Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 70 страниц)
“Do, then. You won’t spy out anything of the sort in me,” Alyosha laughed.
“And, Alyosha, will you submit to me? This, too, ought to be decided beforehand.”
“I will, certainly, with the greatest pleasure, only not in the most important things. If you disagree with me about the most important things, I will still do as duty tells me.”
“That’s how it should be. And you should know that I, too, on the contrary, am not only ready to submit to you in the most important things, but will also yield to you in everything, and I will give you my oath on it right now—in everything and for my whole life,” Lise cried out fervently, “and happily, happily! What’s more, I swear to you that I shall never eavesdrop on you, not once ever, nor shall I read even one of your letters, for you are right and I am not. And though I shall want terribly to eavesdrop, I know it, I still shan’t do it, because you consider it ignoble. You are like my providence now ... Listen, Alexei Fyodorovich, why have you been so sad these days, both yesterday and today? I know you have cares, great troubles, but I see that you have some special sadness besides, perhaps some secret one, don’t you?”
“Yes, Lise, I have a secret one, too,” Alyosha said sadly. “I can see that you love me if you’ve guessed that.”
“What is this sadness? About what? Can you tell me?” Lise pleaded timidly.
“I’ll tell you later, Lise ... later ... ,” Alyosha became embarrassed. “Now perhaps you wouldn’t understand it. And perhaps I wouldn’t be able to explain it myself.”
“Besides, I know that your brothers and your father are tormenting you.”
“Yes, my brothers, too,” said Alyosha, as if thinking to himself.
“I don’t like your brother Ivan Fyodorovich, Alyosha,” Lise suddenly remarked.
Alyosha noted her remark with a certain surprise, but did not take it up.
“My brothers are destroying themselves,” he went on, “my father, too. And they’re destroying others with them. This is the ‘earthy force of the Karama-zovs,’ as Father Paissy put it the other day—earthy and violent, raw ... Whether the Spirit of God is moving over that force—even that I do not know. I only know that I myself am a Karamazov ... I am a monk, a monk? Am I a monk, Lise? Didn’t you say somehow a moment ago that I was a monk?”
“Yes, I said that.”
“And, look, maybe I don’t even believe in God.” “You don’t believe? What’s the matter with you?” Lise asked softly and cautiously. But Alyosha did not answer. There was, in these too-sudden words, something too mysterious and too subjective, perhaps not clear to himself, but that undoubtedly tormented him.
“And now, on top of all that, my friend is going, the first of men in the world is leaving the earth! If you knew, if you knew, Lise, how bound I am, how welded my soul is to this man! And now I shall be left alone ... I will come to you, Lise ... Henceforth we will be together ...”
“Yes, together, together! From now on, always together, for the whole of our lives. Listen, kiss me, I allow you to.”
Alyosha kissed her.
“Well, go now, Christ be with you!” (and she made a cross over him). “Go to him,quickly, while he is alive. I see that I’ve delayed you cruelly. I will pray today for him and for you. Alyosha, we shall be happy! We shall be happy, shan’t we?”
“It seems we shall be, Lise.”
On parting from Lise, Alyosha chose not to go and see Madame Khokhlakov, and he was about to leave the house without saying good-bye to her. But as soon as he opened the door and went to the stairs, Madame Khokhlakov appeared before him from nowhere. Alyosha could tell from her very first words that she had been waiting there for him on purpose.
“Alexei Fyodorovich, this is terrible. It’s a child’s trifles and all nonsense. I hope you won’t take it into your head to dream ... Foolishness, foolishness, and more foolishness!” she pounced on him.
“Only don’t say that to her,” said Alyosha, “or she will get upset, and that is bad for her now.”
“Sensible words from a sensible young man. Shall I take it that you agreed with her only because, out of compassion for her sickly condition, you did not want to anger her by contradicting her?”
“Oh, no, not at all, I spoke perfectly seriously with her,” Alyosha declared firmly.
“Seriousness is impossible, unthinkable here, and first of all let me tell you that now I will not receive you again, not even once, and second, I will go away and take her with me.”
“But why?” said Alyosha. “It’s still so far off, we’ll have to wait perhaps a year and a half.”
“Ah, Alexei Fyodorovich, that’s true, of course, and in a year and a half you will quarrel and break up with her a thousand times. But I’m so unhappy, so unhappy! Perhaps it’s all a trifle, but it is a great blow to me. Now I’m like Famusov in the last scene, you are Chatsky, and she is Sophia, [121]and just imagine, I ran out here to the stairs on purpose to meet you, and there, too, all the fatal things take place on the stairs. I heard everything, I almost fell over. This explains the horrors of that whole night and all these recent hysterics! For the daughter—love, and for the mother—death. Go lie in your coffin. Now, the second and most important thing: what is this letter she wrote to you? Show it to me at once, at once!”
“No, there’s no need. Tell me, how is Katerina Ivanovna’s health? I very much need to know.”
“She’s still delirious, she hasn’t come to herself; her aunts are here and do nothing but say ‘Ah’ and put on airs in front of me, and Herzenstube came and got so frightened that I didn’t know what to do with him or how to save him, I even thought of sending for a doctor. He was taken away in my carriage. And suddenly, to crown it all, suddenly you, with this letter! True, it won’t be for a year and a half. In the name of all that’s great and holy, in the name of your dying elder, show me the letter, Alexei Fyodorovich, show me, her mother! Hold it up, if you wish, and I shall read it from your hand.”
“No, I won’t show it to you, Katerina Osipovna, even with her permission I would not show it to you. I’ll come tomorrow, and, if you wish, I’ll discuss many things with you, but now—farewell!”
And Alyosha ran downstairs into the street.
Chapter 2: Smerdyakov with a Guitar
Besides, he had no time. A thought flashed through him as he was saying good-bye to Lise—a thought about how he might contrive, now, to catch his brother Dmitri, who was apparently hiding from him. It was getting late, already past two in the afternoon. With his whole being Alyosha felt drawn to the monastery, to his”great” dying man, but the need to see his brother Dmitri outweighed everything: with each hour the conviction kept growing in Alyosha’s mind that an inevitable, terrible catastrophe was about to occur. What precisely the catastrophe consisted in, and what he would say at that moment to his brother, he himself would perhaps have been unable to define. “Let my benefactor die without me, but at least I won’t have to reproach myself all my life that I might have saved something and did not, but passed by, in a hurry to get home. In doing so, I shall be acting in accordance with his great word ...”
His plan consisted in taking his brother Dmitri unawares—namely, by climbing over the same wattle fence as yesterday, getting into the garden, and planting himself in that gazebo. “If he’s not there,” Alyosha thought, “then, without telling either Foma or the landladies, I’ll hide in the gazebo until evening, if need be. If he’s still keeping watch for Grushenka’s visit, most likely he’ll come to the gazebo . . .”By the way, Alyosha did not give too much thought to the details of the plan, but decided to carry it out, even if it meant he would not get back to the monastery that day . . .
Everything went without hindrance: he climbed over the wattle fence at almost the same spot as the day before and secretly stole into the gazebo. He did not want to be observed: both the landlady and Foma (if he was there) might be on his brother’s side and obey his orders, and therefore either not let Alyosha into the garden or forewarn his brother in good time that he was being sought and asked for. There was no one in the gazebo. Alyosha sat in the same place as the day before and began to wait. He looked around the gazebo, and for some reason it seemed to him much more decrepit than before; this time it seemed quite wretched to him. The day, by the way, was as fine as the day before. On the green table a circle was imprinted from yesterday’s glass of cognac, which must have spilled over. Empty and profitless thoughts, as always during a tedious time of waiting, crept into his head: for example, why, as he had come in now, had he sat precisely in the very same place as the day before, and not in some other place? Finally he became very sad, sad from anxious uncertainty. But he had not been sitting there for even a quarter of an hour when suddenly, from somewhere very close by, came the strum of a guitar. Some people were sitting, or had just sat down, about twenty paces away, certainly not more, somewhere in the bushes. Alyosha suddenly had a flash of recollection that the day before, when he had left his brother and gone out of the gazebo, he had seen, or there flashed before him, as it were, to the left, near the fence, a low, old green garden bench among the bushes. The visitors, therefore, must just have sat down on it. But who were they? A single male voice suddenly sang a verse in a sweet falsetto, accompanying himself on the guitar:
An invincible power
Binds me to my flower.
Lord have me-e-e-ercy
On her and me!
On her and me!
On her and me!’ [122]
The voice stopped. A lackey tenor, with a lackey trill. Another voice, female this time, suddenly said caressingly and timidly, as it were, but still in a very mincing manner:
“And why, Pavel Fyodorovich, have you been staying away from us so much? Why do you keep neglecting us?”
“Not at all, miss,” a man’s voice answered, politely enough, but above all with firm and insistent dignity. Apparently the man had the upper hand and the woman was flirting with him. “The man seems to be Smerdyakov,” thought Alyosha, “judging by his voice at least. And the lady must be the daughter of the house, the one who came from Moscow, wears a dress with a train, and goes to get soup from Marfa Ignatievna...”
“I like any verses terribly, if it’s nicely put together,” the female voice went on. “Why don’t you go on?”
The voice sang again:
More than all a king’s wealth Is my dear one’s good health. Lord have me-e-e-ercy On her and me! On her and me! On her and me!
“Last time it came out even better,” remarked the female voice. “After the king’s wealth, you sang: ‘Is my honey’s good health.’ It came out more tender. You must have forgotten today.” “Verse is nonsense, miss,” Smerdyakov said curtly. “Oh, no, I do so like a bit of verse.”
“As far as verse goes, miss, essentially it’s nonsense. Consider for yourself: who on earth talks in rhymes? And if we all started talking in rhymes, even by order of the authorities, how much would get said, miss? Verse is no good, Maria Kondratievna.”
“You’re so smart about everything! How did you ever amount to all that?” the female voice was growing more and more caressing.
“I could have done even better, miss, and I’d know a lot more, if it wasn’t for my destiny ever since childhood. I’d have killed a man in a duel with a pistol for calling me low-born, because I came from Stinking Lizaveta without a father, and they were shoving that in my face in Moscow, it spread there thanks to Grigory Vasilievich. Grigory Vasilievich reproaches me for rebelling against my nativity: ‘You opened her matrix,’ he says. [123]I don’t know about her matrix, but I’d have let them kill me in the womb, so as not to come out into the world at all, miss. They used to say in the market, and your mama, too, started telling me, with her great indelicacy, that she went around with her hair in a Polish plait and was a wee bitunder five feet tall. Why say a wee bitwhen you can simply say ‘a little’ like everyone else? She wanted to make it tearful, but those are peasant tears, miss, so to speak, those are real peasant feelings. Can a Russian peasant have feelings comparably to an educated man? With such lack of education, he can’t have any feelings at all. Ever since my childhood, whenever I hear this ‘wee bit,’ I want to throw myself at the wall. I hate all of Russia, Maria Kondratievna.”
“If you were a military cadet or a fine young hussar, you wouldn’t talk that way, you’d draw your sword and start defending all of Russia.”
“I not only have no wish to be a fine military hussar, Maria Kondratievna, but I wish, on the contrary, for the abolition of all soldiers.”
“And when the enemy comes, who will defend us?”
“But there’s no need to at all, miss. In the year twelve there was a great invasion by the emperor Napoleon of France, the first, the father of the present one, [124]and it would have been good if we had been subjected then by those same Frenchmen: an intelligent nation would have subjected a very stupid one, miss, and joined it to itself. There would be quite a different order of things then, miss.”
“Why, as if theirs are so much better than ours! I wouldn’t trade a certain gallant I know for three of the youngest Englishmen,” Maria Kondratievna said tenderly, no doubt accompanying her words at that moment with a most languid look.
“Folks have their preferences, miss.”
“And you yourself are just like a foreigner, just like a real noble foreigner, I’ll tell you so for all that I’m blushing.”
“When it comes to depravity, if you want to know, theirs and ours are no different. They’re all rogues, only theirs walks around in patent leather boots, and our swine stinks in his poverty and sees nothing wrong with it. The Russian people need thrashing, miss, as Fyodor Pavlovich rightly said yesterday, though he’s a madman, he and all his children, miss.”
“But you respect Ivan Fyodorovich, you said so yourself.”
“And he made reference to me that I’m a stinking lackey. He considers me as maybe rebelling, but he’s mistaken, miss. If I had just so much in my pocket, I’d have left long ago. Dmitri Fyodorovich is worse than any lackey, in his behavior, and in his intelligence, and in his poverty, miss, and he’s not fit for anything, but, on the contrary, he gets honor from everybody. I may be only a broth-maker, but if I’m lucky I can open a café-restaurant in Moscow, on the Petrovka. [125]Because I cook specialités,and no one in Moscow except foreigners can serve specialités.Dmitri Fyodorovich is a ragamuffin, but if he were to challenge the biggest count’s son to a duel, he would accept, miss, and how is he any better than me? Because he’s a lot stupider than me. He’s blown so much money, and for nothing, miss.”
“I think duels are so nice,” Maria Kondratievna suddenly remarked.
“How so, miss?” “It’s so scary and brave, especially when fine young officers with pistols in their hands are shooting at each other because of some lady friend. Just like a picture. Oh, if only they let girls watch, I’d like terribly to see one.”
“It’s fine when he’s doing the aiming, but when it’s his mug that’s being aimed at, there’s the stupidest feeling, miss. You’d run away from the place, Maria Kondratievna.”
“Do you mean you would run away?”
But Smerdyakov did not deign to answer. After a moment’s silence there came another strum, and the falsetto poured out the last verse:
I don’t care what you say
For I’m going away,
I’ll be happy and free In the big citee! And I won’t grieve, No, I’ll never grieve,I don’t plan ever to grieve.
Here something unexpected happened: Alyosha suddenly sneezed. The people on the bench hushed at once. Alyosha got up and walked in their direction. It was indeed Smerdyakov, dressed up, pomaded, perhaps even curled, in patent leather shoes. The guitar lay on the bench. The lady was Maria Kondratievna, the landlady’s daughter; she was wearing a light blue dress with a train two yards long; she was still a young girl, and would have been pretty if her face had not been so round and so terribly freckled.
“Will my brother Dmitri be back soon?” Alyosha asked as calmly as he could.
Smerdyakov slowly rose from the bench; Maria Kondratievna rose, too.
“Why should I be informed as to Dmitri Fyodorovich? It’s not as if I were his keeper,” Smerdyakov answered quietly, distinctly, and superciliously.
“But I just asked if you knew,” Alyosha explained.
“I know nothing of his whereabouts, and have no wish to know, sir.”
“But my brother precisely told me that it is you who let him know about everything that goes on in the house, and have promised to let him know when Agrafena Alexandrovna comes.”
Smerdyakov slowly and imperturbably raised his eyes to him.
“And how were you pleased to get in this time, since the gates here have been latched for an hour already?” he asked, looking fixedly at Alyosha.
“I got in over the fence from the lane and went straight to the gazebo. I hope you will excuse me for that,” he addressed Maria Kondratievna, “I was in a hurry to get hold of my brother.” “Ah, how should we take offense at you,” drawled Maria Kondratievna, flattered by Alyosha’s apology, “since Dmitri Fyodorovich, too, often goes to the gazebo in the same manner, we don’t even know it and there he is sitting in the gazebo.”
“I am trying very hard to find him now, I very much wish to see him, or to find out from you where he is now. Believe me, it’s a matter of great importance for him.”
“He doesn’t keep us notified,” babbled Maria Kondratievna.
“Even though I come here as an acquaintance,” Smerdyakov began again, “even here the gentleman harasses me cruelly with his ceaseless inquiries about the master; well, he says, how are things there, who comes and who goes, and can I tell him anything else? Twice he even threatened me with death.”
“With death?” Alyosha asked in surprise.
“But that would constitute nothing for him, sir, given his character, which you yourself had the honor of observing yesterday. If I miss Agrafena Alexandrovna, and she spends the night here, he says, you won’t live long, you first. I’m very afraid of him, sir, and if I wasn’t even more afraid, I’d have to report him to the town authorities. God even knows what he may produce.”
“The other day he said to him, ‘I’ll grind you in a mortar,’ “ Maria Kondratievna added.
“Well, if it’s in a mortar, it may just be talk .. . ,” Alyosha remarked. “If I could see him now, I might say something about that, too...”
“There’s only one thing I can tell you,” Smerdyakov suddenly seemed to make up his mind. “I come here sometimes as a customary neighborly acquaintance, and why shouldn’t I, sir? On the other hand, today at daybreak Ivan Fyodorovich sent me to his lodgings, on his Lake Street, without a letter, sir, so that in words Dmitri Fyodorovich should come to the local tavern, on the square, to have dinner together. I went, sir, but I didn’t find Dmitri Fyodorovich at home, and it was just eight o’clock. ‘He’s been and gone,’ his landlords informed me, in those very words. As if they had some kind of conspiracy, sir, a mutual one. And now, maybe at this very moment he’s sitting in that tavern with his brother Ivan Fyodorovich, because Ivan Fyodorovich did not come home for dinner, and Fyodor Pavlovich finished his dinner alone an hour ago, and then lay down to sleep. I earnestly request, however, that you not tell him anything about me and what I’ve told you, because he’d kill me for nothing, sir.”
“My brother Ivan invited Dmitri to a tavern today?” Alyosha quickly asked again.
“Right, sir.” “To the ‘Metropolis,’ on the square?”
“That’s the one, sir.”
“It’s quite possible!” Alyosha exclaimed in great excitement. “Thank you, Smerdyakov, that is important news, I shall go there now.”
“Don’t give me away, sir,” Smerdyakov called after him.
“Oh, no, I’ll come to the tavern as if by chance, don’t worry.”
“But where are you going? Let me open the gate for you,” cried Maria Kondratievna.
“No, it’s closer this way, I’ll climb over the fence.”
The news shook Alyosha terribly. He set off for the tavern. It would be improper for him to enter the tavern dressed as he was, but he could inquire on the stairs and ask them to come out. Just as he reached the tavern, however, a window suddenly opened and his brother Ivan himself shouted down to him:
“Alyosha, can you come in here, or not? I’d be awfully obliged.”
“Certainly I can, only I’m not sure, the way I’m dressed...”
“But I have a private room. Go to the porch, I’ll run down and meet you...”
A minute later Alyosha was sitting next to his brother. Ivan was alone, and was having dinner.
Chapter 3: The Brothers Get Acquainted:
Ivan was not, however, in a private room. It was simply a place at the window separated by screens, but those who sat behind the screens still could not be seen by others. It was the front room, the first, with a sideboard along the wall. Waiters kept darting across it every moment. There was only one customer, a little old man, a retired officer, and he was drinking tea in the corner. But in the other rooms of the tavern there was all the usual tavern bustle, voices calling, beer bottles popping, billiard balls clicking, a barrel organ droning. Alyosha knew that Ivan hardly ever went to this tavern, and was no lover of taverns generally; therefore he must have turned up here, Alyosha thought, precisely by appointment, to meet with his brother Dmitri. And yet there was no brother Dmitri.
“I’ll order some fish soup for you, or something—you don’t live on tea alone, do you?” cried Ivan, apparently terribly pleased that he had managed to lure Alyosha. He himself had already finished dinner and was having tea.
“I’ll have fish soup, and then tea, I’m hungry,” Alyosha said cheerfully.
“And cherry preserve? They have it here. Do you remember how you loved cherry preserve at Polenov’s when you were little?”
“You remember that? I’ll have preserve, too, I still love it.”
Ivan rang for the waiter and ordered fish soup, tea, and preserve.
“I remember everything, Alyosha, I remember you till you were eleven, I was nearly fifteen then. Fifteen and eleven, it’s such a difference that brothers of those ages are never friends. I don’t even know if I loved you. When I left for Moscow, in the first years I didn’t even think of you at all. Later, when you got to Moscow yourself, it seems to me that we met only once somewhere. And now it’s already the fourth month that I’ve been living here, and so far you and I have not exchanged a single word. I’m leaving tomorrow, and I was sitting here now, wondering how I could see you to say good-bye, and you came walking along.”
“So you wished very much to see me?”
“Very much. I want to get acquainted with you once and for all, and I want you to get acquainted with me. And with that, to say good-bye. I think it’s best to get acquainted before parting. I saw how you kept looking at me all these three months, there was a certain ceaseless expectation in your eyes, and that is something I cannot bear, which is why I never approached you. But in the end I learned to respect you: this little man stands his ground, I thought. Observe that I’m speaking seriously, though I may be laughing. You do stand your ground, don’t you? I love people who stand their ground, whatever they may stand upon, and even if they’re such little boys as you are. In the end, your expectant look did not disgust me at all; on the contrary, I finally came to love your expectant look ... You seem to love me for some reason, Alyosha?”
“I do love you, Ivan. Our brother Dmitri says of you: Ivan is a grave. I say: Ivan is a riddle. You are still a riddle to me, but I’ve already understood something about you, though only since this morning!”
“What is it?” Ivan laughed.
“You won’t be angry?” Alyosha laughed, too.
“Well?”
“That you are just a young man, exactly like all other young men of twenty-three—yes, a young, very young, fresh and nice boy, still green, in fact! Well, are you very offended?”
“On the contrary, you’ve struck me with a coincidence!” Ivan cried gaily and ardently. “Would you believe that after our meeting today at her place, I have been thinking to myself about just that, my twenty-three-year-old greenness, and suddenly you guessed it exactly, and began with that very thing. I’ve been sitting here now, and do you know what I was saying to myself? If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced, on the contrary, that everything is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos, if I were struck even by all the horrors of human disillusionment—still I would want to live, and as long as I have bent to this cup, I will not tear myself from it until I’ve drunk it all! However, by the age of thirty, I will probably drop the cup, even if I haven’t emptied it, and walk away ... I don’t know where. But until my thirtieth year, I know this for certain, my youth will overcome everything—all disillusionment, all aversion to life. I’ve asked myself many times: is there such despair in the world as could overcome this wild and perhaps indecent thirst for life in me, and have decided that apparently there is not—that is, once again, until my thirtieth year, after which I myself shall want no more, so it seems to me. Some snotty-nosed, consumptive moralists, poets especially, often call this thirst for life base. True, it’s a feature of the Karamazovs, to some extent, this thirst for life despite all; it must be sitting in you, too; but why is it base? There is still an awful lot of centripetal force on our planet, Alyosha. I want to live, and I do live, even if it be against logic. Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring [126]are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one’s heart, out of old habit. Here, they’ve brought your fish soup—help yourself. It’s good fish soup, they make it well. I want to go to Europe, Alyosha, I’ll go straight from here. Of course I know that I will only be going to a graveyard, but to the most, the most precious graveyard, that’s the thing! The precious dead lie there, each stone over them speaks of such ardent past life, of such passionate faith in their deeds, their truth, their struggle, and their science, that I—this I know beforehand—will fall to the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them—being wholeheartedly convinced, at the same time, that it has all long been a graveyard and nothing more. And I will not weep from despair, but simply because I will be happy in my shed tears. I will be drunk with my own tenderness. Sticky spring leaves, the blue sky—I love them, that’s all! Such things you love not with your mind, not with logic, but with your insides, your guts, you love your first young strength ... Do you understand any of this blather, Alyoshka, or not?” Ivan suddenly laughed.
“I understand it all too well, Ivan: to want to love with your insides, your guts—you said it beautifully, and I’m terribly glad that you want so much to live,” Alyosha exclaimed. “I think that everyone should love life before everything else in the world. “
“Love life more than its meaning?”
“Certainly, love it before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will I also understand its meaning. That is how I’ve long imagined it. Half your work is done and acquired, Ivan: you love life. Now you need only apply yourself to the second half, and you are saved.”
“You’re already saving me, though maybe I wasn’t perishing. And what does this second half consist of?”
“Resurrecting your dead, who may never have died. Now give me some tea. I’m glad we’re talking, Ivan.”
“I see you’re feeling inspired. I’m terribly fond of such professions de foi [127] from such ... novices. You’re a firm man, Alexei. Is it true that you want to leave the monastery?”
“Yes, it’s true. My elder is sending me into the world.”
“So we’ll see each other in the world, we’ll meet before my thirtieth year, when I will begin to tear myself away from the cup. Now, father doesn’t want to tear himself away from his cup until he’s seventy, he’s even dreaming of eighty, he said so himself, and he means it all too seriously, though he is a buffoon. He stands on his sensuality, also as on a rock ... though after thirty years, indeed, there may be nothing else to stand on ... But still, seventy is base; thirty is better: it’s possible to preserve ‘a tinge of nobility’ [128]while duping oneself. Have you seen Dmitri today?”
“No, I haven’t, but I did see Smerdyakov.” And Alyosha told his brother quickly and in detail about his meeting with Smerdyakov. Ivan suddenly began listening very anxiously, and even asked him to repeat certain things.
“Only he asked me not to tell brother Dmitri what he had said about him,” Alyosha added.
Ivan frowned and lapsed into thought.
“Are you frowning because of Smerdyakov?” asked Alyosha.
“Yes, because of him. Devil take him. Dmitri I really did want to see, but now there’s no need ... ,” Ivan spoke reluctantly.
“Are you really leaving so soon, brother?”
“Yes.”
“What about Dmitri and father? How will it end between them?” Alyosha said anxiously.
“Don’t drag that out again! What have I got to do with it? Am I my brother Dmitri’s keeper or something?” Ivan snapped irritably, but suddenly smiled somehow bitterly. “Cain’s answer to God about his murdered brother, eh? Maybe that’s what you’re thinking at the moment? But, devil take it, I can’t really stay on here as their keeper! I’ve finished my affairs and I’m leaving. Don’t think that I’m jealous of Dmitri and have been trying all these three months to win over his beauty Katerina Ivanovna! Damn it, I had my own affairs. I’ve finished my affairs and I’m leaving. I just finished my affairs today, as you witnessed.”
