Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"

“What are you talking about, Mitya?”

“Ideas, ideas, that’s what! Ethics. What is ethics?”

“Ethics?” Alyosha said in surprise.

“Yes, what is it, some sort of science?”

“Yes, there is such a science ... only ... I must confess I can’t explain to you what sort of science it is.”

“Rakitin knows. Rakitin knows a lot, devil take him! He won’t become a monk. He’s going to go to Petersburg. There, he says, he’ll get into the department of criticism, but with a noble tendency. Why not? He can be useful and make a career. Oof, how good they are at making careers! Devil take ethics! But I am lost, Alexei, I’m lost, you man of God! I love you more than anyone. My heart trembles at you, that’s what. Who is this Carl Bernard?”

“Carl Bernard?” Again Alyosha was surprised.

“No, not Carl, wait, I’ve got it wrong: Claude Bernard. ^[293]What is it? Chemistry or something?”

“He must be a scientist,” Alyosha replied, “only I confess I’m not able to say much about him either. I’ve just heard he’s a scientist, but what kind I don’t know.”

“Well, devil take him, I don’t know either,” Mitya swore. “Some scoundrel, most likely. They’re all scoundrels. But Rakitin will squeeze himself in, he’ll squeeze himself through some crack—another Bernard. Oof, these Bernards! How they breed!”

“But what’s the matter with you?” Alyosha asked insistently.

“He wants to write an article about me, about my case, and begin his role in literature that way, that’s why he keeps coming, he explained it to me himself. He wants something with a tendency: ‘It was impossible for him not to kill, he was a victim of his environment,’ and so on, he explained it to me. It will have a tinge of socialism, he says. So, devil take him, let it have a tinge, it’s all the same to me. He doesn’t like brother Ivan, he hates him, you’re not in favor with him either. Well, and I don’t throw him out because he’s an intelligent man. He puts on airs too much, however. I was telling him just now: ‘The Karamazovs are not scoundrels, but philosophers, because all real Russians are philosophers, and you, even though you’ve studied, are not a philosopher, you’re a stinking churl.’ He laughed, maliciously. And I said to him: de thoughtibus non est disputandum ^[294] —a good joke? At least I, too, have joined classicism,” Mitya suddenly guffawed.

“But why are you lost? What were you just saying?” Alyosha interrupted.

“Why am I lost? Hm! The fact is ... on the whole ... I’m sorry for God, that’s why!” “What do you mean, sorry for God?”

“Imagine: it’s all there in the nerves, in the head, there are these nerves in the brain (devil take them!) ... there are little sorts of tails, these nerves have little tails, well, and when they start trembling there ... that is, you see, I look at something with my eyes, like this, and they start trembling, these little tails ... and when they tremble, an image appears, not at once, but in a moment, it takes a second, and then a certain moment appears, as it were, that is, not a moment—devil take the moment—but an image, that is, an object or an event, well, devil take it—and that’s why I contemplate, and then think ... because of the little tails, and not at all because I have a soul or am some sort of image and likeness, ^[295]that’s all foolishness. Mikhail explained it to me, brother, just yesterday, and it was as if I got burnt. It’s magnificent, Alyosha, this science! The new man will come, I quite understand that ... And yet, I’m sorry for God!”

“Well, that’s good enough,” said Alyosha.

“That I’m sorry for God? Chemistry, brother, chemistry! Move over a little, Your Reverence, there’s no help for it, chemistry’s coming! And Rakitin doesn’t like God, oof, how he doesn’t! That’s the sore spot in all of them! But they conceal it. They lie. They pretend. ‘What, are you going to push for that in the department of criticism?’ I asked. ‘Well, they won’t let me do it openly,’ he said, and laughed. ‘But,’ I asked, ‘how will man be after that? Without God and the future life? It means everything is permitted now, one can do anything?’ ‘Didn’t you know?’ he said. And he laughed. ‘Everything is permitted to the intelligent man,’ he said. ‘The intelligent man knows how to catch crayfish, but you killed and fouled it up,’ he said, ‘and now you’re rotting in prison!’ He said that to me. A natural-born swine! I once used to throw the likes of him out—well, and now I listen to them. He does talk a lot of sense, after all. He writes intelligently, too. About a week ago he started reading me an article, I wrote down three lines of it on purpose; wait, here it is.”

Mitya hurriedly pulled a piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket and read:

“‘In order to resolve this question it is necessary, first of all, to put one’s person in conflict with one’s actuality.’ Do you understand that?”

“No, I don’t,” said Alyosha.

He was watching Mitya and listened to him with curiosity.

“I don’t understand it either. Obscure and vague, but intelligent. ‘Everybody writes like that now,’he says,’because it’s that sort of environment . . .’ They’re afraid of the environment. He also writes verses, the scoundrel, he celebrated Khokhlakov’s little foot, ha, ha, ha!”

“So I’ve heard,” said Alyosha.

“You have? And have you heard the jingle itself?”

“No.” “I have it; here, I’ll read it to you. You don’t know, I never told you, but there’s a whole story here. The swindler! Three weeks ago he decided to tease me: ‘You fouled it up, like a fool,’ he said, ‘for the sake of three thousand, but I’ll grab a hundred and fifty thousand, marry a certain widow, and buy a stone house in Petersburg.’ And he told me he was offering his attentions to Khokhlakov, and that she, who wasn’t very smart to begin with, had lost her mind altogether by the age of forty. ‘But she’s very sentimental,’ he said, ‘so that’s how I’ll bring it off with her. I’ll marry her, take her to Petersburg, and start a newspaper there. ‘ And he had such nasty, sensual drool on his lips—drooling not over Khokhlakov, but over the hundred and fifty thousand. And he convinced me, he convinced me; he kept coming to see me every day; she’s weakening, he said. He was beaming with joy. And then suddenly he was turned out: Perkhotin, Pyotr Ilyich, got the upper hand, good fellow! I mean, I really could kiss the foolish woman for turning him out! So it was while he was coming to see me that he also wrote this jingle. ‘For the first time in my life,’ he said, ‘I’ve dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction—that is, for the sake of a useful cause. If I get the capital away from the foolish woman, then I can be of civic use.’ Because they have a civic excuse for every abomination! ‘And anyway,’ he said, ‘I’ve done a better job of writing than your Pushkin, because I managed to stick civic woes even into a foolish jingle.’ What he says about Pushkin I quite understand. After all, maybe he really was a capable man, but all he wrote about was little feet! And how proud he was of his little jingles! Such vanity they have, such vanity! ‘For the Recovery of My Object’s Ailing Little Foot’—that’s the title he came up with—a nimble fellow!

Ah, what a charming little foot,

But what a swelling has come to ‘t!

Tho’ doctors visit, bringing balm,

They only seem to do it harm. ^[296]

I do not long for little feet—Let Pushkin sing them if he please: My longing’s for a head that’s sweet But does not comprehend ideas.

It used to comprehend a bit;

The little foot’s distracted it! Oh, little foot, if you’d but mend, The little head might comprehend.’

“A swine, a pure swine, but he’s written it playfully, the scoundrel! And he really did stick in his ‘civic’ idea. And how mad he was when he got turned out. He was gnashing!” “He’s already had his revenge,” said Alyosha. “He wrote an article about Madame Khokhlakov.”

And Alyosha told him hastily about the article in the newspaper Rumors.

“That’s him, him!” Mitya confirmed, frowning. “It’s him! These articles ... how well I know ... I mean, so many base things have already been written, about Grusha, for instance . . .! And about the other one, about Katya .. . Hm!”

He walked worriedly around the room.

“Brother, I can’t stay with you long,” Alyosha said, after a pause. “Tomorrow will be a terrible, great day for you: divine judgment will be passed on you ... and so it surprises me that you’re walking around, talking about God knows what instead of anything that matters ...”

“No, don’t be surprised,” Mitya hotly interrupted. “What should I talk about—that stinking dog, or what? About the murderer? We’ve talked enough about that, you and I. No more talk about the stinking son of Stinking Lizaveta! God will kill him, you’ll see. Keep still!”

Excited, he went up to Alyosha and suddenly kissed him. His eyes lit up.

“Rakitin wouldn’t understand this,” he began, all in a sort of rapture, as it were, “but you, you will understand everything. That’s why I’ve been thirsting for you. You see, for a long time I’ve been wanting to say many things to you here, within these peeling walls, but I’ve kept silent about the most important thing: the time didn’t seem to have come yet. I’ve been waiting till this last time to pour out my soul to you. Brother, in these past two months I’ve sensed a new man in me, a new man has arisen in me! He was shut up inside me, but if it weren’t for this thunderbolt, he never would have appeared. Frightening! What do I care if I spend twenty years pounding out iron ore in the mines, I’m not afraid of that at all, but I’m afraid of something else now: that this risen man not depart from me! Even there, in the mines, underground, you can find a human heart in the convict and murderer standing next to you, and you can be close to him, because there, too, it’s possible to live, and love, and suffer! You can revive and resurrect the frozen heart in this convict, you can look after him for years, and finally bring up from the cave into the light a soul that is lofty now, a suffering consciousness, you can revive an angel, resurrect a hero! And there are many of them, there are hundreds, and we’re all guilty for them! Why did I have a dream about a ‘wee one’ at such a moment? ‘Why is the wee one poor?’ It was a prophecy to me at that moment! It’s for the ‘wee one’ that I will go. Because everyone is guilty for everyone else. For all the ‘wee ones,’ because there are little children and big children. All people are ‘wee ones.’ And I’ll go for all of them, because there must be someone who will go for all of them. I didn’t kill father, but I must go. I accept! All of this came to me here ... within these peeling walls. And there are many, there are hundreds of them, underground, with hammers in their hands. Oh, yes, we’ll be in chains, and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great grief, we will arise once more into joy, without which it’s not possible for man to live, or for God to be, for God gives joy, it’s his prerogative, a great one ... Lord, let man dissolve in prayer! How would I be there underground without God? Rakitin’s lying: if God is driven from the earth, we’ll meet him underground! It’s impossible for a convict to be without God, even more impossible than for a non-convict! And then from the depths of the earth, we, the men underground, will start singing a tragic hymn to God, in whom there is joy! Hail to God and his joy! I love him!”

Mitya was almost breathless uttering his wild speech. He grew pale, his lips trembled, tears poured from his eyes.

“No, life is full, there is life underground, too!” he began again. “You wouldn’t believe, Alexei, how I want to live now, what thirst to exist and be conscious has been born in me precisely within these peeling walls! Rakitin doesn’t understand it, all he wants is to build his house and rent out rooms, but I was waiting for you. And besides, what is suffering? I’m not afraid of it, even if it’s numberless. I’m not afraid of it now; I was before. You know, maybe I won’t even give any answers in court ... And it seems to me there’s so much strength in me now that I can overcome everything, all sufferings, only in order to say and tell myself every moment: I am! In a thousand torments—I am; writhing under torture—but I am. Locked up in a tower, but still I exist, I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, still I know it is. And the whole of life is there—in knowing that the sun is.Alyosha, my cherub, all these philosophies are killing me, devil take them! Brother Ivan ...”

“What about brother Ivan?” Alyosha tried to interrupt, but Mitya did not hear.

“You see, before I didn’t have any of these doubts, but they were all hiding in me. Maybe I was drinking and fighting and raging, just because unknown ideas were storming inside me. I was fighting to quell them within me, to tame them, to subdue them. Brother Ivan is not Rakitin, he hides his idea. Brother Ivan is a sphinx; he’s silent, silent all the time. And I’m tormented by God. Tormented only by that. What if he doesn’t exist? What if Rakitin is right, that it’s an artificial idea of mankind? So then, if he doesn’t exist, man is chief of the earth, of the universe. Splendid! Only how is he going to be virtuous without God? A good question! I keep thinking about it. Because whom will he love then—man, I mean? To whom will he be thankful, to whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says it’s possible to love mankind even without God. Well, only a snotty little shrimp can affirm such a thing, but I can’t understand it. Life is simple for Rakitin: ‘You’d do better to worry about extending man’s civil rights,’ he told me today, ‘or at least about not letting the price of beef go up; you’d render your love for mankind more simply and directly that way than with any philosophies.’ But I came back at him: ‘And without God,’ I said, ‘you’ll hike up the price of beef yourself, if the chance comes your way, and make a rouble on every kopeck.’ He got angry. Because what is virtue?—answer me that, Alexei. I have one virtue and a Chinese has another—so it’s a relative thing. Or not? Not relative? Insidious question! You mustn’t laugh if I tell you that I didn’t sleep for two nights because of it. I just keep wondering now how people can live and think nothing about these things. Vanity! Ivan does not have God. He has his idea. Not on my scale. But he’s silent. I think he’s a freemason. I asked him—he’s silent. I hoped to drink from the waters of his source—he’s silent. Only once did he say something. “

“What did he say?” Alyosha picked up hastily.

“I said to him: ‘Then everything is permitted, in that case?’ He frowned: ‘Fyodor Pavlovich, our papa, was a little pig,’ he said, ‘but his thinking was right.’ That’s what he came back with. That’s all he ever said. It’s even neater than Rakitin.”

“Yes,” Alyosha bitterly confirmed. “When was he here?”

“That can wait, there’s something else now. I’ve said almost nothing to you about Ivan so far. I’ve been putting it off till last. When this thing is over with me here, and they give me my sentence, then I’ll tell you certain things, I’ll tell you everything. There’s one terrible matter here ... And you’ll be my judge in this matter. But for now don’t even get into it, for now—hush. You were talking about tomorrow, about the trial, but, would you believe it, I don’t know a thing.”

“Have you talked with that lawyer?”

“Forget the lawyer! I talked with him about everything. He’s a smooth Petersburg swindler. A Bernard! He just doesn’t believe a pennyworth of what I say. He thinks I killed him, can you imagine? I see it. I asked him, ‘In that case, why have you come to defend me?’ To hell with them. They’ve called in a doctor, too, they want to prove I’m crazy. I won’t have it! Katerina Ivanovna wants to do ‘her duty’ to the end. What an effort!” Mitya smiled bitterly. “A cat! A cruel heart! And she knows what I said about her in Mokroye then, that she’s a woman of ‘great wrath’! They told her. Yes, the evidence has multiplied like the sands of the sea! Grigory stands by his; Grigory is honest, but he’s a fool. Many people are honest simply because they’re fools. That’s Rakitin’s notion. Grigory is my enemy. Certain people it’s better to have as enemies than as friends. I’m referring to Katerina Ivanovna. I’m afraid, oh, I’m afraid she’ll tell in court about that bow to the ground after the forty-five hundred! She’ll pay me back to the uttermost farthing ^{[297] I don’t want her sacrifice! They’ll put me to shame in court! I’ll endure it somehow. Go to her, Alyosha, ask her not to say it in court. Or is it impossible? Ah, the devil, it makes no difference, I’ll endure! And I’m not sorry for her. She’s asking for it. Let the thief get his beating. I’ll have my say, Alexei,” again he smiled bitterly. “Only ... only Grusha, Grusha ... Lord! Why should she take such suffering on herself?” he suddenly exclaimed, in tears. “Grusha is killing me, the thought of her is killing me, killing me! She was here today...”}

“She told me. She was very upset by you today.”

“I know. Devil take me and my character. I got jealous! I repented as I was letting her go, I kissed her. I didn’t ask her forgiveness.”

“Why didn’t you?” exclaimed Alyosha.

Mitya suddenly laughed almost gaily.

“God save you, dear boy, from ever asking forgiveness for your guilt from a woman you love! Especially from a woman you love, no matter how guilty you are before her! Because a woman—devil knows what a woman is, brother, I’m a good judge of that at least! Try going and confessing your guilt to her; say, ‘I’m guilty, forgive me, pardon me,’ and right then and there you’ll be showered with reproaches! She’ll never forgive you directly and simply, she’ll humble you in the dust, she’ll take away things that weren’t even there, she’ll take everything, she’ll forget nothing, she’ll add things of her own, and only then will she forgive you. And that’s the best of them, the best! She’ll scrape up the last scraps and heap them on your head—such bloodthirstiness just sits in them, I tell you, in all of them, to the last one, those angels without whom it’s even impossible for us to live! You see, my dear, I’ll tell you frankly and simply: every decent man ought to be under the heel of some woman at least. That’s my conviction; not a conviction, but a feeling. A man ought to be magnanimous, and that’s no stain on a man. It’s no stain even on a hero, even on Caesar! Well, but still don’t go asking forgiveness, not ever, not for anything. Remember that rule: it was taught you by your brother Mitya, who perished because of women. No, I’d better restore myself in Grusha’s eyes some other way, without forgiveness. I revere her, Alexei, revere her! Only she doesn’t see it, no, it’s still not enough love for her. And she frets me, she frets me with her love. Before was nothing! Before it was just her infernal curves that fretted me, but now I’ve taken her whole soul into my soul, and through her I’ve become a man! Will they let us be married? Without that I’ll die of jealousy. I keep imagining something every day ... What did she say to you about me?”

Alyosha repeated everything Grushenka had told him earlier. Mitya listened closely, asked about many things, and was left feeling pleased.

“So she’s not angry that I’m jealous,” he exclaimed. “A real woman! ‘I have a cruel heart myself.’ Oof, I love such cruel women, though I can’t stand it when anyone’s jealous over me, I can’t stand it! We will fight. But love—oh, I will love her infinitely. Will they let us be married? Do they let convicts marry? A good question. And I can’t live without her...”

Mitya walked glumly around the room. The room was getting almost dark. Suddenly he became terribly worried.

“A secret, so she says there’s a secret? She says the three of us are conspiring against her, and she says ‘Katka’ is mixed up in it? No, Grushenka old girl, that’s not it. You’ve missed your mark this time, you’ve missed your silly female mark! Alyosha, darling—ah, well, why not? I’ll reveal our secret to you!”

He looked around, quickly went up to Alyosha, who was standing before him, and whispered to him with a mysterious air, though in fact no one could hear them: the old guard was nodding on his bench in the corner, and not a word could reach the sentries.

“I’ll reveal our whole secret to you!” Mitya began whispering hastily. “I was going to reveal it later, because how could I decide to do anything without you? You are everything to me. Though I say that Ivan is the highest of us, you are my cherub. Only your decision will decide it. Maybe it’s you who are the highest man, and not Ivan. You see, here it’s a matter of conscience, a matter of the highest conscience—a secret that is so important that I cannot deal with it myself and have put everything off for you. And it’s still too early to decide, because the sentence must come first: the sentence will be given, and then you will decide my fate. Don’t decide now: I’ll tell you now, you will listen, but don’t decide. Stand and be silent. I won’t reveal everything to you. I’ll tell you only the idea, without details, and you be silent. Not a question, not a movement, agreed? But anyway, Lord, what am I going to do about your eyes? I’m afraid your eyes will tell me your decision even if you are silent. Oof, I’m afraid! Alyosha, listen: brother Ivan suggests that I escape.I’m not telling you the details: everything has been foreseen, everything can be arranged. Be silent, don’t decide. To America with Grusha. I really can’t live without Grusha! What if they won’t let her join me there? Do they let convicts marry? Brother Ivan says they don’t. And without Grusha what will I do under the ground with my sledgehammer? I’ll take the sledgehammer and smash my own head with it! On the other hand, what about my conscience? I’ll be running away from suffering! I was shown a path—and I rejected the path; there was a way of purification—I did an about-face. Ivan says that a man ‘with good inclinations’ can be of more use in America than under the ground. Well, and where will our underground hymn take place? Forget America, America means vanity again! And there’s a lot of swindling in America, too, I think. To run away from crucifixion! I’m talking to you, Alexei, because you alone can understand this, and no one else, for the others it’s foolishness, raving—all that I was telling you about the hymn. They’ll say, he’s lost his mind, or else he’s a fool. But I haven’t lost my mind, and I’m not a fool either. Ivan, too, understands about the hymn, oof, he understands—only he doesn’t respond to it, he’s silent. He doesn’t believe in the hymn. Don’t speak, don’t speak: I see your look: you’ve already decided! Don’t decide, spare me, I can’t live without Grusha, wait for the trial!”

Mitya ended as if in a frenzy. He held Alyosha by the shoulders with both hands, and simply fixed his eyes with his yearning, feverish look.

“Do they let convicts marry?” he repeated for the third time, in a pleading voice.

Alyosha listened with extreme surprise and was deeply shaken.

“Tell me one thing,” he said, “does Ivan insist on it very much, and who was the first to come up with it?”

“He, he came up with it, he insists on it! For a while he wouldn’t come to see me, and then he suddenly came a week ago and began straight off with it. He’s terribly insistent. He doesn’t ask, he orders. He has no doubt I’ll obey, though I turned my heart inside out for him, as I did for you, and talked about the hymn. He told me how he would arrange it, he’s gathered all the information, but of that later. He wants it to the point of hysterics. The main thing is the money: ten thousand for the escape, he says, and twenty thousand for America, and with ten thousand, he says, we’ll arrange a splendid escape.”

“And he asked you by no means to tell me?” Alyosha asked again.

“By no means to tell anyone, and you above all: not to tell you for anything! He’s surely afraid that you’ll stand before me as my conscience. Don’t tell him I told you. Oof, don’t tell him!”

“You’re right,” Alyosha decided, “it’s impossible to decide before the sentence. After the trial you will decide yourself; you’ll find a new man in yourself then, and he will decide.”

“A new man, or a Bernard, and he will decide Bernard-wise! Because I think I’m a contemptible Bernard myself!” Mitya grinned bitterly.

“But can it be, brother, can it be that you have no hope of acquittal?”

Mitya shrugged convulsively and shook his head.

“Alyosha, darling, it’s time for you to go!” he suddenly hurried. “The warden’s shouting in the yard, he’ll be here soon. It’s late for us, it’s not in order. Embrace me quickly, kiss me, cross me, darling, cross me for tomorrow’s cross ...”

They embraced and kissed each other. “And Ivan,” Mitya spoke suddenly, “suggests I escape, but then he believes I killed father!”