Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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“Suddenly a new major arrived to take command of the battalion. He took command. And the old colonel suddenly fell ill, couldn’t move, stayed home for two days, did not turn over the government money. Our doctor Kravchenko gave assurances that he really was ill. Only here’s what I knew thoroughly and secretly, and for a long time: that for four years in a row, as soon as the authorities finished going over the accounts, the money disappeared for a while. The colonel used to loan it to a most reliable man, a local merchant, the old widower Trifonov, a bearded man with gold spectacles. Trifonov would go to the fair, put the money out as he liked, and return the whole amount to the colonel immediately, with some little presents from the fair besides, and along with the presents a little interest as well. Only this last time (I learned of it quite by chance from a boy, Trifonov’s driveling son, his son and heir, one of the most depraved lads the world has yet produced), this time, as I said, when Trifonov returned from the fair, he didn’t return anything. The colonel rushed to him. ‘I never received anything from you, and could not have received anything,’ came the answer. So our colonel sat at home like that, with his head wrapped in a towel, and all three women putting ice to it; suddenly an orderly arrived with the books and an order to turn over the government funds at once, immediately, in two hours. He signed—I saw his signature afterwards in the book—stood up, said he would go and put on his uniform, ran to the bedroom, took his double-barreled shotgun, loaded it, rammed home a service bullet, took off his right boot, propped the gun against his chest, and began feeling for the trigger with his foot. But Agafya was suspicious; she remembered what I had told her, stole over and peeked into the room just in time: she rushed in, threw herself on him from behind, the gun fired into the ceiling, no one was hurt; the others ran in, seized him, took the gun away, held him by the arms ... All this I learned afterwards to the last detail. I was sitting at home at the time, it was dusk, I was just about to go out, I got dressed, combed my hair, put scent on my handkerchief, picked up my cap, when suddenly the door opened—and there, in my room, stood Katerina Ivanovna.
“Strange things do happen: no one in the street then noticed her coming into my place, so for the town it just vanished. I rented my lodgings from two widows of local officials, two ancient crones, they also served me, respectful women, they obeyed me in everything, and this time, on my orders, they were as silent as iron posts. Of course, I at once understood everything. She came in and looked squarely at me, her dark eyes resolute, defiant even, but on her lips and around her mouth I noticed some irresolution.
“‘My sister told me you would give us forty-five hundred roubles if I came ... to get them myself. I have come ... give me the money ... !’ She couldn’t keep it up, she choked, got frightened, her voice broke off, and the corners of her mouth and the lines around her mouth trembled. Alyoshka, are you listening or sleeping?”
“Mitya, I know you will tell me the whole truth,” Alyosha said with emotion.
“So I will. If you want the whole truth, this is it, I won’t spare myself. My first thought was a Karamazov thought. Once, brother, I was bitten by a spider, and was laid up with a fever for two weeks; it was the same now, I could feel the spider bite my heart, an evil insect, understand? I sized her up. Have you seen her? A real beauty. And she was beautiful then, but for a different reason. She was beautiful at that moment because she was noble, and I was a scoundrel; she was there in the majesty of her magnanimity and her sacrifice for her father, and I was a bedbug. And on me, a bedbug and a scoundrel, she depended entirely, all of her, all of her entirely, body and soul. No way out. I’ll tell you honestly: this thought, this spider’s thought, so seized my heart that it almost poured out from the sheer sweetness of it. It seemed there could even be no struggle: I had to act precisely like a bedbug, like an evil tarantula, without any pity ... I was breathless. Listen: naturally I would come the next day to ask for her hand, so that it would all end, so to speak, in the noblest manner, and no one, therefore, would or could know of it. Because although I’m a man of base desires, I am honest. And then suddenly, at that very second, someone whispered in my ear: ‘But tomorrow, when you come to offer your hand, a girl like this will not even see you, she’ll have the coachman throw you out: Go cry it all over town, I’m not afraid of you!’ I glanced at the girl. The voice was right: that was certainly what she would do. I’d be thrown out, you could see it in the look on her face. Anger boiled up in me. I wanted to pull some mean, piggish, merchant’s trick: to give her a sneering look, and right there, as she stood before me, to stun her with the tone of voice you only hear from some petty merchant:
“‘But four thousand is much too much! I was joking, how could you think it? You’ve been too gullible, madam. Perhaps two hundred, even gladly and with pleasure, but four thousand—it’s too much money, miss, to throw away on such trifles. You have gone to all this trouble for nothing.’”
“You see, I’d lose everything, of course, she would run away, but on the other hand, such infernal revenge would be worth it all. I might have spent the rest of my life howling with remorse, but right then I just wanted to pull this little stunt. Believe me, never in such a moment have I looked at any woman, not a single one, with hatred—see, I’m making the sign of the cross—but I looked at this one for three or five seconds, then, with terrible hatred—the kind of hatred that is only a hair’s breadth from love, the maddest love! I went to the window, leaned my forehead on the frozen glass, and I remember that the ice burned my forehead like fire. I didn’t keep her long, don’t worry; I turned around, went to the table, opened the drawer and took out a five percent bank note for five thousand roubles, with no name filled in (it was stuck in a French dictionary). I silently showed it to her, folded it, handed it to her, opened the door to the hallway for her, and, stepping back, bowed deeply to her, with a most respectful and heartfelt bow, believe me! She was startled, she looked intently at me for a second, turned terribly pale—white as a sheet—and suddenly, also without saying a word, not impulsively but very gently, deeply, quietly, bent way down and fell right at my feet—with her forehead to the ground, not like an institute girl but like a Russian woman! Then she jumped up and ran away. When she ran out—I was wearing my sword—I drew it and wanted to stab myself right there—why, I don’t know, it was terribly foolish, of course, but probably from a certain kind of ecstasy. Do you understand that one can kill oneself from a certain kind of ecstasy? But I didn’t stab myself, I only kissed the sword and put it back in the scabbard—which detail, by the way, I needn’t have mentioned. And it even seems that while I was telling about all these agonies just now, I must have been filling them out a little, to praise myself. But let it be, let it be so, and to hell with all spies into the human heart! That’s the whole of my past ‘incident’ with Katerina Ivanovna. So now brother Ivan knows about it, and you—and that’s all.”
Dmitri Fyodorovich got up, took a step, then another in his agitation, pulled out his handkerchief, wiped the sweat from his brow, then sat down again, not in the same place as before, but on another bench against the opposite wall, so that Alyosha had to turn all the way around to face him.
Chapter 5: The Confession of an Ardent Heart. “Heels Up”
“Now,” said Alyosha, “I understand the first half of this business.”
“You understand the first half: it’s a drama, and it took place there. The second half is a tragedy, and will take place here.”
“I still don’t understand anything of the second half,” said Alyosha.
“And I? Do I understand it?”
“Wait, Dmitri, there is one key word here. Tell me: you are her fiancé, aren’t you still her fiancé?”
“I became her fiancé, not at once, but only three months after those events. The day after it happened I told myself that the case was closed, done with, there would be no sequel. To come with an offer of my hand seemed a base thing to do. For her part, during all the six weeks she then spent in our town, she never once let me hear a word of herself. Except, indeed, in one instance: on the day after her visit, their maid slipped into my room, and without saying a word handed me an envelope. It was addressed to me. I opened it—there was the change from the five-thousand-rouble bank note. They needed only forty-five hundred, and there was a loss of about two hundred and something on the sale of the note. She sent me back only two hundred and sixty roubles, I think, I don’t quite remember, and just the money—no note, no word, no explanation. I looked into the envelope for some mark of a pencil—nothing! So meanwhile I went on a spree with the rest of my roubles, until the new major also finally had to reprimand me. And the colonel did hand over the government funds—satisfactorily and to everyone’s surprise, because nobody believed any longer that he had them intact. He handed them over, and came down sick, lay in bed for about three weeks, then suddenly he got a softening of the brain, and in five days he was dead. He was buried with military honors, since his discharge hadn’t come through yet. Katerina Ivanovna, her sister, and her aunt, having buried the father, set out for Moscow ten days later. And just before their departure, on the very day they left (I didn’t see them or say good-bye), I received a tiny letter, a blue one, on lacy paper, with only one line penciled on it: ‘I’ll write to you. Wait. K.’ That was all.
“I’ll explain the rest in two words. Once they were in Moscow, things developed in a flash and as unexpectedly as in an Arabian tale. The widow of the general, her main relative, suddenly lost both of her closest heirs, her two closest nieces, who died of smallpox in one and the same week. The shaken old woman welcomed Katya like her own daughter, like a star of salvation, fell upon her, changed her will at once in her favor, but that was for the future, and meanwhile she gave her eighty thousand roubles outright—here’s a dowry for you, she said, do as you like with it. A hysterical woman, I observed her later in Moscow. So then suddenly I received forty-five hundred roubles in the mail; naturally, I was bewildered and struck dumb. Three days later came the promised letter as well. It’s here with me now, I always keep it with me, and shall die with it—do you want to see it? You must read it: she offers to be my fiancée, she offers herself, ‘I love you madly,’ she says, ‘even if you do not love me—no matter, only be my husband. Don’t be afraid, I shan’t hinder you in any way, I’ll be your furniture, the rug you walk on ... I want to love you eternally, I want to save you from yourself . . .’ Alyosha, I’m not worthy even to repeat those lines in my mean words and in my mean tone, in my eternally mean tone that I can never be cured of! This letter pierced me even to this day, and is it easy for me now, is it easy for me today? I wrote a reply at once (I couldn’t manage to go to Moscow in person). I wrote it in tears. One thing I am eternally ashamed of: I mentioned that she was now rich and had a dowry, and I was just a poverty-stricken boor—I mentioned money! I should have borne it, but it slipped off my pen. Then I wrote at once to Ivan, in Moscow, and explained everything to him, as far as I could in a letter, it was a six-page letter, and sent Ivan to her. Why are you looking, why are you staring at me? So, yes, Ivan fell in love with her, is in love with her still, I know it, I did a foolish thing, in your worldly sense, but maybe just this foolishness will now save us all! Ah! Don’t you see how she reveres him, how she respects him? Can she compare the two of us and still love a man like me, especially after all that’s happened here?”
“But I’m sure she does love a man like you, and not a man like him.” “She loves her own virtue, not me,” the words suddenly escaped, inadvertently and almost maliciously, from Dmitri Fyodorovich. He laughed, but a moment later his eyes flashed, he blushed all over and pounded his fist violently on the table.
“I swear, Alyosha,” he exclaimed with terrible and sincere anger at himself, “believe it or not, but I swear as God is holy and Christ is the Lord, that even though I sneered just now at her lofty feelings, still I know that I am a million times more worthless in my soul than she is, and that her lofty feelings—are as sincere as a heavenly angel’s! That’s the tragedy, that I know it for certain. What’s wrong with declaiming a little? Am I not declaiming? But I am sincere, I really am sincere. As for Ivan, I can understand with what a curse he must look at nature now, and with his intelligence, too! To whom, to what has the preference been given? It has been given to a monster, who even here, already a fiancé and with all eyes looking at him, was not able to refrain from debaucheries—and that right in front of his fiancée, right in front of his fiancée! And a man like me is preferred, and he is rejected. Why? Because a girl wants to violate her life and destiny, out of gratitude! Absurd! I’ve never said anything of the sort to Ivan; Ivan, of course, has never said half a word about it to me either, not the slightest hint; but destiny will be fulfilled, the worthy man will take his place, and the unworthy one will disappear down his back lane– his dirty back lane, his beloved, his befitting back lane, and there, in filth and stench, will perish of his own free will, and revel in it. I seem to be rambling; all my words are worn out, as if I were just joining them at random; but I’ve determined that it will be so. I’ll drown in my back lane, and she will marry Ivan.”
“Wait, brother,” Alyosha interrupted again, deeply troubled, “you still haven’t explained one thing to me: are you her fiancé, are you really her fiancé? How can you want to break it off if she, your fiancée, doesn’t want to?”
“I am her fiancé, formally and with blessings; it all happened in Moscow after my arrival, with pomp, with icons, in the proper manner. The general’s widow gave the blessing, and—would you believe it?—even congratulated Katya: you have chosen well, she said, I can see inside him. And would you believe that she disliked Ivan and did not congratulate him? In Moscow I talked a lot with Katya, I painted myself in my true colors, nobly, precisely, in all sincerity. She listened to it all.
There was sweet confusion, There were tender words . . . [89]
Well, there were some proud words, too. She extorted from me, then, a great promise to reform. I gave my promise. And now ...” “What now?” “And now I’ve called you and dragged you here today, this very day—remember that!—in order to send you, again this very day, to Katerina Ivanovna, and...”
“And what?”
“And tell her that I shall never come to her again, that I—tell her that I bow to her.”
“But is it possible?”
“But that’s why I’m sending you instead of going myself, because it’s impossible. How could I say that to her myself?”
“But where will you go?”
“To my back lane.”
“You mean to Grushenka!” Alyosha exclaimed ruefully, clasping his hands. “Can it be that Rakitin was really speaking the truth? And I thought you just saw her a few times and stopped.”
“How can a fiancé just see another woman? And with such a fiancée, and before everyone’s eyes? It’s impossible! I have my honor, haven’t I? As soon as I began seeing Grushenka, I at once ceased to be a fiancé and an honest man, of course I know that. Why do you stare at me? You see, first of all I went to give her a beating. I had heard, and now know for certain, that this Grushenka had gotten from this captain, father’s agent, a promissory note in my name, so that she could demand payment and that would stop me and shut me up. They wanted to frighten me. So I set out to give Grushenka a beating. I’d seen her before around town. Nothing striking. I knew about the old merchant, who on top of everything else is lying sick now, paralyzed, but still will leave her a nice sum. I also knew that she likes making money, that she does make it, loans it out at wicked rates of interest, a sly fox, a rogue, merciless. I went to give her a beating, and stayed. A thunderstorm struck, a plague broke out, I got infected and am infected even now, and I know that everything is over and there will never be anything else. The wheel has come full circle. That’s how it is for me. And then suddenly, as if on purpose, in my beggar’s pocket, three thousand roubles turned up. We went from here to Mokroye, it’s fifteen miles away, I got some gypsies to join us, gypsy women, champagne, got all the peasants drunk on champagne, all the village women and girls, thousands were flying around. In three days I was broke, but a hero. And did he get anywhere , this hero? She didn’t even show it to him from a distance. A curve, I tell you! That rogue Grushenka has a certain curve to her body, it even shows in her foot, it’s even echoed in her little left toe. I saw it and kissed it, but that’s all—I swear! She said, ‘I’ll marry you if you like, though you’re a beggar. Tell me you won’t beat me and will let me do anything I want, and then maybe I’ll marry you,’ she laughed. And she’s laughing still.” Dmitri Fyodorovich rose from his place, almost in a sort of fury. He seemed suddenly as if he were drunk. His eyes suddenly became bloodshot.
“And do you really want to marry her?”
“At once, if she will, and if she won’t, I’ll stay anyway, I’ll be a caretaker in her yard. You ... you, Alyosha ... ,” he stopped suddenly in front of him and, grasping his shoulders, suddenly began shaking him violently, “but do you know, you innocent boy, that all of this is raving, impossible raving, because there’s a tragedy here! I tell you, Alexei: I can be a mean man, with passions mean and ruinous, but a thief, a pickpocket, a pilferer, that Dmitri Karamazov can never be! And now let me tell you that I am a little thief, a pickpocket and pilferer! Just before I went to give Grushenka a beating, that very morning, Katerina Ivanovna sent for me and, in terrible secrecy, so that for the time being no one would know (I have no idea why, but that’s evidently how she wanted it), she asked me to go to the provincial capital and from there post three thousand roubles to Agafya Ivanovna in Moscow, so that nobody here in town would know about it. And with those three thousand roubles in my pocket, I then found myself at Grushenka’s, and on them we went to Mokroye. Later I pretended that I had raced to the capital and back, but I didn’t present her with a postal receipt; I told her I’d sent the money and would bring her the receipt, but so far I haven’t brought it, I’ve forgotten, if you like. Now, what if you go today and say to her: ‘He bows to you,’ and she says, And the money?’ You could tell her: ‘He’s a base sensualist, a mean creature with irrepressible passions. He did not send your money that time, he spent it, because he couldn’t help himself, like an animal,’ and then you could add: ‘But he is not a thief, here are your three thousand roubles, he returns them to you, send them to Agafya Ivanovna yourself, and he says he bows to you.’ But then what if she suddenly says: And where is the money?’”
“Mitya, you’re unhappy, yes! But 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 can’t find three thousand roubles to give back to her? That’s just the thing: I won’t shoot myself. It’s beyond my strength right now—later, maybe, but right now I’ll go to Grushenka ... Let my flesh rot!”
“And what then?”
“I’ll be her husband, I’ll have the honor of being her spouse, and if a lover comes, I’ll go to another room. I’ll clean her friends’ dirty galoshes, I’ll heat up the samovar, I’ll run errands ...”
“Katerina Ivanovna will understand everything,” Alyosha all of a sudden said solemnly. “She will understand all the depths of all this grief and be reconciled. She has a lofty mind, because it’s impossible to be unhappier than you are, she will see that.”
“She will not be reconciled to everything,” Mitya grinned. “There’s something here, brother, that no woman can be reconciled to. Do you know what the best thing would be?”
“What?”
“To give her back the three thousand.”
“But where can we get it? Listen, I have two thousand, Ivan will give a thousand, that makes three—take it and give it to her.”
“And how soon will we get your three thousand? Besides, you’re not of age yet, and you must, you must go today and make that bow to her, with the money or without it, because I can’t drag on any longer, that’s what it’s come to. Tomorrow will already be too late, too late. I’ll send you to father.”
“To father?”
“Yes, to father, and then to her. Ask him for three thousand.”
“But, Mitya, he won’t give it.”
“Of course he won’t, I know he won’t. Alexei, do you know what despair is?”
“I do.”
“Listen: legally he owes me nothing. I’ve already gotten everything out of him, everything, I know that. But morally he surely owes me something, doesn’t he? He started with my mother’s twenty-eight thousand and made a hundred thousand out of it. Let him give me only three of those twenty-eight thousands, only three, and bring up my life from the Pit, [90]and it will be reckoned unto him for his many sins! And I’ll stop at those three thousands, I give you my solemn word on it, and he’ll never hear of me again. For the last time I give him a chance to be my father. Tell him that God himself sends him this chance.”
“Mitya, he won’t do it for anything.”
“I know he won’t do it, I know perfectly well he won’t. Not now, especially. Moreover, I know something else: recently, only the other day, just yesterday maybe, he learned for the first time seriously—underline seriously—that Grushenka indeed may not be joking and could very well up and marry me. He knows her nature, he knows the cat in her. And can he really give me money to help make that happen, when he himself has lost his mind over her? And that’s still not all, I can present you with something more: I know that about five days ago he withdrew three thousand roubles in hundred-rouble notes and packed them into a big envelope, sealed with five seals and tied crisscross with a red ribbon. See what detailed knowledge I have! And written on the envelope is: ‘To my angel Grushenka, if she wants to come.’ He scribbled it himself in silence and secrecy, and no one knows he’s keeping the money except the lackey Smerdyakov, whose honesty he trusts like himself. For three or four days now he’s been waiting for Grushenka, hoping she’ll come for the envelope. He sent her word of it, and she sent word back saying, ‘Maybe I’ll come.’ But if she comes to the old man, could I marry her then? Do you understand, now, why I’m keeping a secret watch here, and what precisely I’m watching for?”
“Her?”
“Her. The sluts who own this house rent out a closet to Foma. Foma is a local man, one of our former soldiers. He does chores for them, guards the house at night, and goes hunting grouse during the day, and that’s how he lives. I’ve set myself up in his place; neither he nor the women of the house know the secret, that is, that I’m keeping watch here.”
“Only Smerdyakov knows?”
“Only he. And he’ll let me know if she comes to the old man.”
“It was he who told you about the envelope?”
“Yes. It’s a great secret. Even Ivan knows nothing about the money or anything. And the old man is sending Ivan on a ride to Chermashnya for two or three days: a buyer has turned up for the woodlot, eight thousand to cut down the trees, so the old man is begging Ivan: ‘Help me, go by yourself—which means for two or three days. So that when Grushenka comes, he won’t be there.”
“So he’s expecting her even today?”
“No, she won’t come today, there are signs. She surely won’t come today!” Mitya suddenly shouted. “And Smerdyakov thinks the same. Father is drinking now, he’s sitting at the table with brother Ivan. Go, Alexei, and ask him for the three thousand ...”
“Mitya, my dear, what’s the matter with you!” Alyosha exclaimed, jumping up and staring at the frenzied Dmitri Fyodorovich. For a moment he thought he had gone mad.
“What’s wrong? I haven’t gone mad,” said Dmitri Fyodorovich, looking at him intently and even somehow solemnly. “No, when I tell you to go to father, I know what I’m saying: I believe in a miracle.”
“In a miracle?”
“In a miracle of divine Providence. God knows my heart, he sees all my despair. He sees the whole picture. Can he allow horror tohappen? Alyosha, I believe in a miracle. Go!”
“I will go. Tell me, will you be waiting here?”
“Yes. I realize it will take some time, you can’t just walk in and ask him– bang!—like that. He’s drunk now. I’ll wait three hours, and four, and five, and six, and seven—only know that you must go to Katerina Ivanovna today, even if it’s at midnight, with the money or without it, and tell her: ‘He says he bows to you.’ I want you to say precisely this verse: ‘He says he bows to you.’”
“Mitya! What if Grushenka comes today ... or if not today, then tomorrow, or the day after?”
“Grushenka? I’ll spot her, burst in, and stop it...”
“And if ... ?”
“If there’s an if, I’ll kill. I couldn’t endure that.”
“Kill whom?”
“The old man. I wouldn’t kill her.”
“Brother, what are you saying!”
“I don’t know, I don’t know ... Maybe I won’t kill him, and maybe I will. I’m afraid that at that moment his face will suddenly become hateful to me. I hate his Adam’s apple, his nose, his eyes, his shameless sneer. I feel a personal loathing. I’m afraid of that. I may not be able to help myself ...”
“I’ll go, Mitya. I believe God will arrange it as he knows best, so that there will be no horror.”
“And I’ll sit and wait for a miracle. But if it doesn’t happen, then...”
Alyosha, in deep thought, went to see his father.
Chapter 6: Smerdyakov
And indeed he found his father still at the table. And the table was laid, as usual, in the drawing room, though the house had an actual dining room. This drawing room was the largest room in the house, furnished with some sort of old-fashioned pretentiousness. The furniture was ancient, white, with threadbare upholstery of red half-silk. Mirrors in fanciful frames with old-fashioned carving, also white and gilt, hung in the spaces between the windows. The walls, covered with white paper, now cracked in many places, were adorned by two large portraits—one of some prince who thirty years before had been governor-general hereabouts, and the other of some bishop, also long since deceased. In the front corner were several icons, before which an oil-lamp burned all night ... not so much out of veneration as to keep the room lit through the night. Fyodor Pavlovich went to bed very late, at about three or four o’clock in the morning, and until then would pace around the room or sit in his armchair and think. This had become a habit with him. He often spent the night quite alone in the house, after sending the servants to the cottage, but usually the servant Smerdyakov stayed with him, sleeping on a bench in the front hall. The dinner was all finished when Alyosha entered, but they were still having coffee and preserves. Fyodor Pavlovich liked sweets and cognac after dinner. Ivan Fyodorovich was there at the table, also having coffee. The servants Grigory and Smerdyakov stood near the table. Both masters and servants were obviously and unusually animated. Fyodor Pavlovich loudly roared and laughed. From the front hall, Alyosha already heard his shrill laughter, by now so familiar to him, and concluded at once from the sound of it that his father was not yet drunk, but was still only in a benevolent mood.
“Here he is! Here he is!” yelled Fyodor Pavlovich, terribly glad suddenly to see Alyosha. “Join us, sit down, have some coffee—it’s lenten fare, lenten fare, and it’s hot, it’s good! I’m not offering you cognac, you’re fasting, but would you like some, would you? No, I’d better give you some liqueur, it’s fine stuff! Smerdyakov, go to the cupboard, second shelf on the right, here’s the key, get moving!”
Alyosha started to refuse the liqueur.
“We’ll serve it anyway, if not for you then for us,” Fyodor Pavlovich beamed. “But wait, did you have dinner or not?”
“I did,” said Alyosha, who in truth had had only a piece of bread and a glass of kvass in the Superior’s kitchen. “But I’d very much like some hot coffee.”
“Good for you, my dear! He’ll have some coffee. Shall we heat it up? Ah, no, it’s already boiling. Fine stuff, this coffee. Smerdyakovian! With coffee and cabbage pies, my Smerdyakov is an artist—yes, and with fish soup, too. Come for fish soup some time, let us know beforehand ... But wait, wait, didn’t I tell you this morning to move back today with your mattress and pillows? Did you bring the mattress, heh, heh, heh?”
“No, I didn’t,” Alyosha grinned too.
“Ah, but you were scared then—weren’t you scared, scared? Ah, my boy, my dear, could I offend you? You know, Ivan, I can’t resist it when he looks me in the eyes like that and laughs, I simply can’t. My whole insides begin to laugh with him, I love him so! Alyoshka, let me give you my paternal blessing.”
Alyosha stood up, but Fyodor Pavlovich had time to think better of it.
“No, no, for now I’ll just make a cross over you—so—sit down. Well, now you’re going to have some fun, and precisely in your line. You’ll laugh your head off. Balaam’s ass, [91]here, has started to talk, and what a talker, what a talker!” Balaam’s ass turned out to be the lackey Smerdyakov. Still a young man, only about twenty-four years old, he was terribly unsociable and taciturn. Not that he was shy or ashamed of anything—no, on the contrary, he had an arrogant nature and seemed to despise everyone. But precisely at this point we cannot avoid saying at least a few words about him. He had been raised by Marfa Ignatievna and Grigory Vasilievich, but the boy grew up “without any gratitude,” as Grigory put it, solitary, and with a sidelong look in his eye. As a child he was fond of hanging cats and then burying them with ceremony. He would put on a sheet, which served him as a vestment, chant, and swing something over the dead cat as if it were a censer. It was all done on the sly, in great secrecy. Grigory once caught him at this exercise and gave him a painful birching. The boy went into a corner and sat there looking sullen for a week. “He doesn’t like us, the monster,” Grigory used to say to Marfa Ignatievna, “and he doesn’t like anyone. You think you’re a human being? “ he would suddenly address Smerdyakov directly. “You are not a human being, you were begotten of bathhouse slime, that’s who you are ... “ Smerdyakov, it turned out later, never could forgive him these words. Grigory taught him to read and write and, when he was twelve, began teaching him the Scriptures. But that immediately went nowhere. One day, at only the second or third lesson, the boy suddenly grinned.
