The Brothers Karamazov (115 page)

“It was your pride that made you think I was stupid. Here, take your money.”

Ivan took the three bundles of bills and shoved them into his pocket without wrapping them in anything.

“I’ll produce this money as evidence in court tomorrow.”

“No one will believe you. You have enough money of your own now and they’ll say you just took it out of your cashbox.”

Ivan stood up.

“Let me repeat that the only reason I haven’t killed you yet is that I’ll need you in court tomorrow. Don’t forget that!”

“I don’t care. Go ahead—kill me, right now. Go ahead,” Smerdyakov said in a strange voice. “Even that, you won’t dare to do!” he snorted. “You dare do nothing—you, a man who talked so big!”

“See you tomorrow!” Ivan said, getting ready to leave.

“Wait, let me have one more look at it.”

Ivan took the bills out of his pocket and showed them to Smerdyakov. Smerdyakov kept his eyes on them for ten seconds or so.

“All right, you can go,” he said in a resigned tone. But before Ivan had taken three steps, he called out: “Mr. Ivan!”

“What is it now?”

“Farewell!”

“See you tomorrow then!” Ivan said and walked out.

The blizzard was still raging. Ivan started out energetically enough, but soon his steps became uncertain and he began to sway. “This is something physical,” he thought with a grin. A strange happiness had come over him now. He felt full of determination: there would be no more wavering for him, wavering such as had caused him so much suffering lately. His mind was made up and he wasn’t going to change it, he thought cheerfully. At that moment he stumbled against something and almost fell. He saw in the darkness that it was the little peasant, still lying there unconscious. By now almost his whole face was covered with snow. Ivan suddenly bent down, picked the man up, and, carrying him on his back, went on until he saw a house with a light inside. He knocked on the window and asked the man who answered to help him to carry the peasant to the police station, promising to give him three rubles for his help. The man put his coat on and came out.

I won’t go into the details of how Ivan finally succeeded in getting the peasant to the police station, seeing that the man got properly taken care of and examined by a doctor, and generously providing “for possible expenses.” I shall only say that it took almost a whole hour of his time, but Ivan felt that it was well worth his while.

His thoughts wandered as his mind worked intently. “If I hadn’t made up my mind so definitely about tomorrow,” he suddenly thought with delight, “I wouldn’t have stopped and spent a whole hour looking after that peasant; I would have just gone on and not cared a damn if he froze to death . . . It’s strange, though, that I can make all these observations about myself,” he thought with even greater delight, “while those people there believe I’m going mad!”

When he reached his house and was about to go in, he stopped and asked himself: “Shouldn’t I go and see the prosecutor right now and tell him everything without waiting?” But he answered his own question by entering the house. “Let it all be done tomorrow at the same time!” he whispered and at that very second all his joy and happiness vanished. When he got to his room, he felt as though icy fingers were clutching at his heart, a reminder of something painful and repulsive that was connected precisely with this room, that had been here, and that was here now at this very moment. He dropped exhausted onto the sofa. The old servant brought him the samovar, and Ivan poured himself tea, but he did not touch it and sent the old woman away for the night. As he sat on the sofa, the room began to sway before his eyes. He felt very weak and ill. He started to doze off but then nervously got up and walked up and down the room to shake off his drowsiness. At moments he thought he was delirious, but his illness had ceased to worry him. He sat down again, looking around him now and then as if expecting to find something. In the end his eyes rested on one particular point. He grinned, but then the blood rushed angrily to his head. He sat for a long time with his head resting heavily in his hands, his eyes focused on a certain spot in the middle of the sofa that stood against the opposite wall. There was obviously something there that made him nervous, some object that worried and tormented him.

Chapter 9: Ivan’s Nightmare And The Devil

ALTHOUGH I am not a doctor, I feel that at this point I must give the reader at least some idea of the nature of Ivan’s illness. I will anticipate somewhat and say that the following day Ivan was to succumb completely to the brain fever which he had been incubating for a long time, but which his organism had stubbornly resisted. Knowing very little about medicine, I will only risk the assumption that perhaps he had succeeded in delaying the sickness by a desperate effort of will, although of course he could not avoid it altogether. He knew he was not well but was horrified at the thought of falling ill just when he was faced with the most important moments of his life,when he had to be in full possession of his faculties in order to say bravely what he had to say and justify himself to himself. He had once consulted the Moscow doctor whom Katerina had invited to our town, following through on an idea I have already mentioned. The doctor examined him, sounded him with a stethoscope, and diagnosed that he was suffering from some sort of brain disorder, not seeming in the least surprised when Ivan reluctantly confessed to a certain symptom.

“Hallucinations are quite possible in your present condition,” the doctor decided, “although we should really check on them . . . In general, I think you should undergo serious medical treatment without wasting a minute; otherwise it may become very serious.”

Upon leaving the doctor, however, Ivan wisely ignored his advice and did not put himself in the doctor’s hands. “As long as I’m strong enough to walk around, I’ll do so; when I can no longer stand on my feet and have to stay in bed, let them give me any medical treatment they can think of,” he decided, dismissing his illness with a shrug.

And so he sat now, realizing full well that he was delirious, with his eyes focused, as I’ve already mentioned, on that point on the sofa opposite him.

Now there was someone sitting in that spot. God knows how he’d got in, because he hadn’t been in the room when Ivan first got home from Smerdyakov’s. He was a Russian gentleman of a certain type, no longer young, 
qui frisait la cinquantaine
, as the French would say, with dark, still-thick hair and pointed beard which were only slightly graying. He wore a brownish jacket which had obviously been made by a first-class tailor but a good three years earlier, for it was rather worn and was cut in a fashion that no wealthy man of the world would have been seen in for at least the past two years. His shirt and his wide tie were just the kind worn by elegant gentlemen, although if you looked closely you could see that the shirt was none too clean and the tie was slightly frayed. The visitor’s checkered trousers fitted him perfectly, but again they were a bit too light and somewhat narrower than the present fashion. And his fluffy white felt hat was altogether out of season. In short, he looked like a very respectable gentleman somewhat down on his luck. He seemed to be the sort of idle landowner who prospered under serfdom, who once moved in high society and traveled, who used to have the right connections and perhaps had even kept them up but who, after a gay and lavish youth and after the recent abolition of serfdom, had little by little become impoverished and had turned into a well-bred parasite, sponging off his old acquaintances; they still received him because of his pleasant and sociable character, for he could be invited to dinner with anybody, although, of course, he would be seated at the far end of the table. Such pleasant, easy-going gentleman spongers, who, as a rule, know how to tell a good story and make up a fourth at cards, and are fiercely reluctant to run errands for anybody, are usually lonely men, bachelors or widowers; some of them even have children, but they are always being educated somewhere far away and being taken care of by an aunt, and the gentleman almost never mentions them in polite society, as if he were ashamed of them. And gradually such gentlemen became altogether estranged from their children, finally only hearing from them on their birthdays and at Christmas and occasionally acknowledging these greetings.

The unheralded visitor did not have a really kind appearance, but he looked pleasant enough and capable of assuming various amiable expressions to fit particular circumstances. He had no pocketwatch, but displayed a tortoise shell lorgnette on a black ribbon. On the middle finger of his right hand could be seen a massive gold signet ring set with a not very expensive opal.

Ivan maintained an annoyed silence, reluctant to be the one to start the conversation. The visitor sat there and waited, just as a parasite house guest does when he comes down from his room for tea but, seeing his host frowning and apparently preoccupied with something, waits patiently until he is addressed, always ready to start a pleasant tea-table conversation.

All of a sudden the visitor’s face took on an expression of considerable worry.

“Listen,” he said to Ivan, “forgive me, but I must remind you that you went to see Smerdyakov to find out about Katerina and you left without having found out anything at all about her. You probably forgot . . .”

“Ah yes, that’s right!” Ivan cried, a very worried look appearing on his face. “I forgot all about it! But it doesn’t make any difference now,” he muttered to himself. “And you,” he said to the visitor in annoyance, “I want you to know that I would have remembered it myself in a second, because that’s what was bothering me now, but you rushed in ahead of me so I’d believe you had reminded me of it.”

“Well, don’t believe it,” the gentleman said with an affable smile. “There’s no point in trying to believe something against one’s will. Besides, in matters of faith, proof, especially material proof, is pretty useless. Thomas believed, not because he saw that Christ had risen, but because he had the will to believe beforehand. Take the spiritualists, for example (I love them, by the way): would you believe it—they’re sure they are helpful to the propagation of the faith just because the devils allow them to peek into the other world and have a glimpse at their horns, which is supposed to be material proof that the ‘other world’ exists. The ‘world beyond’ and material proof—a peculiar combination that only men would think up! And then, when you come to think of it, even if they have proved the existence of the devil, why should it follow that God exists too? I’d like to join one of their progressive philosophical discussion groups and take a stand as an anti-materialist realist.” He chuckled.

“Listen,” Ivan said, suddenly getting up. “I feel as if I were delirious. In fact, I’m sure I am . . . So you can go on talking drivel until you’re blue in the face, you won’t make me lose my temper as you did last time. I just feel ashamed of—I don’t know what . . . I want to pace the room . . . There are times when, unlike last time, I don’t see you and don’t even hear your voice, but I still know what nonsense you’ll come up with, because, in actual fact, it is 
I
 myself and 
not you
 who says all that! I’m not sure of one thing, though: was I asleep and dreaming when I saw you last or was I awake? I’ll try dipping a towel in cold water and holding it to my head to see whether that’ll make you vanish.”

Ivan went to the corner of the room, took a towel, dipped it in water, and, holding the wet towel against his head, went back to pacing the room.

“What I like about this,” the visitor said, “is that from the very start we’ve addressed each other with complete familiarity.”

“Idiot!” Ivan laughed. “How could I possibly treat you with conventional courtesy? You know, I’m really enjoying myself, except that I have a pain in my temples . . . Yes, and on top of my head too . . . Only, please, don’t start again with your philosophizing, the way you did last time. If you won’t make yourself scarce, at least let’s talk about more cheerful things. And since you’re an old parasite and rumor-monger, let’s have some gossip, by all means! I know you’re just one of those nightmarish visions that come and pester people, but then, you don’t frighten me, you know. I’ll get over it and they won’t take me to a madhouse!”

“Parasite—
c’est charmant!
 Well, I suppose that’s just the right way for me to present myself, because what else can I be on earth but a parasite? And, by the way, as I listen to you, I notice, upon my word, that you’re gradually beginning to accept me as someone real and not just a figment of your imagination, as you insisted on doing throughout my last visit.”

“I’ve never for one second taken you as real,” Ivan cried, strangely angry. “You’re just a lie. You’re my sickness. You’re a phantom. I don’t yet know, though, how to destroy you, so I’ll have to put up with you for a while. You are my hallucination. You are an incarnation of myself, I mean of one aspect of me only, the personification of my worst and most stupid thoughts and feelings. From that point of view, I would be rather curious to have a look at you, if I had time to bother with it all now.”

“Just a minute, just a minute, I’ve caught you now: remember, earlier this evening, when you became so angry with Alyosha, by that street light, you shouted: ‘You must have got it from 
him!
 How did you find out that 
he
 was visiting me?’ Why, I’m sure you were talking about me. Doesn’t that show that, at least for a moment, be it ever so brief a moment, you did believe that I really exist—didn’t you?” the gentleman said with a low chuckle.

“Yes, but it was just a passing aberration . . . But I still cannot believe in you. I don’t even know whether I was asleep or awake last time, so perhaps I only saw you in my dream.”

“But why, then, did you have to pounce on Alyosha the way you did then? He’s such a sweet boy! You know, I feel rather guilty toward him, about the elder Zosima.”

“Leave Alyosha alone! Don’t you dare drag him into this, you miserable flunkey!”