The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Performer: 0140449248
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life’s being a moment, and he will love his brother without need of
reward. Love will be sufficient only for a moment of life, but the
very consciousness of its momentariness will intensify its fire, which
now is dissipated in dreams of eternal love beyond the grave’… and
so on and so on in the same style. Charming!”
Ivan sat with his eyes on the floor, and his hands pressed to
his ears, but he began trembling all over. The voice continued.
“The question now is, my young thinker reflected, is it possible
that such a period will ever come? If it does, everything is
determined and humanity is settled for ever. But as, owing to man’s
inveterate stupidity, this cannot come about for at least a thousand
years, everyone who recognises the truth even now may legitimately
order his life as he pleases, on the new principles. In that sense,
‘all things are lawful’ for him. What’s more, even if this period
never comes to pass, since there is anyway no God and no
immortality, the new man may well become the man-god, even if he is
the only one in the whole world, and promoted to his new position,
he may lightheartedly overstep all the barriers of the old morality of
the old slaveman, if necessary. There is no law for God. Where God
stands, the place is holy. Where I stand will be at once the
foremost place… ‘all things are lawful’ and that’s the end of it!
That’s all very charming; but if you want to swindle why do you want a
moral sanction for doing it? But that’s our modern Russian all over.
He can’t bring himself to swindle without a moral sanction. He is so
in love with truth-”
The visitor talked, obviously carried away by his own eloquence,
speaking louder and louder and looking ironically at his host. But
he did not succeed in finishing; Ivan suddenly snatched a glass from
the table and flung it at the orator.
“Ah, mais c’est bete enfin,”* cried the latter, jumping up from
the sofa and shaking the drops of tea off himself. “He remembers
Luther’s inkstand! He takes me for a dream and throws glasses at a
dream! It’s like a woman! I suspected you were only pretending to stop
up your ears.”
* But after all, that’s stupid.
A loud, persistent knocking was suddenly heard at the window. Ivan
jumped up from the sofa.
“Do you hear? You’d better open,” cried the visitor; “it’s your
brother Alyosha with the most interesting and surprising news, I’ll be
bound!”
“Be silent, deceiver, I knew it was Alyosha, I felt he was coming,
and of course he has not come for nothing; of course he brings
‘news,’” Ivan exclaimed frantically.
“Open, open to him. There’s a snowstorm and he is your brother.
Monsieur sait-il le temps qu’il fait? C’est a ne pas mettre un chien
dehors.”*
* Does the gentleman know the weather he’s making? It’s not
weather for a dog.
The knocking continued. Ivan wanted to rush to the window, but
something seemed to fetter his arms and legs. He strained every effort
to break his chains, but in vain. The knocking at the window grew
louder and louder. At last the chains were broken and Ivan leapt up
from the sofa. He looked round him wildly. Both candles had almost
burnt out, the glass he had just thrown at his visitor stood before
him on the table, and there was no one on the sofa opposite. The
knocking on the window frame went on persistently, but it was by no
means so loud as it had seemed in his dream; on the contrary, it was
quite subdued.
“It was not a dream! No, I swear it was not a dream, it all
happened just now!” cried Ivan. He rushed to the window and opened the
movable pane.
“Alyosha, I told you not to come,” he cried fiercely to his
brother. “In two words, what do you want? In two words, do you hear?”
“An hour ago Smerdyakov hanged himself,” Alyosha answered from the
yard.
“Come round to the steps, I’ll open at once,” said Ivan, going
to open the door to Alyosha.
“It Was He Who Said That”
ALYOSHA coming in told Ivan that a little over an hour ago Marya
Kondratyevna had run to his rooms and informed him Smerdyakov had
taken his own life. “I went in to clear away the samovar and he was
hanging on a nail in the wall.” On Alyosha’s inquiring whether she had
informed the police, she answered that she had told no one, “but I
flew straight to you, I’ve run all the way.” She seemed perfectly
crazy, Alyosha reported, and was shaking like a leaf. When Alyosha ran
with her to the cottage, he found Smerdyakov still hanging. On the
table lay a note: “I destroy my life of my own will and desire, so
as to throw no blame on anyone.” Alyosha left the note on the table
and went straight to the police captain and told him all about it.
“And from him I’ve come straight to you,” said Alyosha, in conclusion,
looking intently into Ivan’s face. He had not taken his eyes off him
while he told his story, as though struck by something in his
expression.
“Brother,” he cried suddenly, “you must be terribly ill. You
look and don’t seem to understand what I tell you.”
“It’s a good thing you came,” said Ivan, as though brooding, and
not hearing Alyosha’s exclamation. “I knew he had hanged himself.”
“From whom?”
“I don’t know. But I knew. Did I know? Yes, he told me. He told me
so just now.”
Ivan stood in the middle of the room, and still spoke in the
same brooding tone, looking at the ground.
“Who is he?” asked Alyosha, involuntarily looking round.
“He’s slipped away.”
Ivan raised his head and smiled softly.
“He was afraid of you, of a dove like you. You are a ‘pure
cherub.’ Dmitri calls you a cherub. Cherub!… the thunderous
rapture of the seraphim. What are seraphim? Perhaps a whole
constellation. But perhaps that constellation is only a chemical
molecule. There’s a constellation of the Lion and the Sun. Don’t you
know it?”
“Brother, sit down,” said Alyosha in alarm. “For goodness’ sake,
sit down on the sofa! You are delirious; put your head on the
pillow, that’s right. Would you like a wet towel on your head? Perhaps
it will do you good.”
“Give me the towel: it’s here on the chair. I just threw it down
there.”
“It’s not here. Don’t worry yourself. I know where it is-here,”
said Alyosha, finding a clean towel, folded up and unused, by Ivan’s
dressing-table in the other corner of the room. Ivan looked
strangely at the towel: recollection seemed to come back to him for an
instant.
“Stay”- he got up from the sofa- “an hour ago I took that new
towel from there and wetted it. I wrapped it round my head and threw
it down here… How is it it’s dry? There was no other.”
“You put that towel on your head?” asked Alyosha.
“Yes, and walked up and down the room an hour ago… Why have
the candles burnt down so? What’s the time?”
“Nearly twelve”
“No, no, no!” Ivan cried suddenly. “It was not a dream. He was
here; he was sitting here, on that sofa. When you knocked at the
window, I threw a glass at him… this one. Wait a minute. I was
asleep last time, but this dream was not a dream. It has happened
before. I have dreams now, Alyosha… yet they are not dreams, but
reality. I walk about, talk and see… though I am asleep. But he
was sitting here, on that sofa there…. He is frightfully stupid,
Alyosha, frightfully stupid.” Ivan laughed suddenly and began pacing
about the room.
“Who is stupid? Of whom are you talking, brother?” Alyosha asked
anxiously again.
“The devil! He’s taken to visiting me. He’s been here twice,
almost three times. He taunted me with being angry at his being a
simple devil and not Satan, with scorched wings, in thunder and
lightning. But he is not Satan: that’s a lie. He is an impostor. He is
simply a devil-a paltry, trivial devil. He goes to the baths. If
you undressed him, you’d be sure to find he had a tail, long and
smooth like a Danish dog’s, a yard long, dun colour…. Alyosha, you
are cold. You’ve been in the snow. Would you like some tea? What? Is
it cold? Shall I tell her to bring some? C’est a ne pas mettre un
chien dehors…”
Alyosha ran to the washing-stand, wetted the towel, persuaded Ivan
to sit down again, and put the wet towel round his head. He sat down
beside him.
“What were you telling me just now about Lise?” Ivan began
again. (He was becoming very talkative.) “I like Lise. I said
something nasty about her. It was a lie. I like her… I am afraid for
Katya to-morrow. I am more afraid of her than of anything. On
account of the future. She will cast me off to-morrow and trample me
under foot. She thinks that I am ruining Mitya from jealousy on her
account! Yes, she thinks that! But it’s not so. To-morrow the cross,
but not the gallows. No, I shan’t hang myself. Do you know, I can
never commit suicide, Alyosha. Is it because I am base? I am not a
coward. Is it from love of life? How did I know that Smerdyakov had
hanged himself? Yes, it was he told me so.”
“And you are quite convinced that there has been someone here?”
asked Alyosha.
“Yes, on that sofa in the corner. You would have driven him
away. You did drive him away: he disappeared when you arrived. I
love your face, Alyosha. Did you know that I loved your face? And he
is myself, Alyosha. All that’s base in me, all that’s mean and
contemptible. Yes, I am a romantic. He guessed it… though it’s a
libel. He is frightfully stupid; but it’s to his advantage. He has
cunning, animal cunning-he knew how to infuriate me. He kept taunting
me with believing in him, and that was how he made me listen to him.
He fooled me like a boy. He told me a great deal that was true about
myself, though. I should never have owned it to myself. Do you know,
Alyosha,” Ivan added in an intensely earnest and confidential tone, “I
should be awfully glad to think that it was he and not I.”
“He has worn you out,” said Alyosha, looking compassionately at
his brother.
“He’s been teasing me. And you know he does it so cleverly, so
cleverly. ‘Conscience! What is conscience? I make it up for myself.
Why am I tormented by it? From habit. From the universal habit of
mankind for the seven thousand years. So let us give it up, and we
shall be gods.’ It was he said that, it was he said that!”
“And not you, not you?” Alyosha could not help crying, looking
frankly at his brother. “Never mind him, anyway; have done with him
and forget him. And let him take with him all that you curse now,
and never come back!”
“Yes, but he is spiteful. He laughed at me. He was impudent,
Alyosha,” Ivan said, with a shudder of offence. “But he was unfair
to me, unfair to me about lots of things. He told lies about
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