Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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Текущая страница: 57 (всего у книги 70 страниц)
“And what other torments have you got in that world, besides the quadrillion?” Ivan interrupted with some strange animation.
“What other torments? Ah, don’t even ask: before it was one thing and another, but now it’s mostly the moral sort, ‘remorse of conscience’ and all that nonsense. That also started because of you, from the ‘mellowing of your mores.’ [317]Well, and who benefited? The unscrupulous benefited, because what is remorse of conscience to a man who has no conscience at all? Decent people who still had some conscience and honor left suffered instead ... There you have it—reforms on unprepared ground, and copied from foreign institutions as well—nothing but harm! The good old fire was much better. Well, so this man sentenced to the quadrillion stood a while, looked, and then lay down across the road: ‘I don’t want to go, I refuse to go on principle! ‘ Take the soul of an enlightened Russian atheist and mix it with the soul of the prophet Jonah, who sulked in the belly of a whale for three days and three nights—you’ll get the character of this thinker lying in the road.”
“And what was he lying on?” “Well, there must have been something there. Or are you laughing?”
“Bravo!” cried Ivan, still with the same strange animation. He was listening now with unexpected curiosity. “Well, so is he still lying there?”
“The point is that he isn’t. He lay there for nearly a thousand years, and then got up and started walking.”
“What an ass!” Ivan exclaimed, bursting into nervous laughter, still apparently trying hard to figure something out. “Isn’t it all the same whether he lies there forever or walks a quadrillion kilometers? It must be about a billion years’ walk!”
“Much more, even. If we had a pencil and paper, we could work it out. But he arrived long ago, and this is where the anecdote begins.”
“Arrived! But where did he get a billion years?”
“You keep thinking about our present earth! But our present earth may have repeated itself a billion times; it died out, let’s say, got covered with ice, cracked, fell to pieces, broke down into its original components, again there were the waters above the firmament, then again a comet, again the sun, again the earth from the sun—all this development may already have been repeated an infinite number of times, and always in the same way, to the last detail. A most unspeakable bore...”
“Go on, what happened when he arrived?”
“The moment the doors of paradise were opened and he went in, before he had even been there two seconds—and that by the watch, the watch (though I should think that on the way his watch would long ago have broken down into its component elements in his pocket)—before he had been there two seconds, he exclaimed that for those two seconds it would be worth walking not just a quadrillion kilometers, but a quadrillion quadrillion, even raised to the quadrillionth power! In short, he sang ‘Hosannah’ and oversweetened it so much that some persons there, of a nobler cast of mind, did not even want to shake hands with him at first: he jumped over to the conservatives a bit too precipitously. The Russian character. I repeat: it’s a legend. Take it for what it’s worth. That’s the sort of ideas current among us on all these subjects.”
“Caught you!” Ivan cried out with almost childish glee, as if he had now finally remembered something. “That anecdote about the quadrillion years– I made it up myself! I was seventeen years old then, I was in high school ... I made up that anecdote then and told it to a friend of mine, his last name was Korovkin, it was in Moscow ... It’s such a typical anecdote that I couldn’t have gotten it from anywhere. I almost forgot it ... but now I’ve unconsciously recalled it—recalled it myself, not because you told it to me! Just as one sometimes recalls a thousand things unconsciously, even when one is being taken out to be executed ... I’ve remembered it in a dream. You are my dream! You’re a dream, you don’t exist!” “Judging by the enthusiasm with which you deny me,” the gentleman laughed, “I’m convinced that you do believe in me all the same.”
“Not in the least! Not for a hundredth part do I believe in you!”
“But for a thousandth part you do believe. Homeopathic doses are perhaps the strongest. Admit that you do believe, let’s say for a ten-thousandth part ...”
“Not for one moment!” Ivan cried in a rage. “And, by the way, I should like to believe in you!” he suddenly added strangely.
“Aha! Quite a confession, really! But I am kind, I will help you here, too. Listen, it is I who have caught you, not you me! I deliberately told you your own anecdote, which you had forgotten, so that you would finally lose faith in me.”
“Lies! The purpose of your appearance is to convince me that you are.”
“Precisely. But hesitation, anxiety, the struggle between belief and disbelief—all that is sometimes such a torment for a conscientious man like yourself, that it’s better to hang oneself. Precisely because I knew you had a tiny bit of belief in me, I let in some final disbelief, by telling you that anecdote. I’m leading you alternately between belief and disbelief, and I have my own purpose in doing so. A new method, sir: when you’ve completely lost faith in me, then you’ll immediately start convincing me to my face that I am not a dream but a reality—I know you now; and then my goal will be achieved. And it is a noble goal. I will sow just a tiny seed of faith in you, and from it an oak will grow—and such an oak that you, sitting in that oak, will want to join ‘the desert fathers and the blameless women’; [318]because secretly you want that verry, ver-ry much, you will dine on locusts, you will drag yourself to the desert to seek salvation!”
“So, you scoundrel, you’re troubling yourself over the salvation of my soul?”
“One needs to do a good deed sometimes, at least. But I see you’re angry with me, really angry!”
“Buffoon! And have you ever tempted them, the ones who eat locusts and pray for seventeen years in the barren desert, and get overgrown with moss?”
“My dear, I’ve done nothing else. One forgets the whole world and all worlds, and clings to such a one, because a diamond like that is just too precious; one such soul is sometimes worth a whole constellation—we have our own arithmetic. It’s a precious victory! And some of them, by God, are not inferior to you in development, though you won’t believe it: they can contemplate such abysses of belief and disbelief at one and the same moment that, really, it sometimes seems that another hair’s breadth and a man would fall in ‘heel-over-headed,’ as the actor Gorbunov says.” [319]
“So, what? They put your nose out of joint?” “My friend,” the visitor observed sententiously, “it’s sometimes better to have your nose put out of joint than to have no nose at all, as one afflicted marquis (he must have been treated by a specialist) uttered not long ago in confession to his Jesuit spiritual director. I was present—it was just lovely. ‘Give me back my nose!’ he said, beating his breast. ‘My son,’ the priest hedged, ‘through the inscrutable decrees of Providence everything has its recompense, and a visible calamity sometimes brings with it a great, if invisible, profit. If a harsh fate has deprived you of your nose, your profit is that now for the rest of your life no one will dare tell you that you have had your nose put out of joint.’ ‘Holy father, that’s no consolation!’ the desperate man exclaimed. ‘On the contrary, I’d be delighted to have my nose put out of joint every day of my life, if only it were where it belonged!’ ‘My son,’ the priest sighed, ‘one cannot demand all blessings at once. That is to murmur against Providence, which even here has not forgotten you; for if you cry, as you have just cried, that you would gladly have your nose put out of joint for the rest of your life, in this your desire has already been fulfilled indirectly; for, having lost your nose, you have thereby, as it were, had your nose put out of joint all the same ...”
“Pah, how stupid!” cried Ivan.
“My friend, I merely wanted to make you laugh, but I swear that is real Jesuit casuistry, and I swear it all happened word for word as I’ve told it to you. That was a recent incident, and it gave me a lot of trouble. The unfortunate young man went home and shot himself that same night; I was with him constantly up to the last moment ... As for those little Jesuit confessional booths, that truly is my pet amusement in the sadder moments of life. Here’s another incident for you, from just the other day. A girl comes to an old priest, a blonde, from Normandy, about twenty years old. Beautiful, buxom, all nature—enough to make your mouth water. She bends down and whispers her sin to the priest through the little hole. ‘What, my daughter, can you have fallen again so soon ... ?’ the priest exclaims.’O Sancta Maria, what’s this I hear? With another man now? But how long will it go on? What shame! ‘ ‘Ah, mon père,’the sinner replies, bathed in tears of repentance, ‘ça lui fait tant de plaisir, et à moi si peu de peine!’ [320] Well, just imagine such an answer! At that even I backed off: it was the very cry of nature, which, if you like, is better than innocence itself. I remitted her sin on the spot and turned to leave, but I had to come back at once: I heard the priest arranging a rendezvous with her for that evening through the hole; the old man was solid as a rock, but he fell in an instant! It was nature, the truth of nature, claiming its own! What, are you turning your nose up again, are you angry again? I really don’t know how to please you . . .” “Leave me, you’re throbbing in my brain like a persistent nightmare,” Ivan groaned painfully, powerless before his apparition. “I’m bored with you, it’s unbearable, agonizing! I’d give a lot to be able to get rid of you!”
“I repeat, moderate your demands, don’t demand ‘all that is great and beautiful’ [321]of me, and we shall live in peace and harmony, you’ll see,” the gentleman said imposingly. “Indeed, you’re angry with me that I have not appeared to you in some sort of red glow, ‘in thunder and lightning,’ with scorched wings, but have presented myself in such a modest form. You’re insulted, first, in your aesthetic feelings, and, second, in your pride: how could such a banal devil come to such a great man? No, you’ve still got that romantic little streak in you, so derided by Belinsky. [322]It can’t be helped, young man. This evening, as I was getting ready to come to you, I did think of appearing, for a joke, in the form of a retired Regular State Councillor who had served in the Caucasus, with the star of the Lion and Sun pinned to my frock coat, but I was decidedly afraid, because you’d have thrashed me just for daring to tack the Lion and Sun on my frock coat, instead of the North Star or Sirius at least. [323] And you keep saying how stupid I am. But, my God, I don’t make any claims to being your equal in intelligence. Mephistopheles, when he comes to Faust, testifies of himself that he desires evil, yet does only good. [324]Well, let him do as he likes, it’s quite the opposite with me. I am perhaps the only man in all of nature who loves the truth and sincerely desires good. I was there when the Word who died on the cross was ascending into heaven, carrying on his bosom the soul of the thief who was crucified to the right of him, I heard the joyful shrieks of the cherubim singing and shouting ‘Hosannah,’ and the thundering shout of rapture from the seraphim, which made heaven and all creation shake. And, I swear by all that’s holy, I wanted to join the chorus and shout ‘Hosannah’ with everyone else. It was right on my lips, it was already bursting from my breast ... you know, I’m very sensitive and artistically susceptible. But common sense—oh, it’s the most unfortunate quality of my nature—kept me within due bounds even then, and I missed the moment! For what—I thought at that same moment—what will happen after my ‘Hosannah? Everything in the world will immediately be extinguished and no events will occur. And so, solely because of my official duty and my social position, I was forced to quash the good moment in myself and stay with my nasty tricks. Someone takes all the honor of the good for himself and only leaves me the nasty tricks. But I don’t covet the honor of living as a moocher, I’m not ambitious. Why, of all beings in the world, am I alone condemned to be cursed by all decent people, and even to be kicked with boots, for, when I become incarnate, I must occasionally take such consequences as well? There’s a secret here, I know, but they won’t reveal this secret to me for anything, because then, having learned what it’s all about, I might just roar ‘Hosannah,’ and the necessary minus would immediately disappear and sensibleness would set in all over the world, and with it, of course, the end of everything, even of newspapers and journals, because who would subscribe to them? I know that I will finally be reconciled, that I, too, will finish my quadrillion and be let in on the secret. But until that happens I sulk and grudgingly fulfill my purpose: to destroy thousands so that one may be saved. For instance, how many souls had to be destroyed, and honest reputations put to shame, in order to get just one righteous Job, with whom they baited me so wickedly in olden times! No, until the secret is revealed, two truths exist for me: one is theirs, from there, and so far completely unknown to me; the other is mine. And who knows which is preferable ... Are you asleep?”
“What else?” Ivan groaned spitefully. “Everything in my nature that is stupid, long outlived, mulled over in my mind, flung away like carrion—you are now offering to me as some kind of news!”
“Displeased again! And I hoped you might even be charmed by such a literary rendition: that ‘Hosannah’ in heaven really didn’t come out too badly, did it? And then that sarcastic tone, à la Heine, [325]eh? Don’t you agree?”
“No, never have I been such a lackey! How could my soul produce such a lackey as you?”
“My friend, I know a most charming and dear young Russian gentleman: a thinker and a great lover of literature and other fine things, the author of a promising poem entitled ‘The Grand Inquisitor’... It was him only that I had in mind.”
“I forbid you to speak of ‘The Grand Inquisitor,’” Ivan exclaimed, blushing all over with shame.
“Well, and what about the ‘Geological Cataclysm’? Remember that? What a poem!”
“Shut up, or I’ll kill you!”
“Kill me? No, excuse me, but I will have my say. I came in order to treat myself to that pleasure. Oh, I love the dreams of my friends—fervent, young, trembling with the thirst for life! ‘There are new people now,’ you decided last spring, as you were preparing to come here, ‘they propose to destroy everything and begin with anthropophagy. Fools, they never asked me! In my opinion, there is no need to destroy anything, one need only destroy the idea of God in mankind, that’s where the business should start! One should begin with that, with that—oh, blind men, of no understanding! Once mankind has renounced God, one and all (and I believe that this period, analogous to the geological periods, will come), then the entire old world view will fall of itself, without anthropophagy, and, above all, the entire former morality, and everything will be new. People will come together in order to take from life all that it can give, but, of course, for happiness and joy in this world only. Man will be exalted with the spirit of divine, titanic pride, and the man-god will appear. Man, his will and his science no longer limited, conquering nature every hour, will thereby every hour experience such lofty delight as will replace for him all his former hopes of heavenly delight. Each will know himself utterly mortal, without resurrection, and will accept death proudly and calmly, like a god. Out of pride he will understand that he should not murmur against the momentariness of life, and he will love his brother then without any reward. Love will satisfy only the moment of life, but the very awareness of its momentariness will increase its fire, inasmuch as previously it was diffused in hopes of an eternal love beyond the grave’ ... well, and so on and so on, in the same vein. Lovely!”
Ivan was sitting with his hands over his ears, looking down, but his whole body started trembling. The voice went on:
“‘The question now,’ my young thinker reflected, ‘is whether or not it is possible for such a period ever to come. If it does come, then everything will be resolved and mankind will finally be settled. But since, in view of man’s inveterate stupidity, it may not be settled for another thousand years, anyone who already knows the truth is permitted to settle things for himself, absolutely as he wishes, on the new principles. In this sense, “everything is permitted” to him. Moreover, since God and immortality do not exist in any case, even if this period should never come, the new man is allowed to become a man-god, though it be he alone in the whole world, and of course, in this new rank, to jump lightheartedly over any former moral obstacle of the former slave-man, if need be. There is no law for God! Where God stands—there is the place of God! Where I stand, there at once will be the foremost place ... “everything is permitted,” and that’s that! ‘ It’s all very nice; only if one wants to swindle, why, I wonder, should one also need the sanction of truth? But such is the modern little Russian man: without such a sanction, he doesn’t even dare to swindle, so much does he love the truth...”
The visitor spoke, obviously carried away by his own eloquence, raising his voice more and more, and glancing sidelong at his host; but he did not manage to finish: Ivan suddenly snatched a glass from the table and flung it at the orator.
“Ah, mais c’est bête enfin!” [326]the latter exclaimed, jumping up from the sofa and shaking the spatters of tea off himself. “He remembered Luther’s inkstand! [327]He considers me a dream and he throws glasses at a dream! Just like a woman! I knew you were only pretending to stop your ears and were really listening...” Suddenly there came a firm, insistent knocking on the window from outside. Ivan Fyodorovich jumped up from the sofa.
“Listen, you’d better open,” the visitor cried, “it’s your brother Alyosha with the most unexpected and interesting news, I guarantee it!”
“Shut up, deceiver, I knew it was Alyosha without you, I had a presentiment of him, and of course he hasn’t come for no reason, of course he has ‘news’!” Ivan exclaimed frenziedly.
“But open, open to him. There’s a blizzard out there, and he’s your brother. Monsieur sait-il le temps qu’il fait? C’est à ne pas mettre un chien dehors ...“ [328]
The knocking continued. Ivan wanted to rush to the window; but something seemed suddenly to bind his legs and arms. He was straining as hard as he could to break his bonds, but in vain. The knocking on the window grew stronger and louder. At last the bonds broke and Ivan Fyodorovich jumped up from the sofa. He looked around wildly. The two candles were almost burnt down, the glass he had just thrown at his visitor stood before him on the table, and there was no one on the opposite sofa. The knocking on the window continued insistently, but not at all as loudly as he had just imagined in his dream, on the contrary, it was quite restrained.
“That was no dream! No, I swear it was no dream, it all just happened!” Ivan Fyodorovich cried, rushed to the window, and opened it.
“Alyosha, I told you not to come!” he cried fiercely to his brother. “Make it short: what do you want? Make it short, do you hear?”
“Smerdyakov hanged himself an hour ago,” Alyosha answered from outside.
“Come to the porch, I’ll open at once,” Ivan said, and he went to open the door for Alyosha.
Chapter 10: “He Said That!”
Once inside, Alyosha told Ivan Fyodorovich that a little more than an hour ago Maria Kondratievna came running to his place and announced that Smerdyakov had taken his own life. “So I went into his room to clear away the samovar, and he was hanging from a nail in the wall.” To Alyosha’s question of whether she had reported it to the proper authorities, she replied that she had not reported to anyone, but “rushed straight to you first, and was running all the way.” She looked crazy, Alyosha went on, and was shaking all over like a leaf. When Alyosha ran back with her to the cottage, he found Smerdyakov still hanging. There was a note on the table: “I exterminate my life by my own will and liking, so as not to blame anybody.” Alyosha left the note on the table and went straight to the police commissioner, to whom he reported everything, “and from there straight to you,” Alyosha concluded, looking intently into Ivan’s face. All the while he was talking, he had not taken his eyes off him, as if very much struck by something in the expression of his face.
“Brother,” he cried suddenly, “you must be terribly ill! You look and it’s as if you don’t understand what I’m saying.”
“It’s good that you’ve come,” Ivan said, thoughtfully, as it were, seeming not to have heard Alyosha’s exclamation. “I knew he had hanged himself.”
“From whom?”
“I don’t know from whom. But I knew. Did I know? Yes, he told me. He was just telling me.”
Ivan stood in the middle of the room and spoke still with the same thoughtfulness, looking at the ground.
“Who is he?” Alyosha asked, automatically looking around.
“He slipped away.”
Ivan raised his head and smiled gently:
“He got frightened of you, of you, a dove. You’re a ‘pure cherub.’ Dmitri calls you a cherub. A cherub ... The thundering shout of the seraphim’s rapture! What is a seraph? Maybe a whole constellation. And maybe that whole constellation is just some chemical molecule ... Is there a constellation of the Lion and Sun, do you know?”
“Sit down, brother!” Alyosha said in alarm. “For God’s sake, sit down on the sofa. You’re raving, lean on the pillow, there. Want a wet towel for your head? Wouldn’t it make you feel better?”
“Give me that towel on the chair, I just threw it there.”
“It’s not there. Don’t worry, I know where it is—here,” said Alyosha, finding the clean, still folded and unused towel in the other corner of the room, near Ivan’s dressing table. Ivan looked strangely at the towel; his memory seemed to come back to him all at once.
“Wait,” he rose a little from the sofa, “just before, an hour ago, I took this towel from there and wetted it. I put it to my head, and then threw it down here ... how can it be dry? I don’t have another.”
“You put the towel to your head?” Alyosha asked.
“Yes, and I paced the room, an hour ago ... Why are the candles so burned down? What time is it?”
“Nearly twelve.” “No, no, no!” Ivan suddenly cried out, “it was not a dream! He was here, sitting here, on that sofa. As you were knocking on the window, I threw a glass at him ... this one ... Wait, I was asleep before, but this dream isn’t a dream. It’s happened before. I sometimes have dreams now, Alyosha ... yet they’re not dreams, but reality: I walk, talk, and see ... yet I’m asleep. But he was sitting here, he came, he was there on that sofa ... He’s terribly stupid, Alyosha, terribly stupid,” Ivan suddenly laughed and began pacing the room.
“Who is stupid? Who are you talking about, brother?” Alyosha asked again, sorrowfully.
“The devil! He’s taken to visiting me. He’s been here twice, even almost three times. He taunted me, saying I’m angry that he’s simply a devil and not Satan, with scorched wings, with thunder and lightning. But he’s not Satan, he’s lying. He’s an impostor. He’s simply a devil, a rotten little devil. He goes to the public baths. Undress him and you’re sure to find a tail, long and smooth as a Great Dane’s, a good three feet long, brown ... Alyosha, you’re chilly, you were out in the snow, do you want some tea? What? It’s cold? Shall I tell them to make some hot? C’est à ne pas mettre un chien dehors...”
Alyosha ran quickly to the sink, wetted the towel, persuaded Ivan to sit down again, and put the wet towel around his head. He sat down beside him.
“What were you saying earlier about Liza?” Ivan began again. (He was becoming very talkative.) “I like Liza. I said something nasty to you about her. I was lying, I like her ... I’m afraid for Katya tomorrow, afraid most of all. For the future. She’ll drop me tomorrow and trample me under her feet. She thinks I’m destroying Mitya out of jealousy over her! Yes, that’s what she thinks! But no, it won’t be! Tomorrow the cross, but not the gallows. No, I won’t hang myself. Do you know, I’d never be able to take my own life, Alyosha! Is it out of baseness, or what? I’m not a coward. Out of thirst for life! How did I know Smerdyakov had hanged himself? But it was hewho told me...”
“And you’re firmly convinced that someone was sitting here?” Alyosha asked.
“On that sofa in the corner. You’d have chased him away. And you did chase him away: he disappeared as soon as you came. I love your face, Alyosha. Did you know that I love your face? And he—is me, Alyosha, me myself. All that’s low, all that’s mean and contemptible in me! Yes, I’m a ‘romantic,’ he noticed it ... though it’s a slander. He’s terribly stupid, but he makes use of it. He’s cunning, cunning as an animal, he knew how to infuriate me. He kept taunting me with believing in him and got me to listen to him that way. He hoodwinked me, like a boy. By the way, he told me a great deal that’s true about myself. I would never have said it to myself. You know, Alyosha, you know,” Ivan added, terribly seriously, and as if confidentially, “I would much prefer that he were really heand not I!”
“He has worn you out,” Alyosha said, looking at his brother with compassion.
“He taunted me! And cleverly, you know, very cleverly: ‘Conscience! What is conscience? I make it up myself. Why do I suffer then? Out of habit. Out of universal human habit over seven thousand years. So let us get out of the habit, and we shall be gods! ‘ He said that, he said that!”
“And not you, not you!” Alyosha cried irrepressibly, looking brightly at his brother. “So never mind him, drop him, and forget about him! Let him take with him all that you curse now and never come back!”
“Yes, but he’s evil! He laughed at me. He was impudent, Alyosha,” Ivan said with a shudder of offense. “He slandered me, slandered me greatly. He lied about me to my face. ‘Oh, you are going to perform a virtuous deed, you will announce that you killed your father, that the lackey killed your father at your suggestion ... !’”
“Brother,” Alyosha interrupted, “restrain yourself: you did not kill him. It’s not true!”
“He says it, he, and he knows it: ‘You are going to perform a virtuous deed, but you don’t even believe in virtue—that’s what makes you angry and torments you, that’s why you’re so vindictive.’ He said it to me about myself, and he knows what he’s saying ...”
“You are saying it, not him!” Alyosha exclaimed ruefully, “and you’re saying it because you’re sick, delirious, tormenting yourself!”
“No, he knows what he’s saying. You’re going out of pride, he says, you’ll stand up and say: ‘I killed him, and you, why are you all shrinking in horror, you’re lying! I despise your opinion, I despise your horror! ‘ He said that about me, and suddenly he said: And, you know, you want them to praise you: he’s a criminal, a murderer, but what magnanimous feelings he has, he wanted to save his brother and so he confessed!’ Now that is a lie, Alyosha!” Ivan suddenly cried, flashing his eyes. “I don’t want the stinking rabble to praise me. He lied about that, Alyosha, he lied, I swear to you! I threw a glass at him for that, and it smashed on his ugly snout.”
“Brother, calm yourself, stop!” Alyosha pleaded.
“No, he knows how to torment, he’s cruel,” Ivan went on, not listening. “All along I had a presentiment of what he came for. ‘Suppose you were to go out of pride,’ he said, ‘but still there would also be the hope that Smerdyakov would be convicted and sent to hard labor, that Mitya would be cleared, and you would be condemned only morally’(and then he laughed, do you hear! ), ‘and some would even praise you. But now Smerdyakov is dead, he’s hanged himself—so who’s going to believe just you alone there in court? But you’ll go, you’ll go, you’ll still go, you’ve made up your mind to go. But, in that case, what are you going for? ‘ I’m afraid, Alyosha, I can’t bear such questions! Who dares ask me such questions!”
“Brother,” Alyosha interrupted, sinking with fear, but still as if hoping to bring Ivan to reason, “how could he have talked of Smerdyakov’s death with you before I came, if no one even knew of it yet, and there was no time for anyone to find out?”
“He talked of it,” Ivan said firmly, not admitting any doubt. “He talked only of that, if you like. ‘And one could understand it,’ he said, ‘if you believed in virtue: let them not believe me, I’m going for the sake of principle. But you are a little pig, like Fyodor Pavlovich, and what is virtue to you? Why drag yourself there if your sacrifice serves no purpose? Because you yourself don’t know why you’re going! Oh, you’d give a lot to know why you’re going! And do you think you’ve really decided? No, you haven’t decided yet. You’ll sit all night trying to decide whether to go or not. But you will go all the same, and you know you will go, you know yourself that no matter how much you try to decide it, the decision no longer depends on you. You will go because you don’t dare not to. Why you don’t dare—you can guess for yourself, there’s a riddle for you!’ He got up and left. You came and he left. He called me a coward, Alyosha! Le mot de l’énigmeis that I’m a coward!’ [329]‘It’s not for such eagles to soar above the earth! ‘ He added that, he added that! And Smerdyakov said the same thing. He must be killed! Katya despises me, I’ve seen that already for a month, and Liza will also begin to despise me! ‘You’re going in order to be praised’—that’s a beastly lie! And you, too, despise me, Alyosha. Now I’ll start hating you again. I hate the monster, too, I hate the monster! I don’t want to save the monster, let him rot at hard labor! He’s singing a hymn! Oh, tomorrow I’ll go, stand before them, and spit in all their faces!”
