The Brothers Karamazov (34 page)

“Ah, Lise, don’t scream like that. You drive me frantic with your fussing and screaming. How could I help it when you hadn’t put the bandages back in the proper place? I looked and looked for them, and I almost suspect you did it on purpose.”

“What are you talking about? How could I possibly have known that he’d come here with his finger half bitten off? Otherwise, really I might have hidden them, just as you say. I see that you have at last come up with a clever remark today.”

“Clever or not, I’m a little taken aback by the fuss you’re making about poor dear Alexei’s finger . . . Ah, Alexei, what upsets me is not just one particular thing. It’s everything together—Herzenstube and all the rest put together. It’s more than I can bear!”

“Why don’t you forget Dr. Herzenstube, mother, and just give me that gauze,” Lise said laughingly. “Hurry, mother, give me the gauze and water. This is simply a solution of zinc, Alexei. I remember now what it is. It’s very good stuff . . . You know what happened to him, mother? Well, on the way here, he simply got into a fight with some schoolboys and one of those streetboys bit him like that. Doesn’t that prove, mother, that he’s only a little boy himself and that it’s absolutely impossible for him to get married yet? Because, guess what, mother—he’s planning to get married! Just imagine him as a married man! Wouldn’t that be funny, terribly funny?”

And Lise went on giggling nervously, casting sly, sidelong glances at Alyosha.

“What are you talking about, Lise? Who’s going to marry? Why? How can you talk such nonsense when the boy who bit Alexei may have had rabies . . .”

“Is there really such a thing as rabid little boys, mother?”

“Why not? Don’t look at me as if I’d said something idiotic. Suppose the boy was bitten by a rabid dog and then goes around biting other people . . . I must say you have bandaged Alexei’s finger beautifully—I could never have done such a good job of it. Does it still hurt you?”

“Very little now.”

“And you’re not worried about rabies, are you?”

“That’s enough, Lise. Perhaps I was a bit hasty when I mentioned the possibility of the boy having rabies. You know, Alexei, when Katerina heard you were here, she rushed to me and asked me to tell you that she is very, very anxious to see you.”

“You go and join her yourself, mother. Alyosha can’t go yet, his finger still hurts too much.”

“It doesn’t hurt me at all,” Alyosha said. “I could go and see her right now.”

“What? You’re leaving me now? So that’s the way you are!”

“What do you mean? As soon as I’m through there, I’ll be back and we can talk as long as you like. And I’d like to see Katerina right away because I want to get back to the monastery as soon as possible today.”

“So take him away, mother. And you know, Alexei, there’s no need for you to bother to come back; when you’ve finished with Katerina, you may as well go straight to the monastery, because that’s where you really belong. Besides, you know I didn’t sleep properly last night and I’m very sleepy now.”

“Ah, Lise, I know you’re just saying that, but I think it would be very good if you really did have a little sleep,” Mrs. Khokhlakov said.

“I really don’t know what I’ve . . .” Alyosha muttered. “I could stay with you three more minutes . . . or perhaps five, if you wish.”

“Five whole minutes! That would be much too kind of you, really! Take him away, mother, take the monster away with you!”

“What’s the matter, Lise, have you gone quite mad? Let’s go, Alexei. She’s really impossible today, and I’m afraid she’ll only get more irritated if we stay. It’s really very hard to deal with a nervous woman. And yet, perhaps she really felt sleepy while you were with her. How did you manage to make her sleepy so soon—and it’s so fortunate!”

“I love the way you talk, mother. I’d like to kiss you for saying all those sweet things!”

“And I’d like to kiss you too, Lise,” Mrs. Khokhlakov said, and as soon as she and Alyosha had left the room, she started whispering to him in an important and business-like manner: “I don’t want to influence you in any way, nor do I wish to tell you anything beforehand. Go in and see for yourself what’s going on in there. It’s a real heartbreak, a fantastic farce: she’s in love with your brother Ivan but is trying very hard to convince herself that she’s really in love with your brother Dmitry. I suppose I’ll come in with you and I’ll stay to the end unless they throw me out.”

Chapter 5: Heartbreak In The Drawing Room

BUT BY that time they had almost finished talking in the drawing room. Katerina seemed very agitated, and yet determined. When Mrs. Khokhlakov and Alyosha entered, Ivan was already on his feet, about to leave. He seemed rather pale and Alyosha gave him a worried look. At that moment Alyosha found the answer to something that had been puzzling him, to one of the doubts that had been tormenting him for some time. For more than a month he had been hearing from various sources that Ivan was in love with Katerina and, above all, that he was trying to take her away from Mitya. Until very recently Alyosha had felt that this was a quite inconceivable slander, but it had nevertheless worried him a great deal. He loved both his brothers and the possibility of such a rivalry frightened him. But then Dmitry himself had told him the day before that he welcomed Ivan’s interest in Katerina, that it was very helpful to him in many respects. How could it be helpful to him, though? By enabling him to marry Grushenka? But such a marriage, Alyosha felt, would be a final gesture of despair. Until the day before, Alyosha had had no doubt whatever that Katerina was deeply and passionately in love with Dmitry. Moreover, he had felt that Katerina could not love a man like Ivan, that she could only love Dmitry, and love him just the way he was, however monstrous the circumstances surrounding her passion. The day before, however, during the scene between Katerina and Grushenka, Alyosha had received a somewhat different impression. The word “heartbreak” that Mrs. Khokhlakov had just used had almost made him shudder because, when he had awakened before daybreak that morning, he had muttered twice, “Heartbreak, heartbreak,” apparently in connection with his dream. And he had been dreaming all night about the scene he had witnessed between the two women. And now Alyosha found a new meaning in Mrs. Khokhlakov’s assertion that Katerina was really in love with Ivan but that she was denying it, playing some sort of a game with herself, trying to “break her own heart” by pretending to herself that she was in love with Dmitry, out of some sort of gratitude. “Yes,” he thought, “what she said may be the real truth.” But then what about Ivan? Alyosha felt instinctively that a woman like Katerina had to dominate and, while she could dominate Dmitry, she could not possibly dominate a man of Ivan’s character. Eventually (it would take some time, though), Dmitry would calm down and accept her domination “for his own good” (Alyosha hoped for that), but Ivan would never be able to submit to her; besides, submission would never bring him happiness. This was, for some reason, the way Alyosha imagined Ivan. And now, as he entered the drawing room, all these feelings and impressions again flitted through his mind, along with a new thought: “And what if she doesn’t really love either of them?” It must be noted, though, that Alyosha was rather ashamed of such ideas and when they had kept cropping up during the past month, he had told himself reproachfully: “Much I know about love and women to qualify me to draw such conclusions!” But he could not prevent himself from thinking. He felt that this rivalry was much too crucial a point in his brothers’ lives and that too much depended on it. “One wild beast will devour the other,” Ivan had said irritatedly the day before, referring to their father and their brother Dmitry. So then, Dmitry was a wild beast to him and had been for a long time. Perhaps ever since Ivan had come to know Katerina? Of course, those words had escaped Ivan involuntarily, when he was irritated. But didn’t that make them even more significant? And if that was the truth, what peace could there be between them? Wasn’t this only a new cause for feuds and hatred within their family? And, above all, for whom should he, Alyosha, be sorry? What should he wish for each of them? He loved both Dmitry and Ivan, but what could he hope for each in the face of all these violent and conflicting passions? A man could get completely lost in all these complications and Alyosha could not bear the unknown because his love was an active one. He was unable to love passively: as soon as he came to love someone, he had to help that person. And in order to help, he had to set himself a goal. He had to be sure what was good for each person, what it was he needed, and then when he was sure of what was best for everyone, he got to work. But now, instead of a clear picture, he saw only confusion. “Heartbreak”—the word he had heard—kept turning in his mind, but what could he understand about “heartbreak,” even in this particular case? He felt he could not understand the first thing in all this twisted business.

Katerina seemed very pleased to see Alyosha.

“Wait a moment,” she said quickly to Ivan, who was ready to leave. “First, I’d like to hear the opinion of one whom I trust with my whole being. And you, too, Mrs. Khokhlakov, please stay.”

Katerina made Alyosha sit down next to her, while Mrs. Khokhlakov installed herself next to Ivan, facing them.

“You are all my friends here, the only friends I have in the world,” she began in a voice vibrating with deep and genuine pain and verging on sincere tears, a voice that made Alyosha’s heart go out to her once more. “You, Alexei, you witnessed that nightmare yesterday and . . . and you saw me for what I am. You, Ivan, you didn’t see it, but he did. What he thought of me I don’t know, but I do know that if the same circumstances were repeated today, I would react in exactly the same way, show the same emotions, use the same words, make the same gestures, the same movements . . . You remember my movements, Alexei, since you yourself intercepted one of them and held me back,” she said, reddening, her eyes flashing. “I’ll tell you this, Alexei: I am not one who just accepts things and resigns myself. Listen, I’m not even so sure that I still love 
him
 now. I’m 
sorry
 for him, and that doesn’t go well with love. If I were still in love with him, I don’t suppose I’d be sorry for him. I think, rather, that I’d hate him, if anything . . .”

Her voice quivered and tears appeared on her eyelashes. Alyosha shuddered inwardly: “She is truthful and sincere,” he thought, “and . . . and she no longer loves Dmitry.”

“Right, right!” Mrs. Khokhlakov cried approvingly.

“Wait, my dear Mrs. Khokhlakov, I haven’t yet said the most important thing. I haven’t told you yet the final decision I came to last night. I suspect it may be an awful decision, but I feel I will stick by it as long as I live and nothing will make me change it. My dear, kind, and generous adviser, my only friend in the world, Ivan Karamazov, who possesses a profound knowledge of the human heart, approves that decision and has praised me for making it. He knows what it is.”

“Yes, and I think you’re right,” Ivan said in a quiet but firm voice.

“But I would also like Alyosha—I hope you will forgive me, Alexei, if I call you Alyosha—to tell me now, in front of my friends here, whether he thinks I am right or not. Somehow I feel instinctively, Alyosha, my sweet little brother—for that’s what you are, my sweet brother,” she said, ecstatically seizing his cold hand in her burning one, “I feel that your judgment, your approval, will calm my torments. I feel that I will find peace in your words and will be able to accept my fate. I feel it!”

“I have no idea what you’re about to ask me,” Alyosha said, his cheeks glowing. “I only know that I like you and that, at this particular moment, I’m more concerned about your happiness than about my own! You must understand, however, that I’m not much of an expert in this kind of thing,” he somehow felt obliged to add.

“In those things, my dear Alexei, what counts most is honor and duty and something else, something perhaps more important. My heart tells me about that irresistible feeling and I’m irresistibly drawn to it. But let me tell it all in just two words: my mind is made up, and even if he should marry that creature, whom I’ll never, never forgive, 
I shall still never abandon him,”
 she announced slowly and solemnly. “Yes, as of today, I shall never abandon him!” she repeated with a sort of twisted ecstasy and a strange break in her voice, her face turning pale. “I don’t mean that I’ll always be trailing after him, getting in his way every moment, making his life miserable. No, I may even move to some other town, anywhere, but as long as I live I’ll never stop watching over him. And when that woman makes him unhappy—which is bound to happen soon—he can come to me and he’ll find in me a friend and a sister . . . Yes, just a sister, of course, and it must always be that way, but he will realize then that this sister really loves him and has sacrificed her life for him. And I will finally succeed in making him understand what sort of person I am and then he will trust me and tell me everything without being ashamed!” she exclaimed ecstatically. “I shall be the god to whom he will pray—and that is the least he owes me to make up for his betrayal and for the calvary I suffered yesterday through his fault. And let him see, as long as he lives, that I stay true to him and to the promise I have given him once and for all, even though he himself has been untrue and has betrayed me. I will be . . . I will become just a means to his happiness, or, should I say, an instrument, a machine, to help him achieve happiness, and that until the end of my life. And I want him to see it and be aware of it as long as he lives. So that is my decision, and Ivan is in full agreement.”

She was almost out of breath. Perhaps she had planned to explain her idea in a more dignified, skillful, and natural way and felt she had done so too hurriedly, too openly. Indeed, there was much that was callow in her words, much that reflected her irritation at what had happened the day before and her need to make a proud gesture—she was well aware of it herself. Her face darkened and her eyes took on a hostile look. Alyosha noticed it and compassion stirred in his heart. Just at that moment Ivan said: