The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗

at his brother’s crime. Another contradicted this, and

stated that he and his elder, Father Zossima, had broken into the

monastery chest and “made tracks from the monastery.” The present

paragraph in the paper Gossip was under the heading, “The Karamazov

Case at Skotoprigonyevsk.” (That, alas! was the name of our little

town. I had hitherto kept it concealed.) It was brief, and Madame

Hohlakov was not directly mentioned in it. No names appeared, in fact.

It was merely stated that the criminal, whose approaching trial was

making such a sensation-retired army captain, an idle swaggerer,

and reactionary bully-was continually involved in amorous

intrigues, and particularly popular with certain ladies “who were

pining in solitude.” One such lady, a pining widow, who tried to

seem young though she had a grown-up daughter, was so fascinated by

him that only two hours before the crime she offered him three

thousand roubles, on condition that he would elope with her to the

gold mines. But the criminal, counting on escaping punishment, had

preferred to murder his father to get the three thousand rather than

go off to Siberia with the middle-aged charms of his pining lady. This

playful paragraph finished, of course, with an outburst of generous

indignation at the wickedness of parricide and at the lately abolished

institution of serfdom. Reading it with curiosity, Alyosha folded up

the paper and handed it back to Madame Hohlakov.

 

“Well, that must be me,” she hurried on again. “Of course I am

meant. Scarcely more than an hour before, I suggested gold mines to

him, and here they talk of ‘middle-aged charms’ as though that were my

motive! He writes that out of spite! God Almighty forgive him for

the middle-aged charms, as I forgive him! You know it’s -Do you know

who it is? It’s your friend Rakitin.”

 

“Perhaps,” said Alyosha, “though I’ve heard nothing about it.”

 

“It’s he, it’s he! No ‘perhaps’ about it. You know I turned him

out of the house…. You know all that story, don’t you?”

 

“I know that you asked him not to visit you for the future, but

why it was, I haven’t heard… from you, at least.”

 

“Ah, then you’ve heard it from him! He abuses me, I suppose,

abuses me dreadfully?”

 

“Yes, he does; but then he abuses everyone. But why you’ve given

him up I, haven’t heard from him either. I meet him very seldom now,

indeed. We are not friends.”

 

“Well, then, I’ll tell you all about it. There’s no help for it,

I’ll confess, for there is one point in which I was perhaps to

blame. Only a little, little point, so little that perhaps it

doesn’t count. You see, my dear boy”- Madame Hohlakov suddenly

looked arch and a charming, though enigmatic, smile played about her

lips- “you see, I suspect… You must forgive me, Alyosha. I am like a

mother to you… No, no; quite the contrary. I speak to you now as

though you were my father-mother’s quite out of place. Well, it’s

as though I were confessing to Father Zossima, that’s just it. I

called you a monk just now. Well, that poor young man, your friend,

Rakitin (Mercy on us! I can’t be angry with him. I feel cross, but not

very), that frivolous young man, would you believe it, seems to have

taken it into his head to fall in love with me. I only noticed it

later. At first-a month ago-he only began to come oftener to see me,

almost every day; though, of course, we were acquainted before. I knew

nothing about it… and suddenly it dawned upon me, and I began to

notice things with surprise. You know, two months ago, that modest,

charming, excellent young man, Ilyitch Perhotin, who’s in the

service here, began to be a regular visitor at the house. You met

him here ever so many times yourself. And he is an excellent,

earnest young man, isn’t he? He comes once every three days, not every

day (though I should be glad to see him every day), and always so well

dressed. Altogether, I love young people, Alyosha, talented, modest,

like you, and he has almost the mind of a statesman, he talks so

charmingly, and I shall certainly, certainly try and get promotion for

him. He is a future diplomat. On that awful day he almost saved me

from death by coming in the night. And your friend Rakitin comes in

such boots, and always stretches them out on the carpet…. He began

hinting at his feelings, in fact, and one day, as he was going, he

squeezed my hand terribly hard. My foot began to swell directly

after he pressed my hand like that. He had met Pyotr Ilyitch here

before, and would you believe it, he is always gibing at him, growling

at him, for some reason. I simply looked at the way they went on

together and laughed inwardly. So I was sitting here alone-no, I

was laid up then. Well, I was lying here alone and suddenly Rakitin

comes in, and only fancy! brought me some verses of his own

composition-a short poem, on my bad foot: that is, he described my

foot in a poem. Wait a minute-how did it go?

 

A captivating little foot.

 

It began somehow like that. I can never remember poetry. I’ve

got it here. I’ll show it to you later. But it’s a charming thing-charming; and, you know, it’s not only about the foot, it had a good

moral, too, a charming idea, only I’ve forgotten it; in fact, it was

just the thing for an album. So, of course, I thanked him, and he

was evidently flattered. I’d hardly had time to thank him when in

comes Pyotr Ilyitch, and Rakitin suddenly looked as black as night.

I could see that Pyotr Ilyitch was in the way, for Rakitin certainly

wanted to say something after giving me the verses. I had a

presentiment of it; but Pyotr Ilyitch came in. I showed Pyotr

Ilyitch the verses and didn’t say who was the author. But I am

convinced that he guessed, though he won’t own it to this day, and

declares he had no idea. But he says that on purpose. Pyotr Ilyitch

began to laugh at once, and fell to criticising it. ‘Wretched

doggerel,’ he said they were, ‘some divinity student must have written

them,’ and with such vehemence, such vehemence! Then, instead of

laughing, your friend flew into a rage. ‘Good gracious!’ I thought,

‘they’ll fly at each other.’ ‘It was I who wrote them,’ said he. ‘I

wrote them as a joke,’ he said, ‘for I think it degrading to write

verses…. But they are good poetry. They want to put a monument to

your Pushkin for writing about women’s feet, while I wrote with a

moral purpose, and you,’ said he, ‘are an advocate of serfdom.

You’ve no humane ideas,’ said he. ‘You have no modern enlightened

feelings, you are uninfluenced by progress, you are a mere

official,’ he said, ‘and you take bribes.’ Then I began screaming

and imploring them. And, you know, Pyotr Ilyitch is anything but a

coward. He at once took up the most gentlemanly tone, looked at him

sarcastically, listened, and apologised. ‘I’d no idea,’ said he. ‘I

shouldn’t have said it, if I had known. I should have praised it.

Poets are all so irritable,’ he said. In short, he laughed at him

under cover of the most gentlemanly tone. He explained to me

afterwards that it was all sarcastic. I thought he was in earnest.

Only as I lay there, just as before you now, I thought, ‘Would it,

or would it not, be the proper thing for me to turn Rakitin out for

shouting so rudely at a visitor in my house?’ And, would you believe

it, I lay here, shut my eyes, and wondered, would it be the proper

thing or not. I kept worrying and worrying, and my heart began to

beat, and I couldn’t make up my mind whether to make an outcry or not.

One voice seemed to be telling me, ‘Speak,’ and the other ‘No, don’t

speak.’ And no sooner had the second voice said that than I cried out,

and fainted. Of course, there was a fuss. I got up suddenly and said

to Rakitin, ‘It’s painful for me to say it, but I don’t wish to see

you in my house again.’ So I turned him out. Ah! Alexey

Fyodorovitch, I know myself I did wrong. I was putting it on. I wasn’t

angry with him at all, really; but I suddenly fancied-that was what

did it-that it would be such a fine scene…. And yet, believe me, it

was quite natural, for I really shed tears and cried for several

days afterwards, and then suddenly, one afternoon, I forgot all

about it. So it’s a fortnight since he’s been here, and I kept

wondering whether he would come again. I wondered even yesterday, then

suddenly last night came this Gossip. I read it and gasped. Who

could have written it? He must have written it. He went home, sat

down, wrote it on the spot, sent it, and they put it in. It was a

fortnight ago, you see. But, Alyosha, it’s awful how I keep talking

and don’t say what I want to say. the words come of themselves!”

 

“It’s very important for me to be in time to see my brother

to-day,” Alyosha faltered.

 

“To be sure, to be sure! You bring it all back to me. Listen, what

is an aberration?”

 

“What aberration?” asked Alyosha, wondering.

 

“In the legal sense. An aberration in which everything is

pardonable. Whatever you do, you will be acquitted at once.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I’ll tell you. This Katya… Ah! she is a charming, charming

creature, only I never can make out who it is she is in love with. She

was with me some time ago and I couldn’t get anything out of her.

Especially as she won’t talk to me except on the surface now. She is

always talking about my health and nothing else, and she takes up such

a tone with me, too. I simply said to myself, ‘Well so be it. I

don’t care’…Oh, yes. I was talking of aberration. This doctor has

come. You know a doctor has come? Of course, you know it-the one

who discovers madmen. You wrote for him. No, it wasn’t you, but Katya.

It’s all Katya’s doing. Well, you see, a man may be sitting

perfectly sane and suddenly have an aberration. He may be conscious

and know what he is doing and yet be in a state of aberration. And

there’s no doubt that Dmitri Fyodorovitch was suffering from

aberration. They found out about aberration as soon as the law

courts were reformed. It’s all the good effect of the reformed law

courts. The doctor has been here and questioned me about that evening,

about the gold mines. ‘How did he seem then?’ he asked me. He must

have been in a state of aberration. He came in shouting, ‘Money,

money, three thousand! Give me three thousand!’ and then went away and

immediately did the murder. ‘I don’t want to murder him,’ he said, and

he suddenly went and murdered him. That’s why they’ll acquit him,

because he struggled against it and yet he murdered him.”

 

“But he didn’t murder him,” Alyosha interrupted rather sharply. He

felt more and more sick with anxiety and impatience.

 

“Yes, I know it was that old man Grigory murdered him.”

 

“Grigory?” cried Alyosha.

 

“Yes, yes; it was Grigory. He lay as Dmitri Fyodorovitch struck

him down, and then got up, saw the door open, went in and killed

Fyodor Pavlovitch.”

 

“But why, why?”

 

“Suffering from aberration. When he recovered