“If you want to talk to me about something, please change the subject,” he said suddenly.
“Here, so that I don’t forget, is a letter for you,” Alyosha said timidly, and, pulling Liza’s letter from his pocket, he handed it to him. Just then they came up to a streetlamp. Ivan recognized the hand at once.
“Ah, it’s from that little demon!” he laughed maliciously, and, without unsealing the envelope, he suddenly tore it into several pieces and tossed them to the wind. The scraps flew all over.
“She’s not yet sixteen, I believe, and already offering herself!” he said contemptuously, and started down the street again.
“What do you mean, offering herself?” Alyosha exclaimed.
“You know, the way loose women offer themselves.”
“No, no, Ivan, don’t say that!” Alyosha pleaded ruefully and ardently. “She’s a child, you’re offending a child! She’s ill, she’s very ill; she, too, may be losing her mind ... I had no choice but to give you her letter ... I wanted, on the contrary, to hear something from you ... to save her.”
“You’ll hear nothing from me. If she’s a child, I’m not her nanny. Keep still, Alexei. Don’t go on. I’m not even thinking about it.”
They again fell silent for a minute or so.
“She’ll be praying all night now to the Mother of God, to show her how to act at the trial tomorrow,” he suddenly spoke again, sharply and spitefully.
“You ... you mean Katerina Ivanovna?”
“Yes. Whether to come as Mitenka’s savior, or as his destroyer. She will pray for her soul to be illumined. She doesn’t know yet, you see, she hasn’t managed to prepare herself. She, too, takes me for a nanny, she wants me to coo over her!”
“Katerina Ivanovna loves you, brother,” Alyosha said sorrowfully.
“Maybe. Only I don’t fancy her.”
“She’s suffering. Why, then, do you ... sometimes ... say things to her that give her hope?” Alyosha went on, with timid reproach. “I know you used to give her hope—forgive me for talking like this,” he added.
“I cannot act as I ought to here, break it off and tell her directly!” Ivan said irritably. “I must wait until they pass sentence on the murderer. If I break off with her now, she’ll take vengeance on me by destroying the scoundrel in court tomorrow, because she hates him and she knows she hates him. There are nothing but lies here, lie upon lie! But now, as long as I haven’t broken off with her, she still has hopes, and will not destroy the monster, knowing how much I want to get him out of trouble. Oh, when will that cursed sentence come!”
The words “murderer” and “monster” echoed painfully in Alyosha’s heart.
“But in what way can she destroy our brother?” he asked, pondering Ivan’s words. “What testimony can she give that would destroy Mitya outright?”
“You don’t know about it yet. She has hold of a document, in Mitenka’s own hand, which proves mathematically that he killed Fyodor Pavlovich.”
“That can’t be!” Alyosha exclaimed.
“Why can’t it? I’ve read it myself.”
“There can be no such document!” Alyosha repeated hotly. “There cannot be, because he is not the murderer. It was not he who murdered father, not he!”
Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly stopped.
“Then who is the murderer, in your opinion ?” he asked somehow with obvious coldness,[299] and a certain haughty note even sounded in the tone of the question.
“You know who,” Alyosha said softly, and with emotion.
“Who? You mean that fable about the mad epileptic idiot? About Smerdyakov?”
Alyosha suddenly felt himself trembling all over.
“You know who,” escaped him helplessly. He was breathless.
“Who? Who?” Ivan cried almost fiercely now. All his reserve suddenly vanished.
“I know only one thing,” Alyosha said, still in the same near whisper. “It was not you who killed father.”
“‘Not you’! What do you mean by ‘not you’?” Ivan was dumbfounded.
“It was not you who killed father, not you!” Alyosha repeated firmly.
The silence lasted for about half a minute.
“But I know very well it was not me—are you raving? “ Ivan said with a pale and crooked grin. His eyes were fastened, as it were, on Alyosha. The two were again standing under a streetlamp.
“No, Ivan, you’ve told yourself several times that you were the murderer.”
“When did I ... ? I was in Moscow ... When did I say so?” Ivan stammered, completely at a loss.
“You’ve said it to yourself many times while you were alone during these two horrible months,” Alyosha continued as softly and distinctly as before. But he was now speaking not of himself, as it were, not of his own will, but obeying some sort of irresistible command. “You’ve accused yourself and confessed to yourself that you and you alone are the murderer. But it was not you who killed him, you are mistaken, the murderer was not you, do you hear, it was not you! God has sent me to tell you that.”
They both fell silent. For a whole, long minute the silence continued. They both stood there looking into each other’s eyes. They were both pale. Suddenly Ivan began shaking all over and gripped Alyosha hard by the shoulder.
“You were in my room!” he uttered in a rasping whisper. “You were in my room at night when he came ... Confess ... you saw him, didn’t you?”
“Who are you talking about ... Mitya?” Alyosha asked in bewilderment.
“Not him—devil take the monster!” Ivan shouted frenziedly. “Can you possibly know that he’s been coming to me? How did you find out? Speak!”
“Who is he? I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Alyosha murmured, frightened now.
“No, you do know ... otherwise how could you ... it’s impossible that you don’t know ...”
But suddenly he seemed to check himself. He stood and seemed to be thinking something over. A strange grin twisted his lips.
“Brother,” Alyosha began again, in a trembling voice, “I’ve said this to you because you will believe my word, I know it. I’ve spoken this word to you for the whole of your life: it was not you! Do you hear? For the whole of your life. And it is God who has put it into my heart to say this to you, even if you were to hate me forever after ...”
But Ivan Fyodorovich had now apparently managed to regain control of himself.
“Alexei Fyodorovich,” he spoke with a cold smile, “I cannot bear prophets and epileptics, messengers from God especially, you know that only too well. From this moment on I am breaking with you, and, I suppose, forever. I ask you to leave me this instant, at this very crossroads. Besides, your way home is down this lane. Beware especially of coming to me today! Do you hear?”
He turned and walked straight off, with firm steps, not looking back.
“Brother,” Alyosha called after him, “if anything happens to you today, think of me first of all...!”
But Ivan did not answer. Alyosha stood at the crossroads under the street-lamp until Ivan disappeared completely into the darkness. Then he turned down the lane and slowly made his way home. He and Ivan lived separately, in different lodgings: neither of them wanted to live in the now empty house of Fyodor Pavlovich. Alyosha rented a furnished room with a family of tradespeople; and Ivan Fyodorovich lived quite far from him, and occupied a spacious and rather comfortable apartment in the wing of a good house belonging to the well-to-do widow of an official. But his only servant in the whole wing was an ancient, completely deaf old woman, rheumatic all over, who went to bed at six o’clock in the evening and got up at six o’clock in the morning. Ivan Fyodorovich had become undemanding to a strange degree during those two months and liked very much to be left completely alone. He even tidied the one room he occupied himself; as for the other rooms in his lodgings, he rarely even went into them. Having come up to the gates of his house, and with his hand already on the bell, he stopped. He felt himself still trembling all over with a spiteful trembling. He suddenly let go of the bell, spat, turned around, and quickly went off again to quite a different, opposite end of town, about a mile and a half from his apartment, to a tiny, lopsided log house, the present lodgings of Maria Kondratievna, formerly Fyodor Pavlovich’s neighbor, who used to come to Fyodor Pavlovich’s kitchen to get soup and to whom Smerdyakov, in those days, used to sing his songs and play on the guitar. She had sold her former house, and now lived with her mother in what was almost a hut, and the sick, nearly dying Smerdyakov had been living with them ever since Fyodor Pavlovich’s death. It was to him that Ivan Fyodorovich now directed his steps, drawn by a sudden and irresistible consideration.