The Brothers Karamazov
“Ah, then you’ve heard it from him! He abuses me, I suppose, abuses me
dreadfully?”
“Yes, he does; but then he abuses every one. 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,
Pyotr 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 criticizing
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
apologized. ‘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. Ah! 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 from the blow Dmitri
Fyodorovitch gave him on the head, he was suffering from aberration; he
went and committed the murder. As for his saying he didn’t, he very
likely doesn’t remember. Only, you know, it’ll be better, ever so much
better, if Dmitri Fyodorovitch murdered him. And that’s how it must
have been, though I say it was Grigory. It certainly was Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, and that’s better, ever so much better! Oh! not better
that a son should have killed his father, I don’t defend that. Children
ought to honor their parents, and yet it would be better if it were he,
as you’d have nothing to cry over then, for he did it when he was
unconscious or rather when he was conscious, but did not know what he
was doing. Let them acquit him—that’s so humane, and would show what a
blessing reformed law courts are. I knew nothing about it, but they say
they have been so a long time. And when I heard it yesterday, I was so
struck by it that I wanted to send for you at once. And if he is
acquitted, make him come straight from the law courts to dinner with
me, and I’ll have a party of friends, and we’ll drink to the reformed
law courts. I don’t believe he’d be dangerous; besides, I’ll invite a
great many friends, so that he could always be led out if he did
anything. And then he might be made a justice of the peace or something
in another town, for those who have been in trouble themselves make the
best judges. And, besides, who isn’t suffering from aberration
nowadays?—you, I, all of us are in a state of aberration, and there are
ever so many examples of it: a man sits singing a song, suddenly
something annoys him, he takes a pistol and shoots the first person he
comes across, and no one blames him for it. I read that lately, and all
the doctors confirm it. The doctors are always confirming; they confirm
anything. Why, my Lise is in a state of aberration. She made me cry
again yesterday, and the day before, too, and to-day I suddenly
realized that it’s all due to aberration. Oh, Lise grieves me so! I
believe she’s quite mad. Why did she send for you? Did she send for you
or did you come of yourself?”
“Yes, she sent for me, and I am just going to her.” Alyosha got up
resolutely.
“Oh, my dear, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, perhaps that’s what’s most
important,” Madame Hohlakov cried, suddenly bursting into tears. “God
knows I trust Lise to you with all my heart, and it’s no matter her
sending for you on the sly, without telling her mother. But forgive me,
I can’t trust my daughter so easily to your brother Ivan Fyodorovitch,
though I still consider him the most chivalrous young man. But only
fancy, he’s been to see Lise and I knew nothing about it!”
“How? What? When?” Alyosha was exceedingly surprised. He had not sat
down again and listened standing.
“I will tell you; that’s perhaps why I asked you to come, for I don’t
know now why I did ask you to come. Well, Ivan Fyodorovitch has been to
see me twice, since he came back from Moscow. First time he came as a
friend to call on me, and the second time Katya was here and he came