“And you’re firmly convinced that someone was sitting here?” Alyosha asked.
“On that sofa in the corner. You’d have chased him away. And you did chase him away: he disappeared as soon as you came. I love your face, Alyosha. Did you know that I love your face? And he—is me, Alyosha, me myself. All that’s low, all that’s mean and contemptible in me! Yes, I’m a ‘romantic,’ he noticed it ... though it’s a slander. He’s terribly stupid, but he makes use of it. He’s cunning, cunning as an animal, he knew how to infuriate me. He kept taunting me with believing in him and got me to listen to him that way. He hoodwinked me, like a boy. By the way, he told me a great deal that’s true about myself. I would never have said it to myself. You know, Alyosha, you know,” Ivan added, terribly seriously, and as if confidentially, “I would much prefer that he were really he and not I!”
“He has worn you out,” Alyosha said, looking at his brother with compassion.
“He taunted me! And cleverly, you know, very cleverly: ‘Conscience! What is conscience? I make it up myself. Why do I suffer then? Out of habit. Out of universal human habit over seven thousand years. So let us get out of the habit, and we shall be gods! ‘ He said that, he said that!”
“And not you, not you!” Alyosha cried irrepressibly, looking brightly at his brother. “So never mind him, drop him, and forget about him! Let him take with him all that you curse now and never come back!”
“Yes, but he’s evil! He laughed at me. He was impudent, Alyosha,” Ivan said with a shudder of offense. “He slandered me, slandered me greatly. He lied about me to my face. ‘Oh, you are going to perform a virtuous deed, you will announce that you killed your father, that the lackey killed your father at your suggestion ... !’”
“Brother,” Alyosha interrupted, “restrain yourself: you did not kill him. It’s not true!”
“He says it, he, and he knows it: ‘You are going to perform a virtuous deed, but you don’t even believe in virtue—that’s what makes you angry and torments you, that’s why you’re so vindictive.’ He said it to me about myself, and he knows what he’s saying ...”
“You are saying it, not him!” Alyosha exclaimed ruefully, “and you’re saying it because you’re sick, delirious, tormenting yourself!”
“No, he knows what he’s saying. You’re going out of pride, he says, you’ll stand up and say: ‘I killed him, and you, why are you all shrinking in horror, you’re lying! I despise your opinion, I despise your horror! ‘ He said that about me, and suddenly he said: And, you know, you want them to praise you: he’s a criminal, a murderer, but what magnanimous feelings he has, he wanted to save his brother and so he confessed!’ Now that is a lie, Alyosha!” Ivan suddenly cried, flashing his eyes. “I don’t want the stinking rabble to praise me. He lied about that, Alyosha, he lied, I swear to you! I threw a glass at him for that, and it smashed on his ugly snout.”
“Brother, calm yourself, stop!” Alyosha pleaded.
“No, he knows how to torment, he’s cruel,” Ivan went on, not listening. “All along I had a presentiment of what he came for. ‘Suppose you were to go out of pride,’ he said, ‘but still there would also be the hope that Smerdyakov would be convicted and sent to hard labor, that Mitya would be cleared, and you would be condemned only morally’ (and then he laughed, do you hear! ), ‘and some would even praise you. But now Smerdyakov is dead, he’s hanged himself—so who’s going to believe just you alone there in court? But you’ll go, you’ll go, you’ll still go, you’ve made up your mind to go. But, in that case, what are you going for? ‘ I’m afraid, Alyosha, I can’t bear such questions! Who dares ask me such questions!”
“Brother,” Alyosha interrupted, sinking with fear, but still as if hoping to bring Ivan to reason, “how could he have talked of Smerdyakov’s death with you before I came, if no one even knew of it yet, and there was no time for anyone to find out?”
“He talked of it,” Ivan said firmly, not admitting any doubt. “He talked only of that, if you like. ‘And one could understand it,’ he said, ‘if you believed in virtue: let them not believe me, I’m going for the sake of principle. But you are a little pig, like Fyodor Pavlovich, and what is virtue to you? Why drag yourself there if your sacrifice serves no purpose? Because you yourself don’t know why you’re going! Oh, you’d give a lot to know why you’re going! And do you think you’ve really decided? No, you haven’t decided yet. You’ll sit all night trying to decide whether to go or not. But you will go all the same, and you know you will go, you know yourself that no matter how much you try to decide it, the decision no longer depends on you. You will go because you don’t dare not to. Why you don’t dare—you can guess for yourself, there’s a riddle for you!’ He got up and left. You came and he left. He called me a coward, Alyosha! Le mot de l’énigme is that I’m a coward!’[329] ‘It’s not for such eagles to soar above the earth! ‘ He added that, he added that! And Smerdyakov said the same thing. He must be killed! Katya despises me, I’ve seen that already for a month, and Liza will also begin to despise me! ‘You’re going in order to be praised’—that’s a beastly lie! And you, too, despise me, Alyosha. Now I’ll start hating you again. I hate the monster, too, I hate the monster! I don’t want to save the monster, let him rot at hard labor! He’s singing a hymn! Oh, tomorrow I’ll go, stand before them, and spit in all their faces!”
He jumped up in a frenzy, threw off the towel, and began pacing the room again. Alyosha recalled what he had just said: “It’s as if I’m awake in my sleep ... I walk, talk, and see, yet I’m asleep.” That was precisely what seemed to be happening now. Alyosha stayed with him. The thought flashed in him to run and fetch a doctor, but he was afraid to leave his brother alone: there was no one to entrust him to. At last Ivan began gradually to lose all consciousness. He went on talking, talked incessantly, but now quite incoherently. He even enunciated his words poorly, and suddenly he staggered badly on his feet. But Alyosha managed to support him. Ivan allowed himself to be taken to bed. Alyosha somehow undressed him and laid him down. He sat over him for two hours more. The sick man lay fast asleep, without moving, breathing softly and evenly. Alyosha took a pillow and lay down on the sofa without undressing. As he was falling asleep he prayed for Mitya and Ivan. He was beginning to understand Ivan’s illness: “The torments of a proud decision, a deep conscience!” God, in whom he did not believe, and his truth were overcoming his heart, which still did not want to submit. “Yes,” it passed through Alyosha’s head, which was already lying on the pillow, “yes, with Smerdyakov dead, no one will believe Ivan’s testimony; but he will go and testify!” Alyosha smiled gently: “God will win!” he thought. “He will either rise into the light of truth, or ... perish in hatred, taking revenge on himself and everyone for having served something he does not believe in,” Alyosha added bitterly, and again prayed for Ivan.
BOOK XII: A JUDICIAL ERROR
Chapter 1: The Fatal Day
The day after the events just described, at ten o’clock in the morning, our district court opened its session and the trial of Dmitri Karamazov began.
I will say beforehand, and say emphatically, that I am far from considering myself capable of recounting all that took place in court, not only with the proper fullness, but even in the proper order. I keep thinking that if one were to recall everything and explain everything as one ought, it would fill a whole book, even quite a large one. Therefore let no one grumble if I tell only that which struck me personally and which I have especially remembered. I may have taken secondary things for the most important, and even overlooked the most prominent and necessary features ... But anyway I see that it is better not to apologize. I shall do what I can, and my readers will see for themselves that I have done all I could.