Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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“Did you figure it out for yourself?” Ivan grinned crookedly.
“With your guidance, sir.”
“So now you’ve come to believe in God, since you’re giving back the money?”
“No, sir, I haven’t come to believe, sir,” whispered Smerdyakov.
“Why are you giving it back then?”
“Enough ... it’s no use, sir!” Smerdyakov again waved his hand. “You yourself kept saying then that everything was permitted, so why are you so troubled now, you yourself, sir? You even want to go and give evidence against yourself ... Only there will be nothing of the sort! You won’t go and give evidence!” Smerdyakov decided again, firmly and with conviction.
“You’ll see!” said Ivan.
“It can’t be. You’re too intelligent, sir. You love money, that I know, sir, you also love respect, because you’re very proud, you love women’s charms exceedingly, and most of all you love living in peaceful prosperity, without bowing to anyone—that you love most of all, sir. You won’t want to ruin your life forever by taking such shame upon yourself in court. You’re like Fyodor Pavlovich most of all, it’s you of all his children who came out resembling him most, having the same soul as him, sir.”
“You’re not stupid,” Ivan said as if struck; the blood rushed to his face. “I used to think you were stupid. You’re serious now!” he remarked, suddenly looking at Smerdyakov in some new way.
“It was your pride made you think I was stupid. Do have the money, sir.”
Ivan took all three packets of bills and shoved them into his pocket without wrapping them in anything.
“I’ll show them to the court tomorrow,” he said.
“No one there will believe you, sir, seeing as you’ve got enough money of your own, now, so you just took it out of your box and brought it, sir.”
Ivan rose from his seat.
“I repeat to you, that if I haven’t killed you, it’s only because I need you for tomorrow, remember that, don’t forget it!”
“Well, so kill me, sir. Kill me now,” Smerdyakov suddenly said strangely, looking strangely at Ivan. “You won’t dare do that either, sir,” he added, with a bitter smirk, “you won’t dare do anything, you former brave man, sir!”
“Until tomorrow!” Ivan cried, and made a move to go.
“Wait ... show it to me one more time.”
Ivan took the money out and showed it to him. Smerdyakov looked at it for about ten seconds.
“Well, go,” he said, waving his hand. “Ivan Fyodorovich!” he suddenly called after him again.
“What is it?” Ivan turned, already walking out.
“Farewell, sir!”
“Until tomorrow!” Ivan cried again, and walked out of the cottage.
The blizzard was still going on. He walked briskly for the first few steps, but suddenly began staggering, as it were. “It’s something physical,” he thought, and grinned. It was as if a sort of joy now descended into his soul. He felt an infinite firmness in himself: the end to his hesitations, which had tormented him so terribly all through those last days! The decision was taken, “and now will not be changed,” he thought with happiness. At that moment he suddenly stumbled against something and nearly fell. Having stopped, he made out at his feet the little peasant he had struck down, who was still lying in the same spot, unconscious and not moving. The blizzard had all but covered his face. Ivan suddenly pulled him up and took him on his back. Seeing light in a cottage to the right, he went over, knocked on the shutters, and when the tradesman who owned the house answered, asked him to help him carry the peasant to the police station, with the promise that he would give him three roubles at once for it. The tradesman got ready and came out. I will not describe in detail how Ivan Fyodorovich then managed to achieve his goal and get the peasant installed in the police station and have him examined immediately by a doctor, while he once again provided liberally “for the expenses.” I will say only that the affair took him almost a whole hour. But Ivan Fyodorovich was left feeling very pleased. His thoughts were expanding and working. “If my decision for tomorrow had not been taken so firmly,” he suddenly thought with delight, “I would not have stayed for a whole hour arranging things for the little peasant, I would simply have passed him by and not cared a damn whether he froze ... I’m quite capable of observing myself, incidentally,” he thought at the same moment, with even greater delight, “and they all decided I was losing my mind!” As he reached his house, he stopped all at once under a sudden question: “And shouldn’t I go to the prosecutor right now at once and tell him everything? “ He resolved the question by turning towards his house again: “Tomorrow everything together!” he whispered to himself, and, strangely, almost all his joy, all his self-content vanished in a moment. And as he entered his room, something icy suddenly touched his heart, like a recollection, or, rather, a reminder, of something loathsome and tormenting that was precisely in that room now, presently, and had been there before. He sank wearily onto his sofa. The old woman brought him the samovar, he made tea, but did not touch it; he dismissed the woman till morning. He sat on the sofa feeling dizzy. He felt himself sick and strengthless. He was beginning to fall asleep, but got up nervously and paced the room to drive sleep away. At moments he fancied that he seemed delirious. But it was not sickness that occupied him most of all; when he sat down again he began looking around from time to time, as if searching for something. This happened several times. Finally his eyes focused intently on one spot. Ivan grinned, but an angry flush covered his face. He sat where he was for a long time, his head propped firmly on both hands, but still looking sideways at the former spot, at the sofa standing against the opposite wall. Apparently something there, some object, irritated him, troubled him, tormented him.
Chapter 9: TheDevil. Ivan Fyodorovich’s Nightmare
I am not a doctor, but nevertheless I feel the moment has come when it is decidedly necessary for me to explain to the reader at least something of the nature of Ivan Fyodorovich’s illness. Getting ahead of myself, I will say only one thing: he was, that evening, precisely just on the verge of brain fever, which finally took complete possession of his organism, long in disorder but stubbornly refusing to succumb. Though I know nothing of medicine, I will venture the suggestion that he had indeed succeeded, perhaps, by a terrible effort of will, in postponing his illness for a time, hoping, of course, to overcome it completely. He knew he was not well, but he was loath to be ill at that time, during those approaching fatal moments of his life; he had to be personally present, to speak his word boldly and resolutely, and “vindicate himself to himself. “ However, he did once visit the new doctor who had come from Moscow, invited by Katerina Ivanovna owing to a fantasy of hers, which I have already mentioned above. The doctor, having listened to him and examined him, concluded that he was indeed suffering from something like a brain disorder, as it were, and was not at all surprised at a certain confession that he made to him, though not without repugnance. “In your condition hallucinations are quite possible,” the doctor decided, “though they should be verified ... but generally it is necessary to begin serious treatment without a moment’s delay, otherwise things will go badly.” But Ivan Fyodorovich, having left the doctor, did not follow up this sensible advice, and treated the idea of treatment with disregard: “I’m up and about, I’m still strong enough, if I collapse it’s another matter, then anyone who likes can treat me,” he decided, with a wave of the hand. And so he was sitting there now, almost aware of being delirious, and, as I have already said, peering persistently at some object on the sofa against the opposite wall. Someone suddenly turned out to be sitting there, though God knows how he had got in, because he had not been in the room when Ivan Fyodorovich came back from seeing Smerdyakov. It was some gentleman, or, rather, a certain type of Russian gentleman, no longer young, qui frisait la cinquantaine, [303] as the French say, with not too much gray in his dark, rather long, and still thick hair, and with a pointed beard. He was wearing a sort of brown jacket, evidently from the best of tailors, but already shabby, made approximately three years ago and already completely out of fashion, such as no well-to-do man of society had been seen in for at least two years. His linen, his long, scarflike necktie, all was just what every stylish gentleman would wear, but, on closer inspection, the linen was a bit dirty and the wide scarf was quite threadbare. The visitor’s checkered trousers fitted perfectly, but again they were too light and somehow too narrow, of a style no one wore any longer, as was the soft, downy white hat the visitor had brought with him, though it was entirely the wrong season. In short, he gave the appearance of decency on rather slender means. The gentleman looked as though he belonged to the category of former idle landowners that flourished in the time of serfdom; had obviously seen the world and decent society, had once had connections and perhaps had them still, but, after the gay life of his youth and the recent abolition of serfdom, had gradually fallen into poverty and become a sort of sponger, in bon ton, as it were, knocking about among good old acquaintances, and received by them for his easy, agreeable nature, and also considering that he was, after all, a decent man, who could even be invited to sit at the table in any company, though, of course, in a humble place. Such spongers, gentlemen of agreeable nature, who can tell a story or two and play a hand of cards, and who decidedly dislike having any tasks thrust upon them, are usually single, either bachelors or widowers, and if they have children, the children are always brought up somewhere far away, by some aunts, whom the gentleman hardly ever mentions in decent company, as though somewhat ashamed of such relations. They gradually become estranged from their children altogether, occasionally receiving letters from them on their birthday or at Christmas, and sometimes even answering them. The unexpected visitor’s physiognomy was not so much good-humored as, again, agreeable and ready, depending on the circumstances, for any amiable expression. He did not have a watch, but he had a tortoiseshell lorgnette on a black ribbon. On the middle finger of his right hand there was displayed a massive gold ring with an inexpensive opal. Ivan Fyodorovich was spitefully silent and did not want to begin talking. The visitor sat and waited precisely like a sponger who had just come down from upstairs, from the room assigned to him, to keep his host company at tea, but was humbly silent, since the host was preoccupied and scowling at the thought of something; but who was ready for any amiable conversation as soon as the host would begin it. Suddenly his face seemed to express some unexpected concern.
“Listen,” he began to Ivan Fyodorovich, “forgive me, it’s just a reminder: didn’t you go to Smerdyakov to find out about Katerina Ivanovna? Yet you left without finding out anything about her, you must have forgotten...”
“Ah, yes!” suddenly escaped from Ivan, and his face darkened with worry, “yes, I forgot ... Anyway, it’s all the same now, all till tomorrow,” he muttered to himself. “As for you,” he turned irritably to his visitor, “I’d have remembered it myself in a moment, because that’s exactly what has been causing me such anguish! Why did you have to come out with it? Do you think I’ll simply believe you prompted me and not that I remembered it myself?”
“Don’t believe it then,” the gentleman smiled sweetly, “what good is faith by force? Besides, proofs are no help to faith, especially material proofs. Thomas believed not because he saw the risen Christ but because he wanted to believe even before that. [304]Spiritualists, for example ... I like them so much ... imagine, they think they’re serving faith because devils show their little horns to them from the other world. ‘This,’ they say, ‘is a material proof, so to speak, that the other world exists.’ The other world and material proofs, la-di-da! And, after all, who knows whether proof of the devil is also a proof of God? I want to join an idealist society and form an opposition within it: ‘I’m a realist,’ I’ll say, ‘not a materialist,’ heh, heh!”
“Listen,” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly got up from the table. “I seem to be delirious now ... and of course I am delirious ... you can lie as much as you like, it’s all the same to me! You won’t put me into a rage, as you did last time. Only I’m ashamed of something ... I feel like pacing the room ... I sometimes don’t see you, and don’t even hear your voice, as last time, but I always guess what you’re driveling, because i( is I, I myself who am talking, and not you!Only I don’t know whether I was asleep last time or actually saw you. I am now going to wet a towel with cold water and put it to my head, and maybe you’ll evaporate.”
Ivan Fyodorovich went to the corner, took a towel, carried out his intention, and with the wet towel on his head began pacing up and down the room.
“I’m glad we can be so informal with each other,” the visitor tried to begin.
“Fool,” Ivan laughed, “what, should I call you ‘sir’ or something? I feel fine now, only there’s a pain in my temple ... and in the top of my head ... only please don’t philosophize, as you did last time. Tell some pleasant lies, if you can’t clear out. Gossip, since you’re a sponger, go ahead and gossip. Why am I stuck with such a nightmare! But I’m not afraid of you. I will overcome you. They won’t take me to the madhouse!”
“C’est charmant—sponger! Yes, that is precisely my aspect. What am I on earth if not a sponger? Incidentally, I’m a little surprised listening to you: by God, it seems you’re gradually beginning to take me for something real, and not just your fantasy, as you insisted last time ...”
“Not for a single moment do I take you for the real truth,” Ivan cried, somehow even furiously. “You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a ghost. Only I don’t know how to destroy you, and I see I’ll have to suffer through it for a while. You are my hallucination. You are the embodiment of myself, but of just one side of me ... of my thoughts and feelings, but only the most loathsome and stupid of them. From that angle you could even be interesting to me, if I had time to bother with you...”
“I beg your pardon, I’m going to catch you now: earlier, under the street-lamp, when you jumped on Alyosha and shouted: ‘You learned it from him! How do you know that hehas been coming to me?’ You were thinking of me then. It means that for one little moment you believed, you did believe that I really am,” the gentleman laughed softly.
“Yes, that was a lapse of character ... but I couldn’t believe in you. I don’t know whether I was asleep or awake the last time. Perhaps I only saw you in my sleep and not in reality at all.” “And why were you so severe with him today, with Alyosha, I mean? He’s a dear boy; I owe him one for the elder Zosima.”
“Shut up about Alyosha! How dare you, you lackey!” Ivan laughed again.
“You laugh while you’re abusing me—a good sign. By the way, you’re much more amiable with me today than you were last time, and I know why: that great decision...”
“Shut up about my decision!” Ivan cried ferociously.
“I understand, I understand, c’est noble, c’est charmant,you go to defend your brother tomorrow, and you sacrifice yourself ... c’est chevaleresque.” [305]
“Shut up or I’ll kick you!”
“I’d be glad of it in a way, because my goal would then be achieved: if it comes to kicks, that means you must believe in my realism, because one doesn’t kick a ghost. Joking aside: it’s all the same to me, abuse me if you like, but still it would be better to be a bit more polite, even with me. Fool, lackey– what sort of talk is that?”
“By abusing you, I’m abusing myself!” Ivan laughed again. “You are me, myself, only with a different mug. You precisely say what I already think ... and you’re not capable of telling me anything new!”
“If my thoughts agree with yours, it only does me honor,” the gentleman said with dignity and tact.
“You just pick out all my bad thoughts, and above all the stupid ones. You are stupid and banal. You are terribly stupid. No, I can’t endure you! What am I to do, what am I to do!” Ivan gnashed his teeth.
“My friend, I still want to be a gentleman, and to be accepted as such,” the visitor began in a fit of some sort of purely spongerish, good-natured, and already-yielding ambition. “I am poor, but ... I won’t say very honest, but ... in society it is generally accepted as an axiom that I am a fallen angel. By God, I can’t imagine how I could ever have been an angel. If I ever was one, it was so long ago that it’s no sin to have forgotten it. Now I only value my reputation as a decent man and get along as best I can, trying to be agreeable. I sincerely love people—oh, so much of what has been said about me is slander! Here, when I move in with people from time to time, my life gets to be somewhat real, as it were, and I like that most of all. Because, like you, I myself suffer from the fantastic, and that is why I love your earthly realism. Here you have it all outlined, here you have the formula, here you have geometry, and with us it’s all indeterminate equations! I walk about here and dream. I love to dream. Besides, on earth I become superstitious—don’t laugh, please: that is precisely what I like, that I become superstitious. Here I take on all your habits: I’ve come to love going to the public baths, can you imagine that? I love having a steam bath with merchants and priests. My dream is to become incarnate, but so that it’s final, irrevocable, in some fat, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound merchant’s wife, and to believe everything she believes. My ideal is to go into a church and light a candle with a pure heart—by God, it’s true. That would put an end to my sufferings. I’ve also come to love getting medical treatment here: there was smallpox going around this spring, so I went to the foundling hospital and had myself inoculated against smallpox—if only you knew how pleased I was that day: I donated ten roubles for our brother Slavs ... ! [306]But you’re not listening. You know, you seem rather out of sorts tonight,” the gentleman paused for a moment. “I know you went to see that doctor yesterday ... well, how is your health? What did the doctor say?”
“Fool!”snapped Ivan.
“And aren’t you a smart one! So you’re abusing me again? I’m just asking, not really out of sympathy. You don’t have to answer. And now this rheumatism’s come back ...”
“Fool,” Ivan repeated.
“You keep saying the same thing, but I caught such rheumatism last year that I still remember it.”
“The devil with rheumatism?”
“Why not, if I sometimes become incarnate? Once incarnate, I accept the consequences. Satan sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto.” [307]
“How’s that? Satan sum et nihil humanum ...not too bad for the devil!”
“I’m glad I’ve finally pleased you.”
“And you didn’t get that from me,” Ivan suddenly stopped as if in amazement, “that never entered my head—how strange...”
“C’est de nouveau, n’est-ce pas? [308] This time I’ll be honest and explain to you. Listen: in dreams and especially in nightmares, well, let’s say as a result of indigestion or whatever, a man sometimes sees such artistic dreams, such complex and real actuality, such events, or even a whole world of events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details, beginning from your highest manifestations down to the last shirt button, as I swear even Leo Tolstoy couldn’t invent; and, by the way, it’s not writers who occasionally see such dreams, but quite the most ordinary people, officials, journalists, priests. . . There’s even a whole problem concerning this: one government minister even confessed to me himself that all his best ideas come to him when he’s asleep. Well, and so it is now. Though I am your hallucination, even so, as in a nightmare, I say original things, such as have never entered your head before, so that I’m not repeating your thoughts at all, and yet I am merely your nightmare and nothing more.”
“Lies. Your goal is precisely to convince me that you are in yourself and are not my nightmare, and so now you yourself assert that you’re a dream.” “My friend, today I’ve adopted a special method, I’ll explain it to you later. Wait, where was I? Oh, yes, so I caught a cold, only not here, but there ...”
“There where? Tell me, are you going to stay long, couldn’t you go away?” Ivan exclaimed almost in despair. He stopped pacing, sat down on the sofa, rested his elbows on the table again, and clutched his head with both hands. He tore the wet towel off and threw it aside in vexation: obviously it did not help.
“Your nerves are unstrung,” the gentleman remarked, with a casually familiar and yet perfectly amiable air, “you’re angry with me even for the fact that I could catch cold, whereas it happened in the most natural way. I was then hurrying to a diplomatic soirée at the home of a most highly placed Petersburg lady, who had designs on a ministry. Well, evening dress, white tie, gloves—and yet I was God knows where, and to get to your earth I still had to fly through space ... of course it only takes a moment, but then a sun’s ray takes a full eight minutes, and, imagine, in a dinner jacket, with an open vest. Spirits don’t freeze, but when one’s incarnate, then ... in short, it was flighty of me, I just set out, and in those spaces, I mean, the ether, the waters above the firmament, [309]it’s so freezing cold ... that is, don’t talk about freezing– you can’t call it freezing anymore, just imagine: a hundred and fifty degrees below zero! You know how village girls amuse themselves: they ask some unsuspecting novice to lick an axe at thirty degrees below zero; the tongue instantly sticks to it, and the dolt has to tear it away so that it bleeds; and that’s just at thirty below, but at a hundred and fifty, I suppose, if you just touched your finger to an axe, there would be no more finger, that is ... that is, if there happened to be an axe ...”
“And could there happen to be an axe?” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly interrupted, absently and disgustedly. He was trying with all his might not to believe in his delirium and not to fall into complete insanity.
“An axe?” the visitor repeated in surprise.
“Yes, what would an axe be doing there?” Ivan Fyodorovich cried with a sort of fierce and persistent stubbornness.
“What would an axe be doing in space? Quelle idée!If it got far enough away, I suppose it would begin flying around the earth, without knowing why, like a satellite. The astronomers would calculate the rising and setting of the axe, Gattsuk would introduce it into the calendar, [310]and that’s all.”
“You are stupid, you are terribly stupid!” Ivan said cantankerously. “Put more intelligence into your lies, or I won’t listen. You want to overcome me with realism, to convince me that you are, but I don’t want to believe that you are! I won’t believe it!!”
“But I’m not lying, it’s all true; unfortunately, the truth is hardly ever witty. You, I can see, are decidedly expecting something great from me, and perhaps even beautiful. [311]That’s a pity, because I give only what I can...”
“Stop philosophizing, you ass!”
“How philosophize, when my whole right side was numb, and I was moaning and groaning. I called on the entire medical profession: they diagnose beautifully, they tell you all that’s wrong with you one-two-three, but they can’t cure you. There happened to be one enthusiastic little student: even if you die, he said, at least you’ll have a thorough knowledge of what disease you died of! Then, too, they have this way of sending you to specialists: we will give you our diagnosis, they say, then go to such and such a specialist and he will cure you. I tell you, the old-fashioned doctor who treated all diseases has completely disappeared, now there are only specialists, and they advertise all the time in the newspapers. If your nose hurts, they send you to Paris: there’s a European specialist there, he treats noses. You go to Paris, he examines your nose: I can treat only your right nostril, he says, I don’t treat left nostrils, it’s not my specialty, but after me, go to Vienna, there’s a separate specialist there who will finish treating your left nostril. What is one to do? I resorted to folk remedies, one German doctor advised me to take a steam bath and rub myself with honey and salt. I did it, only for the chance of having an extra bath: I got myself all sticky, and to no avail. In desperation I wrote to Count Mattei in Milan; he sent me a book and some drops, God help him. And imagine, what cured me was Hoff ‘s extract of malt! I accidentally bought some, drank a glass and a half, and could even have danced—everything went away. I was absolutely determined to thank him publicly in the newspapers, the feeling of gratitude was crying out in me, but, imagine, that led to another story: not one publisher would take it! ‘It would be too retrograde, no one will believe it, le diable n’existepoint.’ [312]They advised me to publish it anonymously. Well, what good is a ‘thank you’ if it’s anonymous? I had a laugh with the clerks: ‘In our day,’ I said, ‘what’s retrograde is believing in God; but I am the devil, it’s all right to believe in me. ‘ ‘We understand,’ they said, ‘who doesn’t believe in the devil? But all the same we can’t do it, it might harm our tendency. Or perhaps only as a joke?’ Well, I thought, as a joke it wouldn’t be very witty. So they simply didn’t publish it. And would you believe that it still weighs on my heart? My best feelings, gratitude, for example, are formally forbidden solely because of my social position.”
“Up to his neck in philosophy again!” Ivan snarled hatefully.
“God preserve me from that, but one can’t help complaining sometimes. I am a slandered man. Even you tell me I’m stupid every other minute. It shows how young you are. My friend, the point is not just intelligence! I have a naturally kind and cheerful heart,’and various little vaudevilles, I, too . . .’ You seem to take me decidedly for some gray-haired Khlestakov, [313]and yet my fate is far more serious. By some pre-temporal assignment, which I have never been able to figure out, I am appointed ‘to negate,’ whereas I am sincerely kind and totally unable to negate. No, they say, go and negate, without negation there will be no criticism, and what sort of journal has no ‘criticism section’? Without criticism, there would be nothing but ‘Hosannah.’ But ‘Hosannah’ alone is not enough for life, it is necessary that this ‘Hosannah’ pass through the crucible of doubt, and so on, in the same vein. I don’t meddle with any of that, by the way, I didn’t create it, and I can’t answer for it. So they chose themselves a scapegoat, they made me write for the criticism section, and life came about. We understand this comedy: I, for instance, demand simply and directly that I be destroyed. No, they say, live, because without you there would be nothing. If everything on earth were sensible, nothing would happen. Without you there would be no events, and there must be events. And so I serve grudgingly, for the sake of events, and I do the unreasonable on orders. People take this whole comedy for something serious, despite all their undeniable intelligence. That is their tragedy. Well, they suffer, of course, but ... still they live, they live really, not in fantasy; for suffering is life. Without suffering, what pleasure would there be in it—everything would turn into an endless prayer service: holy, but a bit dull. And me? I suffer, and still I do not live. I am an x in an indeterminate equation. I am some sort of ghost of life who has lost all ends and beginnings, and I’ve finally even forgotten what to call myself. You’re laughing ... no, you’re not laughing, you’re angry again. You’re eternally angry, you want reason only, but I will repeat to you once more that I would give all of that life beyond the stars, all ranks and honors, only to be incarnated in the soul of a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound merchant’s wife and light candles to God.”
“So you don’t believe in God, then?” Ivan grinned hatefully.
“Well, how shall I put it—that is, if you’re serious...”
“Is there a God, or not?” Ivan cried again with fierce insistence.
“Ah, so you are serious? By God, my dear, I just don’t know—there’s a great answer for you!”
“You don’t know, yet you see God? No, you are not in yourself, you are me, meand nothing else! You are trash, you are my fantasy!”
“Let’s say I’m of one philosophy with you, if you like, that would be correct. Je pense donc jesuis, [314]I’m quite sure of that, but all the rest around me, all those worlds, God, even Satan himself—for me all that is unproven, whether it exists in itself, or is only my emanation, a consistent development of my I, which exists pre-temporally and uniquely ... in short, I hasten to stop, because you look as if you’re about to jump up and start fighting.”
“Better tell me some funny anecdote!” Ivan said sickly. “There is an anecdote, and precisely on our subject—that is, not an anecdote but more of a legend. You reproach me with unbelief: ‘You see, but you don’t believe.’ But, my friend, I am not alone in that, all of us there are stirred up now, and it all comes from your science. While there were still just atoms, five senses, four elements, well, then it all still stayed together anyhow. They had atoms in the ancient world, too. But when we found out that you had discovered your ‘chemical molecule,’ and ‘protoplasm,’ and devil knows what else—then we put our tails between our legs. A real muddle set in; above all—superstition, gossip (we have as much gossip as you do, even a bit more); and, finally, denunciations as well (we, too, have a certain department where such ‘information’ is received) . [315]And so there is this wild legend, which goes back to our middle ages—not yours but ours—and no one believes it except for two-hundred-and-fifty-pound merchants’ wives—that is, again, not your merchants’ wives but ours. Everything that you have, we have as well; I’m revealing one of our secrets to you, out of friendship, though it’s forbidden. This legend is about paradise. There was, they say, a certain thinker and philosopher here on your earth, who ‘rejected all—laws, conscience, faith,’ [316]and, above all, the future life. He died and thought he’d go straight into darkness and death, but no—there was the future life before him. He was amazed and indignant: ‘This,’ he said, ‘goes against my convictions.’ So for that he was sentenced ... I mean, you see, I beg your pardon, I’m repeating what I heard, it’s just a legend ... you see, he was sentenced to walk in darkness a quadrillion kilometers (we also use kilometers now), and once he finished that quadrillion, the doors of paradise would be opened to him and he would be forgiven everything.”
