The Brothers Karamazov
‘If my darling be in health’; it sounded more tender. I suppose you’ve
forgotten to-day.”
“Poetry is rubbish!” said Smerdyakov curtly.
“Oh, no! I am very fond of poetry.”
“So far as it’s poetry, it’s essential rubbish. Consider yourself, who
ever talks in rhyme? And if we were all to talk in rhyme, even though
it were decreed by government, we shouldn’t say much, should we? Poetry
is no good, Marya Kondratyevna.”
“How clever you are! How is it you’ve gone so deep into everything?”
The woman’s voice was more and more insinuating.
“I could have done better than that. I could have known more than that,
if it had not been for my destiny from my childhood up. I would have
shot a man in a duel if he called me names because I am descended from
a filthy beggar and have no father. And they used to throw it in my
teeth in Moscow. It had reached them from here, thanks to Grigory
Vassilyevitch. Grigory Vassilyevitch blames me for rebelling against my
birth, but I would have sanctioned their killing me before I was born
that I might not have come into the world at all. They used to say in
the market, and your mamma too, with great lack of delicacy, set off
telling me that her hair was like a mat on her head, and that she was
short of five foot by a wee bit. Why talk of a wee bit while she might
have said ‘a little bit,’ like every one else? She wanted to make it
touching, a regular peasant’s feeling. Can a Russian peasant be said to
feel, in comparison with an educated man? He can’t be said to have
feeling at all, in his ignorance. From my childhood up when I hear ‘a
wee bit,’ I am ready to burst with rage. I hate all Russia, Marya
Kondratyevna.”
“If you’d been a cadet in the army, or a young hussar, you wouldn’t
have talked like that, but would have drawn your saber to defend all
Russia.”
“I don’t want to be a hussar, Marya Kondratyevna, and, what’s more, I
should like to abolish all soldiers.”
“And when an enemy comes, who is going to defend us?”
“There’s no need of defense. In 1812 there was a great invasion of
Russia by Napoleon, first Emperor of the French, father of the present
one, and it would have been a good thing if they had conquered us. A
clever nation would have conquered a very stupid one and annexed it. We
should have had quite different institutions.”
“Are they so much better in their own country than we are? I wouldn’t
change a dandy I know of for three young Englishmen,” observed Marya
Kondratyevna tenderly, doubtless accompanying her words with a most
languishing glance.
“That’s as one prefers.”
“But you are just like a foreigner—just like a most gentlemanly
foreigner. I tell you that, though it makes me bashful.”
“If you care to know, the folks there and ours here are just alike in
their vice. They are swindlers, only there the scoundrel wears polished
boots and here he grovels in filth and sees no harm in it. The Russian
people want thrashing, as Fyodor Pavlovitch said very truly yesterday,
though he is mad, and all his children.”
“You said yourself you had such a respect for Ivan Fyodorovitch.”
“But he said I was a stinking lackey. He thinks that I might be unruly.
He is mistaken there. If I had a certain sum in my pocket, I would have
left here long ago. Dmitri Fyodorovitch is lower than any lackey in his
behavior, in his mind, and in his poverty. He doesn’t know how to do
anything, and yet he is respected by every one. I may be only a
soup-maker, but with luck I could open a café restaurant in Petrovka, in
Moscow, for my cookery is something special, and there’s no one in
Moscow, except the foreigners, whose cookery is anything special.
Dmitri Fyodorovitch is a beggar, but if he were to challenge the son of
the first count in the country, he’d fight him. Though in what way is
he better than I am? For he is ever so much stupider than I am. Look at
the money he has wasted without any need!”
“It must be lovely, a duel,” Marya Kondratyevna observed suddenly.
“How so?”
“It must be so dreadful and so brave, especially when young officers
with pistols in their hands pop at one another for the sake of some
lady. A perfect picture! Ah, if only girls were allowed to look on, I’d
give anything to see one!”
“It’s all very well when you are firing at some one, but when he is
firing straight in your mug, you must feel pretty silly. You’d be glad
to run away, Marya Kondratyevna.”
“You don’t mean you would run away?” But Smerdyakov did not deign to
reply. After a moment’s silence the guitar tinkled again, and he sang
again in the same falsetto:
Whatever you may say,
I shall go far away.
Life will be bright and gay
In the city far away.
I shall not grieve,
I shall not grieve at all,
I don’t intend to grieve at all.
Then something unexpected happened. Alyosha suddenly sneezed. They were
silent. Alyosha got up and walked towards them. He found Smerdyakov
dressed up and wearing polished boots, his hair pomaded, and perhaps
curled. The guitar lay on the garden-seat. His companion was the
daughter of the house, wearing a light-blue dress with a train two
yards long. She was young and would not have been bad-looking, but that
her face was so round and terribly freckled.
“Will my brother Dmitri soon be back?” asked Alyosha with as much
composure as he could.
Smerdyakov got up slowly; Marya Kondratyevna rose too.
“How am I to know about Dmitri Fyodorovitch? It’s not as if I were his
keeper,” answered Smerdyakov quietly, distinctly, and superciliously.
“But I simply asked whether you do know?” Alyosha explained.
“I know nothing of his whereabouts and don’t want to.”
“But my brother told me that you let him know all that goes on in the
house, and promised to let him know when Agrafena Alexandrovna comes.”
Smerdyakov turned a deliberate, unmoved glance upon him.
“And how did you get in this time, since the gate was bolted an hour
ago?” he asked, looking at Alyosha.
“I came in from the back-alley, over the fence, and went straight to
the summer-house. I hope you’ll forgive me,” he added, addressing Marya
Kondratyevna. “I was in a hurry to find my brother.”
“Ach, as though we could take it amiss in you!” drawled Marya
Kondratyevna, flattered by Alyosha’s apology. “For Dmitri Fyodorovitch
often goes to the summer-house in that way. We don’t know he is here
and he is sitting in the summer-house.”
“I am very anxious to find him, or to learn from you where he is now.
Believe me, it’s on business of great importance to him.”
“He never tells us,” lisped Marya Kondratyevna.
“Though I used to come here as a friend,” Smerdyakov began again,
“Dmitri Fyodorovitch has pestered me in a merciless way even here by
his incessant questions about the master. ‘What news?’ he’ll ask.
‘What’s going on in there now? Who’s coming and going?’ and can’t I
tell him something more. Twice already he’s threatened me with death.”
“With death?” Alyosha exclaimed in surprise.
“Do you suppose he’d think much of that, with his temper, which you had
a chance of observing yourself yesterday? He says if I let Agrafena
Alexandrovna in and she passes the night there, I’ll be the first to
suffer for it. I am terribly afraid of him, and if I were not even more
afraid of doing so, I ought to let the police know. God only knows what
he might not do!”
“His honor said to him the other day, ‘I’ll pound you in a mortar!’”
added Marya Kondratyevna.
“Oh, if it’s pounding in a mortar, it may be only talk,” observed
Alyosha. “If I could meet him, I might speak to him about that too.”
“Well, the only thing I can tell you is this,” said Smerdyakov, as
though thinking better of it; “I am here as an old friend and neighbor,
and it would be odd if I didn’t come. On the other hand, Ivan
Fyodorovitch sent me first thing this morning to your brother’s lodging
in Lake Street, without a letter, but with a message to Dmitri
Fyodorovitch to go to dine with him at the restaurant here, in the
market-place. I went, but didn’t find Dmitri Fyodorovitch at home,
though it was eight o’clock. ‘He’s been here, but he is quite gone,’
those were the very words of his landlady. It’s as though there was an
understanding between them. Perhaps at this moment he is in the
restaurant with Ivan Fyodorovitch, for Ivan Fyodorovitch has not been
home to dinner and Fyodor Pavlovitch dined alone an hour ago, and is
gone to lie down. But I beg you most particularly not to speak of me
and of what I have told you, for he’d kill me for nothing at all.”
“Brother Ivan invited Dmitri to the restaurant to-day?” repeated
Alyosha quickly.
“That’s so.”
“The Metropolis tavern in the market-place?”
“The very same.”
“That’s quite likely,” cried Alyosha, much excited. “Thank you,
Smerdyakov; that’s important. I’ll go there at once.”
“Don’t betray me,” Smerdyakov called after him.
“Oh, no, I’ll go to the tavern as though by chance. Don’t be anxious.”
“But wait a minute, I’ll open the gate to you,” cried Marya
Kondratyevna.
“No; it’s a short cut, I’ll get over the fence again.”
What he had heard threw Alyosha into great agitation. He ran to the
tavern. It was impossible for him to go into the tavern in his monastic
dress, but he could inquire at the entrance for his brothers and call
them down. But just as he reached the tavern, a window was flung open,
and his brother Ivan called down to him from it.
“Alyosha, can’t you come up here to me? I shall be awfully grateful.”
“To be sure I can, only I don’t quite know whether in this dress—”
“But I am in a room apart. Come up the steps; I’ll run down to meet
you.”
A minute later Alyosha was sitting beside his brother. Ivan was alone
dining.
Chapter III.
The Brothers Make Friends
Ivan was not, however, in a separate room, but only in a place shut off
by a screen, so that it was unseen by other people in the room. It was
the first room from the entrance with a buffet along the wall. Waiters
were continually darting to and fro in it. The only customer in the
room was an old retired military man drinking tea in a corner. But
there was the usual bustle going on in the other rooms of the tavern;
there were shouts for the waiters, the sound of popping corks, the
click of billiard balls, the drone of the organ. Alyosha knew that Ivan
did not usually visit this tavern and disliked taverns in general. So
he must have come here, he reflected, simply to meet Dmitri by
arrangement. Yet Dmitri was not there.
“Shall I order you fish, soup or anything. You don’t live on tea alone,
I suppose,” cried Ivan, apparently delighted at having got hold of
Alyosha. He had finished dinner and was drinking tea.
“Let me have soup, and tea afterwards, I am hungry,” said Alyosha
gayly.
“And cherry jam? They have it here. You remember how you used to love
cherry jam when you were little?”
“You remember that? Let me have jam too, I like it still.”
Ivan rang for the waiter and ordered soup, jam and tea.
“I remember everything, Alyosha, I remember you till you were eleven, I
was nearly fifteen. There’s such a difference between fifteen and
eleven that brothers are never companions at those ages. I don’t know
whether I was fond of you even. When I went away to Moscow for the
first few years I never thought of you at all. Then, when you came to
Moscow yourself, we only met once somewhere, I believe. And now I’ve
been here more than three months, and so far we have scarcely said a
word to each other. To-morrow I am going away, and I was just thinking
as I sat here how I could see you to say good-by and just then you
passed.”
“Were you very anxious to see me, then?”
“Very. I want to get to know you once for all, and I want you to know
me. And then to say good-by. I believe it’s always best to get to know