Lat.).

7 “After me, the flood” (Fr.). Attributed to Louis XV of France.

8 Attributed to the Roman emperor Nero.

9 Cf. Matthew 6:5.

10 A group in the 1860s known as the pochvenniki, “men of the soil,” closely tied to the Slavophiles, members of an intellectual movement that wanted Russia to develop in line with values derived from its own early history. Slavophiles opposed the influences of western Europe.

VII

A HISTORICAL SURVEY

“The medical experts have aimed to prove that the defendant is out of his mind and is a maniac. I maintain that he’s in his right mind, and that’s exactly what’s even worse: if he’d been out of his mind, he might’ve behaved with greater intelligence. As to the question of whether he’s a maniac, I would agree, but only on one point—namely, that point also indicated by the medical experts, the defendant’s obsession with the three thousand rubles allegedly owed him by his father. However, perhaps one can find an incomparably simpler explanation for his insanity over this sum of money. For my part, I agree completely with the opinion of the young doctor who concluded that the defendant enjoyed and had enjoyed his normal mental faculties, and that he was merely irritated and embittered. That’s just the point: the defendant’s irritation and bitterness resulted not from the three thousand rubles, not from the actual money; rather it was a unique motive arousing his rage. That motive was jealousy.”

At this point Ippolit Kirillovich revealed the complete picture of the defendant’s fatal passion for Grushenka. He began at the very moment when the defendant went to this “young person’s” lodging to “beat her” (using his own words, explained Ippolit Kirillovich), “but instead of beating her, he remained there at her feet—and that’s how their love began. At the same time the old man, the defendant’s father, was also casting his glance at this young person—an astonishing and fateful coincidence, for both hearts were suddenly kindled simultaneously, although both had met and known this person previously—and these two hearts were inflamed by the most unrestrained, Karamazov-like passion. Here we have her own confession: ‘I was laughing,’ she said, ‘at both of them.’ Yes, she wanted to laugh at both of them; previously she hadn’t wanted to, but all of sudden this intention occurred to her—and it ended when both were smitten at once. The old man, who worshipped money like a god, immediately prepared an envelope for her with three thousand rubles, if only she’d visit him; but he was soon driven to the point where he’d have gladly placed both his property and his name at her feet, if only she’d become his lawful wife. We possess definitive evidence on this point. As far as the defendant is concerned, his tragedy is obvious: it lies before us. But such was the young person’s ‘game.’ The enchantress didn’t even give the unhappy young man any hope—for hope, genuine hope, was given to him only at the very last moment, when, kneeling before his tormentor, he stretched out his arms, already stained with the blood of his father and rival: it was in this position that the defendant was arrested. ‘Send me, send me into exile with him; I drove him to it. I’m the one most to blame,’ the woman herself cried out in sincere remorse at the moment of his arrest.

“The talented young man who’d taken it upon himself to describe the proceedings—the same Mr. Rakitin whom I mentioned earlier—characterized this heroine in a few concise and distinctive terms: ‘Early disillusionment, early deception and fall, betrayal by the seducer and fiancé who deserted her, then poverty, the curse of a decent family, and, finally, the protection of a certain wealthy old man, whom she herself still considers her benefactor. Her young heart may have contained much good, but it harbored bitterness from an early age. She grew calculating and amassed capital. She became sarcastic and began to resent society.’ In light of this character sketch, it is clear why she could laugh at both the father and the son solely for the sake of a game, a spiteful game.

“And during that month of hopeless love, moral disgrace, betrayal of his fiancée, the appropriation of money entrusted to his honor—the defendant was driven almost to a frenzy, to madness, from unceasing jealousy, and of whom? Of his father! And the worst part was that the crazy old man was tempting and enticing the object of his passion—with that very same three thousand rubles that the son considered his own property, the inheritance from his mother, out of which his father was cheating him. Yes, I agree that this was hard to bear! It might well drive a man to mania! It was not the money itself; rather, the fact that the money was being used with such sickening cynicism to destroy his happiness.”

Then Ippolit Kirillovich went on to describe how the idea of patricide gradually developed in the mind of the accused, and he used the evidence to support it.

“At first we only talked about it in taverns—talked about it for an entire month. Oh, we do love to live among other people and disclose to them even our most infernal and dangerous ideas; we love to share, for some reason, every thought with others, and we demand that they respond with complete sympathy, enter into all our cares and worries, support us, and not object to anything. Otherwise we become angry and wreck the entire tavern. (There followed the episode with Captain Snegiryov.) Those who saw and heard the defendant during that month felt at last that this might end in more than just shouts and threats against his father, and that such frenzy might indeed develop into action.” (Here the prosecutor described the family gathering in the monastery, conversations with Alyosha, and the terrible scene of violence at his father’s house, when the defendant came rushing in right after dinner.)

“I can’t claim,” continued Ippolit Kirillovich, “that before this scene the accused had intended with deliberation and premeditation to murder his father. Nevertheless, this idea had occurred to him more than once; he’d contemplated it—we have evidence, witnesses, and his own testimony to support this contention. I confess, gentlemen of the jury,” he added, “that I hesitated even until today to ascribe to the defendant conscious premeditation of the crime that was suggesting itself to him. I was firmly convinced that his soul had imagined the fateful moment many times in advance, but had merely imagined it, contemplating it only as a possibility, but hadn’t yet decided on a time and place to carry it out.

“But I hesitated only until today, until this fateful document was presented to the court by Miss Verkhovtseva. You yourselves heard, gentlemen, her exclamation: ‘It was the plan, the program of the murder!’ That’s how she described the unhappy defendant’s unfortunate ‘drunken’ letter. And, in fact, from that letter we can see the entire implication of his program and his premeditation. It was written two days before the crime, and, thus, we know for certain that two days before the implementation of his terrible plan, the defendant swore that if he couldn’t procure the money the next day, he’d kill his father to take from him the money under his pillow, ‘wrapped in a packet and tied with a pink ribbon, as soon as Ivan left town.’ Listen: ‘as soon as Ivan left town’—so he’d thought it all out, weighing all the circumstances—and then what? Everything was carried out just as he’d described! Premeditation and careful planning without question; the murder was to be committed for the purpose of robbery; that was declared openly, written, and signed. The defendant doesn’t deny his own signature.

“They’ll say he was drunk when he wrote it. But that doesn’t diminish the importance of the letter; quite the contrary; it makes it more important: in his drunken state he wrote what he’d conceived when sober. If he hadn’t planned it when he was sober, he never could’ve written it while drunk. Perhaps they’ll ask: why did he go around shouting about his intentions in taverns? A person who premeditates such a crime remains silent and keeps it to himself. True, but he shouted it before it was a plan or an intention; it was merely a desire, an impulse that was maturing. Afterward he talked about it less and less. That evening when the letter was written, after having gotten drunk in the Capital City tavern, contrary to his custom, he was reserved; he didn’t play billiards, sat to one side, spoke with no one, and merely drove a local shopkeeper from his seat, but he did that almost unconsciously, out of habit, because he could never enter a tavern without creating a disturbance. It’s true that after he reached the final decision, the defendant had to feel anxiety over having said too much in town about his plan beforehand, aware that this could very well result in his arrest and prosecution after he carried out his plan. But what was to be done? The publicity was now a fact; he couldn’t take back his words; things had always worked out before, and something would turn up and work out now as well. We believed in our lucky star, gentlemen! I must also confess that he’d done a great deal to avoid the bloody outcome. ‘Tomorrow I shall ask to borrow three thousand rubles from all the people I know,’ he wrote in his own language, ‘and if they don’t lend it to me, then blood will be shed.’ Once again it was written in a drunken state, and once again it was carried out in a sober state, just as he’d planned.”

Here Ippolit Kirillovich turned to a detailed description of Mitya’s efforts to procure the money for himself to avoid committing the crime. He described his visit to Samsonov, his journey to Lyagavy—all according to the evidence. “Exhausted, ridiculed, hungry, having sold his watch to pay for the journey (although he claims to have had fifteen hundred rubles on his person—allegedly, oh, allegedly), suffering from jealousy, but having left the object of his love in town, suspecting that in his absence, she’d go to see Fyodor Pavlovich, he returned to town at last. Thank God! She hadn’t been to see Fyodor Pavlovich. He himself accompanies her to see her benefactor, Samsonov. (Strange to say, he wasn’t jealous of Samsonov, and this psychological peculiarity is characteristic of this case!) Then he hastens to his observation post in the back garden, and there—there he learns that Smerdyakov’s suffering an epileptic fit, that the other servant’s ill—the coast is clear and he knows the ‘signals’—what a temptation! Nevertheless, he still resists; he goes to see Madame Khokhlakova, the widely respected lady who has recently been living in town. For some time she’d been observing his course with sympathy; this lady offers him a most judicious piece of advice: to forsake all his binges, his unseemly love, his loitering in taverns, the fruitless waste of his young strengths, and to set off to Siberia to the gold mines: ‘That would be a channel for your impressive strengths,’ she says, ‘your romantic character, and your thirst for adventure.’ ”

After describing the outcome of this conversation and that moment when the defendant suddenly received the news that Grushenka hadn’t been to see Samsonov at all, and having described the sudden frenzy of the unfortunate, jealous man, his nerves shattered by the thought that she’d deceived him and was now with Fyodor Pavlovich, Ippolit Kirillovich concluded by drawing attention to the fateful role played by chance: “If the maid had told him that Grushenka was in Mokroye with her former and indisputable lover, then nothing at all would’ve happened. But she was taken aback by terror and began to curse and blaspheme; if the defendant didn’t kill the maid right then and there, it was only because he went rushing off in pursuit of the woman who’d betrayed him.

“But note: as frantic as he was, he took a brass pestle with him. Why exactly a pestle? Why not some other weapon? But if we’d been pondering this scheme for a whole month and preparing for it, we’d grab anything resembling a weapon that happened to flash before our eyes. So without any hesitation, we realized the pestle would serve our purpose. So it was by no means unconsciously or involuntarily that he seized upon this fateful pestle.

“And then we find him in his father’s garden—the coast is clear, there are no witnesses, it’s dead of night—darkness and jealousy. The suspicion that she is there, with him, with his rival, in his arms, and perhaps laughing at him at that very moment—takes his breath away. And it is not mere suspicion—why even talk of suspicion?—the deception is manifest, obvious: she is there, in that very room where the light is shining; she is there, behind the screen—the unfortunate man sneaks up to the window, glances in respectfully, and withdraws discreetly, thus quickly avoiding any trouble. He wants us to believe this, knowing his character, understanding his state of mind, one known to us from the facts, and the main thing, being in possession of the signals that enabled him to enter the house!”

At this point Ippolit Kirillovich decided to let the prosecution rest for some time and found it necessary to expand on the subject of Smerdyakov, to undermine completely the superfluous episode regarding the suspicion that Smerdyakov was connected with the murder, and dismiss this idea once and for all. He did this extremely thoroughly, and everyone understood that in spite of the contempt he showed for this suspicion, he nevertheless considered it very important.

VIII

A TREATISE ON SMERDYAKOV

“In the first place, where did the possibility of such suspicion originate?” Ippolit Kirillovich began with this question. “The first person to begin hollering that Smerdyakov was the murderer was the defendant himself, at the moment of his arrest; however, neither at that time nor since then has he presented a single fact in support of his accusation—not only not a single fact, but not even a suggestion that might be considered a fact by any rational human being. Only three individuals have subsequently confirmed his accusation: the two brothers of the accused and Miss Svetlova. But the elder of the two brothers declared his suspicion only today, and when gravely ill, while he was undoubtedly suffering from brain fever. But we know for certain that during the last two months he’s shared our conviction in his brother’s guilt, and didn’t even wish to contradict that idea. But we’ll deal with this fact later.

“The defendant’s younger brother just admitted that he has no facts whatever to support his belief in Smerdyakov’s guilt, and that he was led to that conclusion only by the defendant’s own words and by ‘the expression of his face’—yes, this colossal bit of evidence has been mentioned twice today by his brother. Whereas Miss Svetlova expressed herself in even more colossal terms: ‘You must believe whatever the defendant says; he’s not the sort to lie.’ This is all the factual evidence against Smerdyakov from these three people, too involved in the fate of the defendant. Meanwhile, the accusation against Smerdyakov has persisted, been maintained, and is still being maintained now. . . . Can it be believed? Can it even be imagined?”

Here Ippolit Kirillovich found it necessary to describe briefly the character of the late Smerdyakov, “who’d cut short his life in a fit of morbid derangement and insanity.” He presented him as a feebleminded man with a dim smattering of education, confounded by philosophical ideas way above his head and frightened by certain contemporary theories concerning duty and obligation, in which he’d been thoroughly initiated in practice through the rash life of his master and maybe even his father, Fyodor Pavlovich, and, theoretically, by various philosophical conversations with his master’s middle son, Ivan Fyodorovich, who willingly indulged this diversion—probably out of boredom or for his own amusement, since he was unable to find a better object for his mockery. “He himself spoke to me about his spiritual condition during his last days in his master’s house,” Ippolit Kirillovich explained, “but other people corroborate this as well: the defendant himself, his brother, and even the servant Grigory, that is, all those who knew him well.

“Furthermore, Smerdyakov, whose health was compromised by epilepsy, was ‘as cowardly as a chicken.’ ‘He fell at my feet and kissed them,’ the defendant told us before he’d realized how detrimental that statement would be to himself. ‘He was an epileptic chicken,’ he said in his own characteristic language. And yet the defendant chose him for his confidant (he said so himself), and he frightened him so much that he agreed to act as his spy and informant. In this capacity as a domestic snitch, he betrays his master and reveals to the defendant the existence of the packet of money and the signals with which he could gain entrance to his master’s house. How could he refuse to tell him? ‘He’d kill me, sir! I could see that he’d kill me, sir!’ he said during the preliminary interrogation, quaking and shaking even before us, though by that time his threatening tormentor was under arrest and couldn’t return to punish him. ‘He suspected me constantly, sir; I hurried in fear and trembling to tell him every secret to placate his anger, sir, so he could see that I was innocent, sir, and might let me live.’ Those are his very own words; I noted them down and committed them to memory. ‘When he began shouting at me, I would fall down on my knees before him.’

“Being a very honest young man by nature, enjoying his master’s complete confidence, and after having returned some money to him that he’d lost, the unfortunate Smerdyakov, it must be supposed, was terribly tormented by remorse at having deceived his master, whom he loved as his own benefactor. According to respected psychiatrists, people suffering from severe epilepsy are always inclined toward constant and, of course, morbid self-blame. They’re tormented by their ‘guilt’ over something or someone; they suffer from pangs of conscience, often with no basis, exaggerating and even inventing all sorts of faults and crimes. And here we have a man of that type who felt real guilt and became criminally implicated, through fear and intimidation.

“Besides, he had a strong premonition that something bad would result from the circumstances that he saw developing before his eyes. When Fyodor Pavlovich’s middle son, Ivan Fyodorovich, was about to leave for Moscow before the catastrophe, Smerdyakov implored him to stay, however not daring, because of his timid nature, to indicate clearly and categorically what he feared might happen. He limited himself to hints, but those hints were not understood. We must observe that Smerdyakov regarded Ivan Fyodorovich as his defender, a man whose presence in the house would guarantee that no harm would ever come to him. Recall a phrase in Dmitry Karamazov’s ‘drunken’ letter, ‘I’ll kill the old man if Ivan leaves’; therefore Ivan’s presence seemed to everyone to be a guarantee of peace and quiet in the household.

“And then he went away; almost within an hour of his young master’s departure, Smerdyakov suffers an epileptic fit. But that was completely understandable. We must recall here that, depressed by terror and a kind of despair, in those last few days Smerdyakov had a particular sense of the possibility of experiencing an epileptic seizure, something that had always previously occurred to him at moments of moral anxiety and distress. Of course, it’s impossible to predict the date and time of these attacks, but every epileptic can feel beforehand that a fit might occur. Medicine confirms this fact.

“So as soon as Ivan Fyodorovich left for Moscow, Smerdyakov, feeling that he’d been left an orphan, so to speak, and without a defender, goes about his household chores to the cellar; he goes down the stairs wondering, ‘Will I have a fit or not, and what will happen if I do?’ And it was precisely that frame of mind, that uncertainty about all these questions, that brought on a spasm in his throat, which always precedes an epileptic fit, and he falls headlong down the stairs, unconscious, onto the cellar floor. And in this perfectly natural occurrence, people contrive to see something suspicious, some indication, and some hint that he intentionally pretended to be ill! But if that was on purpose, a question arises at once: For what purpose? From what calculation? With what goal? I’m not saying anything about medicine; science, they say, tells lies, science deceives, doctors have been unable to distinguish between truth and prevarication—so be it, so be it; but answer me one question: for what reason would he dissemble? Could he have been plotting the murder and wishing to attract in advance the attention of those in the household by having a fit just before committing the crime?

“You see, gentlemen of the jury, there were or had been at one time or another five people in Fyodor Pavlovich’s house on the night of the crime: first, Fyodor Pavlovich himself—but it’s clear that he didn’t kill himself; second, his servant Grigory, but he himself was almost killed; third, Grigory’s wife, Marfa Ignatyevna, but it’s simply shameful to imagine her as her master’s murderer. Therefore, two people are left to consider: the defendant and Smerdyakov. But since the defendant maintains that he didn’t kill his father, it had to be Smerdyakov; there’s no other alternative, because it’s impossible to find anyone else; you can’t come up with any other culprit. That’s what explains this ‘ingenious’ and colossal accusation against the unfortunate idiot who took his own life yesterday! Precisely because there was no one else to blame! If there were a shadow of suspicion about anyone else, some sixth person, I’m convinced that the defendant himself would be embarrassed to accuse Smerdyakov, and would impugn this sixth person, because to accuse Smerdyakov of this crime is completely absurd.

“Gentlemen, let’s forsake psychology, medicine, even logic itself, and turn to the facts, the facts alone, and see what the facts can tell us. If Smerdyakov killed him, how did he do it? Alone or conspiring with the defendant? Let’s begin with the first alternative: Smerdyakov killed him acting alone. Of course, if he did it, what was his motive? What did he hope to gain? But having no trace of a motive to murder, such as the defendant had, that is, hatred, jealousy, and so on, without doubt Smerdyakov could kill him only for the money, to appropriate for himself the three thousand rubles, which he’d seen, as the master was wrapping up his packet. And so, having planned the murder, he informs another person—and one most intimately involved, namely, the defendant—of all the circumstances concerning the money and the signals: where the packet was hidden, what precisely was written on it, how it was wrapped, and the main thing, the main thing, he told him about those ‘signals,’ by means of which he could gain access to his master’s room. Well, did he do this simply to betray himself or find a rival, someone who might want to gain entrance and procure the packet of money? Yes, they’ll say that he told him out of fear. But how could that be? A person who could conceive of such a daring and ruthless plan and then implement it divulges facts that he alone in the whole world knows and that, if he’d only remained silent, no one in the whole world would ever have guessed.

“No, no matter how cowardly this man was, if he’d conceived of such a crime, never would he have told a soul about the packet of money and the signals, because that would mean giving himself away beforehand. He’d have invented something on purpose, he’d have told a lie, if they’d demanded the facts from him, or he’d have kept silent! On the contrary, I repeat, if he’d kept quiet only about the money, and then killed Fyodor Pavlovich and taken it for himself, no one in the whole world would ever have accused him of murder for the sake of robbery, since no one else had seen the money beside him, no one knew that it even existed in the house. Even if he’d been accused of murder, it could only have been assumed that he killed for some other motive, and not for the money. But since no one had been aware of any other motives beforehand, and, on the contrary, everyone saw that he was beloved by his master and considered honest by his master, then of course he’d be the last to be suspected; people would’ve suspected someone who had these motives, who’d declared that he had these motives, and who didn’t hide them; in a word, they’d have suspected the son of the murdered man, Dmitry Fyodorovich. If Smerdyakov had killed and robbed him, and if the son had been accused of the crime—wouldn’t that have been advantageous for Smerdyakov the murderer? Are we supposed to believe that Smerdyakov, having planned the murder, tells his master’s son Dmitry in advance about the money, the packet, and the signals—is this logical? Is this clear?

“The day arrives for the murder planned by Smerdyakov: first he falls down the cellar stairs, feigning an epileptic fit, but for what purpose? Of course, in the first place, so that Grigory, who was intending to take his medicine, seeing that no one was left on guard, would postpone his treatment and remain to secure the house. In the second place, of course, so that the master himself, seeing that no one was protecting him, and terrified at the thought that his son might appear, which he didn’t conceal, intensified both his watchfulness and his caution. Finally, and primarily, of course, so that Smerdyakov, incapacitated by his fit, would at once be carried out of the kitchen, where he always slept, apart from the others, and where he had his own entrance and exit at the other end of the lodge, to Grigory’s cottage, separated by a screen, three paces from his own bed, as always, from time immemorial, whenever he suffered a fit, but arranged by the master and the kindhearted Marfa Ignatyevna. There, lying behind the screen, most likely trying to pretend to be ill, he began to moan, of course, keeping them awake all night (according to the testimony of both Grigory and his wife)—and all of this, all of it so that he could suddenly get up and more conveniently murder his master!

“But they’ll tell me, perhaps, that he intentionally feigned illness so as not to be suspected, and told the defendant about the money and the signals precisely to tempt him to come and commit the murder; and, don’t you see, that after killing him, he’d leave and take the money, making noise and a commotion to rouse the witnesses; then, don’t you see, Smerdyakov himself would get up and go in? He’d enter to kill the master a second time and carry the money off again. Ladies and gentlemen, you’re laughing! I’m even ashamed to make these suggestions; meanwhile, just imagine, this is precisely what the defendant’s claiming. After he’d left the house, knocked Grigory down, and raised the alarm, Smerdyakov got up, went in, killed him, and robbed him. I won’t insist on the point that Smerdyakov could hardly have worked all this out beforehand, as if on his fingers, and have foreseen that the agitated and frantic son would come merely to glance respectfully into the window; and, though he was in possession of the signals, he’d then retreat, leaving him, Smerdyakov, all the booty! Gentlemen of the jury, I pose this question seriously: when was the moment at which Smerdyakov committed the crime? Point it out to me, because without it, no conviction is possible.

“But perhaps the fit really was genuine. The patient suddenly came to, heard the scream, and went out. Well, what then? He looked around and said to himself, ‘Why not go in and kill the master?’ How did he know what had already happened, since he’d been lying there unconscious? But, gentlemen, there has to be a limit to fantasy.

“ ‘Yes, sir,’ shrewd people will say, ‘but what if the two were acting in concert, murdered him together, and were sharing the loot? Then what?’

“Yes, that’s really a serious suspicion, and, in the first place, the facts substantiating it are colossal: one of them commits the crime and takes on all the work, while the accomplice lies there on his side, feigning an epileptic fit—precisely to arouse suspicion in everyone, apprehension in his master, and alarm in Grigory. It would be interesting to know what motives the two partners would’ve had to concoct such an insane plan. Perhaps it wasn’t a case of active complicity on Smerdyakov’s part, but simply passive acceptance as a result of his long suffering: perhaps a frightened Smerdyakov agreed not to prevent the murder; foreseeing that he’d be blamed for letting his master be killed, he didn’t scream and didn’t object—having gained in advance Dmitry Karamazov’s permission to feign a fit and telling him, ‘You may do as you like; it’s none of my business.’ But even if this were true, this epileptic fit would surely have created chaos in the house; foreseeing this, Dmitry Karamazov could never have agreed to such a plan. But I concede the point—let’s suppose he did agree; then it would still turn out that Dmitry Karamazov was the murderer, the outright murderer, and the instigator, while Smerdyakov was merely a passive participant, and not even that, but he’d merely acquiesced out of fear and against his will; but the court would certainly be able to distinguish that, and so, what do we see? As soon as he’s arrested, the defendant immediately places all the blame on Smerdyakov alone, and accuses him alone of committing the crime. He doesn’t accuse him of being an accomplice, but of acting alone: ‘He did it by himself, he killed and robbed, it’s the work of his hands!’ So much for the two partners, who immediately begin to accuse each other of the crime—it simply can’t be. And note what the risk is for Karamazov: he’s the primary murderer, while Smerdyakov is merely the accessory lying behind the screen, and Dmitry casts the blame on the poor invalid. But the patient in bed might have resented it and might well have confessed the truth out of self-preservation: both participated, he says, but I didn’t kill him; I merely concurred and allowed it to happen out of fear. After all, Smerdyakov could understand that the court would distinguish between degrees of culpability and, therefore, could consider that if it were to punish him, it would be far less severely than the actual murderer who was hoping to cast blame on him. But in that case he’d have been sure to confess. But he hasn’t done so. Smerdyakov didn’t even hint at complicity, in spite of the fact that the murderer deliberately persisted in accusing him and declaring that he alone had committed the crime.

“Moreover: at the preliminary inquiry Smerdyakov revealed that he himself had told the defendant about the packet of money and the signals, and that without him, Dmitry Fyodorovich would have known nothing about them. If he’d really been an accomplice and guilty, would he have revealed that fact so openly at the inquiry, that is, that he himself had told the defendant? On the contrary, he’d have tried to obscure and distort the facts and minimize them. But he didn’t distort or minimize them. Only an innocent man who had no fear of being accused of complicity could do that. And thus yesterday, in a bout of melancholy as a result of his epilepsy, and this catastrophe, he hanged himself. He left a note written in his own particular language: ‘I’m destroying my life by my own will and desire—no one else is to blame.’ What would it have cost him to add in his note: ‘I’m the murderer and not Karamazov’? But he didn’t do that. Was it that his conscience led him to do one thing but not the other?

“And then what happened? The sum of three thousand rubles was just brought into court, ‘the very same money,’ Ivan Fyodorovich says, ‘that was in the packet, on the table with the material evidence, which he received from Smerdyakov yesterday,’ he says. But you, gentlemen of the jury, you yourselves remember the recent sorrowful scene here. I won’t retell the details, but will only allow myself to make two or three remarks, selecting the most significant, which might not be obvious to everyone and might have been overlooked. In the first place and once again: from pangs of conscience Smerdyakov gave the money back yesterday and then hanged himself. (Because without those pangs of conscience, he never would’ve returned the money.) And, of course, only yesterday evening did he confess the crime for the first time to Ivan Fyodorovich, as he himself stated; if it were not the case, why would he have kept silent up to now? And so, he confessed, why? I repeat once again: why didn’t he reveal the whole truth in his last note, knowing that the innocent defendant would stand trial the next day?

“The money alone is no proof. A week ago a certain fact came to my attention inadvertently, namely that Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov had sent two five-percent notes worth five thousand rubles each, for a total of ten thousand, to be cashed in the chief town of the province. I mention this only to show that anyone can have money at any time, and that bringing in three thousand rubles to court in no way constitutes proof that it was the same money concealed in Fyodor Pavlovich’s drawer or packet.

“Finally, after receiving such an important message from the actual murderer, Ivan Karamazov does absolutely nothing. Why didn’t he report it at once? Why did he postpone it until the next morning? I assume I have the right to guess why: his health had been declining for the last week and he’d told the doctor and his nearest and dearest that he was seeing apparitions, and was encountering specters of the dead; on the eve of his attack of brain fever, which struck him down only today, he suddenly learned about Smerdyakov’s suicide, and suddenly reached the following conclusion: ‘The man’s dead; I can blame it all on him and thus will save my brother.’ Furthermore: ‘I have some money: I’ll take some and say that Smerdyakov gave it to me before his death.’ You’ll say that this is dishonorable: that it’s dishonorable to slander the dead, even to save one’s own brother. True, but what if he’d slandered him unconsciously? What if he himself was finally deranged by the sudden news of the lackey’s death? You saw the recent scene and the condition of this witness. He stood on his own two legs and spoke, but where was his mind? The earlier testimony of a man stricken with brain fever was followed by a document, a letter by the defendant to Miss Verkhovtseva, written two days before the crime with a complete outline of the murder. Why, then, are we searching for any other plan and the person who conceived it? The crime was committed precisely according to this outline, and it was committed by the person who’d conceived it.

“Yes, gentlemen of the jury, the ‘plan was carried out smoothly’! We didn’t run away respectfully and apprehensively from our father’s window, although we were firmly convinced that the object of our affections was now inside. No, that’s absurd and contrary to fact! He entered and committed the act. He probably murdered in anger, burning with resentment; he merely looked at his hated rival, and after killing him with one stroke of the brass pestle, and having convinced himself after a thorough search that she wasn’t there, he still didn’t forget to stick his hand under the pillow and find the envelope with the money, the torn wrapper of which now lies before us on the table with the material evidence.

“I’m saying this so that you’ll note one circumstance, extremely characteristic, in my opinion. If he’d been an experienced killer and one whose primary aim was robbery—would he have left the torn envelope on the floor, where it was found next to the body? Had it been Smerdyakov, for instance, who killed to rob, he simply would have taken the entire packet with him, not troubling to open it while standing over the corpse of his victim; since he’d known for sure that it contained the money—after all, it was placed there and sealed in his presence—if he’d taken it, no one would’ve ever known about the robbery.

“I ask you, gentlemen of the jury, would Smerdyakov have acted in this way, leaving the envelope on the floor? No, this was the action of a desperate murderer, one whose reasoning was already inadequate, a murderer, not a thief, and someone who’d never stolen anything before, and who’d taken the money from under the pillow not like a thief stealing it but, rather, like someone who was retrieving his own property from a thief—because that’s exactly what Dmitry Karamazov thought about those three thousand rubles that had become an obsession. Seizing the packet, which he’d never seen before, he tears off the wrapping to ascertain whether it contains the money, then runs away with the money in his pocket, forgetting that he’d left a colossal piece of evidence against himself on the floor in the form of the torn packet. All of this because it was Karamazov and not Smerdyakov: he doesn’t think, he doesn’t reflect—how could he? He runs away, he hears once again the cry of the servant overtaking him; the servant grabs hold of him, stops him, and falls down, struck by the brass pestle.

“The defendant, moved by pity, rushes over to him. Imagine, he suddenly assures us that he jumped down out of pity, out of compassion, to see if he could somehow help him. Was that a time to show compassion like that? No, he jumped down to see whether the only witness to his crime was still alive. Every other feeling, every other motive would have been unnatural! Note that he takes pains over Grigory, wipes his head with his handkerchief, and, after being convinced that he is dead, and stunned and covered in blood, he runs once again to his mistress’s house—how was it that he never thought about being covered in blood or that he would be found out? But the defendant himself assures us that he didn’t even pay any attention to the fact that he was covered in blood; that point may be conceded, it’s very possible; it often occurs at such times with criminals. On the one hand, there’s diabolical calculation; on the other, insufficient consideration. But at the time he was thinking about only one thing: where was she? He had to find out as soon as possible where she was, so he rushed to her lodging and discovered an unexpected and colossal piece of news: she’d left for Mokroye to join her ‘former’ and ‘rightful’ lover.”

IX

PSYCHOLOGY FULL STEAM AHEAD. THE GALLOPING TROIKA.

The Prosecutor’s Finale.

Reaching this point in his speech, Ippolit Kirillovich, who’d chosen a rigorously historical method of exposition favored by all nervous orators deliberately seeking strict limits to restrain their impatient fervor—Ippolit Kirillovich expanded in particular on the subject of the “former” and “rightful” lover and offered several interesting observations on this theme.

“Karamazov, jealous of all other men to the point of frenzy, suddenly and immediately collapses and vanishes before this ‘former’ and ‘rightful’ lover. It’s all the more curious that previously he’d paid hardly any attention to this new danger, looming into sight in the person of this unexpected rival. But he’d regarded him as a remote threat; Karamazov always lives only in the present moment. Very likely he considered him no more than a fiction. But he understood instantly with his wounded heart that perhaps this rival’s importance was why the woman had been concealing him and deceiving him before, and that this new rival was anything but a fantasy or a fiction, and represented the one hope of her life; grasping this instantly, he submitted.

“Why, gentlemen of the jury, I can’t help dwelling on this unexpected trait in the defendant’s soul; he might have been thought incapable of manifesting it. He suddenly demonstrates an implacable need for truth, respect for a woman, recognizing the rights of her heart, and when? At the very moment when he’d stained his hands with his father’s blood for her sake! It’s also true that the spilled blood was already crying out for revenge; because, after having ruined his life in this world and his earthly existence, he was forced to experience and to ask himself at that time: What does he, Mitya, mean and what could he now mean to her, this being dearer to him than his own soul, in comparison with her ‘former’ and ‘rightful’ lover, who’d repented and returned with renewed love to the woman he’d once betrayed, now with an honorable offer and the promise of a renewed and happy life?

“Karamazov understood all this, understood that his crime had blocked all roads for him and that he was merely a criminal to be sentenced, not a man who could live life! This thought overwhelmed and devastated him. He adopted a frantic plan instantly, which, given his character, couldn’t help but seem like the single and fateful escape from his terrible predicament. This escape was suicide. He rushes to reclaim the pistols that he’d pawned with the civil servant Perkhotin; along the way he pulls all his money out of his pocket, for the sake of which he’d stained his hands with his father’s blood. Oh, he needed money now more than ever: Karamazov would die; Karamazov would shoot himself, and this would be remembered! Not for nothing are we a poet, not for nothing have we burned our life like a candle from both ends. ‘To her, to her—and there, oh, there, I shall provide a feast for the whole world, such as no one has ever seen, so they’ll remember it and talk about it for a long time to come. In the midst of the shouting and the wild gypsy songs and dances, we’ll raise our glass and drink to the new happiness of the woman we adore; right then and there, at her feet, we’ll shoot our brains out and take our own life! She’ll remember Mitya Karamazov for some time; she’ll see how he loved her, and she’ll feel sorry for him!’

“Very picturesque, much romantic ecstasy, the wild Karamazov lack of restraint, and sentimentality—well, there’s also something else, gentlemen of the jury, something that cries out in his soul, throbs constantly in his mind, and poisons his heart to death; this something—is conscience, gentlemen of the jury, it’s judgment, with its terrible torments. But the pistol will solve everything; the pistol’s the only way out; there’s no other way, and there—I don’t know if at that moment Karamazov pondered, ‘What will I find there?’ And whether a Karamazov, like Hamlet, could even think about what he would find. No, gentlemen of the jury, they have their Hamlets, while we still have only our Karamazovs!”

At this point Ippolit Kirillovich painted a most detailed picture of Mitya’s preparations, first the scene with Perkhotin, then in the shop, then with the cab drivers. He quoted an enormous number of words, sayings, gestures, all confirmed by witnesses—and this picture made a terrible impression on the audience. The main thing was the strength of all the facts. The guilt of this frenzied, chaotic man who no longer cared about his own welfare was incontrovertibly displayed.

“There was no reason for him to take precautions,” said Ippolit Kirillovich. “Two or three times he almost confessed to the crime himself, hinting, and almost divulging himself (there followed the evidence of the witnesses). He even shouted to the cab driver along the way, ‘You know, you’re driving a murderer?’ Even so, he was unable to reveal all: he had to get to Mokroye first and complete his poem. But what awaited this unfortunate man? The point is that almost from the first minutes in Mokroye he sees, and at last he understands completely, that his ‘rightful’ rival might not be that ‘rightful,’ and that no congratulations on her new happiness nor a raised cup for a toast would be desired from him or even accepted. But, gentlemen of the jury, you know the facts already from the preliminary investigation. Karamazov’s victory over his rival was indisputable, and here—oh, here began a completely new phase, perhaps the most terrible of all that this soul experienced or would ever experience!

“One may state with certainty, gentlemen of the jury,” exclaimed Ippolit Kirillovich, “that offended nature and the criminal heart achieve their vengeance more than any worldly justice! Moreover: justice and earthly punishment can even relieve nature’s punishment and are even necessary for the criminal’s soul in those moments as salvation from despair, because I can’t imagine Karamazov’s horror and moral suffering when he found out that she really loved him, Mitya, and that for his sake she’d rejected her ‘first’ and ‘rightful’ lover; now she was summoning him, him, ‘Mitya’ to a new life, promising him happiness, and when? When everything was finished and nothing more was possible!

“By the way, I’ll note in passing one extremely important fact for the light it sheds on the real essence of the defendant’s position at that time: this woman, his love for her, even to the very moment of his arrest, had remained for him an unattainable creature, passionately desired, but unattainable. But why, why didn’t he shoot himself at that moment? Why did he forsake that decision he’d made formerly and even forget where his pistol was? It was his passionate desire for love and hope for receiving it then that appeased and restrained him. In the excitement of the feast he clung to his beloved paramour, who was also carousing with him, more charming and seductive than ever—he doesn’t leave her; he admires her and melts before her. This passionate thirst could even suppress for a moment not only the fear of arrest, but even the pangs of conscience! But for a moment, oh, only for a moment!

“I can imagine the criminal’s state of mind at the time, undeniably enslaved to three elements: first, the influence of drink, of intoxication and excitement, the stamping of the dances, the screeching of the songs, while she, she, flushed from the wine, singing and dancing, was laughing to him! In the second place, the encouraging but remote hope that the fateful denouement was still far way, or at least not imminent, and that not until the next morning would they come to arrest him. Therefore, he had several hours, and that was much, much! He could think up many things in several hours. I imagine that he experienced something of what criminals feel when they’re being led out to execution, to the gallows: they still have to go a long, long way, at the pace of a horse’s walk, past thousands of people, then they’ll turn, and only at the end of that street stands the terrible place of execution! It seems to me that at the beginning of the procession, the condemned man, sitting on that infamous cart, must feel that an endless life still lies before him. But then the houses recede, the cart advances—oh, it’s still nothing, it’s still very far to the turning into the second street, and he’s looking boldly to the right and the left at these thousands of curious people, their eyes focused on him, and he still fantasizes that he’s a man just like they are. But suddenly there’s the turn into the other street—oh! it’s nothing; there’s one whole street left. And no matter how many houses have passed, he’ll still be thinking: ‘There are still many houses left.’ And so on until the end of the street, to the square.[1]

“This, I imagine, was how it was with Karamazov at the time. ‘They haven’t had time,’ he thinks, ‘it’s still possible to find a way out; oh, there’s still time to devise a plan of defense, to conceive of resistance, but now, now—she’s so captivating!’ His soul’s confused and frightful; however, he manages to put aside and conceal half his money—‘otherwise I can’t explain to myself where half of the three thousand rubles went that I took from under my father’s pillow.’ He’d been in Mokroye several times before; he’d been there on a spree lasting two days. He knew this big, old wooden house, with all its barns and galleries. I suppose that part of the money was concealed then, in that house, not long before his arrest, in some crack or crevice, under the floorboards, somewhere in a corner, under the roof—for what? Why? The catastrophe could occur right now; of course we still didn’t know how to meet it, and there wasn’t time to do so; our head was throbbing and our heart was longing to be with her, and what of the money? Money’s essential in any situation! A man with money is always a man. Perhaps such calculation at such a moment seems unnatural to you? But he assures us that even a month beforehand, at another anxious and fateful moment, he set aside half that three thousand and sewed it up in a small incense bag, and if, of course, this isn’t true, which we’ll now prove, it shows that the idea was familiar to Karamazov; he’d contemplated it. Moreover, when he assured the investigator afterward that he’d placed fifteen hundred rubles in the little bag (which never happened), perhaps he came up with the idea of this incense bag instantly, because two hours before he’d divided the money and hidden half somewhere in Mokroye, just in case, until the morning, so as not to have the money now in his possession, following a momentary inspiration. Two abysses, gentlemen of the jury; remember that Karamazov could contemplate two abysses at the same time! We searched in that house but didn’t find anything. Perhaps the money’s still there, and perhaps it disappeared the next day and is in the defendant’s possession. In any case, they arrested him in her presence; he was on his knees before her; she lay on the bed, his arms were stretched out to her, and he’d forgotten everything at that moment, so he didn’t even hear the approach of the men coming to arrest him. He didn’t manage to prepare anything in his mind as a reply. Both he and his mind were taken by surprise.

“And here he is, before his judges, before the men who’ll decide his fate. Gentlemen of the jury, there are moments when, given our duties, we ourselves become almost frightened in the presence of a man, afraid for that man! That moment of contemplating that animal fear, when the criminal already sees that all is lost, yet continues to struggle, and is still intending to struggle against us. These are moments when all his instincts of self-preservation rise up in him at once and, in trying to save himself, he regards you with a piercing glance, questioning and suffering; he’s trying to catch you; he studies you, your face, your thoughts, and waits to see from which side you’ll strike and rapidly devises in his distracted mind thousands of plans; but he’s still afraid to speak, afraid to give himself away! These humiliating moments of the human soul, these torments, this animal thirst for self-preservation—they are dreadful and sometimes elicit a shudder of compassion for the criminal even in the investigator! This is just what we witnessed then.

“At first he was overwhelmed and he blurted out several compromising words in his terror: ‘Blood! I deserve it!’ But he quickly restrained himself. What to say, how to reply—none of that was he ready to utter; the only prepared reply was his unsubstantiated denial: ‘I’m not guilty of my father’s murder!’ That was our fence for the moment, and behind it we hoped to erect some sort of barricade. He hastened to explain his first compromising exclamations, prompted by our inquiry, saying that he considered himself guilty only of Grigory’s death. ‘I’m guilty for the shedding of his blood. But who killed my father, gentlemen? Who killed him? Who could’ve killed him if not me?’ Do you hear this: he asks us, us, the ones who’d come to ask him the very same question! Do you hear those words uttered in such great haste, ‘if not me’? That animal cleverness, that naïveté, that Karamazov impatience? It wasn’t me who killed him, and you shouldn’t think that I did: ‘I wanted to kill him, gentlemen, I did,’ he confesses in a hurry (he’s hurrying, oh, how he was hurrying), ‘but still I’m not guilty: I didn’t kill him.’ He concedes that he wanted to murder him: ‘You see,’ he says, ‘how sincere I am, so now you can believe me when I say that I didn’t murder him.’ Oh, in such cases the criminal sometimes becomes incredibly thoughtless and gullible.

“And then the inquiry posed, as if incidentally, the simplest question: ‘Wasn’t it perhaps Smerdyakov who killed him?’ And then, as we’d expected, the following occurred: he grew terribly angry that he’d been preempted and taken by surprise before he’d had time to prepare, to select and seize the moment when he planned to introduce Smerdyakov’s name so as to make it seem most plausible. But it’s his nature to rush to the other extreme, so he began with all his might to assure us at once that Smerdyakov couldn’t have killed him, that he was incapable of doing it. But don’t believe him: this was merely his cunning: he didn’t really reject the idea that it was Smerdyakov; on the contrary, he raised his name again, because who else was there to propose? But he does so at another moment, because for now that attempt was spoiled. He might raise his name tomorrow, or even in several days, choosing a time to declare to all of us: ‘You see, I rejected Smerdyakov more than you did, you remember that well, but now I’m convinced: it was he who killed him; he must have done it!’ Meanwhile, he lapses into gloomy, aggravated denial; however, impatience and anger prompt him to the most awkward and improbable explanation: how he looked in through the window and then withdrew respectfully. The main point is that he was still unaware of the testimony and the evidence presented by Grigory, who had regained his consciousness.

“We proceed to an examination of his person and a search of his quarters. The search angers but also encourages him: we didn’t find all three thousand rubles, only half that amount. And, of course, only at that moment of angry silence and denial, the idea of the little incense bag leaps into his head for the first time in his life. Without doubt, he himself was aware of the improbability of that story, and he tries, tries very hard to make it seem more likely, so there emerges an entirely plausible account. In these cases, the most important aspect, the primary task of the investigator is not to allow any preparation, to take unawares, so that the criminal will divulge his treasured ideas in all their simplicity, improbability, and inconsistency. One can only compel the criminal to speak suddenly and apparently with some unintentional communication of a new fact, of some new circumstance, colossally important to the case, but one that he could never have foreseen or imagined up to now. We had such a fact ready; it had been ready for some time: it was the awakened servant Grigory’s testimony about the open door through which the defendant had fled the scene. He’d forgotten all about that door, and the fact that Grigory could’ve seen it.

“The effect was colossal. He jumped up and shouted to us, ‘It was Smerdyakov who killed him, Smerdyakov!’ Thus he divulged his treasured idea, his main thought in its most improbable form, for Smerdyakov could’ve killed him only after he’d struck down Grigory and fled the scene. However, we told him that Grigory had seen the open door before he was struck and had heard him coming out of his bedroom, heard Smerdyakov’s moans from behind the screen—Karamazov was genuinely crushed. My colleague here, our esteemed and clever Nikolai Parfyonovich, told me later that at the moment he even felt sorry for him and moved to tears. And it was at that moment, to repair the damage, that he hurried to tell us about the notorious little incense bag; so be it: you shall hear this little tale!

“Gentlemen of the jury, I’ve told you before why I consider this story of the money sewn up in the incense bag a full month before the crime not only preposterous, but also the most improbable contrivance that could be devised at that moment. If one tried to bet on who could tell the most improbable story, then it would be impossible to come up with anything worse than this. The worst of it is that one can always smash to smithereens the triumphant storyteller with details, those same details, completely insignificant and superfluous, that are neglected by those unfortunate and involuntary storytellers and never even enter their heads. Oh, they have no interest in such details; their minds are focused on the grandiose whole—and you dare suggest such an unimportant trifle to them! But that’s how they’re caught! You pose a question to the defendant: ‘Well, where did you happen to get the material for your little incense bag, and who made it for you?’ ‘I made it myself.’ ‘And just where did you get the fabric?’ The defendant’s already offended, considering it almost insulting for you to ask him such a trivial question; and do you believe, his feeling is genuine! But they’re all like that. ‘I tore a piece off my shirt.’ ‘Fine, sir. Then tomorrow we’ll search your linen for a shirt with a piece torn off.’ And just imagine, gentlemen of the jury, if we’d really found that torn shirt (how could we not have found it in his suitcase or his commode, if it really existed?)—and that would have been a fact, a material fact in support of his statement! But he was incapable of understanding. ‘Perhaps I don’t exactly recall; it wasn’t from my shirt: it was from the landlady’s cap.’ ‘What kind of cap?’ ‘It was an old cotton rag I found lying around.’ ‘Do you recall that clearly?’ ‘No, not clearly . . . ’ And he grows angry, very angry; meanwhile, just imagine: how could he not remember that? In the most terrible moments of one’s life, for example, when a man’s being led to the scaffold, it’s just this sort of detail he does recall. He’ll forget everything, except for some green roof he sees along the way, or a jackdaw perched on a cross—that he’ll remember. But while making his incense bag, he hid it from the landlord’s family; he should recall how he suffered humiliating fear, needle in hand, afraid that someone would come in and find him sewing: how at the slightest sound he hid behind the screen (there was a screen in his apartment) . . .

“But, gentlemen of the jury, why am I telling you all this, all these details, trifles?” exclaimed Ippolit Kirillovich. “Precisely because the defendant stubbornly insists on all this nonsense up to this very moment! During these last two months, since that fateful night, he hasn’t added even one genuine explanatory circumstance to his previous fantastical testimony; all of these are trivial details. You must believe it on my word of honor! Oh, we’re glad to believe, we thirst for belief, even on his word of honor! Are we jackals thirsting for human blood? Show us just one fact in the defendant’s favor and we’ll rejoice—but it must be a substantial fact, real, not a conclusion based on the defendant’s facial expression reached by his own brother, or that when he was striking his own breast, he must have been indicating the little incense bag, even in the darkness. We’ll rejoice at some new fact; we’ll be the first to reject our accusation; we’ll hasten to repudiate it. But justice cries out, and we persevere; we can’t repudiate anything.”

At this point Ippolit Kirillovich moved on to the finale. He seemed to be in a fever; he spoke about the father’s blood crying out for revenge—the father killed by his own son “with the base motive of robbery.” He pointed to the tragic and clamoring totality of the facts.

“And whatever you may hear from the talented and renowned counsel for the defense,” Ippolit Kirillovich continued, unable to restrain himself, “whatever eloquent and poignant words resound in this hall to appeal to your sensibilities, nevertheless remember that at this moment you’re in a sanctuary of justice. Remember that you are defenders of our truth, defenders of our holy Russia, her foundations, her family, of all that’s sacred! Yes, you represent Russia at the given moment, and your verdict will resonate not only in this courtroom, but throughout all Russia; all Russia will harken to you as its defenders and judges, and will be either reassured or disheartened by your verdict. Do not frustrate Russia and her expectations. Our fatal troika rushes headlong, perhaps to its own destruction. For some time now, throughout Russia, people have stretched out their arms and called upon it to stop its insane, brazen course. And if other nations stand aside from this galloping troika, perhaps it’s not out of respect at all, as the poet might have wished,[2] but merely out of horror—note this. Out of horror or, perhaps, even out of disgust; and it’s a good thing they stand aside. Perhaps one day they will cease to do so and will become a solid wall standing before the rushing specter, and will obstruct the frenzied urgency of our unbridled gallop, for the sake of their own salvation, enlightenment, and civilization! We’ve already heard these voices of alarm from Europe. They’ve begun to reverberate by now. Don’t tempt them, don’t accumulate their constantly growing hatred by a verdict that justifies a son’s murder of his own father!”

In a word, Ippolit Kirillovich, although he was undoubtedly carried away, ended his speech emotionally—and truly the impression he produced was extraordinary. He himself, after completing his speech, hurriedly left the courtroom and, I repeat, almost fainted in the next room. The audience didn’t applaud, but serious people were satisfied. Only the ladies were not as pleased, but they appreciated his eloquence, all the more so since they had no apprehension about the outcome of the trial and awaited everything from Fetyukovich’s speech: “He’ll finally have his say and vanquish them all, of course!”

Everyone looked at Mitya; he sat in silence during the prosecutor’s entire speech, wringing his hands, gritting his teeth, and bowing his head. From time to time he raised his head and listened carefully, especially when Grushenka’s name was mentioned. When the prosecutor cited Rakitin’s opinion of her, a smile of contempt and irritation crossed his face, and he uttered a single phrase rather loudly: “The Bernards!” When Ippolit Kirillovich mentioned how he’d interrogated and tormented him in Mokroye, Mitya raised his head and paid very close attention. At one point in the speech, Mitya seemed about to jump up and shout something, but he suppressed his desire and merely shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. Afterward people in our society talked about the finale of the prosecutor’s speech, namely about his heroic feats interrogating the prisoner in Mokroye, and they made fun of him: “The man couldn’t resist, so to speak, bragging about his abilities.”

The court was adjourned, but only for a short time, a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes at most. Among the public, conversations and exclamations rang out from time to time. I recall some of them:

“A serious speech!” a gentleman in one group observed with a frown.

“But he drew too much psychology into it!” said another voice.

“But it’s all true, incontrovertibly true!”

“Yes, he’s a master at it.”

“He summed it all up.”

“He summed us up, too,” a third voice joined in. “At the beginning of his speech, he suggested that we are all like Fyodor Pavlovich.”

“At the end, too. But that isn’t true.”

“There was a lack of clarity.”

“He got a bit carried away.”

“That’s unjust, unjust, sir.”

“Still, it was clever. He waited a long time, but then had his say. Hee-hee.”

“I wonder what the counsel for the defense will say?”

In another group:

“It wasn’t smart for him to insult the fellow from Petersburg like that: ‘appealing to your sensibilities.’ Do you recall?”

“Yes, that wasn’t too smart.”

“He was in a hurry.”

“He’s a nervous man.”

“Well, we’re laughing, but what about the defendant?”

“Yes, sir. I wonder what Mityenka’s feeling?”

“What will the counsel for the defense say?”

In a third group:

“Who is that lady, the fat one with the lorgnette, who’s sitting at the end?”

“She’s a general’s wife, divorced; I know her.”

“Exactly, the one with the lorgnette.”

“Riffraff.”

“No, she’s a savory little dish.”

“Two seats beyond her, there’s a little blonde; she’s much prettier.”

“So they caught him red-handed in Mokroye, didn’t they?”

“Yes, indeed. And he told the story again. He’s told it in other people’s houses so often.”

“Now he couldn’t restrain himself either. What vanity.”

“He’s been offended. Hee, hee.”

“Yes, indeed. And with so much rhetoric. Such long sentences.”

“Yes, and he tried to shock us; did you notice how he tried? Do you recall the troika? ‘They have their Hamlets, while we still have only our Karamazovs!’ That was clever.”

“That was to humor the liberals. He’s afraid!”

“And he’s afraid of the defense attorney.”

“Yes, it will be interesting to hear what Fetyukovich will say.”

“Whatever he says, he won’t shake our peasants.”

“Don’t you think so?”

In a fourth group:

“The part about the troika was good, especially the other nations.”

“It was true what he said, do you recall, about other nations not wanting to wait.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, in the English Parliament, one member stood up last week and spoke about the nihilists and asked the ministry if it wasn’t about time to intervene in a barbarous nation to educate us.[3] Ippolit was thinking about him, I know, about him. He was talking about it last week.”

“Don’t count your chickens.”

“What chickens? Why not?”

“We’ll lock up Kronstadt and not let anyone have any grain.[4] Where will they get it?”

“How about in America? They get it from there now.”

“Not true!”

But then the bell rang and everyone rushed back to their seats. Fetyukovich mounted the platform.

1 Dostoevsky relied on his own personal experience for details of this episode.

2 See above, p. 806.

3 English preoccupation with Russian nihilists was characteristic of the 1870s; since the story takes place in the late 1860s, this reference is an anachronism.

4 A naval base in the Gulf of Finland that guards the entry to Petersburg.

X

THE DEFENSE COUNSEL’S SPEECH. AN ARGUMENT THAT CUTS BOTH WAYS.[1]

Everything grew quiet as the first words of the celebrated orator rang out. All eyes were focused on him. He began very directly, simply, and with conviction, but without the least bit of arrogance. Nor was there any attempt at eloquence, pathos, or phrases that resonated with emotion. He was like a man speaking in an intimate circle of sympathetic friends. His voice was magnificent, loud, and appealing; one could hear something sincere and unassuming even in his tone of voice. But soon it became clear to everyone that the speaker could suddenly rise to genuine pathos—and “pierce the heart with untold power.”[2] He spoke, perhaps, less correctly than did Ippolit Kirillovich, but without long sentences and even more precisely. One thing, however, didn’t please the ladies: he kept bending forward, especially at the beginning of his speech, not exactly bowing, but seeming to surge and fly at his listeners, inclining half of his long, slender back as if it had a hinge that enabled him to bend almost at a right angle.

At the beginning of his speech he started somewhat disjointedly, as if without any method, grabbing facts at random; but in the end a whole picture emerged. His speech could be divided into two parts: the first half was criticism, refutation of the accusation, sometimes malicious and sarcastic. But in the second half he seemed to modify his tone and even his style and rose at once to pathos. It was as though the audience had been waiting for that, and it began to tremble in ecstasy.

He got straight to the point and began by observing that although his law practice was located in Petersburg, he had several times visited provincial Russian towns to defend those accused of crimes, but always where he was convinced of their innocence, or when he had intuited it beforehand. “This is exactly what also happened in the present case,” he explained. “Even from the very first accounts in the newspapers, something flashed through my mind, striking me significantly as being in the defendant’s favor. In a word, I was particularly interested in a certain judicial fact, although it occurs frequently in legal practice, but never with such clarity and with such peculiar characteristics as in the present instance. I should formulate this fact only in the finale of my speech; however, I shall also mention this thought at the very beginning, for it is my weakness to get right to the subject, without reserving my special effects or saving up my impressions. This may be foolish on my part, but it is sincere. This thought of mine, this formula, is as follows: there’s an overwhelming string of evidence against the defendant, yet at the same time, there isn’t one fact that will stand up to criticism, if examined individually! By following the case through rumors and newspapers, I became more and more convinced of my idea, and then I suddenly received an invitation from the accused’s family to defend him. I hastened here and became completely persuaded. I agreed to defend this case to break the terrible string of evidence and to demonstrate the unproven and fantastic nature of each incriminatory fact considered separately.”

Thus began the counsel for the defense; then he suddenly proclaimed:

“Gentlemen of the jury, I’m a newcomer here. All impressions have come to me without preconceptions. The defendant, a man of tempestuous and unbridled character, hasn’t offended me beforehand, as he has, perhaps, a hundred people in this town, as a result of which many of you are prejudiced against him in advance. Of course, I also acknowledge that the moral sensibility of local society has been justifiably provoked: the defendant is indeed tempestuous and unbridled. Yet he has been received by local society, even welcomed by the family of the highly talented prosecutor.” (Nota bene: at these words two or three laughs broke out in the audience, and although they were quickly suppressed, they were noticed by all. Everyone knew that the prosecutor had received Mitya against his will, solely because for some reason his wife found him interesting: she was a lady of the highest virtue and esteem, but whimsical and willful, fond of opposing her husband, especially in unimportant matters. However, Mitya had visited their house rather infrequently.)

“Nevertheless, I venture to declare,” continued the counsel for the defense, “that even in spite of his independent mind and impartial character, my opponent may have formed some erroneous prejudice against my unfortunate client. Oh, that’s only natural: the unfortunate man has even deserved that prejudice all too well. Offended moral feeling and, even more, aesthetic sense can sometimes be uncompromising. Of course, in the highly talented prosecutor’s speech, we have all heard a rigorous analysis of the defendant’s character and actions; his severe critical attitude toward the case was obvious, especially the psychological intricacies used to explain the essence of the affair, which he couldn’t have understood if he’d harbored the least malicious prejudice toward the accused. But there are things that are even worse, even more lethal in similar circumstances, than the most malicious and premeditated attitude toward the case. Namely, it is worse if we are carried away by some artistic game, so to speak, a need for artistic creation, so to speak, the creation of a novel, especially if God has endowed us with a wealth of psychological gifts. While still in Petersburg, before I set out on my journey to come here, I was warned—and I myself was aware without any warning—that I’d find here a talented opponent whose profound psychological insight had earned him special renown in our still young judicial world. But psychology, gentlemen, although a profound enterprise, still resembles a stick that has two sharp ends.” (Laughter among the public.) “Of course, you’ll forgive my trivial comparison; I’m not a master of eloquence. However, here’s an example I take at random from the prosecutor’s speech.

“The defendant, running away in the garden at night, climbing over the fence, grabbed by the servant, knocks him down with the brass pestle. Then he immediately jumps back down into the garden and spends at least five minutes trying to determine whether the servant’s been killed or not. The prosecutor refuses to believe the defendant’s testimony that he jumped back down to the old man Grigory out of a feeling of pity. ‘No,’ he says, ‘how could there be such sentimentality at this moment? It’s unnatural; he jumped down precisely to find out if the single witness to his crime was dead, and thus proved that he’d committed the murder, since he wouldn’t have returned for any other reason.’ That’s his use of psychology; but let’s take that same psychology and apply it to the case but from the other end; the result will not be any less probable. The murderer jumps down as a precaution to determine whether the witness is alive or not, though as the prosecutor himself has argued, he’d just left in his murdered father’s study a colossal piece of evidence in the form of a torn packet on which it was noted that it contained three thousand rubles. ‘If he’d taken that envelope with the money, no one would’ve known that the money had been stolen by the defendant.’ That’s what the prosecutor himself said. So on the one hand, you see the complete lack of precaution: a man who’s become flustered and fled in fear, leaving the evidence on the floor; yet two minutes later, after he’s struck and killed another man, there appears at once at our service the most heartless and calculating sense of caution. But let’s say, let’s admit that this is what really happened: it’s a psychological subtlety that at one moment I’m as bloodthirsty and vigilant as a Caucasian eagle, and the next, I’m as blind and timid as an insignificant mole. But if I’m so bloodthirsty and cruelly calculating that, having killed a man, I run back only to ascertain whether a witness to my crime is alive or dead, why should I spend a full five minutes troubling over this new victim, at the risk of encountering other witnesses? Why soak my handkerchief, wiping blood from the injured man’s head, so that it could later be used as evidence against me? No, if we’re so calculating and hard-hearted, wouldn’t it be better, after jumping down, simply to smack the wounded servant on the head again and again with the same pestle, to kill him outright, thus eliminating a witness, and putting an end to all our anxiety?

“And finally, I jump down to ascertain whether the witness is alive or dead, but right there on the path I leave another clue, namely the same brass pestle seized from the two women, which they could both always identify afterward as their own pestle, and bear witness that I’d taken it from them. And it’s not that I forgot it along the way or dropped it absentmindedly or distractedly: no, we actually threw our weapon away, because it was found some fifteen paces from the place where Grigory lay wounded. A question arises: why did we do that? We did it precisely because we felt sad at having killed a man, the old servant, and therefore, in annoyance and with a curse, we threw the pestle away as a murder weapon; otherwise why else would we have thrown it so far away? If he could feel pain and regret that he’d killed a man, then, of course, it was because he hadn’t killed his own father; if he’d killed him, he wouldn’t have jumped down to see to another victim out of pity. He’d have felt differently—been concerned with self-preservation: of course, this is true. On the contrary, I repeat, he would’ve shattered the servant’s skull instead of spending five minutes tending to him. The reason pity and good feeling emerged was because his conscience was clear up to then. Therefore, it involves a different kind of psychology.

“I’ve resorted to this method intentionally, gentlemen of the jury, to demonstrate that one can prove anything by it. It all depends on who’s using it. Psychology can entice even the most serious people to fiction, and it can be completely unconscious. I have in mind excessive psychology, gentlemen of the jury, the abuse of psychology.”

There were sounds of approval; quiet laughter could be heard from the audience once more, all at the prosecutor’s expense. I won’t repeat in detail the entire speech of the counsel for the defense; I’ll choose only certain passages, some of his most important points.

1 Literally, “A stick with two ends.”

2 A quotation from Pushkin’s lyric “Reply to an Anonymous Correspondent” (1830).

XI

THERE WAS NO MONEY. THERE WAS NO ROBBERY.

There was one point that struck everyone in the speech. It was that the counsel for the defense flatly denied the existence of those three thousand rubles and, therefore, the possibility of a robbery.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” he began, “every fresh and unprejudiced person must be struck by a peculiar characteristic of the present case: namely, the charge of robbery and, at the same time, the absolute impossibility of proving exactly what was stolen. We’re told that some money was taken, precisely three thousand rubles—but whether it really existed, no one knows for sure. Judge for yourselves: In the first place, how did we learn about that money? Who actually saw it? The only person who saw the money and stated that it had been placed in an envelope with an inscription was the servant Smerdyakov. It was he who’d mentioned it to the defendant and to his brother Ivan Fyodorovich well before the catastrophe. Miss Svetlova had also been told about it. However, none of these three people had actually seen the money; only Smerdyakov had.

“But here a question naturally arises: if it’s true that the money existed and that Smerdyakov had seen it, when was the last time he did? What if his master had taken it from under the mattress and returned it to his cash box without telling him? Notice that according to Smerdyakov’s words, the money lay under the mattress; the defendant would’ve had to snatch it from there, yet the bed was untouched, as is precisely noted in the deposition. How could the defendant have taken the money without disturbing the bed? In addition, although his hands were stained with blood, he didn’t soil the fine, fresh linen that had been deliberately used to make the bed. But they’ll ask: what about the envelope on the floor? It’s worth discussing that packet. Earlier, I was even somewhat surprised: the highly talented prosecutor, having mentioned this packet, suddenly—listen, gentlemen, he himself—said in his speech exactly at the point where he notes the preposterous suggestion that Smerdyakov was the murderer, ‘If it hadn’t been for this packet left on the floor as evidence, had the criminal taken it with him, no one would’ve known about its existence, that it contained money, and that, therefore, the money had been stolen by the defendant.’ And so, it was only this torn piece of paper with its inscription, even by the admission of the prosecutor himself, that serves to indict the defendant of robbery, ‘or else no one would’ve known that there was a robbery or, perhaps, that money was even involved.’ But is it true that the mere fact of a torn envelope on the floor is proof that there was money in it and that the money was stolen? But they’ll reply that ‘Smerdyakov said the money was in an envelope’; only when did he see the money for the last time—that’s what I’d like to find out. I spoke with Smerdyakov, and he told me that he’d seen the money two days before the catastrophe! But why can’t I assume, for example, the circumstance that the old man, Fyodor Pavlovich, after locking himself up in his room in impatient and hysterical expectation of a visit by his beloved, with nothing to do, suddenly took it upon himself to retrieve that envelope and tear it open? ‘What’s the use of the envelope,’ he asks. ‘She won’t believe it contains money. But when I show her the thirty rainbow-colored hundred-ruble notes in the envelope, it’ll convince her and she’ll start to salivate.’ So he tears open the envelope, takes the money out, and tosses the envelope on the floor, aware of being the owner, and of course not worrying about leaving any evidence.

“Listen, gentlemen of the jury, could anything be more likely than this supposition and this action? Why isn’t it possible? But if something of this sort actually occurred, the charge of robbery is demolished: if there was no money, then, naturally, there was no robbery. If the envelope lay on the floor as a piece of evidence, and there was no money in it, why can’t I assert the opposite, namely, that the envelope lay there precisely because there was no money in it, and that it had been removed by the owner himself? ‘Yes, but in that case, if Fyodor Pavlovich had taken the money out of the envelope, where did it go, since it wasn’t found by the police during their search?’ In the first place, they found part of the money in his cash box; and in the second place, he could’ve taken it out that morning, or even the night before, and used it in some other way, paying it out, sending it away, finally changing his mind, his plan of action completely, without considering it necessary to inform Smerdyakov in advance. And even if the possibility of such a supposition exists, how can one accuse the defendant so insistently and definitively of committing the murder for the sake of robbery and declare that the robbery did in fact take place? In so doing we’re venturing into the realm of fiction. If it is argued that a certain thing was stolen, then one must produce the thing itself, or at least demonstrate indisputably that the thing existed. But no one had even seen it.

“Not long ago in Petersburg a certain young man, almost a boy, aged eighteen, a peddler in the market, walked into a money changer’s shop in broad daylight carrying an ax and, with extraordinary, characteristic audacity, murdered the shopkeeper and carried off fifteen hundred rubles. Some five hours later he was arrested; they found the remainder of the money on him, everything except for the fifteen rubles he’d managed to spend. Besides, the shop clerk, who’d returned after the murder, had informed the police not only about the sum of money stolen, but even the details of the bills and coins taken; and they found those same bills and coins in the young man’s possession. There followed a full and frank confession by the murderer that, indeed, he’d killed and stolen that sum of money. Gentlemen of the jury, that’s what I call real evidence! In that case, I know, and see, and touch the money; I can’t say that it doesn’t or didn’t exist. But is that true in the present case? Yet it’s a matter of life and death, the fate of a man.

“But they’ll say the defendant went carousing that same night, throwing his money around, and had fifteen hundred rubles in his possession. Where did he get that money? But the fact that he had only fifteen hundred, while the other half couldn’t be found, shows that this money wasn’t the same and had never been in any sort of envelope. By the strictest accounting of time, it was acknowledged and proven in the preliminary investigation that the defendant ran right from the servant women to the civil servant Perkhotin without going home and that he didn’t stop anywhere else; all the while he was with other people, so he couldn’t have divided the three thousand rubles in half, and couldn’t have hidden it somewhere in town. This very supposition has led the prosecutor to believe that the money is still hidden somewhere in a crevice in Mokroye. Why not in the dungeons of the Castle of Udolpho, gentlemen?[1] Isn’t this supposition too fantastic, too romantic? Note that if we demolish just the supposition that there’s something hidden at Mokroye, the whole charge of robbery goes up in smoke, for what’s become of the other fifteen hundred rubles? By what miracle did it disappear, since it’s been proven that the defendant went nowhere else? Are we prepared to destroy a man’s life on the basis of such a fiction?

“They’ll say he couldn’t explain where he got the fifteen hundred rubles found in his possession and that everyone knew that he had no money whatever before. And just who knew it? But the defendant’s provided a clear and full explanation of where he got the money: if you like, gentlemen of the jury, if you like—nothing could or can ever be more plausible than his own account; besides, it’s more consistent with the defendant’s character and spirit. The prosecutor’s enamored with his own fiction: a weak-willed man, having decided to steal this three thousand so disgracefully offered him by his fiancée, couldn’t have divided it into two parts and sewn half into an incense bag; on the contrary, if he’d done so, he’d have opened that bag every few days, taken out a hundred-ruble note, and squandered the whole sum in a month. Remember, all this was presented in a tone that allowed no contradiction. But what if the events didn’t occur like this at all? What if you’ve created a fiction and invented a different character? That’s just it: you’ve created a different character indeed!

“Perhaps they’ll object: ‘There are witnesses who state that he squandered the whole three thousand rubles taken from Miss Verkhovtseva one month before the catastrophe, all at once, as if it were a single kopeck, so he couldn’t have divided the money in half.’ But who are these witnesses? Their degree of trustworthiness has already been shown in court. Besides, a hunk of bread always seems larger in another man’s hands. Last of all, not one of these witnesses had actually counted the money, but merely guessed the amount by sight. And the witness Maksimov testified that the defendant had some twenty thousand rubles in his hand! You see, gentlemen of the jury, psychology is a two-edged sword; allow me to examine the other edge and see what comes of it.

“A month before the catastrophe, the defendant was entrusted by Miss Verkhovtseva to dispatch three thousand rubles by mail: but the question arises—was it true that the money was entrusted to him in such a disgraceful and humiliating manner as was stated here? The first account of this subject by Miss Verkhovtseva was different, completely different; in her second account we heard only cries of resentment and revenge, cries of her long-standing concealed hatred. But the fact that her earlier testimony was inaccurate gives us the right to conclude that her second account could also be inaccurate. The prosecutor ‘doesn’t want, doesn’t dare’ (his own words) to bring up this fiction. So be it: I won’t either, but I’ll allow myself merely to observe that if a pure and extremely moral person, such as the highly respected Miss Verkhovtseva, if such a person, I repeat, suddenly allows herself to refute her first testimony in court, with the clear intention of destroying the defendant, it is clear that this testimony was given not impartially or dispassionately. Don’t we have the right to conclude that a vengeful woman might have exaggerated to a large extent? Yes, precisely to exaggerate that shame and disgrace with which that money was offered. On the contrary, the money was offered in such a way that it was possible to take it, particularly by such a carefree man like our defendant—especially because he had in mind at the time the fact that he’d soon receive the money owed him by his father, namely the three thousand. It was thoughtless on his part but, due to this same thoughtlessness, he was firmly convinced that his father would pay him, that he’d receive the money and, therefore, would at any time be able to dispatch the money entrusted to him by Miss Verkhovtseva and thus repay the debt.

“But the prosecutor absolutely refuses to assume that he could have set aside half the money that same day, the day of the accusation, and sewn it into a little incense bag: ‘Such was not his character,’ he says. ‘He couldn’t have had such feelings.’ But you yourself declared that the Karamazov nature is broad; you yourself declared that there are two extreme abysses that Karamazov can contemplate at the same time. Karamazov is precisely the sort of nature consisting of two sides, two abysses, such that even when motivated by the unrestrained need for a big splurge, he can still stop, if something strikes him on the other side. And the other side is love, that new love that had flared up in his heart like gunpowder, but for that new love he needed money—far more than even for carousing with this same beloved woman. She’ll say to him, ‘I’m yours. I don’t want Fyodor Pavlovich.’ And he’ll pick her up and carry her off—if he only has the money to do so. This is more important than carousing. How could Karamazov fail to understand this? That’s what he was suffering from, this anxiety—how can it be considered improbable that he would divide the money and hide half of it away, just in case?

“Time passed, however, and Fyodor Pavlovich did not turn over the three thousand rubles to the defendant; on the contrary, Dmitry Fyodorovich hears that the money’s been allotted to lure away his own beloved. ‘If Fyodor Pavlovich won’t turn over the money,’ he thinks, ‘I’ll be seen as a thief by Katerina Verkhovtseva.’ That’s when the idea’s born that he’d go to Katerina, and place before her the fifteen hundred rubles he was carrying around his neck in the incense bag, and he’d say to her, ‘I’m a scoundrel, but I’m not a thief.’ So now, consequently, we have two reasons why he should keep that fifteen hundred rubles as the apple of his eye, why he shouldn’t open up that little bag around his neck and shouldn’t whittle it down a hundred rubles at a time. Why do you deny the defendant a sense of honor? No, he has a sense of honor—perhaps incorrect, perhaps very often mistaken, but it exists, to the point of passion, and he’s proven this.

“But now the case becomes even more complicated, the torments of jealousy reach the highest degree, and those same two questions continue to afflict his feverish brain more and more: ‘If I repay Katerina Ivanovna, how can I find the means to take Grushenka away?’ If he behaved like a madman, if he got very drunk, and flew into a rage in several taverns during the course of a month, it might be precisely because he himself felt embittered and it was all more than he could bear. These two questions finally became so acute that they drove him to despair. He was about to send his younger brother to ask his father for the three thousand rubles for the last time, but, without even waiting for a reply, he burst in and beat up the old man in front of witnesses. After that, there was no one from whom he could get the money: his father wouldn’t give it to him. So that very day, in the evening, he strikes his chest, the upper part where the incense bag is, and swears to his brother that he has the means not to be a scoundrel, but that he will still remain a scoundrel because he foresees that he won’t use that means; he lacks the spiritual strength, lacks the fortitude of character. Why, why does the prosecutor refuse to believe Aleksey Karamazov’s testimony, presented so innocently, so sincerely, so naturally, and plausibly? Why, on the contrary, does he try to force me to believe that the money was hidden in some crevice in the dungeons of the Castle of Udolpho?

“That same evening, after the conversation with his brother, the defendant writes his ill-fated letter, and this letter becomes the most colossal piece of evidence indicting the defendant of robbery! ‘I’ll ask everyone, and if they don’t give me the money, I’ll kill my father and take the money from under his mattress, the packet with a pink ribbon, as soon as Ivan leaves town’—that’s the complete blueprint for the murder, so who could it have been, if not him? ‘He committed the crime just as he’d written!’ cries the prosecution.

“In the first place, the letter was written by a drunken man in a state of terrible agitation; in the second place, he writes about the envelope from what he’d learned from Smerdyakov, because he’d never seen it himself; and in the third place, he wrote the letter, that’s true, but how can you prove that he committed the crime according to what he’d written? Did the accused take the envelope from under the pillow? Did he find the money? Did it even exist? Did the accused come for the money at all, remember, remember! He came running recklessly not to rob, but simply to find out where she was, that woman, the woman who’d shattered him—but not according to the blueprint and, therefore, not according to the letter, that is, not to commit premeditated robbery; rather he came running suddenly, spontaneously, in a jealous fury! ‘But they’ll say anyway that after he’d arrived and killed his father, he grabbed the money, too.’ Yes, but finally, did he murder him or not? I reject the accusation of robbery with indignation: it’s impossible to accuse him of robbery if it’s impossible to show exactly what it was that he robbed—that’s an axiom! But did he kill him, did he kill him without a robbery? Has this been proven? Isn’t this also just a fiction?”

1 A reference to Ann Radcliffe’s popular gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794).

XII

AND THERE WAS NO MURDER EITHER

“Allow me, gentlemen of the jury, to remind you that a human life is involved and we must be more careful. We’ve heard that until today, the very day of the trial, the prosecutor himself has refrained from accusing the defendant of full and complete premeditation, that he hesitated until this ‘fateful letter’ was presented to the court today. ‘It happened as described in the letter!’ But I repeat once again: he ran to her, for her, merely to find out where she was. This fact is indisputable. If she’d happened to be at home, he’d have stayed there with her, gone nowhere else, and not have done what he’d promised to do in the letter. He ran inadvertently and unexpectedly, perhaps not even remembering his ‘drunken’ letter. ‘He seized the pestle,’ they say, and recall how from this pestle alone they constructed an entire psychology: why he had to regard that pestle as a weapon, seize upon it, and so on and so forth. At this point a very ordinary idea occurs to me: what if the pestle wasn’t in sight, not on the shelf from which the defendant grabbed it, but hidden away in a cupboard? It wouldn’t have caught his eye; he’d have run away without a weapon, empty-handed, and perhaps he might not have killed anyone. How can I regard the pestle as proof of his arming himself beforehand and of premeditation?

“Yes, he bragged in taverns about planning to murder his father, and two days before, on that evening when he wrote his drunken letter, he was quiet and argued with a merchant’s shop assistant only ‘because a Karamazov couldn’t keep from arguing.’ And I reply that if he were planning to commit murder, according to the plan in his letter, he certainly wouldn’t have argued with the shop assistant and he might not have gone to the tavern at all, because a soul planning such a crime would have sought peace and quiet, to disappear so that he wasn’t seen or heard: ‘Forget all about me, if possible,’ and he would do this not from calculation, but from instinct.

“Gentlemen of the jury, psychology is a two-edged sword, and we, too, know how to understand it. As far as all that swaggering in taverns during the last month, it’s not uncommon for children or drunkards coming out of taverns to shout, ‘I’ll kill you,’ but they don’t actually do it. And that fateful letter—isn’t it just drunken irritability, too? Just a cry coming out of the tavern: ‘I’ll kill the whole lot of you!’ Why not? Why couldn’t it be like that? Why is that fateful letter, why, on the contrary, couldn’t it be seen as ridiculous? Precisely because the corpse of his murdered father had been found, because the defendant had been seen by a witness in the garden, armed and running away, and the witness had also been knocked down by him, and therefore it all occurred as had been described in the letter: therefore the letter is not ridiculous, but fateful.

“Thank God, we’ve come to the point: ‘since he was in the garden, that means he must have murdered him.’ In those two little words, ‘since he was, then that means,’ lies the entire case for the prosecution. ‘Since he was there, he must have murdered.’ But what if it doesn’t mean, even though he was there? Oh, I agree that the sum of the evidence, the coincidence of facts, is really quite telling. However, if you consider all these facts individually, paying no attention to the coincidences: why, for example, does the prosecution refuse to acknowledge the truth of the defendant’s statement that he ran away from his father’s window? You will recall even the sarcasm that the prosecution employed to characterize the respectful and ‘pious’ sentiments that suddenly overwhelmed the murderer. And what if, as a matter of fact, there was something like that, that is, not exactly respectfulness, but some religious feeling? ‘My mother must have been praying for me at that moment,’ the defendant testified at the preliminary interrogation, so he ran away as soon as he became convinced that Miss Svetlova wasn’t in his father’s house. ‘But he couldn’t be convinced by looking through the window,’ the prosecution objects. Why couldn’t he? The window was opened at the signal given by the defendant. At that point Fyodor Pavlovich might have uttered some word, he might have let out some shout, and the defendant could suddenly have been convinced that Miss Svetlova wasn’t there. Why should we assume everything as we imagine it or have presumed to imagine it? In reality, a thousand things may occur that may escape the observation of the subtlest novelist.

“ ‘Yes, but Grigory saw the door open, and that means that the defendant was definitely inside the house, and, therefore, he killed him.’ About that door, gentlemen of the jury, only one person testified, and he was at the time in such a state that. . . . But let’s suppose the door was open, let’s suppose the defendant opened it and he lied out of self-defense, very natural for someone in his position; let’s suppose he entered the house—well, what of it? Why, if he really was inside the house, does it mean that he killed his father? He could’ve rushed in, run through the rooms, pushed his father aside, even have struck his father, but, after being convinced that Svetlova wasn’t there, he could’ve run away, rejoicing that she wasn’t there and that he hadn’t killed his father. And that was why, perhaps, a moment later he jumped down from the fence to help the wounded Grigory, because he was in a condition to experience pure emotion, a feeling of pity and compassion, because he’d run away from the temptation to kill his father, because he felt joy in his pure heart, that he had not killed his father.

“With terrible eloquence the prosecutor has described for us the defendant’s state of mind in Mokroye, when love once again was revealed to him, summoning him to a new life while love was impossible for him because behind him lay his father’s bloodied body, and behind the body—retribution. However, the prosecutor grants him love, which he’s explained according to his psychology: ‘The defendant’s drunken condition,’ he says, ‘as he’s being led to execution, when there’s still time, and so on and so forth.’ But, I ask once again, Mr. Prosecutor, haven’t you created a different character? Is the defendant so crude and so heartless that he could actually think about love at such a moment and about evasion before the court if he were really covered with his father’s blood? No, no, no! It was just revealed that she loved him, called to him, promised him new happiness—oh, I swear that he must’ve felt a double or even triple need to kill himself, and he certainly would’ve done so, if he’d left behind his father’s corpse! Oh, no, he wouldn’t have forgotten where his pistols lay! I know the defendant: the wild, callous heartlessness he’s accused of having is inconsistent with his character. He’d have killed himself for sure; he didn’t do it precisely because ‘his mother prayed for him,’ and he was innocent of having shed his father’s blood. He suffered, he grieved that night in Mokroye only for knocking over the prostrate old man Grigory, and he implored God for the old man to revive and stand up, prayed that the blow had not been fatal, and that he wouldn’t be punished for it. Why not accept such an interpretation of the facts? What definitive proof do we have that the defendant’s lying to us? But they point out once again that there’s his father’s corpse: he ran away, and if he didn’t kill him, then who killed the old man?

“I repeat, here you have the entire logic of the prosecution: who killed him, if not the defendant? There’s no one else, they say, to blame if not him. Gentlemen of the jury, is that so? Is it really true that there’s no one else to blame? We heard the prosecution count on his fingers all the people who were present at one time or another in the house that night. There were five. Three of them, I agree, have to be excluded: the victim himself, the servant Grigory, and his wife. Therefore, that leaves the accused and Smerdyakov, and the prosecutor declares with pathos that the defendant points to Smerdyakov because there’s no one else to blame; had there been a sixth person, even a ghost of a sixth person, the defendant would’ve given up his charge of Smerdyakov in shame, and accused the sixth person. But, gentlemen of the jury, why couldn’t I conclude just the opposite? That leaves two of them: the defendant and Smerdyakov—why can’t I say you’re accusing my client simply because you have no one else to accuse? And there’s no one else simply because in a completely prejudiced manner you’ve completely excluded Smerdyakov from all suspicion. It’s true that only the defendant, his two brothers, and Miss Svetlova accuse Smerdyakov. But isn’t it true that there are others who indict him, too: there’s a certain ferment in society concerning a certain question, a suspicion, a sort of vague rumor, a certain feeling of expectation. Finally, there’s the evidence, too—a combination of facts, most characteristic, though, I admit, inconclusive: in the first place, there’s the epileptic seizure on the day of the catastrophe, a fit that for some reason the prosecutor felt compelled to defend and insist on. Then there’s Smerdyakov’s unexpected suicide on the eve of the trial. Then there’s the equally unexpected testimony, at the trial today, of the elder of the defendant’s brothers, who, up to this point, had believed in his brother’s guilt, and who suddenly brought the money into court and declared that Smerdyakov was the murderer! Oh, I’m in complete agreement with the belief of the court and the prosecutor that Ivan Karamazov’s ill and suffering from brain fever, and that his testimony could really have been a desperate attempt, conceived in his delirium, to save his brother, casting blame on the dead man. Nevertheless, Smerdyakov’s name has still been uttered, once again as though there were some mystery in the air. It is as if there were something that hasn’t been revealed fully, gentlemen of the jury, something incomplete. Perhaps it’ll be explained one day. But we’ll leave that aside; that still lies ahead.

“The court’s resolved to continue with the trial; but now, in the meantime, in anticipation, I would like, for example, to make a few remarks about the character of the late Smerdyakov, drawn with such subtlety and so much talent by the prosecutor. Though I marvel at his talent, I cannot, however, agree completely with the substance of his characterization. I went to see Smerdyakov: I saw him, talked to him, and he made an altogether different impression on me. His health was weak, it’s true, but his character, his heart—oh, no, he was by no means the weak man portrayed by the prosecution. In particular, I found no trace of timidity in him, such as described as his major characteristic by the prosecution. There was no ingenuousness in him at all; on the contrary, I found terrible mistrustfulness, concealed under naïveté, and an intellect capable of contemplating a great deal. Oh! The prosecution was too simpleminded in thinking of him as weak-minded. He made a very definite impression on me: I left with the conviction that he was a decidedly spiteful being, inordinately ambitious, vengeful, and burning with envy. I gathered some information: he hated his parentage, was ashamed of it, and would clench his teeth when he recalled that he was the son of ‘Stinking Lizaveta.’ He was disrespectful to the servant Grigory and his wife, his former benefactors in his childhood. He cursed Russia and made fun of it. He dreamed of going to France and even becoming a Frenchman. He often used to say that he lacked the means to do so. It seems to me that he loved no one except himself, and held himself in very strangely high esteem. His degree of enlightenment was visible in his fine clothes, clean shirtfronts, and his polished boots. Seeing himself as Fyodor Pavlovich’s illegitimate son (there’s factual evidence to support this), he could’ve come to resent his position compared with his master’s legal offspring: they’ll get everything, he thought, while I’ll get nothing; they have all the rights, their inheritance, and I’m only the cook. He told me that he and Fyodor Pavlovich had put the money in the envelope. The purpose of the sum—money that could have established his career—was, of course, hateful to him. In addition, he’d seen those three thousand rubles in rainbow-colored bills (I asked him about that on purpose). Oh, never show an envious and proud man a large amount of money all at once: it was the first time he had seen such a large sum in one place. The impression of this colorful sum could’ve made a morbid impression on his imagination, at first without having any consequences.

“The highly talented prosecutor laid out before us with extraordinary sophistication all the arguments pro and contra concerning the possibility of Smerdyakov’s guilt in the murder; in particular he asked: why did he feign an epileptic fit? But perhaps he wasn’t feigning at all and the fit may have occurred naturally and have passed off naturally, and the patient may have recovered. Let’s suppose he didn’t recover completely, but he still recovered consciousness, which happens with epileptics.

“The prosecution asks: when is the moment that Smerdyakov committed the murder? But it’s very easy to point to that moment. He could’ve regained consciousness and have woken up from a deep sleep (he could’ve been fast asleep, because epileptics always fall asleep after a fit) precisely at that moment when the old man Grigory had grabbed the defendant’s foot as he was fleeing and shouted for the whole neighborhood to hear, ‘Patricide!’ This extraordinary shout in the stillness and darkness could’ve awakened Smerdyakov, whose sleep at that instant might not been have very sound: he might’ve naturally begun to wake up an hour before that. Getting up out of bed, he set off almost unconsciously and without a specific purpose in the direction of the scream, to see what was happening. He may have been in a morbid daze, his mind drowsy, but he found himself in the garden; he approaches the illuminated windows and he hears the terrible news from the master, who, of course, is very glad to see him. His mind gets to work at once. He learns all the details from his master. Gradually, in his distraught and disordered brain, the idea takes shape—horrible, but tantalizing, and irresistibly logical: to kill, take the three thousand, and lay the blame on the young master. Who else would be accused, if not the young master—all the evidence, and he was there. A terrible craving for money, for loot, could have taken hold of his spirit, together with the idea of his impunity. Oh, these sudden and indescribable motives come frequently when the opportunity presents itself; primarily they arrive suddenly in the mind of someone who a minute ago didn’t know that he’d commit murder! And Smerdyakov could’ve gone in to his master and executed his plan, with what, what weapon—with the first stone he’d seen in the garden and then grabbed. But why? With what goal? Three thousand rubles to launch his career. Oh, I’m not contradicting myself: the money may even have existed. And it’s possible that only Smerdyakov knew where to find it, exactly where it was hidden in his master’s room.

“And the torn envelope for the money? Earlier, when the prosecutor was talking about this envelope, he presented his very subtle explanation that only an inexperienced thief like Karamazov would’ve left it on the floor, but not one like Smerdyakov, who never would’ve left a piece of incriminating evidence behind. Earlier, gentlemen of the jury, as I was listening, I suddenly felt that I was hearing something extremely familiar. Would you believe it: just three days before I heard exactly the same explanation, the same theory, from Smerdyakov himself. What’s more, it impressed me greatly at the time: it seemed to me that he was feigning naïveté, hastening to anticipate me, foisting that idea on me, so that I would come up with it myself and think that it was my own. Didn’t he suggest the same explanation to the prosecution? Didn’t he perhaps also suggest it to the highly talented prosecutor?

“They’ll ask, ‘What about the old woman, Grigory’s wife?’ She heard the sick man moaning next to her all night. So, she did hear, but that evidence is extremely unreliable. I once knew a lady who complained bitterly that she’d been kept awake all night by a dog barking in the courtyard, and that she hadn’t slept a wink. However, the poor mutt, as it later became clear, had yelped only two or three times the whole night. But this is natural: a person is asleep and suddenly hears a moan; he wakes annoyed at being aroused, and then falls back to sleep again immediately. Some two hours later there’s another moan, the person wakes up and then falls back to sleep. Then there’s another moan, some two hours after that, three times altogether during the night. In the morning the sleeper wakes up and complains that someone was moaning and kept him awake all night. It has to seem like that to him. He doesn’t recall those two hours in between the moans when he was asleep; he only remembers the times when he was awake, and so it seems to him that he lay awake all night.

“But why, why, exclaims the prosecutor, did Smerdyakov not confess in his final note? ‘His conscience prompted him to confess the first, but not the second.’ Excuse me: conscience implies repentance, and the suicide might not have felt repentance, only despair. Despair and repentance are two very different things. Despair can be spiteful and uncompromising, and the suicide, laying hands on himself, at that moment could’ve felt redoubled hatred for those he’d envied all his life.

“Gentlemen of the jury, beware of making a judicial error! What is improbable in all that I’ve just presented and portrayed to you? Find the error in my account, find the impossibility, the absurd! But if there’s even a shadow of possibility, a shadow of probability in my propositions—withhold your sentence. But is there only a shadow? I swear by all that’s sacred, I believe completely in the explanation of the murder that I’ve just presented to you. But the main thing that disturbs me and angers me is still the thought that out of all these facts amassed by the prosecution to accuse the defendant, there’s not a single one that’s certain and irrefutable, and that the unfortunate man will perish solely as a result of the accumulation of facts. Yes, this accumulation is appalling: the blood, the blood dripping from his fingers, his bloodstained linen, the dark night, reverberating with the shout of ‘Patricide,’ the old man collapsing with a shattered skull, and then the mass of phrases, testimonies, gestures, shouts—oh, all this has such great influence, it can suborn one’s conviction, but, gentlemen of the jury, can it really suborn your conviction?

“Remember, you’ve been given immense power, the power to bind and to loose.[1] But the greater that power, the more overwhelming is the application! I do not retreat one iota from what I’ve said here, but let’s assume, just for one moment, that I agree with the accusation, that my unfortunate client stained his hands with his father’s blood. It’s merely a hypothesis, I repeat; I’ve never doubted his innocence even for one moment; but let’s suppose that the defendant’s guilty of patricide, yet hear me out: I have it in my heart to say something to you, because I feel that a great struggle is going on in your hearts and minds. . . . Forgive me, gentlemen of the jury, for mentioning your hearts and minds. I want to be truthful and sincere to the end. Let’s all be sincere!”

At this point his speech was interrupted by rather loud applause. As a matter of fact, he uttered these last words with such sincerity that everyone thought he really did have something more to say, and that what he said next would be extremely important. But the chairman, after hearing the applause, threatened loudly to “clear” the courtroom if a “similar instance” were to be repeated. Everyone quieted down, and Fetyukovich began in a different voice, one full of emotion, quite unlike the tone he had employed up to this time.

1 Cf. Matthew 16:19.

XIII

AN ADULTERER OF THOUGHT

“Gentlemen of the jury, it’s not only the totality of the facts that threatens my client,” he declared. “No, my client is threatened only by a single fact—the body of his old father! If this had been a simple murder, you’d have rejected the charge in view of its insignificance, the lack of proof, the fantastic nature of the evidence if each and every fact were to be examined separately and not in the totality; you’d have rejected the accusation, or at least you’d have hesitated to destroy a man’s fate merely as a result of prejudice against him, which, alas, was well deserved! But this was not a simple murder: it was a patricide! This strikes one to such an extent that even the insignificance and lack of proof become less insignificant and less unsubstantiated, and this happens even in an unprejudiced mind. How can such a defendant be acquitted? What if he actually did commit the murder and walks away unpunished—that’s what everyone feels in his heart almost involuntarily, instinctively.

“Yes, it’s a terrible thing to shed one’s father’s blood—the blood of the one who begot me, loved me, wouldn’t have spared his own life for me, endured my illnesses from childhood, suffered for my happiness, and who lived only for my joys and successes! Oh, to kill such a man—why, it’s impossible even to conceive!

“Gentlemen of the jury, what is a father, a real father? What is the meaning of this great word? What is the great idea represented by that name? We just indicated in part what a real father is and what he should be. In the present case with which we are now all so involved, and which grieves our souls—in the present case, the father, the late Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, did not in any way resemble that idea of a father that we felt in our hearts. That’s a misfortune. In fact, some fathers resemble misfortunes. Let’s examine this particular misfortune more closely—there’s nothing to fear, gentlemen of the jury, in view of the importance of the impending decision. It’s even our obligation not to fear, so to speak, not to cower like children or frightened women before any idea, to borrow the words of the highly talented prosecutor.

“But in his passionate speech, my esteemed opponent (and he was my opponent even before I said a word), my opponent exclaimed more than once: ‘No, I won’t allow anyone else to defend the accused, I won’t yield the defense of the defendant to someone who’s come from Petersburg—I am the prosecutor, but I’m also the counsel for the defense!’ That’s what he exclaimed several times; however, he forgot to mention that if for twenty-three years the terrible defendant was so grateful for a mere pound of nuts received from the only man who’d ever been kind to him as a child in his father’s house, then might not that same man have recalled how he ran about barefoot in ‘his father’s backyard without boots, wearing only his little trousers fastened by one button,’ using the expression of the compassionate Dr. Herzenshtube?

“Oh, gentlemen of the jury, why should we examine more closely this ‘misfortune’? Why should we repeat what we already know? What did my client encounter when he first arrived here at his father’s house? Why, why depict my client as an unfeeling egoist, a monster? He’s unrestrained, wild, and tempestuous; is that why we’re trying him now? But who is to blame for his own fate? Who is to blame for his having received such a ridiculous upbringing, given his fine propensity, and his generous and sensitive heart? Did anyone teach him to be reasonable, enlighten him in the sciences, and love him even a little bit during his childhood? My client grew up under God’s protection, that is, like a wild beast. Perhaps he was keen to see his father after long years of separation; perhaps before that, recalling his own childhood thousands of times, as if in a dream, he banished negative specters that haunted him, and he longed with his whole soul to embrace and forgive his father. And then what happened? He’s greeted only by cynical taunts, suspicions, and chicanery over the disputed money; every day he hears only conversations and worldly precepts ‘over the brandy’ that he finds revolting, and at last he sees his father trying to lure away his own mistress with his own money—oh, gentlemen of the jury, that’s revolting and cruel! Yet this old man was always complaining about his son’s lack of respect and his cruelty; he’d blacken him in society, injure him, slander him, and buy up his promissory notes to land him in jail!

“Gentlemen of the jury, these people, like my client, who appear to be hard-hearted, fierce, and unrestrained are, most often, extremely tenderhearted, but they don’t show it. Don’t laugh: don’t laugh at my idea! The talented prosecutor laughed mercilessly when I argued that the defendant loves Schiller, loves the ‘sublime and beautiful.’[1] I wouldn’t have laughed at that in his place, in the prosecutor’s place! Yes, these hearts—oh, let me defend these hearts, so rare and so unjustly misunderstood—these hearts quite often yearn for tenderness, beauty, and justice, as though in contrast to themselves, their rowdiness, their cruelty—they yearn unconsciously, but still they do. Passionate and cruel on the outside, they’re painfully capable of loving a woman, for example, with a spiritual and sublime love. Once more, don’t laugh at me: this is very often the case with such natures! Only they can’t conceal their own passions—sometimes very coarse—and this is what strikes one, this is what’s noticed, rather than seeing what’s inside the person. On the contrary, all these passions are quickly satisfied; however, near a noble, splendid being, this apparently coarse and cruel man seeks renewal, seeks the possibility of reform, becoming better, becoming noble and honorable, ‘sublime and beautiful,’ however much that expression has been ridiculed!

“I said just recently that I won’t allow myself to touch on my client’s relationship with Miss Verkhovtseva. However, I might say just a word or two: a while ago we didn’t hear any real evidence, merely the scream of a frenzied and vengeful woman; it’s not for her to reproach him for his betrayal, because she was the one who betrayed him! If she’d had any time to reflect, she wouldn’t have given such testimony! Oh, don’t believe her: no, my client is not a ‘monster,’ as she called him! The crucified Lover of Mankind, on his way to the cross, said, ‘I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep,’ so that not one of them might perish.[2] Let us also not bring ruin to a human soul!

“Just now I asked what the word ‘father’ meant, and I exclaimed that it’s a great word, a precious designation. But, gentlemen of the jury, we must treat that word honestly, and I will allow myself to call things by their right name, their proper designation: such a father as the murdered old man Karamazov cannot be and is unworthy of the name ‘father.’ Love for one’s father that isn’t justified by the father is an absurdity, an impossibility. It’s impossible to create love out of nothing; only God can create out of nothing.

“ ‘Fathers, provoke not your children to anger,’[3] writes the apostle from his heart glowing with love. I quote these sacred words now not for my client’s benefit; I recall them for the benefit of all fathers. Who granted me this power to instruct all fathers? No one. But as a man and a citizen, I call out: vivos voco![4] We aren’t on earth for very long: we perform many bad deeds and utter many bad words. Therefore let us seize upon a favorable moment when we’re all together to say a good word to one another. So I will: while I’m at this place I’ll use this moment. This tribune is not given us in vain by a higher authority—all Russia hears us from here! I’m speaking not only to those fathers present here today, but I declare to all fathers: ‘Fathers, provoke not your children to anger!’ Yes, let us first fulfill Christ’s ordinance ourselves, and only then can we permit ourselves to ask the same of our children. Otherwise we’re not fathers, but enemies of our children, and they’re not our children, but our enemies, and we ourselves made them our enemies! ‘For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.’[5] It’s not I who says this—it’s what the Gospel prescribes: measure with the same measure as it is measured out to you. How can we blame our children if they measure us according to our measure?

“In Finland not long ago, a young servant girl was suspected of having given birth in secret to a child. They began to keep an eye on her, and in a corner of the attic behind some bricks, they found her trunk, which no one had known about; they opened it and took out the body of her newborn infant, whom she’d murdered. In the same trunk they found the skeletons of two more babies: according to her own confession, she’d killed them at the moment of their birth. Gentlemen of the jury, was she a mother to those children? Yes, she’d given birth to them, but was she a mother to them? Would any one of us dare to give her the sacred name of ‘mother’? Let’s be bold, gentlemen of the jury, let’s be courageous, we’re even obliged to be so at the present moment, and let’s not fear certain words and ideas, like the wives of Moscow merchants who fear ‘metal’ and ‘brimstone.’[6] No, let’s prove, on the contrary, that progress during the last few years has affected our own development; and let’s state this outright: a father is not merely the one who begets the child; a father is someone who begets the child and proves himself worthy of it.

“Oh, of course, there’s another meaning, another interpretation of the word ‘father,’ one that insists that my father, even though he may be a monster, even though he may be a villain to his children, still remains my father, merely because he begot me. But this meaning is mystical, so to speak, something I can’t comprehend using my intellect; I can accept it only by faith, better to say, on faith, similar to many other things I don’t understand, but that, however, religion commands me to believe. In that case, let it remain outside the realm of real life. In the realm of real life, which not only has its own rights, but also imposes great obligations—in this realm, if we wish to be humane Christians after all, we should and we’re obliged to act only according to convictions justified by reason and experience, passed through the crucible of analysis; in a word, we must act rationally and not insanely as in a dream or delirium, so as not to cause harm to any person and not to torment or destroy any man. Then, then it will be a genuine Christian act, not merely mystical, but a rational and philanthropic act . . .”

At this point in his speech the orator was interrupted by loud applause from many sides of the courtroom, but Fetyukovich even waved his arms, as if begging the audience not to interrupt him, for them to let him finish. Then everything settled down again. The orator continued:

“Do you think, gentlemen of the jury, that our children, as they grow up and begin to reason, can avoid such questions? No, they can’t, and let’s not impose on them any impossible constraint! The sight of an unworthy father, especially when compared to other worthy fathers of other children the same age, involuntarily suggests tormenting questions to a young person. He’s given answers to these questions in the conventional manner: ‘He begot you, you’re his flesh and blood; therefore you should love him.’ The young man thinks unwittingly: ‘But did he really love me when he begot me?’ He asks, wondering more and more: ‘Did he beget me for my sake? He knew neither me nor even my sex at that moment, that moment of passion, perhaps inflamed by wine, and he perhaps passed along to me a predilection for drunkenness—that’s the good deed he did for me. . . . Why should I love him, merely because he begot me, when he then failed to love me my whole life?’

“Oh, these questions may seem crude or cruel to you, but don’t demand any impossible restraint from the young man: ‘Drive nature out the door and it will come in through the window.’[7] Above all, let’s not be afraid of ‘metal’ and ‘brimstone.’ We’ll resolve the question as reason and philanthropy prescribe, and not as mystical concepts suggest. How will it be resolved? Here’s how: let the son stand before his father and ask him cautiously: ‘Father, tell me: why should I love you? Father, prove to me that I must love you.’ And if this father is capable and in a condition to answer him and show him—then we have a genuine normal family, built not on mystical prejudice, but on a rational, responsible, strictly humane foundation. In the opposite case, if the father can’t show him—that’s the end to the family bond. He’s no longer a father to him, and the son receives his freedom as well as the right to regard him as a stranger, even as an enemy. Our tribune, gentlemen of the jury, should be a school of truth and sensible ideas!”

Here the orator was interrupted by unrestrained, almost frenzied applause. Of course, not the entire audience was applauding, only about half of it. The fathers and mothers were applauding. From above where the ladies were seated, you could hear shrieks and cries. They waved their handkerchiefs. The chairman began to ring the bell for all he was worth. He was evidently irritated by the audience’s behavior, but dared not “clear” the courtroom, as he’d threatened earlier: even those of higher ranks seated in a special section, little old men with stars on their breasts, were also applauding and waving their handkerchiefs; the result was that when the din subsided, the chairman confined himself to repeating his stern warning to “clear” the courtroom, while Fetyukovich, triumphant and inspired, continued his speech.

“Gentlemen of the jury, you remember that dreadful night about which so many have testified here today, when the son climbed the fence and entered his father’s house and at last stood face-to-face with his enemy and persecutor, who’d begotten him. With all my strength I insist that it wasn’t for the money that he came running at that moment: as I argued previously, the accusation of robbery is absurd. And it wasn’t to murder him that he broke into the house, oh, no; if he’d had that intention, he would have armed himself with some weapon beforehand, while he merely grabbed the brass pestle instinctively, unaware of why he did so. Granted, he deceived his father by signaling at the window; granted he burst in on him—I said before that I don’t believe that legend, but let’s assume it for one minute! Gentlemen of the jury, I swear to you by all that’s holy, that if it had not been his father but just some ordinary enemy, he’d have run from room to room and ascertained that the woman was not there in the house, he’d have left the house, without doing his rival any harm; he might perhaps have struck him or shoved him, but that’s all, because he didn’t care and had no time: he needed to find out where she was. But his father, his father! Oh, the mere sight of his father, the father he’d hated since childhood, his enemy, his tormentor, and now his monstrous rival! A hateful emotion overtook him involuntarily, spontaneously, and it was impossible to reason: everything welled up in a single instant! This was the result of madness and insanity, but also the result of nature taking revenge for its eternal laws, irresistibly and unconsciously, like everything in nature. But the alleged murderer did not commit murder—I insist on this, I shout it—no, he merely brandished the pestle in loathsome indignation, not meaning to kill him, not even knowing if he’d kill him. If he hadn’t had the fateful pestle in his hand, he would’ve merely struck his father, perhaps, but he wouldn’t have killed him. After running away, he didn’t know whether he’d killed the old man he’d knocked down. Such a murder is not a real murder. Such a murder is not a patricide. No, the murder of such a father cannot be described as a patricide. Such a murder can only be described as a patricide through prejudice!

“But did this murder actually take place—I appeal to you again and again from the bottom of my heart! Gentlemen of the jury, if we convict him, he’ll say, ‘These people have done nothing for my fate, for my upbringing, or for my education to make me better, to make me a man. These people have given me nothing to eat or drink, they haven’t visited me in prison in my nakedness, and they sent me into penal servitude.[8] Even now I’m with them; I owe them nothing and owe no one anything forever and ever. They’re wicked and I will be, too.’ That’s what he’ll say, gentlemen of the jury! And I swear: with your conviction you’ll only relieve him, relieve his conscience; he’ll curse the blood he shed and will feel no remorse. At the same time you’ll destroy in him the possibility of becoming a new man, for he’ll remain wicked and blind for the rest of his life.

“Don’t you wish to punish him terribly, cruelly, with the most dreadful penalty you can imagine, but, at the same time, to save him and revive his soul forever? If so, then overwhelm him with your mercy! You’ll see, you’ll hear how his soul will tremble in awe: ‘Can I endure this mercy? Can I bear so much love? Am I worthy of it?’ That’s what he’ll cry! Oh, I know, I know his heart: it’s an untamed but noble heart, gentlemen of the jury. It will bow before your deed; it yearns for a great act of love; it will flare up and be resurrected forever. There are souls that, in their inadequacy, blame the whole world. But overwhelm this soul with mercy, show it love, and it will curse its own action, for there are so many good rudiments within it. The soul will expand and see how God is merciful and people are splendid and just. He will be horrified; from then on, remorse and immense obligation will overwhelm him. Then he won’t say, ‘I’m now even’; but he’ll say, ‘I’m guilty before all people and I’m more unworthy than all others.’ With tears of repentance and burning, suffering tender emotion, he’ll exclaim: ‘People are better than I am because they decided not to destroy me, but to save me!’

“Oh, it’s so easy for you to do this, this act of mercy; for in the absence of anything like real evidence, it will be too difficult for you to proclaim, ‘Yes, guilty.’ It’s better to acquit ten guilty men than to punish one innocent man—do you hear, do you hear this majestic voice from the previous century of our glorious history?[9] Is it for me, an insignificant man, to remind you that Russian justice is not only for punishment, but also for the salvation of the fallen man? Let other nations follow the letter of the law and seek retribution, while we adhere to its spirit and meaning, the salvation and rebirth of the fallen. And if this is true, if Russia really is like this and her courts are, too—then onward, Russia; do not frighten us with your frenzied troikas, before which all other nations stand aside in loathing! Not a frenzied troika, but a majestic Russian chariot triumphantly and serenely reaches its goal.

“My client’s fate lies in your hands; the fate of our Russian justice also lies in your hands. You will save it, you will defend it, and you will prove that there is someone to monitor it—it is in good hands!”

1 See above, p. 809.

2 John 10:11.

3 Colossians 3:21.

4 Latin for “I call upon the living!”

5 Luke 6:38.

6 An indication of ignorance and superstition: a reference to the play Hard Days (1863), by the leading nineteenth-century Russian playwright, A. N. Ostrovsky.

7 A quotation from one of Jean de La Fontaine’s fables in a Russian translation by N. M. Karamzin.

8 Cf. Matthew 25:35–36.

9 A paraphrase of lines from Peter the Great’s Code of Martial Law (1716).

XIV

THE PEASANTS STOOD UP FOR THEMSELVES

That was how Fetyukovich concluded, and the enthusiasm that burst forth from the audience this time was uncontrollable, like a storm. It was unthinkable to hold it back: women wept, and many of the men also wept; even two high-ranking persons shed tears. The chairman yielded and even postponed ringing the bell: “To encroach on such enthusiasm would be like encroaching on something sacred,” as the ladies exclaimed afterward. The speaker himself was sincerely moved. It was at such a moment that our Ippolit Kirillovich rose once again to “raise several objections.” People regarded him with hatred: “What? What’s this? He dares raise objections?” squawked the ladies. But even if all the ladies in the world had started complaining, including even his own wife, even then it would’ve been impossible to restrain him at such a moment. He was pale, trembling from agitation; his first words, the first phrases he uttered, were even incomprehensible; he was gasping for breath, his speech was garbled, he lost the thread. But he soon recovered. I shall quote only a few of his words from his second speech.

“. . . I’ve been reproached for having created a fiction. But what is his defense if not one fiction piled on top of another? All that’s missing is poetry: while waiting for his lover, Fyodor Pavlovich tears open the envelope and tosses it on the floor. We’re even told the words he spoke on this remarkable occasion. Isn’t this just like a narrative poem? What proof do we have that he took out the money? Who heard what he said? The weak-minded idiot Smerdyakov is transformed into some kind of Byronic hero, taking his revenge on society because he was illegitimate—isn’t this a poem in the Byronic style? While the son, who breaks into his father’s house and murders him, but at the same time doesn’t murder him—that’s not even a fiction or a poem, it’s a sphinx setting us a riddle that he himself can’t even solve. If he killed him, he killed him: what’s the meaning of this ‘if he killed him, he didn’t kill him’? Who can understand that?

“Then they tell us that our tribune is one of truth and sensible ideas; yet from this tribune of ‘sensible ideas’ comes the notion that to call the murder of a father a patricide is merely prejudice! But if patricide is a prejudice and if every child will ask, ‘Father, why must I love you?’—then what will become of us? What will become of the foundations of society? What will become of the family? Patricide, don’t you see, is merely the ‘brimstone’ of a Moscow merchant’s wife. The most precious, most sacred ordinances in the destiny and future of Russian justice are presented in a distorted and frivolous way, merely to achieve an aim, to justify that which cannot be justified.

“ ‘Oh, overwhelm him with your mercy,’ cried the counsel for the defense, but that’s all the criminal needs: tomorrow everyone will see how overwhelmed he really is! And isn’t the defense counsel too modest in seeking an acquittal? Why not establish a fund in honor of the patricide to perpetuate his heroic deed among his descendants and the younger generation? The Gospels and religion are to be corrected: that, he says, is all mysticism, and ours is the only true Christianity already subjected to the analysis of reason and common sense. And so they set before us a false likeness of Christ! ‘For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again,’ cries the defense counsel and at that same moment concludes that Christ taught us to measure as it is measured to us, and this from the tribune of reason and common sense! We glance into the Gospels only on the eve of our speech to impress the audience with our familiarity with what is still a rather original composition, which might be of use in producing a certain effect and serve our purpose! But Christ commands us not to do that, to refrain from doing that, because that’s what the wicked world does, while we should forgive and turn the other cheek, rather than measure our offenders the same way they measure us. That’s what our God taught us, and not that to forbid children to kill their fathers is a prejudice. And from the tribune of truth or out of good sense we won’t correct the Gospels of our Lord, whom the defense counsel prefers to call ‘the crucified lover of humanity,’ as opposed to all Orthodox Russia, which appeals to Him, ‘For Thou art our God!”

Here the chairman intervened to curb the speaker, who was getting carried away; he asked him not to exaggerate, to keep within the norms, and so on and so forth, the way chairmen usually do on such occasions. And the audience was also restless. The public was stirring, even exclaiming in indignation. Fetyukovich didn’t even object; he merely stepped up onto the tribune, placed his hand over his heart, and uttered a few very dignified words in an offended voice. He only mentioned fleetingly and sarcastically the themes of “fiction” and “psychology once again,” and at one point inserted the line “Jupiter, you are angry; therefore you must be wrong,” which provoked a large burst of approving laughter from the audience, since Ippolit Kirillovich did not in the least resemble Jupiter. Then, concerning the charge that he was allowing the younger generation to murder their fathers, Fetyukovich observed with profound dignity that he would not deign to reply. As for the “false likeness to Christ” and the fact that he hadn’t referred to Christ as God, but had called him merely a “crucified lover of humanity,” which is “contrary to Orthodoxy,” and should not be proclaimed from the “tribune of truth and good sense”—Fetyukovich alluded to the “insinuation” that, in planning to come here, he was hoping that this court would be at least free from accusations “dangerous to my person as a citizen and a loyal subject.” But at these words the chairman checked him, and Fetyukovich, bowing, finished his reply, accompanied by total approval in the courtroom. In the opinion of our ladies, Ippolit Kirillovich, on the other hand, had been “demolished once and for all.”

Then the defendant himself was allowed to speak. Mitya stood up, but said very little. He was extremely exhausted, both physically and spiritually. The look of strength and independence with which he’d entered the courtroom that morning had almost completely disappeared. It was as if he’d experienced something that day, something very important that he hadn’t known before, and that would remain with him for the rest of his life. His voice was weak; he was no longer shouting, as he had before. There was something new, humbled, defeated, and submissive in his voice.

“What can I say, gentlemen of the jury! My judgment has arrived. I feel the righteous hand of God upon me. This is the end of a dissolute man! But as if confessing to God, I say to you: ‘I did not shed my father’s blood.’ I repeat for the last time, ‘It wasn’t me who killed.’ I was dissolute, but I loved the good. I tried to improve every minute, but I lived like a wild beast. I thank the prosecutor, who told me many things about myself that I didn’t know; but it’s not true that I killed my father; he made a mistake! Thanks also to the defense counsel; I wept listening to him, but it’s not true that I killed my father: there was no need even to suppose that! Don’t believe the doctors: I’m in my right mind, but my soul is troubled. If you spare me, if you let me go—I will pray for you. I will become better, I give you my word; I swear before God. And if you condemn me—I’ll break my sword over my head and kiss the pieces![1] But spare me, don’t take my God away from me. I know myself: I will revolt. My soul is troubled, gentlemen . . . spare me!”

He almost fell back into his place; his voice broke off; he could hardly utter his last phrase. Then the judge proceeded to pose the questions and began to ask for each side’s conclusion. I won’t describe that in detail. At last the jury rose to retire for its deliberations. The chairman was exhausted, and thus his parting words to the jury were very weak: “Be impartial; don’t be swayed by the eloquence of the defense; weigh both arguments. Remember that a great responsibility rests on your shoulders,” and so on and so forth.

The jury withdrew, and the court adjourned. People could stand up, move about, exchange their accumulated impressions, and get something to eat at the buffet. It was very late, almost one o’clock in the morning, but no one left. Everyone was so tense and anxious, no one could think about sleep. Almost everyone was waiting with a sinking heart, although not quite everyone. The ladies were in a state of hysterical impatience, but their hearts were calm: “An acquittal is inevitable,” they thought. But they were all preparing for a spectacular moment of general enthusiasm. I confess that among the men there were many who also saw an acquittal as inevitable. Some of them rejoiced, while others frowned, and some simply felt dejected: they didn’t want to see him acquitted! Fetyukovich himself was very confident of his success. He was surrounded, accepted congratulations; people kept trying to ingratiate themselves with him.

“There are,” he said to one group, as was related afterward, “there are invisible threads binding the defense counsel to the jury. They were formed and could be perceived during the speech. I felt that they exist. This case is ours, have no fear.”

“I wonder what our peasants will say now?” asked a frowning, portly, pockmarked gentleman, a neighboring landlord, approaching a crowd of conversing gentlemen.

“But they’re not only peasants. There are four civil servants among them.”

“Yes, civil servants,” said a member of the district council, joining the group.

“And do you know Nazaryov, Prokhor Ivanovich, the merchant wearing a medal, who’s a member of the jury?”

“What about him?”

“He’s smart as they come.”

“But he never says anything.”

“Never says anything: so much the better. There’s no need for the man from Petersburg to teach him: he could teach all of Petersburg himself. Just think—he has twelve children!”

“But wait a moment: do you think they won’t acquit him?” one of our young civil servants cried in another group.

“It’s for sure they’ll acquit him,” a decisive voice replied.

“It would be shameful, disgraceful if they didn’t acquit him!” cried the civil servant. “Suppose he did kill him—there are fathers and there are fathers! Besides, he was in such a frenzy. . . . He might really have done nothing but brandish that pestle, and the old man fell down. It’s too bad they dragged the lackey into it. It’s merely a ridiculous episode. If I were in the defense counsel’s place, I’d have said: ‘He killed him but he’s not guilty, and may the devil take you!’ ”

“That’s exactly what he did, but he didn’t say, ‘May the devil take you.’ ”

“No, Mikhail Semyonych, he almost said it,” a third voice interrupted.

“Why, gentlemen, recently during Lent they acquitted an actress who slit the throat of her lover’s legal wife.”

“Yes, but she didn’t finish slitting it.”

“It doesn’t matter, she still started!”

“What did you think of what he said about the children? Splendid, wasn’t it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, and what about mysticism?”

“Enough about mysticism,” cried someone else. “You ought to think about the prosecutor Ippolit, and his fate from tomorrow onward! Tomorrow his wife will scratch his eyes out for Mitya’s sake.”

“Is she here?”

“What do you mean? If she were here, she’d have scratched his eyes out in the courtroom. She’s sitting at home waiting for him, with a toothache. Ha-ha-ha!”

“Ha-ha-ha!”

In the third group:

“You know, I think they’ll acquit Mitya.”

“For all I know, he might turn the whole Capital City tavern upside down tomorrow. He’ll be drinking for ten days straight!”

“Oh, what the devil!”

“Yes, the devil indeed. He’s bound to be here. Where else could he be if not here?”

“Gentlemen, let’s agree it was eloquent. But it’s still not right to hit one’s father over the head with a steelyard balance. Otherwise, where will we wind up?”

“And the chariot. What about that chariot? Do you remember?”

“Yes, he made a cart into a chariot.”

“And tomorrow he’ll make a cart out of a chariot, ‘in good measure, all in good measure.’ ”

“They’re a clever lot nowadays. Do we have any justice here in Russia, gentlemen, or none at all?”

But the bell rang. The jury had deliberated for precisely one hour, no more, no less. Profound silence reigned as soon as the members of the audience took their seats. I remember how the members of the jury entered the courtroom. At last! I won’t repeat the questions in order; I’ve even forgotten them. I remember only the answer to the chairman’s first and most important question: “Did the defendant commit the murder in premeditated fashion for the purpose of robbery?” (I don’t recall his exact words.) Everyone was dead quiet. The jury foreman, namely the civil servant younger than all the rest, loudly and clearly, amid the deathlike stillness in the hall, proclaimed:

“Yes, guilty!”

And then the same answer was given to every question: guilty, guilty, and without the least recommendation for leniency! No one was expecting this; everyone was convinced that there’d be at least a recommendation for leniency. The deathly stillness in the courtroom was not disturbed; it was as if everyone had frozen in place—both those who’d desired a conviction and those eager for an acquittal. But that was only during the first few moments. The utter silence was followed by terrible chaos. It turned out that many of the men were very satisfied. Some were even rubbing their hands, making no attempt to conceal their joy. Those who were dissatisfied were subdued; they shrugged their shoulders, whispered, still unable to process the verdict. But good Lord, what a state the ladies were in! I thought they might stage a revolt. At first they seemed not to believe their own ears. Suddenly exclamations resounded throughout the hall: “What’s this? How could this be?” They kept jumping up from their seats. Apparently, it seemed to them that the verdict could still be reconsidered and reversed. At this very moment Mitya stood up suddenly and cried out in a sort of heart-rending wail, extending his arms before him:

“I swear by God and the dreadful Judgment Day that I am innocent of shedding my father’s blood! Katya, I forgive you! Brothers, friends, spare the other woman!”

He didn’t finish and broke into terrible loud sobs, heard throughout the courtroom, in a voice that wasn’t his own, a new, unexpected voice that came from God knows where. From up above, in the gallery, from the farthest corner came the piercing wail of a woman: it was Grushenka. She’d been successful in imploring admittance to the courtroom again, before the beginning of the final speeches. They led Mitya away. The announcement of the sentence was delayed to the next day. The entire hall rose in commotion, but I didn’t wait to listen. I remember only a few exclamations heard on the steps as I was leaving:

“He’ll spend twenty years in the mines.”

“Not less.”

“Yes, sir, our peasants stood up for themselves.”

“And finished off our Mitenka!”

1 This is a part of the ceremony of civil execution, which Dmitry accepts.

EPILOGUE

I

PLANS TO SAVE MITYA

Five days after Mitya’s trial, very early in the morning, before nine o’clock, Alyosha went to see Katerina Ivanovna to discuss a matter of great importance to both of them and, in addition, to give her a message. She sat and talked to him in the same room where she’d received Grushenka at one time; nearby, in another room, unconscious and feverish, lay Ivan Fyodorovich. Katerina Ivanovna, immediately after the scene at the trial, had ordered the sick and unconscious Ivan Fyodorovich to be transferred to her house, ignoring all future gossip and the inevitable chatter throughout society, as well as its disapproval. One of the two relatives who lived with her had departed for Moscow immediately after the scene at the trial, while the other remained. But even if both had left, Katerina Ivanovna wouldn’t have altered her decision and would have stayed to look after the sick man and sit with him day and night. He was being treated by Varvinsky and Herzenshtube; the Moscow doctor had returned home, having refused in advance to state his opinion of the prospects for recovery in the case. The two remaining doctors, although they’d been reassuring Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha, evidently couldn’t provide any definitive hope for recovery. Alyosha visited his sick brother twice a day. But this time he had some special, urgent business, and he felt that it would be difficult to talk about it; meanwhile, he was in a great hurry; he had other urgent business in a different place that morning that couldn’t be postponed, so he had to hurry. They had been talking for a quarter of an hour. Katerina Ivanovna was pale, clearly exhausted; yet at the same time she was in a state of extremely unhealthy agitation: she had a premonition of why Alyosha had come to see her at this time.

“Don’t worry about his decision,” she said to Alyosha with firm insistence. “One way or another he’ll come to this conclusion: he must escape! That unfortunate man, that hero of honor and conscience—not him, not Dmitry Fyodorovich, but the one who’s lying behind that door and who sacrificed himself for his brother,” Katya added with flashing eyes, “he told me the entire plan of escape a long time ago. You know, he’s already made some contacts. . . . I’ve already told you a little about it. . . . You see, it’ll probably occur at the third stop from here, as the prisoners are being transported to Siberia. Oh, it’s still a long time until it happens. Ivan Fyodorovich has already been to see the superintendent in charge of the third stop. But the only thing we still don’t know is who’ll be leading the party, and it’s not possible to find out ahead of time. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll show you the whole detailed plan, which Ivan Fyodorovich left on the eve of the trial, just in case. . . . That was the time you found us here quarreling, do you remember? He was going downstairs, but when I saw you, I made him come back, do you recall? Do you know why we were quarreling that time?”

“No, I don’t,” said Alyosha.

“Of course, he was concealing it from you at that time: it was about that plan of escape. Three days before, he’d told me all about it—we began arguing about it, and we’ve been arguing for the last three days. We argued because when he told me that in case Dmitry Fyodorovich was convicted, he would escape abroad with that creature, I became furious at once, I can’t tell you why, I myself don’t know. . . . Oh, of course, I was furious because of that creature, precisely because she, too, together with Dmitry, would be escaping abroad!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly exclaimed, her lips trembling with rage. “As soon as Ivan Fyodorovich saw that I was furious about that creature, he concluded at once that I was jealous of her and therefore was still in love with Dmitry. That’s when the first quarrel occurred. I didn’t want to offer any explanations and couldn’t ask for forgiveness; I found it excruciating that such a man could suspect me of still being in love with that creature. . . . And this, when I myself had already told him that I was no longer in love with Dmitry, and loved only him! It was only because of resentment against that creature that I was angry with him!

“Three days later, on the same evening when you came, he brought me a sealed envelope that I was to open immediately if anything were to happen to him! Oh, he had a premonition of his illness! He told me that the envelope contained details of the escape plan, and in case he died or was dangerously ill, I alone should save Mitya. Then he left me money, almost ten thousand—the very same amount the prosecutor mentioned in his speech, having found out that he’d sent it to me to be changed into banknotes. I was suddenly struck by the fact that Ivan Fyodorovich, still jealous of me and convinced that I was in love with Mitya, hadn’t given up his plan to rescue his brother, and had entrusted his rescue to me! That was a sacrifice! No, you can’t fully understand such self-sacrifice, Aleksey Fyodorovich! I wanted to fall down at his feet in gratitude, but I suddenly thought that he’d consider it only a sign of my joy that he was rescuing Mitya (he’d have thought that undoubtedly!); I was so irritated merely by the possibility of such an unjust thought on his part that I grew angry once more, and instead of kissing his feet, I made quite a scene! Oh, I’m miserable! Such is my character—my terrible, miserable character! Oh, you’ll see, I’ll end by forcing him to give me up for another with whom it’s easier to get along, like Dmitry did, but then . . . no, I won’t be able to bear it and I’ll kill myself! When you came in then, and when I called you and ordered him to come back, and when he came in with you, I was so outraged by the hateful and contemptuous glance he threw at me—do you recall—I suddenly shouted that it was he, he alone, who’d convinced me that his brother Dmitry was the murderer! I slandered him intentionally to wound him again, while he never, ever tried to convince me that his brother was the murderer; on the contrary, it was I who tried to make him believe that! Oh, my fury is the reason for it! It’s I, I who staged that abominable scene at the trial! He wanted to prove to me that he was an honorable man and that even if I loved his brother, he still wouldn’t destroy him out of revenge or jealousy. So he came to the trial. . . . I’m the reason for it all, I alone am to blame!”

Never before had Katya made such a confession to Alyosha, and he felt that she was now at that level of unbearable suffering when the proudest heart would demolish its own pride and be vanquished by invincible sorrow. Oh, Alyosha knew another terrible reason for her present torment, no matter how she’d tried to conceal it from him all those days after Mitya’s conviction: but for some reason he felt it would have been too painful for him if she decided to lower herself and speak with him about this reason now, at this time. She was suffering because of her “treachery” at the trial; Alyosha had a premonition that her conscience was prompting her to confess it precisely to him, with tears, sighs, hysterics, and beating on the floor. But he dreaded that moment and wished to spare her the suffering. It made the commission on which he’d come all the more difficult to carry out. He began talking about Mitya once again.

“It’s all right, all right, don’t worry about him!” Katya began again stubbornly and stridently. “All that’s only momentary. I know him; I know his heart too well. You can be sure he’ll agree to escape. And the main thing is, it’s not immediate; there’ll be time for him to decide. Ivan Fyodorovich will recover by then and lead the effort; I’ll have nothing to do with it. Don’t worry; he’ll agree to escape. He’s already agreed: how could he leave that creature of his? They won’t let her into the prison, so he’ll have to escape. He’s most afraid of you, he’s afraid that you won’t approve his escape on moral grounds, but you must graciously permit it, given that your sanction is so necessary here,” Katya added with venom. She fell silent and grinned.

“He keeps talking about some kind of hymn,” she started in again, “about a cross he has to bear, about some obligation; Ivan Fyodorovich told me a great deal about this—if you only knew how he talked!” Katya exclaimed suddenly with unrestrained emotion. “If you only knew how he loved that unfortunate man at that moment when he told me, and how he hated him, perhaps, at the same time! But I heard his tale and his tears with a haughty grin! Oh, what a creature I am! It’s me who’s the creature, me! I am the one who caused his fever! As for that convicted man—is he ready to suffer?” Katya concluded irritably. “Can such a man suffer? Men like him never suffer!”

A certain feeling of hatred and loathing resounded in her words. Meanwhile, it was she who’d betrayed him. “Perhaps she feels that way because she’s so guilty before him and hates him at such moments,” Alyosha thought to himself. Alyosha wished that it were happening only “at certain moments.” He sensed a challenge in Katya’s last words, but he didn’t accept it.

“That’s why I summoned you today, so you’d promise me to persuade him. Or do you also think that it would be dishonest of him to flee, cowardly, or even . . . unchristian, is that it?” Katya added with even greater challenge.

“No, that doesn’t matter. I’ll tell him everything,” muttered Alyosha. “He’s asking you to come and see him today,” he suddenly blurted out, looking straight into her eyes. She shuddered and moved slightly away from him on the sofa.

“Me? Is that possible?” she asked and turned pale.

“It’s possible and must be done!” Alyosha began adamantly, then grew more animated. “He needs you now especially. I wouldn’t have broached the subject and tormented you prematurely if there wasn’t a need. He’s unwell; he’s like a madman, constantly asking for you. He doesn’t want a reconciliation with you, but he wants you to go and merely stand on his threshold. A great deal has happened to him since that day. He understands how immensely guilty he is before you. He doesn’t want your forgiveness: ‘It’s impossible to forgive me,’ he says himself, but he wants you to show yourself at his door.”

“All of a sudden you . . .” Katya muttered. “I had a premonition all these days that you’d come with this news. . . . I knew he’d summon me! It’s not possible!”

“Let it be impossible, but do it. Remember, he realizes for the first time how much he offended you, for the first time in his life; never before has he understood so fully! He says: ‘If she refuses to come, I’ll be unhappy for the rest of my days.’ Do you hear: he plans to be happy for the next twenty years of his penal servitude—isn’t that pitiful? Just think: you’ll visit him, an innocent man who’s been ruined.” Alyosha burst forth with a challenge: “His hands are clean; there’s no blood on them! For the sake of his infinite suffering in the future, please visit him now! Go to him, see him off into darkness . . . stand on his threshold, and that’s all. . . . After all, you must, you must do this!” Alyosha concluded, emphasizing the word “must” with immeasurable force.

“I must, but . . . I can’t,” Katya said, as though moaning. “He’ll look at me . . . I can’t.”

“Your eyes must meet. How will you live your whole life if you don’t resolve to do this now?”

“It’s better to suffer all my life.”

“You must go, you must,” Alyosha emphasized relentlessly.

“But why today, why now? I can’t leave the sick man . . .”

“You can leave him for a minute, it’s only a minute. If you don’t go today, by evening he’ll have a fever. I wouldn’t lie to you; have pity!”

“Have pity on me,” Katya reproached him bitterly and burst into tears.

“Therefore, you’ll go!” Alyosha said resolutely, seeing her tears. “I’ll tell him you’ll come immediately.”

“No, don’t say a word to him!” Katya cried in alarm. “I’ll come, but don’t tell him beforehand; perhaps I’ll go to see him, but I won’t enter. . . . I still don’t know . . .”

Her voice broke off. She gasped for breath. Alyosha stood up to leave.

“But if I meet someone?” she said suddenly in a low voice, growing pale again.

“That’s why you should go now, so you won’t meet anyone. No one will be there, I can assure you. We’ll expect you,” he concluded insistently and left the room.

II

FOR A MOMENT THE LIE BECOMES TRUTH

He hurried to the hospital where Mitya was resting. Two days after the verdict of the court, he had fallen ill with a nervous fever and been sent to the prisoners’ division of our town hospital. But Dr. Varvinsky, at the request of Alyosha and many others (Khokhlakova, Liza, etc.), had placed Mitya not in a ward with other convicts, but separately, in the same little room where Smerdyakov had previously stayed. It’s true that a guard stood at the end of the corridor, and the window had bars on it, so that Varvinsky could be at ease about the leniency he’d shown—it was not quite legal, but he was a kind and compassionate young man. He understood how difficult it would be for a man like Mitya to be suddenly thrown into contact with murderers and swindlers, and that he’d have to get used to it at first. Visits from family and friends were also allowed by the doctor, the superintendent, and even by the policeman, all under supervision. But during those first few days, Mitya’s only visitors were Alyosha and Grushenka. Rakitin had tried to push his way in twice, but Mitya had categorically requested that Varvinsky not admit him.

Alyosha found him sitting up on his bunk, wearing a hospital dressing gown, with a slight fever, his head wrapped in a towel soaked in water and vinegar. He regarded Alyosha with an indeterminate expression, but there was a trace of fear in his glance.

On the whole, since the trial, he’d become terribly pensive. Sometimes he remained silent for up to half an hour, and seemed to be pondering something painful and difficult, oblivious to his present surroundings. If he emerged from his pensiveness and started to speak, it was always abrupt and never about what he really wanted to say. Sometimes he looked at his brother with suffering. He seemed to find it easier to be with Grushenka than with Alyosha. True, he hardly spoke to her, but as soon as she’d enter, his entire face would light up with joy.

Alyosha sat down next to him on his bunk. This time Mitya had been nervously waiting for him, but he didn’t dare ask him any questions. He considered Katya’s agreement to visit him inconceivable: at the same time, he felt that if she didn’t come, something impossible would occur. Alyosha understood his feelings.

“They say that Trifon Borisych,” Mitya began nervously, “has destroyed his entire inn: he’s pulling up floorboards, pulling up planks, tearing the whole ‘gallery’ into pieces—searching for treasure, the money the prosecutor said I’d hidden there. As soon as he got back home, he began to carry on like that. It serves the swindler right! The guard told me this yesterday; he’s from there.”

“Listen,” said Alyosha, “she’s going to come, but I don’t know when; maybe today, maybe in a few days, I don’t know, but she’ll come, she will, that’s for sure.”

Mitya shuddered, wanted to say something, but kept silent. The news had a tremendous effect on him. It was evident that he desperately wanted to learn the details of the conversation, but he was afraid to ask again now: something cruel and contemptuous from Katya would have been like a knife wound at that moment.

“Here’s what she said, among other things: that I should set your conscience at ease about the plan to escape. If Ivan doesn’t recover before then, she’ll take care of it herself.”

“You told me that already,” said Mitya broodingly.

“And you’ve already told Grushenka,” remarked Alyosha.

“Yes,” confessed Mitya. “She won’t come this morning,” he said, looking timidly at his brother. “She’ll come this evening. As soon as I told her that Katya would handle it, she fell silent; but she made a wry face. She merely whispered, ‘Let her be!’ She understood that it was important. I didn’t dare try any further. It seems that by now she understands that Katya loves not me, but Ivan.”

“Does she?” burst from Alyosha.

“Perhaps she doesn’t. But she won’t come this morning,” Mitya hastened to add again. “I gave her a commission. . . . Listen, brother Ivan will surpass everyone. He should live, not us. He’ll recover.”

“Imagine, even though Katya’s very worried about him, she has no doubt that he’ll recover,” said Alyosha.

“That means she’s convinced he’ll die. It’s because she’s frightened that he’ll recover.”

“Brother Ivan has a strong constitution; I, too, hope fervently he’ll recover,” Alyosha said in alarm.

“Yes, he will. But Katya’s convinced he’ll die. She has so much sorrow.”

Silence ensued. Something very important was tormenting Mitya.

“Alyosha, I love Grusha immensely,” he said suddenly, his voice trembling with tears.

“They won’t let her go out there with you,” Alyosha declared immediately.

“There’s something else I wanted to tell you,” Mitya continued in a voice that was suddenly ringing. “If they start beating me along the way or out there, I won’t stand for it; I’ll kill someone and they’ll shoot me. And that’s for twenty years! Here they’re already addressing me informally. The guards speak to me rudely. I lay here all night judging myself: I’m not ready! I’m not strong enough to take it! I wanted to sing a ‘hymn,’ but I can’t stand that informal way of addressing me. I’d bear anything for Grusha, everything . . . except, perhaps, a beating. . . . But they won’t let her go there . . .”

Alyosha smiled gently.

“Listen, brother, once and for all,” he said. “Here are my thoughts about this. And you know that I won’t lie to you. Listen: you’re not ready; this cross is not for you to bear. Moreover, you don’t need such a great martyr’s cross when you’re not ready for it. If you’d killed Father, I’d feel sorry that you reject your cross. But you’re innocent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to restore another man to life in yourself through suffering; in my opinion, you should always remember that other man, all your life; no matter where you escape—that will be enough for you. The fact that you didn’t accept that great torment of the cross will serve you in that you’ll feel an even greater duty, and with this constant feeling ahead of you, all your life, you will do more to assist in your regeneration than if you went out there. Because you won’t endure it there and will begin to protest; perhaps at last you’ll say, ‘I’ve gotten even.’ The lawyer was right about that. Such heavy burdens are not for all men; for some they’re unbearable. . . . These are my thoughts, if you need them. If others were to be responsible for your escape—officers, soldiers—I ‘wouldn’t allow you’ to flee,” Alyosha said with a smile. “But they say and affirm (the superintendent of the stop told Ivan) that if it’s managed well, there’ll be no penalty and they can get off lightly. Of course, bribery’s dishonest even in this case, but I won’t render judgment about it, because if, for example, Ivan and Katya commissioned me to act on your behalf in this matter, I know that I’d pay bribes; I must tell you the whole truth. But you must know that I’ll never condemn you. Wouldn’t it be strange if I were to act as your judge in this matter? Well, now I’ve contemplated everything.”

“On the other hand, I do condemn myself!” cried Mitya. “I’ll escape—that was decided even without you: can Mitka Karamazov do otherwise than run away? But I’ll condemn myself and will pay for my sin forever. That’s how the Jesuits talk, isn’t it? Just the way we are.”

“Exactly,” Alyosha said with a gentle smile.

“I love you because you always tell me the whole truth and conceal nothing from me,” cried Mitya with a joyful laugh. “In other words, I’ve caught my Alyoshka being a Jesuit! I should kiss you for that, I should! Now listen to the rest: I’ll reveal the other half of my soul to you. Here’s what I thought up and decided: if I escape, even with my passport and money, even to America, I’ll be heartened by the idea that I’m escaping not for pleasure or happiness, but actually to another kind of exile, no worse perhaps than this one! No worse, Alyosha, I’m telling you the truth, no worse! I hate that America already, devil take it! Even if Grusha’s with me, but look at her: is she an American? She’s Russian, Russian to the bone; she’ll begin to long for her native land, and every hour I’ll see how she’s suffering for my sake, that she’s taken up such a cross because of me. But what is she guilty of? How will I put up with the local riffraff out there, even though every one of them may be better than me? I hate that America now! And even if they are all some sort of outstanding machinists there—the devil take them, they’re not my sort of people, they’re not of my soul! I love Russia, Aleksey; I love the Russian God, even though I’m a scoundrel! I’ll croak there!” he exclaimed suddenly with flashing eyes. His voice trembled with tears.

“Well, here’s what I’ve decided, Aleksey, listen!” he began again, suppressing his agitation. “As soon as I get there with Grusha, we’ll plow the land, work in solitude with the wild bears, somewhere far away. There must be some remote area even there! They say there are still redskins living at the end of the horizon. So, we’ll go to the land of the last Mohicans.[1] We’ll set to work on the grammar, Grusha and I. Work and grammar, for some three years. And by then we’ll speak English as well as any Englishman. And as soon as we do, then farewell, America! We’ll come running back here to Russia as American citizens.[2] Don’t worry: we won’t come back to this little town. We’ll hide somewhere remote, in the north or the south. I’ll have changed by then, and she will have, too, in America. The doctors will give me some sort of wart on my face: they’re not mechanics for nothing. If not, then I’ll poke out one of my eyes, grow a yard-long beard, turn gray (pining for Russia)—and perhaps they won’t recognize me. And if they do, let them send me into exile; it won’t matter—it means I’m not destined to survive them. Here we’ll also plow the land somewhere far away, and all my life I’ll pretend to be an American. But at least we’ll die on our own soil. That’s my plan, and it won’t be changed. Do you approve?”

“I do,” said Alyosha, not wishing to contradict him.

Mitya was silent for a moment, and then he suddenly spoke up again:

“How they framed me at the trial! They really did!”

“Even if they hadn’t framed you, they still would have convicted you,” Alyosha replied with a sigh.

“Yes, the local folk got fed up with me! Let them be, but it’s difficult!” Mitya moaned miserably.

They were both silent for a moment.

“Alyosha, put me out of my misery at once!” he cried suddenly. “Will she come now or not, tell me! What did she say? How did she say it?”

“She said she’d come, but I don’t know if it’ll be today. It’s hard for her!” Alyosha looked at his brother timidly.

“Well, I’m sure it’s hard for her! Alyosha, this will drive me mad. Grusha keeps looking at me. She understands. Lord God, calm my heart: what do I want? I want to see Katya! Do I really understand what I want? It’s the profane Karamazov impetuousness! No, I’m incapable of suffering! I’m a scoundrel, that says it all!”

“Here she is!” cried Alyosha.

At that moment Katya suddenly appeared on the threshold. She paused for a moment, regarding Mitya with some sort of perplexed expression. He jumped to his feet at once, his face displaying fear; he turned pale, but then a timid, pleading smile appeared on his lips, and at once, unrestrained, he stretched out his arms toward Katya. Seeing this, she rushed to him impetuously. She grabbed his hands and practically forced him to sit down on the bed; she herself sat down next to him, and instead of letting go of his hands, she squeezed them firmly. Several times they both tried to speak, but they stopped and kept silent, staring at each other with strange smiles, as if riveted together. Some two minutes elapsed in this manner.

“Have you forgiven me or not?” Mitya whispered at last, and at that moment he turned to Alyosha, and with a face distorted with joy, he cried to him:

“Do you hear what I’m asking her?”

“That’s why I loved you—because your heart’s so generous!” burst from Katya suddenly. “You don’t need my forgiveness, and I don’t need yours; it doesn’t matter if you forgive me or not, you’ll remain a sore place in my soul for my entire life, and I will in yours—just as it should be . . .” She paused to catch her breath.

“Why did I come?” she began again in nervous agitation. “To embrace your feet, to squeeze your hands until they hurt; do you recall how I squeezed them in Moscow? To tell you again that you’re my god, my joy, to tell you that I love you madly,” she said, almost moaning in torment and suddenly pressing his hand passionately to her lips. Tears streamed from her eyes.

Alyosha stood in silence and confusion; he hadn’t expected this scene.

“The love’s ended, Mitya!” Katya began again. “But the past is painfully dear to me. Know that forever. But now, for one moment, let there be what might have been,” she mumbled with a twisted smile, once again looking him joyfully in the eye. “And now you love another woman, and I love another man, but I’ll still love you forever, and you’ll love me. Did you know this? You hear, love me! Love me your whole life!” she cried with some sort of threatening tremor in her voice.

“I will love you . . . and you know, Katya,” began Mitya, drawing a breath at every word, “you know, I loved you five days ago, that same evening. . . . When you fell down and they carried you out. . . . All my life! So it will be! So it will always be!”

Thus they mumbled frantic and almost senseless words to each other, perhaps not even true, but at that moment it was all true, and they both believed absolutely in what they were saying.

“Katya,” Mitya cried suddenly, “do you believe I killed him? I know that you don’t believe it now, but did you believe it then . . . when you were testifying? Did you really believe it?”

“I didn’t believe it then either! I never believed it! I hated you and suddenly convinced myself, at that moment. . . . When I was testifying . . . I convinced myself and believed it . . . and when I finished testifying, I immediately stopped believing it again. You must know all this. I forgot that I came here to punish myself!” she said with some new expression, totally unlike her previous loving tone before.

“It’s difficult for you, woman!” burst forth involuntarily from Mitya.

“Let me go,” she whispered. “I’ll come again; now it’s difficult!”

She started to get up from her place but suddenly uttered a loud scream and recoiled. All of a sudden, though very quietly, Grushenka entered the room. No one had expected her. Katya rushed headlong to the door, but when she reached Grushenka she stopped abruptly, turned as white as a ghost, and moaned softly, almost in a whisper:

“Forgive me!”

Grushenka stared at her and, after a moment’s pause, replied in a venomous, vindictive voice:

“We’re wicked, sister, you and I! We’re both wicked! As though we could forgive each other! It’s not for us to forgive each other! Just save him and I’ll worship you for the rest of my life!”

“But you don’t want to forgive her!” Mitya cried to Grushenka with irate reproach.

“Rest assured, I’ll save him for you!” Katya whispered quickly and ran out of the room.

“And you could refuse to forgive her after she herself asked for your forgiveness?” cried Mitya again bitterly.

“Mitya, don’t you dare reproach her; you have no right!” Alyosha shouted passionately at his brother.

“Her proud lips were speaking, but not her heart,” Grushenka sputtered with some loathing. “If she saves you, I’ll forgive her for everything . . .”

She fell silent, as if she were suppressing something in her soul. She still couldn’t come to her senses. She’d entered, as it turned out later, completely accidentally, not suspecting anything and not expecting to meet the person she met.

“Alyosha, run after her!” Mitya said to his brother impetuously. “Tell her . . . I don’t know what . . . but don’t let her leave like this!”

“I’ll come back to see you before this evening!” cried Alyosha, and ran out after Katya. He overtook her beyond the hospital gates. She was walking quickly, hurrying, but as soon as Alyosha caught up with her, she immediately said to him:

“No, I can’t punish myself before that woman! I asked her to forgive me because I wanted to punish myself to the end. But she didn’t forgive me. . . . I love her for that!” Katya added in a distorted voice, and her eyes shone with wild malice.

“My brother didn’t expect this in the least,” Alyosha started to mutter. “He was certain she wouldn’t come . . .”

“No doubt. Let’s leave this subject,” she snapped. “Listen: I can’t go with you now to the funeral. I sent them flowers to put on the little coffin. I think they still have some money. If they need more, tell them I won’t desert them. . . . But now, leave me, please, leave me. You’re already late to go there; the bells are ringing for the late Mass. . . . Leave me, please!”

1 A reference to James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans (1826), from which some Russians derived their first impressions of America.

2 A parody of Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s novel What Is to Be Done?, in which Lopukhov returns to Russia as an American named Charles Beaumont.

III

ILYUSHECHKA’S FUNERAL. THE SPEECH AT THE STONE.

He really was late. They were waiting for him and had already decided to carry the pretty flower-draped little coffin into the church. It was the coffin of Ilyushechka, poor lad. He had died two days after Mitya’s sentencing. At the gate of the house Alyosha was greeted by the shouts of the boys, Ilyushechka’s schoolmates. They’d been waiting impatiently for him and were glad when he finally arrived. There were about twelve boys altogether, and they’d all come with their schoolbags or little satchels over their shoulders. “Papa will cry; be with him,” Ilyusha had said as he lay dying, and the boys remembered his words. At their head was Kolya Krasotkin.

“I’m so glad you’ve come, Karamazov!” he cried, reaching out his hand to Alyosha. “It’s awful here. It’s really painful to watch. Snegiryov isn’t drunk—we know for certain that he didn’t have anything to drink today—but he’s acting as if he were drunk. . . . I’m always steady, but this is awful. Karamazov, if I’m not detaining you, may I ask you just one question before you go in?”

“What is it, Kolya?” Alyosha paused.

“Is your brother innocent or guilty? Did he kill your father, or was it the lackey? I’ll believe whatever you say. I haven’t slept in four nights thinking about it.”

“The lackey killed him; my brother’s innocent,” Alyosha replied.

“That’s what I said, too,” the boy Smurov suddenly shouted.

“So he’ll perish as an innocent victim for truth!” cried Kolya. “Even though he’s ruined, he’s happy! I’m ready to envy him.”

“What do you mean? How can you? Why?” Alyosha cried in astonishment.

“Oh, if only someday I could sacrifice myself for truth and justice,” said Kolya fervently.

“But not in a case like this, not with so much disgrace, and so much horror!” said Alyosha.

“Of course. . . . I’d like to die for all humanity; as far as disgrace is concerned, it doesn’t matter: our names may perish.[1] I respect your brother!”

“So do I!” a lad in the crowd shouted unexpectedly. It was the same lad who’d once claimed that he knew who had discovered Troy, and just as he’d done then, he blushed red as a peony up to his ears.

Alyosha entered the room. Ilyusha was lying with his little hands crossed and his little eyes closed in a blue coffin with a white frill around it. His emaciated face had hardly changed at all; strange to say, there was almost no smell coming from his body. The expression on his face was serious, as if he were in deep thought. His hands, crossed on his breast, looked especially beautiful, as if chiseled in marble. Flowers had been placed in his hands, and the whole coffin was adorned both inside and out with flowers sent by Liza Khokhlakova early that morning. But there were also flowers from Katerina Ivanovna; when Alyosha opened the door, the captain had a bunch of flowers in his trembling hands and was strewing them once again over his dear boy. He hardly noticed Alyosha as he came in; he didn’t want to look at anyone, not even at his crazy weeping wife, his Mamochka, who kept trying to stand up on her crippled legs to get a better view of her dead son. Ninochka had been pushed in her wheelchair by the boys right up to the coffin. She sat with her head pressed against it, and was also weeping softly. Snegiryov’s face looked spirited, but at the same time bewildered and exasperated. There was something crazy about his gestures and the words he uttered. “Old man, you dear old man!” he cried constantly, looking at Ilyusha. He’d had the habit of affectionately calling Ilyusha “old man, dear old man,” when the boy was still alive.

“Papochka, give me a little flower, too; take one from his hands, the white one, and give it to me!” the crazy mamochka whimpered. Either because she liked the little white rose in Ilyusha’s hands or because she wanted it to keep in memory of him, she kept tossing about, stretching out her arms and reaching toward it.

“I won’t give it to anyone, I won’t give anything!” Snegiryov cried implacably. “They’re his flowers, not yours. They are all his; nothing is yours!”

“Papa, give Mama a flower!” Ninochka said, lifting her tear-streaked face to him.

“No, I won’t give anything, especially not to her! She didn’t love him. She took his little cannon away from him, when he had given it to her as a present,” the captain said, breaking into sobs at the recollection of how Ilyusha had given his little cannon to his mother. The poor crazy woman, quietly bursting into tears, buried her face in her hands. The boys, seeing that the father wouldn’t leave the coffin, and that it was time to carry it out, stood around it in a tight circle and began to lift it up.

“I don’t want him buried in the churchyard!” Snegiryov suddenly cried out. “I’ll bury him next to the stone, next to our little stone! That’s what Ilyusha wanted. I won’t let you take him!”

For the last three days he’d been saying that he would bury his son next to the stone; but Alyosha, Krasotkin, the landlady, her sister, and the boys had all intervened.

“Look at what he’s come up with now—to bury him next to a filthy stone, as if he’d hanged himself,” the old landlady said harshly. “The ground in the churchyard has been blessed, and there’s a cross there. People will pray for him there. He’ll be able to hear the singing in church; the deacon reads so clearly and distinctly that each time he’ll hear it as if the words were being read over his grave.”

At this the captain made a last despairing gesture, as if to say, “Take him wherever you want!” The children lifted the coffin, although as they passed the mother, they paused before her for a moment and lowered it so that she could bid farewell to Ilyusha. But all of a sudden, seeing his dear little face close up, this face that for the last three days she’d seen only from a distance, she suddenly began to shake all over, and her head began jerking uncontrollably over the coffin.

“Mama, make the sign of the cross over him, bless him, give him a kiss,” Ninochka called out to her. But like an automaton, her head still jerking back and forth, her face distorted with bitter grief, without saying a word she began to beat her breast with her fist. They carried the coffin away. When they went past Ninochka, she pressed her lips to the mouth of her dead brother for the last time. Alyosha, as he was leaving the house, was about to ask the landlady to look after those left behind, but she didn’t even give him a chance to finish.

“Of course I’ll stay with them; we’re Christians, too,” the old woman said, weeping.

It wasn’t far to carry the coffin to the church, not more than three hundred steps. The day turned clear and quiet; there was a light frost. The church bells were still ringing. Snegiryov ran after the coffin, flustered and preoccupied, wearing his old, short, lightweight coat, his head bare, holding his old, wide-brimmed hat in his hands. He was in an anxious state of indecisiveness, first trying to stretch out his arm to support the head of the coffin, and only getting in the way of the bearers; then running alongside, trying to find a place where he could assist. One flower fell into the snow: he rushed to pick it up as if God knows what depended on it.

“But a crust of bread, we forgot to bring a crust of bread!” he shouted suddenly in a state of terror. The boys reminded him immediately, however, that he’d already taken a crust of bread and that it was in his pocket; he pulled it out at once and was reassured.

“Ilyushechka wanted it,” he explained quickly to Alyosha. “When Ilyushechka was lying in bed and I was sitting next to him, he said, ‘Papochka, when they scatter dirt on my grave, crumble a piece of bread on it so sparrows will fly down; I’ll hear that they’ve come and be so glad that I’m not lying there all alone.”

“That’s a very good thing,” said Alyosha. “You should do this often.”

“Every day, every day!” the captain answered quickly, as if this had lifted his spirits.

At last they reached the church and set the coffin down in the middle of it. All the boys surrounded it and remained standing reverently all during the service. The church was very old and rather poor; many of its icons were hung without frames, but somehow one prays better in such churches. During the service Snegiryov seemed to calm down, though at times he had outbursts of that same unconscious and what seemed like anxious bewilderment: first he would approach the coffin to adjust the pall or the wreath; then, when one candle fell out of its candlestick, he suddenly rushed forward to put it back in its place and kept fussing over it for an awfully long time. Finally he really did calm down and stood humbly at Ilyusha’s head with an expression of uneasiness and incomprehension. After the reading from the Epistles, he suddenly whispered to Alyosha, who was standing next to him, that the Epistles had not been read correctly, but he didn’t explain what he meant. During the Cherubic Hymn he began to sing the words, but he didn’t finish; dropping down on his knees, he pressed his forehead to the stone floor of the church and remained there for quite a long time.

At last they came to the funeral service, and candles were distributed. The frenzied father was about to start fidgeting again, but the tender, poignant funeral prayers awakened and moved his soul. He seemed to shrink into himself and broke repeatedly into sobs, stifling his voice at first, but then sobbing openly and out loud. When they began saying their last farewells to the dead and closing the coffin, he flung his arms around it, as if not allowing them to cover Ilyushechka; then he began avidly kissing his dead son on the lips again and again. They finally managed to persuade him to come away from the steps, but he suddenly stretched out his hand and grabbed a few flowers from the little coffin. As he looked at them, a new idea seemed to dawn upon him, so that for a moment he forgot all about the matter at hand. Gradually he seemed to sink into contemplation and no longer offered any resistance when they lifted the coffin and carried it to the little grave. It was not far away, within the churchyard and close to the church—an expensive plot, but Katerina Ivanovna had paid for it. After the prescribed rites, the gravediggers lowered the coffin. With the flowers in his hands, Snegiryov leaned so far over the open grave that the boys caught hold of his coattails in fear and pulled him back. But he seemed not to understand very well what was happening. When they began filling in the grave, he suddenly pointed anxiously at the falling dirt and began to say something, but nobody could understand him; then he abruptly fell silent. They reminded him that he should crumble the crust of bread, and he grew very agitated; he snatched the bread and began to scatter the crumbs onto the grave. “Come, little birdies, fly down, little sparrows!” he mumbled anxiously.

One of the boys remarked that it would be easier for him to crumble the bread without the flowers in his hands, and suggested that he give them to someone else to hold. But he refused to do that, and even seemed to grow alarmed at the suggestion, as if they wanted to take the flowers away from him; after looking at the grave and satisfying himself that everything had been done properly and the bread crumbs had been scattered, he suddenly, altogether unexpectedly, turned away and headed for home. But his pace became more and more hurried, and he almost began running. The boys and Alyosha kept up with him.

“The flowers are for Mamochka, the flowers are for Mamochka! We’ve offended Mamochka,” he suddenly began exclaiming. Someone shouted to him that he should put on his hat or else he’d be cold; but hearing this, he flung his hat into the snow as if he were angry and kept on repeating: “I don’t want a hat, I don’t want a hat!” The boy Smurov picked it up and followed him with it. All of the boys, without exception, were crying, Kolya and the lad who’d discovered Troy, most of all; and even though Smurov, with the captain’s hat in his hand, was also crying desperately, while he was on the run, he still managed to grab hold of a piece of red brick that lay along the path in the snow and throw it at a flock of sparrows flying by. Of course he missed them, and he didn’t stop weeping as he ran. Halfway home, Snegiryov suddenly halted, stood for a minute as if struck by something, and all of a sudden, turning again toward the church, started running back to the forsaken little grave. But the boys caught up with him a moment later and held on to him from all sides. Helpless, as if he’d been knocked over, Snegiryov fell down then in the snow, writhing, wailing, and sobbing; he began to cry out, “Old man, Ilyushechka, dear old man!” Alyosha and Kolya started to help him up, trying to reason with him.

“Captain, enough: a brave man must endure,” muttered Kolya.

“You’ll ruin the flowers,” said Alyosha, “and Mamochka’s waiting for them; she’s sitting at home crying because you wouldn’t give her any flowers before. Ilyusha’s little bed is still there . . .”

“Yes, yes, let’s go to Mamochka!” Snegiryov suddenly remembered her again. “They’ll take away his bed, they’ll take it away!” he added, as if he feared that they really would take it away. He jumped up and started running home again. But it wasn’t far to run, and they all got there together. Snegiryov rushed to open the door and called to his wife, with whom he’d quarreled so mercilessly before.

“Mamochka, my dear, my poor cripple, Ilyushechka sent you some flowers!” he shouted, holding out a little bunch of flowers half-frozen and crushed from his tossing about in the snow. But at that same moment he saw Ilyusha’s little boots by his little bed in the corner, which the landlady had placed there side by side—stiff, old, reddish boots with patches. As soon as he saw them, he flung up his arms and rushed to them, fell to his knees, seized one boot, and, pressing it to his lips, began kissing it hungrily, crying out, “Old man, Ilyushechka, dear old man, where are your little feet?”

“Where have you taken him? Where have you taken him?” cried the madwoman in a frenzy. Then Ninochka began sobbing, too. Kolya ran out of the room, and the other boys followed him. At last Alyosha went out, as well. “Let them weep,” he said to Kolya, “it’s impossible to console them now. We’ll wait a little while and then go back in.”

“Yes, it’s impossible. It’s awful,” Kolya agreed. “You know, Karamazov,” he said, lowering his voice, so that no one else could hear him, “I feel very sad; I’d give anything on earth if only it were possible to resurrect him!”

“Ah, so would I,” said Alyosha.

“What do you think, Karamazov, should we come back here tonight? He’ll be drunk, you know.”

“Perhaps he will. You and I should come together, just the two of us: it’ll be enough to spend an hour sitting with them—the mother and Ninochka; if we all come, it’ll remind them of everything,” Alyosha counseled.

“The landlady’s setting a table for them now—it’s the wake or something; the priest will come; shouldn’t we go back inside now, Karamazov?”

“Of course,” said Alyosha.

“It’s all very strange, Karamazov—such grief, and suddenly we’re eating pancakes; our religion is so unnatural!”

“They’re going to have smoked salmon, too,” the boy who had discovered Troy suddenly announced in a loud voice.

“I beg you earnestly, Kartashov, not to interrupt with your stupidities, especially when no one’s talking to you and no one wants to know whether you even exist,” Kolya snapped irritably in his direction. The boy blushed deeply, but dared not reply. Meanwhile, they all made their way slowly along the path; Smurov suddenly exclaimed:

“There’s Ilyusha’s stone—where they wanted to bury him!”

They all stopped in silence next to a large stone.[2] Alyosha looked on and all at once recalled the whole picture that Snegiryov had described to him that day, how Ilyushechka, weeping and hugging his father, had cried: “Papa, dearest Papa, he really humiliated you!” Something seemed to stir in his soul. With an earnest and serious expression he surveyed all the eager faces of the boys, and suddenly said to them:

“Gentlemen, I’d like to say a word to you here at this place.”

The boys surrounded him and at once turned their eager and expectant eyes toward him.

“Gentlemen, we’ll take our leave from one another. For the time being I shall remain with my two brothers, one of whom will be sent into exile, while the other lies at death’s door. But I will soon be leaving this town, perhaps for a very long time. So we’ll be parting, gentlemen. Let us make a vow, here at Ilyushechka’s stone, that we shall never forget—first, Ilyushechka, and second, one another. And whatever may happen to us later in life, even if we don’t meet again for twenty years, we will still remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones—do you recall, near the little bridge? And then how all of us came to love him. He was a fine lad, kind and brave, who had a sense of honor, and felt the bitter insult that his father had suffered, and stood up for him. And so, in the first place, we will remember him, gentlemen, all our lives. And even if we may be taken up by the most pressing matters, whether we may have attained honors or fallen into great misfortune—still, let us never forget how good it was here when we were all joined together by such warm feelings, which, at the time we loved this poor boy, perhaps made us better than we really are.

“My little doves—let me call you that—my dear little doves, because you are very much like them, those pretty little blue-gray birds, now, as I see you at this moment; you won’t understand what I’m saying, because I often speak without seeming to make any sense, but all the same you will remember this, and someday you’ll agree with what I’m saying. You should know that there is nothing nobler, better, or more powerful and useful for your future life than some good memory, especially one carried from your childhood, from the time you lived in your parents’ house. A lot is said to you about your education, but some beautiful and sacred memory preserved from childhood may perhaps be the best education. If a person keeps hold of many memories like this in his life, that person is kept safe for his whole life. Even if only one good memory remains in your heart, it may serve to save you at some time. Perhaps we’ll become wicked later on, and even be unable to refrain from committing some bad act; we may even laugh at the tears of others and at those who say, as Kolya did today, ‘I want to suffer for all men’; perhaps we’ll even mock those people maliciously. But however evil we may become—which God forbid—as we remember how we buried Ilyushechka, how we loved him in his last days, and how we’ve been talking together as friends at this stone, then even the cruelest person among us and the most sarcastic—if we become so—will still not allow himself to laugh inwardly at the fact that he was so kind and good at this moment! And what is more, perhaps this very same memory will restrain him from committing some great evil, and he’ll reconsider and say, ‘Yes, I was kind, brave, and honest then.’ Let him laugh to himself; that doesn’t matter—a person often laughs at what’s good and kind. That’s nothing but thoughtlessness; but I assure you, gentlemen, that the moment he laughs, he will say in his heart, ‘No, I was wrong to laugh, because that isn’t something to laugh at!’ ”

“It will certainly be like that, Karamazov; I understand you, Karamazov!” cried Kolya, his eyes flashing. The boys were moved and they, too, wanted to say something, but they held back; with an expression of tenderness, they kept their eyes fixed on the speaker.

“I say this just in case any of us should become bad,” continued Alyosha. “But what reason do we have to become bad, gentlemen—is there any reason why we should? Above all, let us be kind, then honest, and then—let us not forget one another. I say this to you once again and I give you my word of honor, gentlemen, that I won’t forget any one of you; I will remember each face looking at me now, even thirty years from today. Just a little while ago, Kolya said to Kartashov that we didn’t care to know ‘if he exists or not.’ But how can I possibly forget that Kartashov exists and that he’s not blushing now as he did when he discovered Troy, but is looking at me with his lovely, kind, cheerful little eyes? Gentlemen, my dear gentlemen, let us all be generous and brave, like Ilyushechka, brave, intelligent, and generous, like Kolya (who’ll be so much wiser when he’s grown up), and be just as bashful, but also as kind and smart, as Kartashov. Why am I talking just about the two of them? You’re all dear to me, gentlemen, from this day on; I shall keep you all in my heart, and I ask you to find a place for me in yours! Well, and who brought us all together in this good feeling that we’ll remember and are determined to remember for our whole lives if not Ilyushechka, the kind lad, the sweet boy, dear to us forever and ever? Let us never forget him; may his good and eternal memory remain in our hearts from this day forth and forever more!”[3]

“Yes, yes, eternal, for all time,” shouted the boys in their ringing voices, their faces full of tender emotion.

“We’ll remember his face, his clothes, his poor little boots, his little coffin, and his unhappy, sinful father, how bravely he stood up for him alone, against the whole class!”

“We’ll remember, we will!” the boys shouted again. “He was brave, he was kind!”

“Oh, how I loved him!” Kolya cried.

“Oh, boys, my dear friends, don’t be afraid of life! How good life is when one does something good and just!”

“Yes, yes,” the boys cried ecstatically.

“Karamazov, we love you!” one voice—probably Kartashov’s—cried out.

“We love you, we love you,” they all exclaimed joining in. Many of them had tears in their eyes.

“Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya proclaimed ecstatically.

“And may the dead boy be an eternal memory!” Alyosha added with feeling.

“Karamazov!” Kolya cried. “Is it really true what religion says, that we’ll all rise from the dead and be resurrected, and will live again to see one another—all of us, and Ilyushechka, too?”

“Absolutely, we will all rise again, and we will surely see one another and gladly and joyfully tell each other everything that’s happened,” Alyosha replied, half in laughter, half in ecstasy.

“Ah, how good that will be!” Kolya burst out.

“And now let us stop talking and go to his funeral repast. Don’t be upset that we’ll be eating pancakes there. It’s an ancient and eternal custom, and there’s something good in that,” Alyosha said with a laugh. “Well, let’s go! We’ll go now hand in hand!”

“And we always will, all our lives, eternally go hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya cried out again ecstatically, and once again all the boys joined in.

1 Kolya quotes the eloquent Girondist French politician Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud (1753–1793).

2 Cf. Matthew 16:18: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”

3 These lines echo the language of the Orthodox funeral service during which the prayer “Eternal Memory” is sung.

AFTERWORD

Dostoevsky’s last novel combines ideas and motifs that preoccupied him throughout his career. It draws upon many elements from his earlier fiction and his journalism, as well as from a number of other works he was evidently planning to write but never completed, including two novels, “Atheism” and “The Life of a Great Sinner.”

The fifth book of The Brothers Karamazov, entitled “Pro and Contra,” contains what for many readers is the most celebrated chapter in all of his novels, “The Grand Inquisitor.” In a letter to N. A. Lyubimov, the co-editor of the journal the Russian Messenger, in which the novel was first published, Dostoevsky wrote:

This fifth book is in my view the culminating point of the novel and must be finished with particular care.[1]

He repeated those identical words in a letter to the infamous reactionary and procurator of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev:

The thing is that this [fifth] book is the culminating one in my novel, it’s called “Pro and Contra,” and the point of the book is blasphemy and the refutation of blasphemy.[2]

The Russian critic and religious writer V. V. Rozanov, a fervent admirer and disciple of Dostoevsky’s and the author of a book devoted solely to this chapter, was the first to argue (in 1894) that all of the author’s work culminates in the philosophical and religious statement of “The Grand Inquisitor.”

“The Grand Inquisitor” has been excerpted, published, and read separately, as if it represented Dostoevsky’s own unconditioned views on the questions of faith, Christ, and the nature of man. Indeed, the distinguished Library of Liberal Arts released an edition in 1948 entitled The Grand Inquisitor on the Nature of Man, containing only the text of the episode (in Constance Garnett’s classic rendition) and an introduction by William Hubben, a prominent Quaker educator, author, and journalist.

A contrasting view was expressed with some impatience by the influential modern English novelist D. H. Lawrence, who, in a review of Rozanov’s monograph on the Grand Inquisitor, complained bitterly:

One gets tired of being told that Dostoevsky’s Legend of the Grand Inquisitor is the “the most profound declaration which was ever made about man and life.” . . . I have read the Grand Inquisitor three times, and never can remember what it’s really about.[3]

If we return to the author’s illuminating letters, we find that only a few months after he wrote to Lyubimov about the fifth book, he wrote to him again:

I look upon this sixth book [“The Russian Monk”] as the culminating point of the novel.[4]

So what are we to conclude? In our own reading of the novel, which book contains the culminating point of the novel, Book Five, presenting the Grand Inquisitor, or Book Six, focused on Father Zosima?

As reflected in the author’s letters, it is clear that Dostoevsky was desperately worried that the powerful arguments presented by Ivan in what he calls his “poem” of the Grand Inquisitor in Book Five might overpower the message of Book Six, namely the account of the life and times of Father Zosima. The entirety of “The Russian Monk” was presumably intended to answer the “whole negative side” represented by the Inquisitor. But Dostoevsky agonizes: “Will it be answer enough?”[5] He recognized that Book Six was written in an entirely different mode: rather than being a point-by-point intellectual rebuttal of the Inquisitor’s argument, it was an inspired depiction of a saint’s life and teaching, rendering an exemplum of the character of a good life.

In a most insightful essay on this question of the ultimate effectiveness of Dostoevsky’s presumed counterexample, “The Rhetoric of an Ideological Novel,”[6] Robert Belknap wonders why the author’s rhetorical strategy fails so conclusively to convince D. H. Lawrence and many other modern readers. One possible explanation is that Lawrence—and others—read editions in which “The Grand Inquisitor” is presented separately, detached from that powerful section, and so failed to read it in the larger context of the entire novel and mistook it for an unequivocal statement of the author’s own ideological position. That said, it might well be the case that Dostoevsky intended for his readers to be temporarily captivated by the Inquisitor’s commanding arguments.

In any event, it is quite clear that in these two books two entirely different views of the world are juxtaposed, and the author seems to leave the reader guessing which is his own. On the one hand, there is Ivan, for whom the world is irredeemably evil, a cauldron of doubt and gratuitous cruelty; aligned with this assessment stand the Grand Inquisitor, the lackey Smerdyakov, and the devil himself. On the other hand, we are confronted with Father Zosima, for whom Christ is love and who teaches that we are all responsible for all; in his company appear Father Paisy and the ostensible “hero” of the novel, Alyosha Karamazov.[7] While modern readers may find themselves suspended by the text itself between these two worldviews, it seems to me that for Dostoevsky, a man of profound faith, there was ultimately no uncertainty.

The author’s heartfelt reply to the Inquisitor’s powerful rhetoric is represented by Christ’s prolonged and dramatic silence and the astonishing kiss He places on the Grand Inquisitor’s lips at the conclusion of Ivan’s poem. For Dostoevsky, the only true response to the argument presented by the Grand Inquisitor must be unquestioning and unconditional faith and love, as is the case in all of his major works, beginning with Notes from Underground[8] and extending through the great novels, culminating in The Brothers Karamazov. Moreover, along with the inspiring examples of Father Zosima’s life and his compelling sermons, the reader is left with Alyosha Karamazov’s valiant and moving attempt at the end of the novel to lead the schoolboys in establishing a genuine community of believers.

Although this is Dostoevsky’s answer, it is neither mine nor the one favored by many modern readers. In his Literary Notebook (1880–81), referring to Book Five of The Brothers Karamazov, the author wrote:

And so I believe in Christ and confess Him not like some child; my hosanna has passed through a vast furnace of doubt.[9]

Dostoevsky not only entertains his readers’ doubts but “lives them out in their full intensity, regardless of the religious conclusion to which it may be hoped this unsettling process ultimately leads.”[10]

1 Translated by Ralph Matlaw; quoted in The Brothers Karamazov, edited and with a revised translation by Susan McReynolds Oddo (New York: Norton, 2011), 658. My emphasis.

2 Ibid., 659. My emphasis.

3 Quoted in Russian Literature and Modern English Fiction, edited by Donald Davie (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 99–100.

4 Oddo, The Brothers Karamazov, 661. My emphasis.

5 Ibid., 662.

6 In Literature and Society in Imperial Russia, 1800–1914, edited by William Mills Todd III (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1978), 173–202.

7 See “From the Author,” where Dostoevsky identifies Alyosha as his “hero” and says that his subsequent life will be fully revealed in a sequel to The Brothers Karamazov (which he refers to as the “second” novel), a work for whose existence there is no evidence.

8 In Liza’s offer of unconditional love in Part II, Chapter IX, and in the author’s letter to his brother (March 26, 1864) in which he laments the censor’s decision to omit the part where he deduces from all of the above the “necessity of faith and Christ.”

9 In Russian, “bolshoe gornilo somneniya”; from Zapisnaya tetrad (1880–81), reprinted in Literaturnoe nasledstvo (Moscow: Zhurnalnoe-gazetnoe obedinenie, 1971), vol. 83, p. 696. My emphasis.

10 Stephen Donadio, personal correspondence, August 16, 2021.

ALSO BY MICHAEL R. KATZ

The Literary Ballad in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature

Dreams and the Unconscious in Nineteenth-Century Russian Fiction

SELECTED TRANSLATIONS BY MICHAEL R. KATZ

Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Who Is to Blame? (Alexander Herzen)

Notes from Underground (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Tolstoy’s Short Fiction (Leo Tolstoy)

Devils (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Polinka Saks and The Story of Aleksei Dmitrich (Alexsandr Druzhinin)

Fathers and Children (Ivan Turgenev)

Prologue (Nikolai Chernyshevsky)

Antonina (Evgeniya Tur)

Sanin (Mikhail Artsybashev)

The Five (Vladimir Jabotinsky)

The Seagull (Boris Akunin)

Notes from Beyond the Tomb (Vladimir Pecherin)

The Dacha Husband (Ivan Schcheglov)

Pioneers (S. An-sky)

The Kreutzer Sonata Variations: Lev Tolstoy’s Novella and Counterstories (Sofiya Tolstaya and Lev Tolstoy)

Hard Times (Vasily Slepstov)

Pale Horse (Boris Savinkov)

Tarantas (Vladimir Sollogub)

Not a Hero (Ignaty Potapenko)

Copyright © 2023 by Michael R. Katz

All rights reserved

First Edition

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Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title

Contents

Introduction by Michael R. Katz

Acknowledgments

The Brothers Karamazov

From the Author

Part One

Book One: The History of a “Nice” Little Family

I. Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov

II. He Gets Rid of His Eldest Son

III. Second Marriage and Second Children

IV. The Third Son, Alyosha

V. Elders

Book Two: An Unseemly Gathering

I. Arrival at the Monastery

II. The Old Buffoon

III. Peasant Women of Faith

IV. A Lady of Little Faith

V. So Be It! May It Come to Pass!

VI. Why Is Such a Man Alive?

VII. A Seminarian-Careerist

VIII. The Scandal

Book Three: Sensualists

I. In the Servants’ Quarters

II. Stinking Lizaveta

III. The Confession of an Ardent Heart. In Verse.

IV. The Confession of an Ardent Heart. In Anecdotes.

V. The Confession of an Ardent Heart. “Upside Down.”

VI. Smerdyakov

VII. Controversy

VIII. Over the Brandy

IX. The Sensualists

X. Both Together

XI. One More Reputation Ruined

Part Two

Book Four: Lacerations

I. Father Ferapont

II. At His Father’s

III. He Gets Involved with Schoolboys

IV. At the Khokhlakovs’

V. Laceration in the Drawing Room

VI. Laceration in a Peasant Hut

VII. And in the Fresh Air

Book Five: Pro and Contra

I. A Betrothal

II. Smerdyakov with a Guitar

III. The Brothers Get Acquainted

IV. Rebellion

V. The Grand Inquisitor

VI. Very Obscure for Now

VII. “It’s Always Interesting to Chat with a Clever Man”

Book Six: The Russian Monk

I. Father Zosima and His Visitors

II. Notes from the Holy Life of the Late Priest and Monk the Elder Zosima, Compiled from His Own Words by Aleksey Fyodorovich Karamazov

III. From Father Zosima’s Conversations and Teachings

Part Three

Book Seven: Alyosha

I. The Odor of Putrefaction

II. A Critical Moment

III. A Little Onion

IV. Cana of Galilee

Book Eight: Mitya

I. Kuzma Samsonov

II. Lyagavy

III. Gold Mines

IV. In the Darkness

V. A Sudden Decision

VI. Here I Come!

VII. The Former and Indisputable One

VIII. Delirium

Book Nine: The Preliminary Investigation

I. The Beginning of the Civil Servant Perkhotin’s Career

II. The Alarm

III. The Soul’s Journey Through Torments: The First Torment

IV. The Second Torment

V. The Third Torment

VI. The Prosecutor Caught Mitya

VII. Mitya’s Great Secret. Greeted with Hisses.

VIII. The Evidence of the Witnesses. The Babe in Arms.

IX. They Took Mitya Away

Part Four

Book Ten: The Boys

I. Kolya Krasotkin

II. The Kids

III. The Schoolboy

IV. Zhuchka

V. At Ilyusha’s Bedside

VI. Precocious Development

VII. Ilyusha

Book Eleven: Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov

I. At Grushenka’s

II. An Ailing Little Foot

III. A Little Demon

IV. A Hymn and a Secret

V. Not You, Not You!

VI. The First Meeting with Smerdyakov

VII. The Second Visit to Smerdyakov

VIII. The Third and Final Meeting with Smerdyakov

IX. The Devil. Ivan Fyodorovich’s Nightmare.

X. “It’s He Who Said That!”

Book Twelve: A Judicial Error

I. The Fateful Day

II. Dangerous Witnesses

III. Medical Expertise and a Pound of Nuts

IV. Fortune Smiles on Mitya

V. A Sudden Catastrophe

VI. The Prosecutor’s Speech. Character Sketches.

VII. A Historical Survey

VIII. A Treatise on Smerdyakov

IX. Psychology Full Steam Ahead. The Galloping Troika. The Prosecutor’s Finale.

X. The Defense Counsel’s Speech. An Argument That Cuts Both Ways.

XI. There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery.

XII. And There Was No Murder Either

XIII. An Adulterer of Thought

XIV. The Peasants Stood Up for Themselves

Epilogue

I. Plans to Save Mitya

II. For a Moment the Lie Becomes Truth

III. Ilyushechka’s Funeral. The Speech at the Stone.

Afterword by Michael R. Katz

Also by Michael R. Katz

Copyright Page