The Brothers Karamazov
judicious advice and did not take to his bed to be nursed. “I am
walking about, so I am strong enough, if I drop, it’ll be different
then, any one may nurse me who likes,” he decided, dismissing the
subject.
And so he was sitting almost conscious himself of his delirium and, as
I have said already, looking persistently at some object on the sofa
against the opposite wall. Some one appeared to be sitting there,
though goodness knows how he had come in, for he had not been in the
room when Ivan came into it, on his return from Smerdyakov. This was a
person or, more accurately speaking, a Russian gentleman of a
particular kind, no longer young, _qui faisait la cinquantaine_, as the
French say, with rather long, still thick, dark hair, slightly streaked
with gray and a small pointed beard. He was wearing a brownish reefer
jacket, rather shabby, evidently made by a good tailor though, and of a
fashion at least three years old, that had been discarded by smart and
well-to-do people for the last two years. His linen and his long
scarf-like neck-tie were all such as are worn by people who aim at
being stylish, but on closer inspection his linen was not over-clean
and his wide scarf was very threadbare. The visitor’s check trousers
were of excellent cut, but were too light in color and too tight for
the present fashion. His soft fluffy white hat was out of keeping with
the season.
In brief there was every appearance of gentility on straitened means.
It looked as though the gentleman belonged to that class of idle
landowners who used to flourish in the times of serfdom. He had
unmistakably been, at some time, in good and fashionable society, had
once had good connections, had possibly preserved them indeed, but,
after a gay youth, becoming gradually impoverished on the abolition of
serfdom, he had sunk into the position of a poor relation of the best
class, wandering from one good old friend to another and received by
them for his companionable and accommodating disposition and as being,
after all, a gentleman who could be asked to sit down with any one,
though, of course, not in a place of honor. Such gentlemen of
accommodating temper and dependent position, who can tell a story, take
a hand at cards, and who have a distinct aversion for any duties that
may be forced upon them, are usually solitary creatures, either
bachelors or widowers. Sometimes they have children, but if so, the
children are always being brought up at a distance, at some aunt’s, to
whom these gentlemen never allude in good society, seeming ashamed of
the relationship. They gradually lose sight of their children
altogether, though at intervals they receive a birthday or Christmas
letter from them and sometimes even answer it.
The countenance of the unexpected visitor was not so much good-natured,
as accommodating and ready to assume any amiable expression as occasion
might arise. He had no watch, but he had a tortoise-shell lorgnette on
a black ribbon. On the middle finger of his right hand was a massive
gold ring with a cheap opal stone in it.
Ivan was angrily silent and would not begin the conversation. The
visitor waited and sat exactly like a poor relation who had come down
from his room to keep his host company at tea, and was discreetly
silent, seeing that his host was frowning and preoccupied. But he was
ready for any affable conversation as soon as his host should begin it.
All at once his face expressed a sudden solicitude.
“I say,” he began to Ivan, “excuse me, I only mention it to remind you.
You went to Smerdyakov’s to find out about Katerina Ivanovna, but you
came away without finding out anything about her, you probably forgot—”
“Ah, yes,” broke from Ivan and his face grew gloomy with uneasiness.
“Yes, I’d forgotten ... but it doesn’t matter now, never mind, till
to-morrow,” he muttered to himself, “and you,” he added, addressing his
visitor, “I should have remembered that myself in a minute, for that
was just what was tormenting me! Why do you interfere, as if I should
believe that you prompted me, and that I didn’t remember it of myself?”
“Don’t believe it then,” said the gentleman, smiling amicably, “what’s
the good of believing against your will? Besides, proofs are no help to
believing, especially material proofs. Thomas believed, not because he
saw Christ risen, but because he wanted to believe, before he saw. Look
at the spiritualists, for instance.... I am very fond of them ... only
fancy, they imagine that they are serving the cause of religion,
because the devils show them their horns from the other world. That,
they say, is a material proof, so to speak, of the existence of another
world. The other world and material proofs, what next! And if you come
to that, does proving there’s a devil prove that there’s a God? I want
to join an idealist society, I’ll lead the opposition in it, I’ll say I
am a realist, but not a materialist, he he!”
“Listen,” Ivan suddenly got up from the table. “I seem to be
delirious.... I am delirious, in fact, talk any nonsense you like, I
don’t care! You won’t drive me to fury, as you did last time. But I
feel somehow ashamed.... I want to walk about the room.... I sometimes
don’t see you and don’t even hear your voice as I did last time, but I
always guess what you are prating, for it’s I, _I myself speaking, not
you_. Only I don’t know whether I was dreaming last time or whether I
really saw you. I’ll wet a towel and put it on my head and perhaps
you’ll vanish into air.”
Ivan went into the corner, took a towel, and did as he said, and with a
wet towel on his head began walking up and down the room.
“I am so glad you treat me so familiarly,” the visitor began.
“Fool,” laughed Ivan, “do you suppose I should stand on ceremony with
you? I am in good spirits now, though I’ve a pain in my forehead ...
and in the top of my head ... only please don’t talk philosophy, as you
did last time. If you can’t take yourself off, talk of something
amusing. Talk gossip, you are a poor relation, you ought to talk
gossip. What a nightmare to have! But I am not afraid of you. I’ll get
the better of you. I won’t be taken to a mad-house!”
“_C’est charmant_, poor relation. Yes, I am in my natural shape. For
what am I on earth but a poor relation? By the way, I am listening to
you and am rather surprised to find you are actually beginning to take
me for something real, not simply your fancy, as you persisted in
declaring last time—”
“Never for one minute have I taken you for reality,” Ivan cried with a
sort of fury. “You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a phantom.
It’s only that I don’t know how to destroy you and I see I must suffer
for a time. You are my hallucination. You are the incarnation of
myself, but only of one side of me ... of my thoughts and feelings, but
only the nastiest and stupidest of them. From that point of view you
might be of interest to me, if only I had time to waste on you—”
“Excuse me, excuse me, I’ll catch you. When you flew out at Alyosha
under the lamp-post this evening and shouted to him, ‘You learnt it
from _him_! How do you know that _he_ visits me?’ you were thinking of
me then. So for one brief moment you did believe that I really exist,”
the gentleman laughed blandly.
“Yes, that was a moment of weakness ... but I couldn’t believe in you.
I don’t know whether I was asleep or awake last time. Perhaps I was
only dreaming then and didn’t see you really at all—”
“And why were you so surly with Alyosha just now? He is a dear; I’ve
treated him badly over Father Zossima.”
“Don’t talk of Alyosha! How dare you, you flunkey!” Ivan laughed again.
“You scold me, but you laugh—that’s a good sign. But you are ever so
much more polite than you were last time and I know why: that great
resolution of yours—”
“Don’t speak of my resolution,” cried Ivan, savagely.
“I understand, I understand, _c’est noble, c’est charmant_, you are
going to defend your brother and to sacrifice yourself ... _C’est
chevaleresque_.”
“Hold your tongue, I’ll kick you!”
“I shan’t be altogether sorry, for then my object will be attained. If
you kick me, you must believe in my reality, for people don’t kick
ghosts. Joking apart, it doesn’t matter to me, scold if you like,
though it’s better to be a trifle more polite even to me. ‘Fool,
flunkey!’ what words!”
“Scolding you, I scold myself,” Ivan laughed again, “you are myself,
myself, only with a different face. You just say what I am thinking ...
and are incapable of saying anything new!”
“If I am like you in my way of thinking, it’s all to my credit,” the
gentleman declared, with delicacy and dignity.
“You choose out only my worst thoughts, and what’s more, the stupid
ones. You are stupid and vulgar. You are awfully stupid. No, I can’t
put up with you! What am I to do, what am I to do?” Ivan said through
his clenched teeth.
“My dear friend, above all things I want to behave like a gentleman and
to be recognized as such,” the visitor began in an excess of
deprecating and simple-hearted pride, typical of a poor relation. “I am
poor, but ... I won’t say very honest, but ... it’s an axiom generally
accepted in society that I am a fallen angel. I certainly can’t
conceive how I can ever have been an angel. If I ever was, it must have
been so long ago that there’s no harm in forgetting it. Now I only
prize the reputation of being a gentlemanly person and live as I can,
trying to make myself agreeable. I love men genuinely, I’ve been
greatly calumniated! Here when I stay with you from time to time, my
life gains a kind of reality and that’s what I like most of all. You
see, like you, I suffer from the fantastic and so I love the realism of
earth. Here, with you, everything is circumscribed, here all is
formulated and geometrical, while we have nothing but indeterminate
equations! I wander about here dreaming. I like dreaming. Besides, on
earth I become superstitious. Please don’t laugh, that’s just what I
like, to become superstitious. I adopt all your habits here: I’ve grown
fond of going to the public baths, would you believe it? and I go and
steam myself with merchants and priests. What I dream of is becoming
incarnate once for all and irrevocably in the form of some merchant’s
wife weighing eighteen stone, and of believing all she believes. My
ideal is to go to church and offer a candle in simple-hearted faith,
upon my word it is. Then there would be an end to my sufferings. I like
being doctored too; in the spring there was an outbreak of smallpox and
I went and was vaccinated in a foundling hospital—if only you knew how
I enjoyed myself that day. I subscribed ten roubles in the cause of the
Slavs!... But you are not listening. Do you know, you are not at all
well this evening? I know you went yesterday to that doctor ... well,
what about your health? What did the doctor say?”
“Fool!” Ivan snapped out.
“But you are clever, anyway. You are scolding again? I didn’t ask out
of sympathy. You needn’t answer. Now rheumatism has come in again—”
“Fool!” repeated Ivan.
“You keep saying the same thing; but I had such an attack of rheumatism
last year that I remember it to this day.”
“The devil have rheumatism!”
“Why not, if I sometimes put on fleshly form? I put on fleshly form and
I take the consequences. Satan _sum et nihil humanum a me alienum
puto_.”
“What, what, Satan _sum et nihil humanum_ ... that’s not bad for the
devil!”
“I am glad I’ve pleased you at last.”
“But you didn’t get that from me.” Ivan stopped suddenly, seeming
struck. “That never entered my head, that’s strange.”
“_C’est du nouveau, n’est-ce pas?_ This time I’ll act honestly and
explain to you. Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from
indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions,