The Brothers Karamazov (139 page)

In general, Mitya had become strangely absentminded since the trial. There were times when he would remain for half an hour without saying a word, so deeply absorbed in his own thoughts that he forgot all about his visitor. And even when he came out of his thoughts and addressed his visitor, it was always suddenly, unexpectedly, and he always sounded as though he had said something other than what he had intended to say. Now and then, Alyosha caught Mitya looking at him with deep compassion. With Grushenka, he felt easier than with Alyosha, although he spoke very little to her. But every time she came, his face would light up with joy.

Alyosha sat down on a stool next to his cot. This time, Dmitry had been awaiting Alyosha’s arrival with great apprehension, but he waited for Alyosha to speak first, for he did not dare ask him what had happened. He was sure that Katerina would refuse to come and, at the same time, he felt that, if she did not come, he would be unable to face his future. Alyosha knew exactly what was going on inside his brother.

“What do you think about Trifon?” Mitya began breathlessly. “I understand he’s pulling out the floorboards, tearing up the planks, taking his whole inn to pieces, looking for that treasure, for that fifteen hundred rubles the prosecutor said I hid there! I understand that he started searching for the money as soon as he got home. Let him work for nothing then, and I hope it teaches the swindler a lesson! The guard here told me—he comes from Mokroye, you know . . .”

“Listen,” Alyosha said, “she’s coming. I don’t know exactly when. It may be today or any of these days, but she definitely is coming, that’s sure.”

Mitya started. He was about to say something but changed his mind. The news had a violent effect on him. He was obviously longing to know more of what Katerina had said to Alyosha, but again he was afraid to ask: anything scornful or cruel on Katya’s part would have felt like the slash of a knife to him at that moment.

“She asked me, by the way, to reassure you about the escape, to tell you that you can do it with a clear conscience. You know that, if Ivan hasn’t recovered by that time, she will take care of everything herself.”

“You’ve told me that already,” Mitya said musingly.

“And you have already repeated it to Grushenka.”

“Yes,” Mitya admitted. “She won’t come until the evening today,” he said, looking shyly at Alyosha. “When I told her that Katya was arranging things, her lips twisted, but she said nothing at first. Later she whispered only: ‘Let her.’ She knows it’s important. I couldn’t keep her in ignorance any longer. I’m sure that, by now, she must have understood that Katya no longer loves me, that she loves Ivan.”

“But is that the truth?” Alyosha could not help asking.

“Maybe it isn’t. In any case, she won’t come this morning.” Mitya said hurriedly, to make it clear. “I’ve asked her to do an errand for me . . . Listen, Alyosha, Ivan will surpass everybody. If anybody must live, it is him more than us. He’ll recover.”

“Strangely enough, Katya, who is terribly worried about him, also has no doubt that he’ll pull through,” Alyosha said.

“That means she’s convinced he will die. It’s because she’s so afraid of it that she’s sure he’ll recover.”

“Ivan has a strong constitution,” Alyosha said worriedly, “and I am very, very hopeful that he will recover.”

“He will recover, but Katya is convinced he’ll die. There is so much unhappiness in her . . .”

They fell silent. Something very important was tormenting Mitya.

“Alyosha, I love Grusha terribly,” Mitya said suddenly in a quivering voice.

“They won’t allow her to follow you 
there
,” Alyosha put in quickly.

“And this is what I wanted to tell you,” Mitya said in a voice that had suddenly acquired a strange ringing quality, “if anyone ever raises a hand to me, whether on the way or 
there
, I won’t stand for it; I’ll kill him and they’ll shoot me. And I’m supposed to bear it for twenty years! They’re already addressing me as, ‘Hey you!’ here, before we’ve even left. Last night I lay here and I decided that I’m not ready for it. I have no strength to bear it! I thought before that I’d sing that ‘hymn,’ but I see now that I can’t even get over being pushed around by the guards. I’m willing to bear anything for Grusha’s sake . . . no, not the beatings. But, anyway, they won’t allow her to follow me 
there
.”

Alyosha listened to him with a gentle smile.

“Let me tell you once and for all what I think about that, Mitya. And you know very well that I’d never lie to you. So listen: you’re not ready for it and that ordeal is not for you. And since you’re not ready for it, there’s no need for you to go through such a martyrdom. If you had killed father, I would be sad to see you trying to evade your cross. But you are innocent, and that cross would be too much for you. You want to regenerate yourself and become a new man through suffering. But I think it will be enough for you if you remember all your life that new man you want to be, wherever you are after you have escaped from here. And indeed, by escaping the great ordeal, you will become even more acutely aware of your debt, for the rest of your life, and that will help your regeneration perhaps even more than if you went 
there.
 For if you went 
there,
 you wouldn’t be able to bear it, and you’d rebel, and perhaps you’d really say to yourself, ‘We are even now!’ The defense counsel was right about that. Not every man can bear the same burden; for some, it may prove to be beyond their strength . . . Well, that is what I think, if it really interests you. If others had to be made responsible for your escape—officers or soldiers of the escort, or whoever—I would not have ‘allowed’ you to go through with it,” Alyosha said with a smile. “But I understand, they assured me—the commandant even told Ivan—that if it’s done cleverly, there won’t be much trouble for anyone, and they could get off with practically nothing. I know, of course, that bribery is dishonest, even under these circumstances, but I really have no right to judge, for if Ivan and Katya had wanted me to handle it for you, I’d have paid the bribes myself, and that’s the truth. So I cannot judge you if you do it, but I want you to know that I will never condemn you for doing it. Besides, when you think of it—how could I possibly be your judge? Well, I think that’s just about it for now.”

“You may never condemn me, but I’ll condemn myself!” Mitya cried. “I’ll escape. It was settled without you, for how could old Mitya Karamazov turn down an offer to escape? And then I’ll condemn myself and, wherever I find myself, I’ll keep praying that my sins be forgiven me! Isn’t that the way the Jesuits talk? That’s what we’ve come to, is it?”

“Right.” Alyosha smiled gently.

“You always tell the whole truth, never hold back anything, and I love you for it!” Mitya said with a joyful laugh. “So now I’ve caught my little brother Alyosha behaving like a Jesuit! I feel like giving you a huge hug for it! Listen to the rest of it then; let me bare the other half of my soul. Here is what I have been thinking about and what I have decided: if I were to escape, and even if it were with money and a passport, and I managed to get as far away as America, what cheers me is the thought that what I’d find there would not be joy and happiness, but something that might be even worse than hard labor in Siberia. Yes, worse, Alexei, believe me. I know what I’m saying! That America, God damn it, I hate it already! Even if Grusha is with me, for look at her, what kind of an American woman is she? Every little bone in her body is Russian, that’s how Russian she is, and in no time she’ll be missing her old Russia terribly, and I’ll have to watch her being miserable and homesick, and I’ll know that it was because of me that she accepted that awful ordeal, she who has really done nothing to deserve it! And I myself, do you imagine I’ll be able to live there among those completely strange natives, even though every one of them may be a much better man than I am. I hate America already, from here! And even if every one of those fellows was the greatest of engineers or the greatest anything, I still say the hell with them, they aren’t my kind of people, and I don’t want to have anything to do with them. It’s Russia I love, Alexei, and I love the Russian God, although I myself am no good. I’ll die there like a dog,” Dmitry suddenly cried with flashing eyes, his voice quivering with suppressed sobs.

“So here is what I have decided, Alexei,” he went on, overcoming his emotion. “As soon as Grusha and I get there, we’ll move somewhere far out of the way, where there is nothing but wild bears, and we’ll settle on the land, and till the soil. Because there certainly must be such wild places there too. I understand that there are still some Redskins about, somewhere on the frontier, on the horizon, the last of the Mohicans or something—well, that’s where I want to go, to the frontier, to those Mohicans . . . And right away, we’ll start learning English, both Grusha and I, and we’ll keep at it for three years; it will be nothing but tilling the land and grammar all that time. Well, after those three years, we’ll know English like genuine English people and, as soon as we do, that will be the end of America! We’ll return to Russia as American citizens. Ah, you needn’t worry, we won’t come back to this lousy town. We’ll hide ourselves somewhere far away, in the north or in the south, I don’t know, and I’ll look different by then, and she will too. Some doctor over there in America will graft a wart or something onto my face, for they’re great technicians, those Americans, after all. And if they can’t manage that, I’ll take out one of my eyes and grow a yard-long, gray beard—for my hair will have turned gray from homesickness by then—and I hope they’ll never recognize me. If they do, let them pack me off to Siberia then; that’ll just prove it was my fate, after all, to end up there . . . So if they don’t find me out, we’ll settle here, somewhere out of the way too, and work the land, and I’ll just have to pretend I’m an American as long as I live. But at least we’ll die in our own country. That is my plan and it is final. So what do you say to it? Do you approve?”

“I approve all right,” Alyosha said, not wanting to contradict him.

Mitya remained silent for a moment, then suddenly said:

“And what do you say about the trial? It was all fixed in advance, wasn’t it?”

“Whether it was or not, you would have been convicted anyway,” Alyosha said with a sigh.

“Yes, I suppose people around here got tired of seeing my face. Well, that’s just the way they feel, I suppose, but it does hurt!”

They remained silent for a moment and then Mitya burst out:

“Alyosha, hit me with it right now: is she coming now or not? What did she actually say to you? How did she say it?”

“She said she’d come, but she didn’t know whether she’d come today. You must understand that it isn’t easy for her,” Alyosha said, looking timidly at his brother.

“Oh, I’m sure it isn’t easy for her. I know that! It’s driving me mad, Alyosha! And the way Grusha keeps looking at me—she understands everything. O God, punish me! What is it I want? I want Katya! Do I know myself what I’m after? It’s that same, unrestrained, unholy Karamazov urge! No, I’m not ready for the ordeal—I’m just a low scoundrel and nothing more!”

“Here she is!” Alyosha said.

Katerina appeared in the doorway. She stopped for a second, looking forlorn, her eyes on Mitya. He turned pale and leapt to his feet. He looked very frightened at first, but within a second, a shy, beseeching smile appeared on his lips and he stretched out his arms toward Katerina. When she saw it, she flew to him impetuously, seized him by the hands, almost forced him to sit down on his cot, and sat down close by him, never letting go of his hands and pressing them spasmodically. Several times she tried to say something but apparently could not, and they kept looking into each other’s eyes, smiling strangely. It was as if they were shackled together. Two minutes passed in that way.

“Have you forgiven me?” Mitya muttered at last and then, turning toward Alyosha, his face beaming with joy, he cried out to him: “Did you hear? Did you hear what I asked her?”

“That is why I loved you!” Katya cried emotionally. “I loved you because you are so generous. Besides, you have no need of my forgiveness and I have no need of yours. For whether you forgive me or not, you’ll always remain an open wound in my conscience, just as I will be in yours. And this is as it should be.” She stopped to catch her breath, then continued very quickly, in a fervent, exalted tone. “I’ve come to embrace your feet, to press your hands so hard that it hurts you, just as I did in Moscow, remember. I’ve come to tell you again that you are my god, my joy, to tell you that I love you, love you terribly . . .” A moan of pain escaped her lips. She suddenly pressed them violently to Dmitry’s hand, as tears gushed from her eyes. Alyosha stood there in speechless embarrassment; he had never expected anything of this sort.

“Love is gone, Mitya,” she began again, “but what is gone is so dear to me that it hurts. I want you to know it always. But now, for a brief moment only, let there be something that could have been,” she said with a twisted smile, looking happily into his eyes. “I know you are now in love with another woman, and I myself am in love with another man, but nevertheless I’ll always love you and you’ll always love me. Didn’t you know that? You must always love me, as long as you live, do you hear me?” she said with a quiver in her voice that sounded almost like a threat.

“I shall love you, you know that, Katya,” Dmitry said, breathing heavily between words. “You know, that evening, five days ago, when you fainted there and they carried you away . . . I loved you. And all my life it will be like that, always . . .”

And they went on murmuring wild, almost incoherent things to each other, things that were perhaps not even really true. But at that second they were true, and the two of them believed them unquestioningly.

“Katya,” Mitya suddenly asked her, “did you believe I killed him? I know you don’t believe it now, but did you believe it then . . . when you were on the witness stand? . . . Did you really believe it?”

“I didn’t believe it then either! I never believed it! I hated you then and I just managed to convince myself for one second . . . Just when I was testifying . . . Yes, I believed it . . . But as soon as I had finished testifying—I no longer did. You must know all that. Ah, I forgot that I came here to punish myself,” she added, her expression changing abruptly from what it had been when they were murmuring lovingly to each other.