“This Trifon,” Mitya began speaking nervously, “Borisich, I mean, has destroyed his whole inn, they say: he’s taking up the floorboards, ripping out planks, they say he’s broken his ‘verander’ to bits—looking for treasure all the time, for the money, the fifteen hundred the prosecutor said I’d hidden there. They say he started this lunacy as soon as he got back. Serves the swindler right! The guard here told me yesterday; he comes from there.”
“Listen,” said Alyosha, “she will come, but I don’t know when, maybe today, maybe one of these days, that I don’t know, but she will come, she will, it’s certain.”
Mitya started, was about to say something, but remained silent. The news affected him terribly. One could see that he painfully wanted to know the details of the conversation, but once again he was afraid to ask: anything cruel and contemptuous from Katya at that moment would have been like the stab of a knife.
“She told me this, by the way: that I must absolutely set your conscience at rest concerning the escape. Even if Ivan has not recovered by that time, she will take care of it herself.”
“You already told me that,” Mitya observed pensively. “And you already passed it on to Grusha,” observed Alyosha.
“Yes,” Mitya confessed. “She won’t come this morning,” he looked timidly at his brother. “She will only come in the evening. She didn’t say anything yesterday when I told her Katya was taking charge of it; but her lips twisted. She just whispered: ‘Let her! ‘ She understood the importance of it. I was afraid to dig any deeper. She does seem to understand now that the other one loves Ivan and not me.”
“Does she?” escaped from Alyosha.
“Maybe she doesn’t. Only she won’t come this morning,” Mitya hastened to stress again, “I gave her an errand ... Listen, brother Ivan will surpass us all. It’s for him to live, not us. He will recover.”
“You know, though Katya trembles for him, she has almost no doubt that he will recover,” said Alyosha.
“That means she’s convinced he will die. It’s fear that makes her so sure he’ll recover.”
“Our brother has a strong constitution. And I, too, have every hope that he will recover,” Alyosha observed anxiously.
“Yes, he will recover. But she’s convinced he will die. She has so much grief ...”
There was silence. Something very important was tormenting Mitya.
“Alyosha, I love Grusha terribly,” he said suddenly in a trembling, tear-filled voice.
“They won’t let her go to you there,” Alyosha picked up at once.
“And here’s something else I wanted to tell you,” Mitya continued in a suddenly ringing voice, “if they start beating me on the way, or there, I won’t let them, I’ll kill someone, and they’ll shoot me. And it’s for twenty years! They’ve already started talking down to me here. The guards talk down to me. I was lying here all last night judging myself: I’m not ready! Not strong enough to take it! I wanted to sing a ‘hymn,’ yet I can’t stand the guards’ talking down to me! I’d endure everything for Grusha, everything ... except beatings, that is ... But they won’t let her go there.”
Alyosha smiled quietly.
“Listen, brother, once and for all,” he said, “here are my thoughts about it. And you know very well I won’t lie to you. Listen, then: you’re not ready, and such a cross is not for you. Moreover, unready as you are, you don’t need such a great martyr’s cross. If you had killed father, I would regret that you rejected your cross. But you’re innocent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to regenerate another man in yourself through suffering; I say just remember that other man always, all your life, and wherever you escape to— and that is enough for you. That you did not accept that great cross will only serve to make you feel a still greater duty in yourself, and through this constant feeling from now on, all your life, you will do more for your regeneration, perhaps, than if you went there. Because there you will not endure, you will begin to murmur, and in the end you may really say: ‘I am quits.’ The attorney was right about that. Heavy burdens are not for everyone, for some they are impossible ... These are my thoughts, if you need them so much. If others had to answer for your escape—officers, soldiers—then I ‘would not allow’ you to flee,” Alyosha smiled. “But they tell me and assure me (the head man there told Ivan himself) that if it’s managed well, there won’t be much penalty, and they can get off lightly. Of course, bribery is dishonest even in this case, but I wouldn’t make myself a judge here for anything, since, as a matter of fact, if Ivan and Katya asked me to take charge of it for you, for example, I know I would go and bribe; I must tell you the whole truth here. And therefore I am no judge of you in how you yourself act. But know, too, that I will never condemn you. And it would be strange, wouldn’t it, for me to be your judge in these things? Well, I think I’ve covered everything.”
“But I will condemn myself!” exclaimed Mitya. “I will run away, that’s already been decided without you: how could Mitka Karamazov not run away? But I will condemn myself in return, and sit there praying for my sin forever! This is how the Jesuits talk, right? The way you and I are talking now, eh?”
“Right,” Alyosha smiled quietly.
“I love you for always telling the whole complete truth and never hiding anything!” Mitya exclaimed, laughing joyfully. “So I’ve caught my Alyoshka being a Jesuit! You deserve kissing for that, that’s what! So, now listen to the rest, I’ll unfold the remaining half of my soul to you. This is what I’ve thought up and decided: if I do run away, even with money and a passport, and even to America, I still take heart from the thought that I will not be running to any joy or happiness, but truly to another penal servitude, maybe no better than this one! No better, Alexei, I tell you truly, no better! This America, devil take it, I hate it already! So Grusha will be with me, but look at her: is she an American woman? She’s Russian, every little bone of her is Russian, she’ll pine for her native land, and I’ll see all the time that she’s pining away for my sake, that she has taken up such a cross for my sake, and what has she done wrong? And I, will I be able to stand the local rabble, though every last one of them may be better than I am? I hate this America even now! And maybe every last one of them is some sort of boundless machinist or whatever—but, devil take them, they’re not my people, not of my soul! I love Russia, Alexei, I love the Russian God, though I myself am a scoundrel! But there I’ll just croak!” he exclaimed suddenly, flashing his eyes. His voice was trembling with tears.
“So this is what I’ve decided, Alexei, listen!” he began again, suppressing his excitement. “Grusha and I will arrive there—and there we’ll immediately set to work, digging the land, with the wild bears, in solitude, in some remote place. Surely there must be some remote places there. People say there are still redskins there, somewhere on the edge of the horizon, so we’ll go to that edge, to the last Mohicans.[361] And we’ll immediately start on the grammar, Grusha and I. Work and grammar—about three years like that. In three years we’ll learn Engullish as well as any downright Englishman. And as soon as we’ve learned it—good-bye America! We’ll flee here, to Russia, as American citizens. Don’t worry, we won’t come to this little town. We’ll hide somewhere far away, in the north or the south. I’ll have changed by then, and so will she; a doctor there, in America, will fabricate some kind of wart for me; it’s not for nothing they’re all mechanics. Or else I’ll blind myself in one eye, let my beard grow a yard long, a gray beard (I’ll go gray thinking of Russia), and maybe they won’t recognize me. And if they do, worse luck, let them exile me, I don’t care. Here, too, we’ll dig the land somewhere in the wilderness, and I’ll pretend to be an American all my life. But we will die in our native land. That’s my plan, and it will not be changed. Do you approve?”