The Brothers Karamazov
suffering for her “treachery” at the trial, and Alyosha felt that her
conscience was impelling her to confess it to him, to him, Alyosha,
with tears and cries and hysterical writhings on the floor. But he
dreaded that moment and longed to spare her. It made the commission on
which he had come even more difficult. He spoke of Mitya again.
“It’s all right, it’s all right, don’t be anxious about him!” she began
again, sharply and stubbornly. “All that is only momentary, I know him,
I know his heart only too well. You may be sure he will consent to
escape. It’s not as though it would be immediately; he will have time
to make up his mind to it. Ivan Fyodorovitch will be well by that time
and will manage it all himself, so that I shall have nothing to do with
it. Don’t be anxious; he will consent to run away. He has agreed
already: do you suppose he would give up that creature? And they won’t
let her go to him, so he is bound to escape. It’s you he’s most afraid
of, he is afraid you won’t approve of his escape on moral grounds. But
you must generously _allow_ it, if your sanction is so necessary,”
Katya added viciously. She paused and smiled.
“He talks about some hymn,” she went on again, “some cross he has to
bear, some duty; I remember Ivan Fyodorovitch told me a great deal
about it, and if you knew how he talked!” Katya cried suddenly, with
feeling she could not repress, “if you knew how he loved that wretched
man at the moment he told me, and how he hated him, perhaps, at the
same moment. And I heard his story and his tears with sneering disdain.
Brute! Yes, I am a brute. I am responsible for his fever. But that man
in prison is incapable of suffering,” Katya concluded irritably. “Can
such a man suffer? Men like him never suffer!”
There was a note of hatred and contemptuous repulsion in her words. And
yet it was she who had betrayed him. “Perhaps because she feels how
she’s wronged him she hates him at moments,” Alyosha thought to
himself. He hoped that it was only “at moments.” In Katya’s last words
he detected a challenging note, but he did not take it up.
“I sent for you this morning to make you promise to persuade him
yourself. Or do you, too, consider that to escape would be
dishonorable, cowardly, or something ... unchristian, perhaps?” Katya
added, even more defiantly.
“Oh, no. I’ll tell him everything,” muttered Alyosha. “He asks you to
come and see him to-day,” he blurted out suddenly, looking her steadily
in the face. She started, and drew back a little from him on the sofa.
“Me? Can that be?” she faltered, turning pale.
“It can and ought to be!” Alyosha began emphatically, growing more
animated. “He needs you particularly just now. I would not have opened
the subject and worried you, if it were not necessary. He is ill, he is
beside himself, he keeps asking for you. It is not to be reconciled
with you that he wants you, but only that you would go and show
yourself at his door. So much has happened to him since that day. He
realizes that he has injured you beyond all reckoning. He does not ask
your forgiveness—‘It’s impossible to forgive me,’ he says himself—but
only that you would show yourself in his doorway.”
“It’s so sudden....” faltered Katya. “I’ve had a presentiment all these
days that you would come with that message. I knew he would ask me to
come. It’s impossible!”
“Let it be impossible, but do it. Only think, he realizes for the first
time how he has wounded you, the first time in his life; he had never
grasped it before so fully. He said, ‘If she refuses to come I shall be
unhappy all my life.’ Do you hear? though he is condemned to penal
servitude for twenty years, he is still planning to be happy—is not
that piteous? Think—you must visit him; though he is ruined, he is
innocent,” broke like a challenge from Alyosha. “His hands are clean,
there is no blood on them! For the sake of his infinite sufferings in
the future visit him now. Go, greet him on his way into the
darkness—stand at his door, that is all.... You ought to do it, you
ought to!” Alyosha concluded, laying immense stress on the word
“ought.”
“I ought to ... but I cannot....” Katya moaned. “He will look at me....
I can’t.”
“Your eyes ought to meet. How will you live all your life, if you don’t
make up your mind to do it now?”
“Better suffer all my life.”
“You ought to go, you ought to go,” Alyosha repeated with merciless
emphasis.
“But why to-day, why at once?... I can’t leave our patient—”
“You can for a moment. It will only be a moment. If you don’t come, he
will be in delirium by to-night. I would not tell you a lie; have pity
on him!”
“Have pity on _me!_” Katya said, with bitter reproach, and she burst
into tears.
“Then you will come,” said Alyosha firmly, seeing her tears. “I’ll go
and tell him you will come directly.”
“No, don’t tell him so on any account,” cried Katya in alarm. “I will
come, but don’t tell him beforehand, for perhaps I may go, but not go
in.... I don’t know yet—”
Her voice failed her. She gasped for breath. Alyosha got up to go.
“And what if I meet any one?” she said suddenly, in a low voice,
turning white again.
“That’s just why you must go now, to avoid meeting any one. There will
be no one there, I can tell you that for certain. We will expect you,”
he concluded emphatically, and went out of the room.
Chapter II.
For A Moment The Lie Becomes Truth
He hurried to the hospital where Mitya was lying now. The day after his
fate was determined, Mitya had fallen ill with nervous fever, and was
sent to the prison division of the town hospital. But at the request of
several persons (Alyosha, Madame Hohlakov, Lise, etc.), Doctor
Varvinsky had put Mitya not with other prisoners, but in a separate
little room, the one where Smerdyakov had been. It is true that there
was a sentinel at the other end of the corridor, and there was a
grating over the window, so that Varvinsky could be at ease about the
indulgence he had shown, which was not quite legal, indeed; but he was
a kind-hearted and compassionate young man. He knew how hard it would
be for a man like Mitya to pass at once so suddenly into the society of
robbers and murderers, and that he must get used to it by degrees. The
visits of relations and friends were informally sanctioned by the
doctor and overseer, and even by the police captain. But only Alyosha
and Grushenka had visited Mitya. Rakitin had tried to force his way in
twice, but Mitya persistently begged Varvinsky not to admit him.
Alyosha found him sitting on his bed in a hospital dressing-gown,
rather feverish, with a towel, soaked in vinegar and water, on his
head. He looked at Alyosha as he came in with an undefined expression,
but there was a shade of something like dread discernible in it. He had
become terribly preoccupied since the trial; sometimes he would be
silent for half an hour together, and seemed to be pondering something
heavily and painfully, oblivious of everything about him. If he roused
himself from his brooding and began to talk, he always spoke with a
kind of abruptness and never of what he really wanted to say. He looked
sometimes with a face of suffering at his brother. He seemed to be more
at ease with Grushenka than with Alyosha. It is true, he scarcely spoke
to her at all, but as soon as she came in, his whole face lighted up
with joy.
Alyosha sat down beside him on the bed in silence. This time Mitya was
waiting for Alyosha in suspense, but he did not dare ask him a
question. He felt it almost unthinkable that Katya would consent to
come, and at the same time he felt that if she did not come, something
inconceivable would happen. Alyosha understood his feelings.
“Trifon Borissovitch,” Mitya began nervously, “has pulled his whole inn
to pieces, I am told. He’s taken up the flooring, pulled apart the
planks, split up all the gallery, I am told. He is seeking treasure all
the time—the fifteen hundred roubles which the prosecutor said I’d
hidden there. He began playing these tricks, they say, as soon as he
got home. Serve him right, the swindler! The guard here told me
yesterday; he comes from there.”
“Listen,” began Alyosha. “She will come, but I don’t know when. Perhaps
to-day, perhaps in a few days, that I can’t tell. But she will come,
she will, that’s certain.”
Mitya started, would have said something, but was silent. The news had
a tremendous effect on him. It was evident that he would have liked
terribly to know what had been said, but he was again afraid to ask.
Something cruel and contemptuous from Katya would have cut him like a
knife at that moment.
“This was what she said among other things; that I must be sure to set
your conscience at rest about escaping. If Ivan is not well by then she
will see to it all herself.”
“You’ve spoken of that already,” Mitya observed musingly.
“And you have repeated it to Grusha,” observed Alyosha.
“Yes,” Mitya admitted. “She won’t come this morning.” He looked timidly
at his brother. “She won’t come till the evening. When I told her
yesterday that Katya was taking measures, she was silent, but she set
her mouth. She only whispered, ‘Let her!’ She understood that it was
important. I did not dare to try her further. She understands now, I
think, that Katya no longer cares for me, but loves Ivan.”
“Does she?” broke from Alyosha.
“Perhaps she does not. Only she is not coming this morning,” Mitya
hastened to explain again; “I asked her to do something for me. You
know, Ivan is superior to all of us. He ought to live, not us. He will
recover.”
“Would you believe it, though Katya is alarmed about him, she scarcely
doubts of his recovery,” said Alyosha.
“That means that she is convinced he will die. It’s because she is
frightened she’s so sure he will get well.”
“Ivan has a strong constitution, and I, too, believe there’s every hope
that he will get well,” Alyosha observed anxiously.
“Yes, he will get well. But she is convinced that he will die. She has
a great deal of sorrow to bear...” A silence followed. A grave anxiety
was fretting Mitya.
“Alyosha, I love Grusha terribly,” he said suddenly in a shaking voice,
full of tears.
“They won’t let her go out there to you,” Alyosha put in at once.
“And there is something else I wanted to tell you,” Mitya went on, with
a sudden ring in his voice. “If they beat me on the way or out there, I
won’t submit to it. I shall kill some one, and shall be shot for it.
And this will be going on for twenty years! They speak to me rudely as
it is. I’ve been lying here all night, passing judgment on myself. I am
not ready! I am not able to resign myself. I wanted to sing a ‘hymn’;
but if a guard speaks rudely to me, I have not the strength to bear it.
For Grusha I would bear anything ... anything except blows.... But she
won’t be allowed to come there.”
Alyosha smiled gently.
“Listen, brother, once for all,” he said. “This is what I think about
it. And you know that I would not tell you a lie. Listen: you are not
ready, and such a cross is not for you. What’s more, you don’t need
such a martyr’s cross when you are not ready for it. If you had
murdered our father, it would grieve me that you should reject your
punishment. But you are innocent, and such a cross is too much for you.
You wanted to make yourself another man by suffering. I say, only
remember that other man always, all your life and wherever you go; and
that will be enough for you. Your refusal of that great cross will only
serve to make you feel all your life an even greater duty, and that
constant feeling will do more to make you a new man, perhaps, than if
you went there. For there you would not endure it and would repine, and
perhaps at last would say: ‘I am quits.’ The lawyer was right about