The Brothers Karamazov (25 page)

“Yes, I believe you are not just a buffoon.”

“And I believe you believe it and that you’re sincere. You look sincere and you talk sincerely. But not Ivan. Ivan is proud and condescending . . . Nevertheless, I’d do away with your lousy monastery; I’d like to take all that mystical stuff and sweep it out of Russia altogether and finally bring all those fools to their senses. And think of all the gold and silver the government could recover for the mint!”

“But there’s no need to do away with it all,” Ivan said.

“No need? But that would bring the hour of truth closer.”

“But the moment truth triumphs, you’ll be the first to be robbed and then . . . then eliminated altogether.”

“You don’t say! Well, I believe you may be right at that: I’m a real fool, I see!” Mr. Karamazov cried, tapping himself on the forehead. “All right then, let the monastery stand, Alyosha, if that’s how it is. But that shouldn’t prevent us, the clever people, from sitting in a warm house and putting brandy to good use. You know what, Ivan, everything must have been arranged this way by God Himself. I’m sure of it. Tell me, Ivan, is there a God or not? Seriously, tell me. Why are you laughing now?”

“I’m thinking of your witty remark about Smerdyakov’s faith in the existence of the two saints who could move mountains.”

“Why, is there any connection between that and what I just said?”

“A considerable connection.”

“Well, so I’m a Russian too, and I have that Russian trait. Even in you, philosopher that you are, it must be possible to discover it, too, if one catches you unawares. Do you want me to try to catch you? But first I want you to answer my question: Is there a God or not? But I want you to be serious. I want your serious opinion.”

“No, there is no God.”

“What about you, Alyosha—is there a God?”

“Yes, there is.”

“And what about immortality, Ivan? I mean, isn’t there any immortality at all? Not even a tiny little bit?”

“No, there’s no immortality either.”

“None at all?”

“None whatsoever.”

“You mean there’s just nothing, just a vacuum? Perhaps there’s something or other? Not nothing . . .”

“No, there’s absolutely nothing.”

“Now you, Alyosha. Is there immortality?”

“Yes.”

“There is God and there is immortality then?”

“Yes, both God and immortality. And immortality is in God.”

“Hm. Most likely it’s Ivan who’s right. Think how much faith and energy men have devoted to that dream, how much strength has been wasted on it, and for thousands of years! Once more, for the last time: Is there or isn’t there a God? I want a final, definite answer.”

“For the last time—there is no God.”

“Well, who can be playing that joke on men, then, Ivan?”

“The devil, probably,” Ivan said with a vague smile.

“The devil exists then?”

“No, the devil doesn’t exist either.”

“Now that’s a real shame. Ah hell, I can’t even think what I would do to whoever it was who first invented God. Hanging would be too good for him.”

“If they hadn’t invented God, there would have been no civilization today.”

“No civilization without God? Why?”

“Nor would there be any brandy. I must take that brandy away from you.”

“Wait, wait, my boy, just one more little glass. I think I’ve offended Alyosha. Are you angry with me, Alexei? Ah, my sweet little Alyosha!”

“No, father, I’m not angry—I know your ideas. But your heart is better than your head.”

“
My
 heart is better than my head? Good God, look who’s talking. Tell me, Ivan, do you like Alyosha?”

“I do.”

“I want you to like him,” Mr. Karamazov said, now visibly drunk. “Listen, Alyosha, I was rude to your elder. I was excited then . . . But I can see now that the elder has wit. What do you say, Ivan, does he have wit?”

“I suppose he has. You might call it that.”

“He has, I’m sure: 
il y a du Piron là-dedans
. That is—he’s a Russian Jesuit. Being a man of noble feelings, he must hide his anger at being forced to playact, to wrap himself in a veil of saintliness.”

“I don’t see why—he, for one, does believe in God.”

“He doesn’t believe a bit. Didn’t you know? He admits it to everybody—that is, not to everybody, but to every intelligent visitor who comes to see him. Once he even said to Governor Schultz: ‘
Credo
, but I’m not sure in what.’ ”

“Did he really say that?”

“Yes, that’s just what he said. I respect him for it. There’s something of a Mephistopheles in him, or rather something of that character in Lermontov’s 
Hero of Our Times,
 Arbenin—or whatever his name was. I mean, he’s a sensualist, such a sensualist that I would worry about my daughter or my wife if she went to him to confess. You know, when he begins telling his stories . . . Two years ago, he invited us to tea. He served some liqueur too—the liqueur those rich ladies send him. And then he started telling us things. We thought we’d burst our insides laughing . . . There was one story especially, about how he’d cured a paralyzed lady: ‘If my legs didn’t ache so,’ he says, ‘I’d show you a dance you’ve never seen before.’ What do you say to that? ‘I’ve pulled a lot of tricks in my life,’ he says. Why he even told us he’d managed to relieve Demidov—the merchant, you know—of sixty thousand rubles . . .”

“What do you mean by relieve him of it? Did he steal the money?”

“Well, Demidov brought it to him, as an honest man: ‘There will be a search of my place tomorrow,’ Demidov told him. ‘Would you keep it for me?’ Well, he kept it all right. ‘Why,’ he told the merchant later, ‘you gave it to the Church.’ ‘You’re a lousy crook,’ Demidov told him. ‘No,’ he answered, ‘I’m not a crook—I’m a generous man . . .’ But it wasn’t really the elder, it was someone else. I’ve got a bit mixed up. Well, one more glass and that’ll be all. You can take the bottle away, Ivan. I was talking nonsense just now. Why didn’t you stop me, Ivan, why didn’t you tell me I was talking nonsense?”

“I knew you’d stop by yourself.”

“You’re lying. You didn’t stop me because you hate me. That was the only reason. You despise me. You’ve come to see me and you despise me in my own house.”

“Well, I’m leaving soon. But in the meantime you’ve had too much brandy.”

“I’ve begged you, in the name of Christ, to go to Chermashnya for me for a day or two, but you won’t go.”

“I’ll go tomorrow if you really insist.”

“I don’t believe you will. What you really want is to keep an eye on me here all the time, you spiteful son, and that’s why you don’t want to go.”

Nothing would calm the old man now—he had reached the dangerous line of drunkenness beyond which some drinkers, peaceful until then, deliberately try to lose their tempers and to assert themselves.

“Why are you looking at me with those eyes? Those eyes of yours, they’re looking at me and saying ‘Ah, you lousy, drunken swine!’ They’re sly and full of contempt, your eyes. I don’t trust them . . . You must’ve had some scheme when you came here. You’re not at all like my Alyosha—when 
he
 looks at me, his eyes beam. He doesn’t despise me. You mustn’t like Ivan, Alexei, you mustn’t . . .”

“There’s no reason for you to be angry with Ivan,” Alyosha said with a strange insistence. “Stop saying insulting things to him. Leave him in peace.”

“Oh, all right, all right . . . Ugh, I have a headache. Take that brandy away, Ivan. That’s the third time I’ve told you . . .” He suddenly lapsed into dreaminess, then, grinning broadly and slyly, said: “Don’t be angry with a senile old man, Ivan. I’m well aware that you don’t like me, but still, don’t be angry with me. Besides, there’s no reason at all why you should love me. Go to Chermashnya for me and I’ll soon follow you there myself and bring you some presents. I’ll show you a girl there I’ve had my eye on for quite a while. She goes around barefoot still, but there’s no reason why that should frighten you; don’t turn up your nose at barefoot beggar girls. They’re real pearls!”

And smacking his lips noisily, he kissed the tips of his fingers.

“To me,” he said, suddenly snapping out of his drunken torpor as he stumbled onto his favorite topic, “to me—there’s no such thing as a repulsive woman. That’s my motto, children, my own dear little suckling pigs. In all my life I’ve never met a woman who was repulsive to me! Do you understand? But how can you understand, though: you have milk instead of blood in your veins. You’re not mature yet! According to my idea, you can find something devilishly interesting in every woman, something you won’t find in any other. But then, you need to know how to find it and that takes talent! No woman is to be sneezed at. The mere fact that she’s a woman is already half of it . . . But how could you understand that? Even in an old maid you sometimes stumble across such a treasure that you’re amazed that so many fools can have allowed her to grow old without ever noticing her! Barefoot beggar girls and ugly women must first be taken by surprise—that’s how you get them. Why, didn’t you know that? Yes, you must amaze her, bewilder her, make her feel utterly befuddled and embarrassed by the fact that a fine gentleman like you could ever take a fancy to such a rough, coarse creature. It is really a marvelous arrangement in this world that there are gentlefolk and common people. There will always be some lovely scullery maid for her master, and that’s all that’s needed to make one happy! Wait, Alyosha, my boy, listen to this now: I always used to surprise your late mother, but that was different. For long periods I’d stay without touching her, without saying a kind word to her, and then, at the right moment, all of a sudden I’d sort of melt before her, go down on my knees, kiss her feet, and in the end I always succeeded in getting her into such a state that she would let out that nervous little tinkling, cracked laugh of hers. Only she had a laugh like that, and I knew that was how her fits always started. The next day she’d go into her hysterical screaming like a village girl. And that little laugh of hers wasn’t an indication of pleasure, but still, even though I knew all that, it was just as if it did indicate rapture. So you see what it means to be able to find the unique trait in everybody! There was that fellow Belyavsky, rich, good-looking, and all, who took a fancy to her and would hang around here all the time. Well, one day he suddenly slapped me in her presence. You should have seen that meek lamb pounce on me! I thought she was going to attack me herself for that slap. ‘You had your face slapped, slapped,’ she kept repeating. ‘You were trying to sell me to him and he slapped your face! How did he dare slap your face, and in my presence too! Don’t you ever come near me again! Never, never, never! Go on, get out, run after him and challenge him at once to a duel!’ I had to take her to the monastery that day and have the holy fathers lecture her on meekness and calm her down. But I swear to you by God Almighty, Alyosha—I never did anything to hurt my hysterical wife. Well, once perhaps . . . It was during the first year of our marriage still. She really did a lot of praying then, especially during the holidays of our Lady, when she used to drive me away from her and make me sleep in my study. So I decided to try to beat that mystic stuff out of her. ‘Look,’ I said to her, ‘see this icon of yours? I know you think it works miracles, but you watch: I’m about to spit on it and you’ll see that nothing will happen to me.’ The way she looked at me, I thought she’d kill me, but she only jumped up, threw up her hands in despair, then, covering her face with them, started to shake, and fell to the floor . . . Alyosha, Alyosha! What’s the matter?”

Karamazov leapt up from his seat in a fright. From the moment he had started talking about his mother, a gradual change had come over Alyosha’s face. The blood rushed to his cheeks, his eyes glowed, his lips quivered . . . But the drunken old man went on spluttering, noticing nothing, until something very strange happened to Alyosha—an exact repetition of what had happened to the boy’s mother on the occasion which he had just recounted. Alyosha suddenly leapt up from his seat, just as his mother had, threw up his hands, covered his face with them, then collapsed back into his chair as though his legs had been pulled out from under him, and suddenly started shaking in a succession of hysterical, violent, soundless sobs. The boy’s uncanny resemblance to his mother at that moment amazed the old man.

“Ivan, Ivan, quick—get some water . . . He’s just like her, exactly, just like his mother! Spit some water out at him from your mouth—I used to do that to her. It’s because he feels for her, for his mother, he feels sorry for her . . .” Karamazov kept muttering.

“As far as I understand, his mother happens to have been my mother too, or wasn’t she?” Ivan said. There was cold contempt and a note of anger in his voice. The old man looked at him and shuddered before the strange glare in his son’s eye. And then something very strange happened, although it lasted for only one second: it somehow really escaped Karamazov’s mind that Alyosha’s mother was also Ivan’s mother.

“What are you saying—your mother? . . .” he muttered uncomprehendingly. “What are you talking about? Whose mother? Why, was she . . . Ah, damn it, of course! Yes, of course, she was your mother too! It was like an eclipse, a blackout—I’ve never experienced that before. Forgive me, please, I was under the impression, Ivan, that—ha-ha-ha!” He stopped short. A broad, drunken, almost meaningless grin appeared on his face.

At that very second all hell seemed to have broken loose in the entrance hall. There was a terrible din, loud banging and frantic shouting. The door opened and Dmitry burst into the room.

The old man rushed to Ivan in terror.

“He’ll kill me! He’ll kill me! You mustn’t let him, you mustn’t!” he screamed, clutching at Ivan’s jacket.

Chapter 9: The Sensualists

GREGORY AND Smerdyakov rushed in right behind Dmitry. Obeying instructions their master had given them a few days earlier, they had tried to stop him by force, to bar him from entering the house. As Dmitry, after bursting into the room, stopped for a second to look around, Gregory dashed around the table to the opposite side of the room, closed the double doors leading to the interior of the house, spread his arms crosswise, and stood there barring the entrance with his body, looking determined to defend this passage, as they say, with the last drop of his blood. When Dmitry saw his maneuver, he let out a cry, or rather an animal snarl, and pounced on Gregory.