The Brothers Karamazov
herself suddenly, with a charming society smile. “Such a friend as you
are could not suppose that. I am only too unhappy at losing you.” She
rushed impulsively at Ivan, and seizing both his hands, pressed them
warmly. “But what is fortunate is that you will be able in Moscow to
see auntie and Agafya and to tell them all the horror of my present
position. You can speak with complete openness to Agafya, but spare
dear auntie. You will know how to do that. You can’t think how wretched
I was yesterday and this morning, wondering how I could write them that
dreadful letter—for one can never tell such things in a letter.... Now
it will be easy for me to write, for you will see them and explain
everything. Oh, how glad I am! But I am only glad of that, believe me.
Of course, no one can take your place.... I will run at once to write
the letter,” she finished suddenly, and took a step as though to go out
of the room.
“And what about Alyosha and his opinion, which you were so desperately
anxious to hear?” cried Madame Hohlakov. There was a sarcastic, angry
note in her voice.
“I had not forgotten that,” cried Katerina Ivanovna, coming to a sudden
standstill, “and why are you so antagonistic at such a moment?” she
added, with warm and bitter reproachfulness. “What I said, I repeat. I
must have his opinion. More than that, I must have his decision! As he
says, so it shall be. You see how anxious I am for your words, Alexey
Fyodorovitch.... But what’s the matter?”
“I couldn’t have believed it. I can’t understand it!” Alyosha cried
suddenly in distress.
“What? What?”
“He is going to Moscow, and you cry out that you are glad. You said
that on purpose! And you begin explaining that you are not glad of that
but sorry to be—losing a friend. But that was acting, too—you were
playing a part—as in a theater!”
“In a theater? What? What do you mean?” exclaimed Katerina Ivanovna,
profoundly astonished, flushing crimson, and frowning.
“Though you assure him you are sorry to lose a friend in him, you
persist in telling him to his face that it’s fortunate he is going,”
said Alyosha breathlessly. He was standing at the table and did not sit
down.
“What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand myself.... I seemed to see in a flash ... I know I
am not saying it properly, but I’ll say it all the same,” Alyosha went
on in the same shaking and broken voice. “What I see is that perhaps
you don’t love Dmitri at all ... and never have, from the beginning....
And Dmitri, too, has never loved you ... and only esteems you.... I
really don’t know how I dare to say all this, but somebody must tell
the truth ... for nobody here will tell the truth.”
“What truth?” cried Katerina Ivanovna, and there was an hysterical ring
in her voice.
“I’ll tell you,” Alyosha went on with desperate haste, as though he
were jumping from the top of a house. “Call Dmitri; I will fetch
him—and let him come here and take your hand and take Ivan’s and join
your hands. For you’re torturing Ivan, simply because you love him—and
torturing him, because you love Dmitri through ‘self-laceration’—with
an unreal love—because you’ve persuaded yourself.”
Alyosha broke off and was silent.
“You ... you ... you are a little religious idiot—that’s what you are!”
Katerina Ivanovna snapped. Her face was white and her lips were moving
with anger.
Ivan suddenly laughed and got up. His hat was in his hand.
“You are mistaken, my good Alyosha,” he said, with an expression
Alyosha had never seen in his face before—an expression of youthful
sincerity and strong, irresistibly frank feeling. “Katerina Ivanovna
has never cared for me! She has known all the time that I cared for
her—though I never said a word of my love to her—she knew, but she
didn’t care for me. I have never been her friend either, not for one
moment; she is too proud to need my friendship. She kept me at her side
as a means of revenge. She revenged with me and on me all the insults
which she has been continually receiving from Dmitri ever since their
first meeting. For even that first meeting has rankled in her heart as
an insult—that’s what her heart is like! She has talked to me of
nothing but her love for him. I am going now; but, believe me, Katerina
Ivanovna, you really love him. And the more he insults you, the more
you love him—that’s your ‘laceration.’ You love him just as he is; you
love him for insulting you. If he reformed, you’d give him up at once
and cease to love him. But you need him so as to contemplate
continually your heroic fidelity and to reproach him for infidelity.
And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there’s a great deal of
humiliation and self-abasement about it, but it all comes from
pride.... I am too young and I’ve loved you too much. I know that I
ought not to say this, that it would be more dignified on my part
simply to leave you, and it would be less offensive for you. But I am
going far away, and shall never come back.... It is for ever. I don’t
want to sit beside a ‘laceration.’... But I don’t know how to speak
now. I’ve said everything.... Good-by, Katerina Ivanovna; you can’t be
angry with me, for I am a hundred times more severely punished than
you, if only by the fact that I shall never see you again. Good-by! I
don’t want your hand. You have tortured me too deliberately for me to
be able to forgive you at this moment. I shall forgive you later, but
now I don’t want your hand. ‘Den Dank, Dame, begehr ich nicht,’” he
added, with a forced smile, showing, however, that he could read
Schiller, and read him till he knew him by heart—which Alyosha would
never have believed. He went out of the room without saying good-by
even to his hostess, Madame Hohlakov. Alyosha clasped his hands.
“Ivan!” he cried desperately after him. “Come back, Ivan! No, nothing
will induce him to come back now!” he cried again, regretfully
realizing it; “but it’s my fault, my fault. I began it! Ivan spoke
angrily, wrongly. Unjustly and angrily. He must come back here, come
back,” Alyosha kept exclaiming frantically.
Katerina Ivanovna went suddenly into the next room.
“You have done no harm. You behaved beautifully, like an angel,” Madame
Hohlakov whispered rapidly and ecstatically to Alyosha. “I will do my
utmost to prevent Ivan Fyodorovitch from going.”
Her face beamed with delight, to the great distress of Alyosha, but
Katerina Ivanovna suddenly returned. She had two hundred-rouble notes
in her hand.
“I have a great favor to ask of you, Alexey Fyodorovitch,” she began,
addressing Alyosha with an apparently calm and even voice, as though
nothing had happened. “A week—yes, I think it was a week ago—Dmitri
Fyodorovitch was guilty of a hasty and unjust action—a very ugly
action. There is a low tavern here, and in it he met that discharged
officer, that captain, whom your father used to employ in some
business. Dmitri Fyodorovitch somehow lost his temper with this
captain, seized him by the beard and dragged him out into the street
and for some distance along it, in that insulting fashion. And I am
told that his son, a boy, quite a child, who is at the school here, saw
it and ran beside them crying and begging for his father, appealing to
every one to defend him, while every one laughed. You must forgive me,
Alexey Fyodorovitch, I cannot think without indignation of that
disgraceful action of _his_ ... one of those actions of which only
Dmitri Fyodorovitch would be capable in his anger ... and in his
passions! I can’t describe it even.... I can’t find my words. I’ve made
inquiries about his victim, and find he is quite a poor man. His name
is Snegiryov. He did something wrong in the army and was discharged. I
can’t tell you what. And now he has sunk into terrible destitution,
with his family—an unhappy family of sick children, and, I believe, an
insane wife. He has been living here a long time; he used to work as a
copying clerk, but now he is getting nothing. I thought if you ... that
is I thought ... I don’t know. I am so confused. You see, I wanted to
ask you, my dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, to go to him, to find some excuse
to go to them—I mean to that captain—oh, goodness, how badly I explain
it!—and delicately, carefully, as only you know how to” (Alyosha
blushed), “manage to give him this assistance, these two hundred
roubles. He will be sure to take it.... I mean, persuade him to take
it.... Or, rather, what do I mean? You see it’s not by way of
compensation to prevent him from taking proceedings (for I believe he
meant to), but simply a token of sympathy, of a desire to assist him
from me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch’s betrothed, not from himself.... But you
know.... I would go myself, but you’ll know how to do it ever so much
better. He lives in Lake Street, in the house of a woman called
Kalmikov.... For God’s sake, Alexey Fyodorovitch, do it for me, and now
... now I am rather ... tired. Good-by!”
She turned and disappeared behind the portière so quickly that Alyosha
had not time to utter a word, though he wanted to speak. He longed to
beg her pardon, to blame himself, to say something, for his heart was
full and he could not bear to go out of the room without it. But Madame
Hohlakov took him by the hand and drew him along with her. In the hall
she stopped him again as before.
“She is proud, she is struggling with herself; but kind, charming,
generous,” she exclaimed, in a half-whisper. “Oh, how I love her,
especially sometimes, and how glad I am again of everything! Dear
Alexey Fyodorovitch, you didn’t know, but I must tell you, that we all,
all—both her aunts, I and all of us, Lise, even—have been hoping and
praying for nothing for the last month but that she may give up your
favorite Dmitri, who takes no notice of her and does not care for her,
and may marry Ivan Fyodorovitch—such an excellent and cultivated young
man, who loves her more than anything in the world. We are in a regular
plot to bring it about, and I am even staying on here perhaps on that
account.”
“But she has been crying—she has been wounded again,” cried Alyosha.
“Never trust a woman’s tears, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I am never for the
women in such cases. I am always on the side of the men.”
“Mamma, you are spoiling him,” Lise’s little voice cried from behind
the door.
“No, it was all my fault. I am horribly to blame,” Alyosha repeated
unconsoled, hiding his face in his hands in an agony of remorse for his
indiscretion.
“Quite the contrary; you behaved like an angel, like an angel. I am
ready to say so a thousand times over.”
“Mamma, how has he behaved like an angel?” Lise’s voice was heard
again.
“I somehow fancied all at once,” Alyosha went on as though he had not
heard Lise, “that she loved Ivan, and so I said that stupid thing....
What will happen now?”
“To whom, to whom?” cried Lise. “Mamma, you really want to be the death
of me. I ask you and you don’t answer.”
At the moment the maid ran in.
“Katerina Ivanovna is ill.... She is crying, struggling ... hysterics.”
“What is the matter?” cried Lise, in a tone of real anxiety. “Mamma, I
shall be having hysterics, and not she!”
“Lise, for mercy’s sake, don’t scream, don’t persecute me. At your age
one can’t know everything that grown-up people know. I’ll come and tell
you everything you ought to know. Oh, mercy on us! I am coming, I am
coming.... Hysterics is a good sign, Alexey Fyodorovitch; it’s an
excellent thing that she is hysterical. That’s just as it ought to be.
In such cases I am always against the woman, against all these feminine
tears and hysterics. Run and say, Yulia, that I’ll fly to her. As for
Ivan Fyodorovitch’s going away like that, it’s her own fault. But he
won’t go away. Lise, for mercy’s sake, don’t scream! Oh, yes; you are