The Brothers Karamazov
“Ah, Lise, it was not so a bit. The letter is with me now, and it was
this morning, in this pocket. Here it is.”
Alyosha pulled the letter out laughing, and showed it her at a
distance.
“But I am not going to give it to you. Look at it from here.”
“Why, then you told a lie? You, a monk, told a lie!”
“I told a lie if you like,” Alyosha laughed, too. “I told a lie so as
not to give you back the letter. It’s very precious to me,” he added
suddenly, with strong feeling, and again he flushed. “It always will
be, and I won’t give it up to any one!”
Lise looked at him joyfully. “Alyosha,” she murmured again, “look at
the door. Isn’t mamma listening?”
“Very well, Lise, I’ll look; but wouldn’t it be better not to look? Why
suspect your mother of such meanness?”
“What meanness? As for her spying on her daughter, it’s her right, it’s
not meanness!” cried Lise, firing up. “You may be sure, Alexey
Fyodorovitch, that when I am a mother, if I have a daughter like myself
I shall certainly spy on her!”
“Really, Lise? That’s not right.”
“Oh, my goodness! What has meanness to do with it? If she were
listening to some ordinary worldly conversation, it would be meanness,
but when her own daughter is shut up with a young man.... Listen,
Alyosha, do you know I shall spy upon you as soon as we are married,
and let me tell you I shall open all your letters and read them, so you
may as well be prepared.”
“Yes, of course, if so—” muttered Alyosha, “only it’s not right.”
“Ah, how contemptuous! Alyosha, dear, we won’t quarrel the very first
day. I’d better tell you the whole truth. Of course, it’s very wrong to
spy on people, and, of course, I am not right and you are, only I shall
spy on you all the same.”
“Do, then; you won’t find out anything,” laughed Alyosha.
“And, Alyosha, will you give in to me? We must decide that too.”
“I shall be delighted to, Lise, and certain to, only not in the most
important things. Even if you don’t agree with me, I shall do my duty
in the most important things.”
“That’s right; but let me tell you I am ready to give in to you not
only in the most important matters, but in everything. And I am ready
to vow to do so now—in everything, and for all my life!” cried Lise
fervently, “and I’ll do it gladly, gladly! What’s more, I’ll swear
never to spy on you, never once, never to read one of your letters. For
you are right and I am not. And though I shall be awfully tempted to
spy, I know that I won’t do it since you consider it dishonorable. You
are my conscience now.... Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch, why have you
been so sad lately—both yesterday and to-day? I know you have a lot of
anxiety and trouble, but I see you have some special grief besides,
some secret one, perhaps?”
“Yes, Lise, I have a secret one, too,” answered Alyosha mournfully. “I
see you love me, since you guessed that.”
“What grief? What about? Can you tell me?” asked Lise with timid
entreaty.
“I’ll tell you later, Lise—afterwards,” said Alyosha, confused. “Now
you wouldn’t understand it perhaps—and perhaps I couldn’t explain it.”
“I know your brothers and your father are worrying you, too.”
“Yes, my brothers too,” murmured Alyosha, pondering.
“I don’t like your brother Ivan, Alyosha,” said Lise suddenly.
He noticed this remark with some surprise, but did not answer it.
“My brothers are destroying themselves,” he went on, “my father, too.
And they are destroying others with them. It’s ‘the primitive force of
the Karamazovs,’ as Father Païssy said the other day, a crude,
unbridled, earthly force. Does the spirit of God move above that force?
Even that I don’t know. I only know that I, too, am a Karamazov.... Me
a monk, a monk! Am I a monk, Lise? You said just now that I was.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And perhaps I don’t even believe in God.”
“You don’t believe? What is the matter?” said Lise quietly and gently.
But Alyosha did not answer. There was something too mysterious, too
subjective in these last words of his, perhaps obscure to himself, but
yet torturing him.
“And now on the top of it all, my friend, the best man in the world, is
going, is leaving the earth! If you knew, Lise, how bound up in soul I
am with him! And then I shall be left alone.... I shall come to you,
Lise.... For the future we will be together.”
“Yes, together, together! Henceforward we shall be always together, all
our lives! Listen, kiss me, I allow you.”
Alyosha kissed her.
“Come, now go. Christ be with you!” and she made the sign of the cross
over him. “Make haste back to _him_ while he is alive. I see I’ve kept
you cruelly. I’ll pray to-day for him and you. Alyosha, we shall be
happy! Shall we be happy, shall we?”
“I believe we shall, Lise.”
Alyosha thought it better not to go in to Madame Hohlakov and was going
out of the house without saying good-by to her. But no sooner had he
opened the door than he found Madame Hohlakov standing before him. From
the first word Alyosha guessed that she had been waiting on purpose to
meet him.
“Alexey Fyodorovitch, this is awful. This is all childish nonsense and
ridiculous. I trust you won’t dream—It’s foolishness, nothing but
foolishness!” she said, attacking him at once.
“Only don’t tell her that,” said Alyosha, “or she will be upset, and
that’s bad for her now.”
“Sensible advice from a sensible young man. Am I to understand that you
only agreed with her from compassion for her invalid state, because you
didn’t want to irritate her by contradiction?”
“Oh, no, not at all. I was quite serious in what I said,” Alyosha
declared stoutly.
“To be serious about it is impossible, unthinkable, and in the first
place I shall never be at home to you again, and I shall take her away,
you may be sure of that.”
“But why?” asked Alyosha. “It’s all so far off. We may have to wait
another year and a half.”
“Ah, Alexey Fyodorovitch, that’s true, of course, and you’ll have time
to quarrel and separate a thousand times in a year and a half. But I am
so unhappy! Though it’s such nonsense, it’s a great blow to me. I feel
like Famusov in the last scene of _Sorrow from Wit_. You are Tchatsky
and she is Sofya, and, only fancy, I’ve run down to meet you on the
stairs, and in the play the fatal scene takes place on the staircase. I
heard it all; I almost dropped. So this is the explanation of her
dreadful night and her hysterics of late! It means love to the daughter
but death to the mother. I might as well be in my grave at once. And a
more serious matter still, what is this letter she has written? Show it
me at once, at once!”
“No, there’s no need. Tell me, how is Katerina Ivanovna now? I must
know.”
“She still lies in delirium; she has not regained consciousness. Her
aunts are here; but they do nothing but sigh and give themselves airs.
Herzenstube came, and he was so alarmed that I didn’t know what to do
for him. I nearly sent for a doctor to look after him. He was driven
home in my carriage. And on the top of it all, you and this letter!
It’s true nothing can happen for a year and a half. In the name of all
that’s holy, in the name of your dying elder, show me that letter,
Alexey Fyodorovitch. I’m her mother. Hold it in your hand, if you like,
and I will read it so.”
“No, I won’t show it to you. Even if she sanctioned it, I wouldn’t. I
am coming to-morrow, and if you like, we can talk over many things, but
now good-by!”
And Alyosha ran downstairs and into the street.
Chapter II.
Smerdyakov With A Guitar
He had no time to lose indeed. Even while he was saying good-by to
Lise, the thought had struck him that he must attempt some stratagem to
find his brother Dmitri, who was evidently keeping out of his way. It
was getting late, nearly three o’clock. Alyosha’s whole soul turned to
the monastery, to his dying saint, but the necessity of seeing Dmitri
outweighed everything. The conviction that a great inevitable
catastrophe was about to happen grew stronger in Alyosha’s mind with
every hour. What that catastrophe was, and what he would say at that
moment to his brother, he could perhaps not have said definitely. “Even
if my benefactor must die without me, anyway I won’t have to reproach
myself all my life with the thought that I might have saved something
and did not, but passed by and hastened home. If I do as I intend, I
shall be following his great precept.”
His plan was to catch his brother Dmitri unawares, to climb over the
fence, as he had the day before, get into the garden and sit in the
summer-house. If Dmitri were not there, thought Alyosha, he would not
announce himself to Foma or the women of the house, but would remain
hidden in the summer-house, even if he had to wait there till evening.
If, as before, Dmitri were lying in wait for Grushenka to come, he
would be very likely to come to the summer-house. Alyosha did not,
however, give much thought to the details of his plan, but resolved to
act upon it, even if it meant not getting back to the monastery that
day.
Everything happened without hindrance, he climbed over the hurdle
almost in the same spot as the day before, and stole into the
summer-house unseen. He did not want to be noticed. The woman of the
house and Foma too, if he were here, might be loyal to his brother and
obey his instructions, and so refuse to let Alyosha come into the
garden, or might warn Dmitri that he was being sought and inquired for.
There was no one in the summer-house. Alyosha sat down and began to
wait. He looked round the summer-house, which somehow struck him as a
great deal more ancient than before. Though the day was just as fine as
yesterday, it seemed a wretched little place this time. There was a
circle on the table, left no doubt from the glass of brandy having been
spilt the day before. Foolish and irrelevant ideas strayed about his
mind, as they always do in a time of tedious waiting. He wondered, for
instance, why he had sat down precisely in the same place as before,
why not in the other seat. At last he felt very depressed—depressed by
suspense and uncertainty. But he had not sat there more than a quarter
of an hour, when he suddenly heard the thrum of a guitar somewhere
quite close. People were sitting, or had only just sat down, somewhere
in the bushes not more than twenty paces away. Alyosha suddenly
recollected that on coming out of the summer-house the day before, he
had caught a glimpse of an old green low garden-seat among the bushes
on the left, by the fence. The people must be sitting on it now. Who
were they?
A man’s voice suddenly began singing in a sugary falsetto, accompanying
himself on the guitar:
With invincible force
I am bound to my dear.
O Lord, have mercy
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
The voice ceased. It was a lackey’s tenor and a lackey’s song. Another
voice, a woman’s, suddenly asked insinuatingly and bashfully, though
with mincing affectation:
“Why haven’t you been to see us for so long, Pavel Fyodorovitch? Why do
you always look down upon us?”
“Not at all,” answered a man’s voice politely, but with emphatic
dignity. It was clear that the man had the best of the position, and
that the woman was making advances. “I believe the man must be
Smerdyakov,” thought Alyosha, “from his voice. And the lady must be the
daughter of the house here, who has come from Moscow, the one who wears
the dress with a tail and goes to Marfa for soup.”
“I am awfully fond of verses of all kinds, if they rhyme,” the woman’s
voice continued. “Why don’t you go on?”
The man sang again:
What do I care for royal wealth
If but my dear one be in health?
Lord have mercy
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
“It was even better last time,” observed the woman’s voice. “You sang