The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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again, “Dmitri Fyodorovitch has pestered me in a merciless way even
here by his incessant questions about the master. ‘What news?’ he’ll
ask. ‘What’s going on in there now? Who’s coming and going?’ and can’t
I tell him something more. Twice already he’s threatened me with death
“With death?” Alyosha exclaimed in surprise.
“Do you suppose he’d think much of that, with his temper, which
you had a chance of observing yourself yesterday? He says if I let
Agrafena Alexandrovna in and she passes the night there, I’ll be the
first to suffer for it. I am terribly afraid of him, and if I were not
even more afraid of doing so, I ought to let the police know. God only
knows what he might not do!”
“His honour said to him the other day, ‘I’ll pound you in a
mortar!’” added Marya Kondratyevna.
“Oh, if it’s pounding in a mortar, it may be only talk,”
observed Alyosha. “If I could meet him, I might speak to him about
that too.”
“Well, the only thing I can tell you is this,” said Smerdyakov, as
though thinking better of it; “I am here as an old friend and
neighbour, and it would be odd if I didn’t come. On the other hand,
Ivan Fyodorovitch sent me first thing this morning to your brother’s
lodging in Lake Street, without a letter, but with a message to Dmitri
Fyodorovitch to go to dine with him at the restaurant here, in the
marketplace. I went, but didn’t find Dmitri Fyodorovitch at home,
though it was eight o’clock. ‘He’s been here, but he is quite gone,’
those were the very words of his landlady. It’s as though there was an
understanding between them. Perhaps at this moment he is in the
restaurant with Ivan Fyodorovitch, for Ivan Fyodorovitch has not
been home to dinner and Fyodor Pavlovitch dined alone an hour ago, and
is gone to lie down. But I beg you most particularly not to speak of
me and of what I have told you, for he’d kill me for nothing at all.”
“Brother Ivan invited Dmitri to the restaurant to-day?” repeated
Alyosha quickly.
“That’s so.”
“The Metropolis tavern in the marketplace?”
“The very same.”
“That’s quite likely,” cried Alyosha, much excited. “Thank you,
Smerdyakov; that’s important. I’ll go there at once.”
“Don’t betray me,” Smerdyakov called after him.
“Oh, no, I’ll go to the tavern as though by chance. Don’t be
anxious.”
“But wait a minute, I’ll open the gate to you,” cried Marya
Kondratyevna.
“No; it’s a short cut, I’ll get over the fence again.”
What he had heard threw Alyosha into great agitation. He ran to
the tavern. It was impossible for him to go into the tavern in his
monastic dress, but he could inquire at the entrance for his
brothers and call them down. But just as he reached the tavern, a
window was flung open, and his brother Ivan called down to him from
it.
“Alyosha, can’t you come up here to me? I shall be awfully
grateful.”
“To be sure I can, only I don’t quite know whether in this
dress- “
“But I am in a room apart. Come up the steps; I’ll run down to
meet you.”
A minute later Alyosha was sitting beside his brother. Ivan was
alone dining.
The Brothers Make Friends
IVAN was not, however, in a separate room, but only in a place
shut off by a screen, so that it was unseen by other people in the
room. It was the first room from the entrance with a buffet along
the wall. Waiters were continually darting to and fro in it. The
only customer in the room was an old retired military man drinking tea
in a corner. But there was the usual bustle going on in the other
rooms of the tavern; there were shouts for the waiters, the sound of
popping corks, the click of billiard balls, the drone of the organ.
Alyosha knew that Ivan did not usually visit this tavern and
disliked taverns in general. So he must have come here, he
reflected, simply to meet Dmitri by arrangement. Yet Dmitri was not
there.
“Shall I order you fish, soup, or anything. You don’t live on
tea alone, I suppose,” cried Ivan, apparently delighted at having
got hold of Alyosha. He had finished dinner and was drinking tea.
“Let me have soup, and tea afterwards, I am hungry,” said
Alyosha gaily.
“And cherry jam? They have it here. You remember how you used to
love cherry jam when you were little?”
“You remember that? Let me have jam too, I like it still.”
Ivan rang for the waiter and ordered soup, jam, and tea.
“I remember everything, Alyosha, I remember you till you were
eleven, I was nearly fifteen. There’s such a difference between
fifteen and eleven that brothers are never companions at those ages. I
don’t know whether I was fond of you even. When I went away to
Moscow for the first few years I never thought of you at all. Then,
when you came to Moscow yourself, we only met once somewhere, I
believe. And now I’ve been here more than three months, and so far
we have scarcely said a word to each other. To-morrow I am going away,
and I was just thinking as I sat here how I could see you to say
good-bye and just then you passed.”
“Were you very anxious to see me, then?”
“Very. I want to get to know you once for all, and I want you to
know me. And then to say good-bye. I believe it’s always best to get
to know people just before leaving them. I’ve noticed how you’ve
been looking at me these three months. There has been a continual look
of expectation in your eyes, and I can’t endure that. That’s how it is
I’ve kept away from you. But in the end I have learned to respect you.
The little man stands firm, I thought. Though I am laughing, I am
serious. You do stand firm, don’t you? I like people who are firm like
that whatever it is they stand by, even if they are such little
fellows as you. Your expectant eyes ceased to annoy me, I grew fond of
them in the end, those expectant eyes. You seem to love me for some
reason, Alyosha?”
“I do love you, Ivan. Dmitri says of you-Ivan is a tomb! I say of
you, Ivan is a riddle. You are a riddle to me even now. But I
understand something in you, and I did not understand it till this
morning.”
“What’s that?” laughed Ivan.
“You won’t be angry?” Alyosha laughed too.
“Well?”
“That you are just as young as other young men of three and
twenty, that you are just a young and fresh and nice boy, green in
fact! Now, have I insulted you dreadfully?”
“On the contrary, I am struck by a coincidence,” cried Ivan,
warmly and good-humouredly. “Would you believe it that ever since that
scene with her, I have thought of nothing else but my youthful
greenness, and just as though you guessed that, you begin about it. Do
you know I’ve been sitting here thinking to myself: that if I didn’t
believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in
the order of things, were convinced, in fact, that everything is a
disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck
by every horror of man’s disillusionment-still I should want to
live and, having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn away from it
till I had drained it! At thirty, though, I shall be sure to leave the
cup, even if I’ve not emptied it, and turn away-where I don’t know.
But till I am thirty, I know that my youth will triumph over
everything-every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I’ve asked
myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that would
overcome this frantic and perhaps unseemly thirst for life in me,
and I’ve come to the conclusion that there isn’t, that is till I am
thirty, and then I shall lose it of myself, I fancy. Some drivelling
consumptive moralists-and poets especially-often call that thirst
for life base. It’s a feature of the Karamazovs, it’s true, that
thirst for life regardless of everything; you have it no doubt too,
but why is it base? The centripetal force on our planet is still
fearfully strong, Alyosha. I have a longing for life, and I go on
living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the
universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in
spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves you
know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by
men, though I’ve long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from
old habit one’s heart prizes them. Here they have brought the soup for
you, eat it, it will do you good. It’s first-rate soup, they know
how to make it here. I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall
set off from here. And yet I know that I am only going to a graveyard,
but it’s a most precious graveyard, that’s what it is! Precious are
the dead that lie there, every stone over them speaks of such
burning life in the past, of such passionate faith in their work,
their truth, their struggle and their science, that I know I shall
fall on the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them; though
I’m convinced in my heart that it’s long been nothing but a graveyard.
And I shall not weep from despair, but simply because I shall be happy
in my tears, I shall steep my soul in emotion. I love the sticky
leaves in spring, the blue sky-that’s all it is. It’s not a matter of
intellect or logic, it’s loving with one’s inside, with one’s stomach.
One loves the first strength of one’s youth. Do you understand
anything of my tirade, Alyosha?” Ivan laughed suddenly.
“I understand too well, Ivan. One longs to love with one’s inside,
with one’s stomach. You said that so well and I am awfully glad that
you have such a longing for life,” cried Alyosha. “I think everyone
should love life above everything in the world.”
“Love life more than the meaning of it?”
“Certainly, love it, regardless of logic as you say, it must be
regardless of logic, and it’s only then one will understand the
meaning of it. I have thought so a long time. Half your work is
done, Ivan, you love life, now you’ve only to try to do the second
half and you are saved.”
“You are trying to save me, but perhaps I am not lost! And what
does your second half mean?”
“Why, one has to raise up your dead, who perhaps have not died
after all. Come, let me have tea. I am so glad of our talk, Ivan.”
“I see you are feeling inspired. I am awfully fond of such
professions de foi* from such-novices. You are a steadfast person,
Alexey. Is it true that you mean to leave the monastery?”
* Professions of faith.
“Yes, my elder sends me out into the world.”
“We shall see each other then in the world. We shall meet before I
am thirty, when I shall begin to turn aside from the cup. Father
doesn’t want to turn aside from his cup till he is seventy, he
dreams of
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