“I do,” said Alyosha, not wishing to contradict him.
Mitya fell silent for a moment, and said suddenly:
“And how they set me up in court! They really set me up!”
“Even if they hadn’t set you up, you’d have been convicted anyway,” Alyosha said, sighing.
“Yes, the local public is sick of me! God help them, but it’s a heavy thing!” Mitya groaned with suffering.
Again they fell silent for a moment.
“Put me out of my misery, Alyosha!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Is she coming now or not, tell me! What did she say? How did she say it?”
“She said she would come, but I don’t know about today. It’s really hard for her!” Alyosha looked timidly at his brother.
“Of course it is, of course it’s hard for her! Alyosha, this is driving me crazy. Grusha keeps looking at me. She knows. Lord God, humble me: what am I asking for? I’m asking for Katya! Do I realize what I am asking? This impious Karamazov unrestraint! No, I’m not fit for suffering! A scoundrel, that says it all!”
“Here she is!” exclaimed Alyosha.
At that moment Katya suddenly appeared in the doorway. She stopped for a second, gazing at Mitya with a sort of lost expression. He jumped impetuously to his feet, a frightened look came to his face, he turned pale, but at once a shy, pleading smile flashed on his lips, and suddenly, irrepressibly, he reached out to Katya with both hands. Seeing this, she rushed impetuously to him. She seized his hands and almost by force sat him down on the bed, sat down beside him, and, still holding his hands, kept squeezing them strongly, convulsively. Several times they both tried to say something, but checked themselves and again sat silently, their eyes as if fastened on each other, gazing at each other with a strange smile; thus about two minutes passed.
“Have you forgiven or not?” Mitya murmured at last, and at the same moment, turning to Alyosha, his face distorted with joy, he cried to him:
“Do you hear what I’m asking, do you hear?”
“That’s why I loved you, for your magnanimous heart!” escaped suddenly from Katya. “And you do not need my forgiveness, nor I yours; it’s all the same whether you forgive or not, all my life you will remain a wound in my soul, and I in yours—that’s how it should be ... ,” she stopped to catch her breath.
“Why have I come?” she began again, frenziedly and hastily. “To embrace your feet, to squeeze your hands, like this, till it hurts—remember how I used to squeeze them in Moscow?—to say to you that you are my God, my joy, to tell you that I love you madly,” she nearly groaned from suffering, and suddenly, greedily pressed her lips to his hand. Tears streamed from her eyes.
Alyosha stood speechless and embarrassed; he had never expected to see what he was seeing.
“Love is gone, Mitya!” Katya began again, “but what is gone is painfully dear to me. Know that, for all eternity. But now, for one minute, let it be as it might have been,” she prattled with a twisted smile, again looking joyfully into his eyes. “You now love another, I love another, but still I shall love you eternally, and you me, did you know that? Love me, do you hear, love me all your life!” she exclaimed with some sort of almost threatening tremor in her voice.
“I shall love you, and ... you know, Katya,” Mitya also began to speak, catching his breath at each word, “five days ago, that evening, you know, I loved you ... When you collapsed, and they carried you out ... All my life! It will be so, eternally so...”
Thus they prattled to each other, and their talk was frantic, almost senseless, and perhaps also not even truthful, but at that moment everything was truth, and they both utterly believed what they were saying.
“Katya,” Mitya suddenly exclaimed, “do you believe I killed him? I know you don’t believe it now, but then ... when you were testifying ... Did you, did you really believe it!”
“I did not believe it then either! I never believed it! I hated you, and suddenly I persuaded myself, for that moment ... While I was testifying ... I persuaded myself and believed it. . . and as soon as I finished testifying, I stopped believing it again. You must know all that. I forgot that I came here to punish myself!” she said with some suddenly quite new expression, quite unlike her prattling of love just a moment before.
“It’s hard for you, woman!” suddenly escaped somehow quite unrestrainably from Mitya.
“Let me go,” she whispered, “I’ll come again, it’s hard now...!”
She got up from her place, but suddenly gave a loud cry and drew back. All at once, though very quietly, Grushenka came into the room. No one was expecting her. Katya stepped swiftly towards the door, but, coming up with Grushenka, she suddenly stopped, turned white as chalk, and softly, almost in a whisper, moaned to her:
“Forgive me!”
The other woman stared her in the face and, pausing for a moment, answered in a venomous voice, poisoned with wickedness:
“We are wicked, sister, you and I! We’re both wicked! It’s not for us to forgive! Save him, and I’ll pray to you all my life.”
“You don’t want to forgive!” Mitya cried to Grushenka with wild reproach.
“Don’t worry, I’ll save him for you!” Katya whispered quickly, and she ran out of the room.
“But how could you not forgive her, after she herself said ‘Forgive me’ to you?” Mitya again exclaimed bitterly.
“Mitya, do not dare to reproach her, you have no right!” Alyosha shouted hotly at his brother.
“It was her proud lips speaking, not her heart,” Grushenka said with a sort of loathing. “If she delivers you—I’ll forgive everything...”
She fell silent, as if she had quelled something in her soul. She still could not recover herself. She had come in, as it turned out later, quite by chance, suspecting nothing, and not at all expecting to meet what she met.
“Alyosha, run after her!” Mitya turned swiftly to his brother, “tell her ... I don’t know what ... don’t let her go away like that!”
“I’ll come to you before evening!” cried Alyosha, and he ran after Katya. He caught up with her outside the hospital gate. She was walking briskly, hurrying, but as soon as Alyosha caught up with her, she quickly said to him:
“No, I cannot punish myself before that one! I said ‘forgive me’ to her because I wanted to punish myself to the end. She did not forgive ... I love her for that!” Katya added in a distorted voice, and her eyes flashed with savage wickedness.
“My brother did not expect her at all,” Alyosha began muttering, “he was sure she would not come ...”
“No doubt. Let’s drop it,” she cut him short. “Listen: I can’t go with you to the funeral now. I sent them flowers for the coffin. They still have money, I think. If need be, tell them that in the future I shall never abandon them ... Well, leave me now, please leave me. You’re late going there as it is, they’re already ringing for the late service ... Leave me, please!”
Chapter 3: Ilyushechka’s Funeral. The Speech at the Stone
Indeed, he was late. They had waited for him and even decided finally to carry the pretty little coffin, all decked with flowers, to the church without him. It was the coffin of the poor little boy Ilyushechka. He had died two days after Mitya was sentenced. At the gate of the house Alyosha was met by the shouts of the boys, Ilyusha’s comrades. They had been waiting impatiently for him and were glad that he had come at last. There were about twelve boys altogether, all with their satchels and shoulder bags. “Papa will cry, be with papa,” was Ilyusha’s dying wish, and the boys remembered it. At their head was Kolya Krasotkin.