“It’s cognac!” Mitya laughed loudly. “I see your look: ‘He’s drinking again! ‘ Do not believe the phantom.
Do not believe the empty, lying crowd, Forget your doubts . . . [80]
I’m not drinking, I’m just relishing, as that pig of yours, Rakitin, says; and he’ll become a state councillor and still say ‘relishing.’ Sit down. I could take you, Alyoshka, and press you to my heart until I crushed you, for in all the world ... I really ... re-al-ly ... (understand?) ... love only you!”
He spoke this last line almost in a sort of ecstasy.
“Only you, and also one other, a ‘low woman’ I’ve fallen in love with and it was the end of me. But to fall in love does not mean to love. One can fall in love and still hate. Remember that! I say it now while there’s still joy in it. Sit down here at the table, I’ll be right beside you, and I’ll look at you and go on talking. You’ll keep quiet and I’ll keep talking, for the time has come. And by the way, you know, I’ve decided we really ought to speak softly, because here ... here ... the most unexpected ears may turn up. I’ll explain everything: sequel to follow, as they say. Why was I longing for you, thirsting for you now, all these days and now? (It’s five days since I dropped anchor here.) Why all these days? Because I’ll tell everything to you alone, because it’s necessary, because you’re necessary, because tomorrow I’ll fall from the clouds, because tomorrow life will end and begin. Have you ever felt, have you ever dreamed that you were falling off a mountain into a deep pit? Well, I’m falling now, and not in a dream. And I’m not afraid, and don’t you be afraid either. That is, I am afraid, but I’m delighted! That is, not delighted, but ecstatic ... Oh, to hell with it, it’s all the same, whatever it is. Strong spirit, weak spirit, woman’s spirit—whatever it is! Let us praise nature: see how the sun shines, how clear the sky is, the leaves are all green, it’s still summer, four o’clock in the afternoon, so calm! Where were you going?”
“To father’s, but first I wanted to stop and see Katerina Ivanovna.”
“To her, and to father! Whew! A coincidence! Why was I calling you, wishing for you, why was I longing and thirsting for you with every curve of my soul and even with my ribs? Because I wanted to send you precisely to father, and then to her as well, to Katerina Ivanovna, to have done with her and with father. To send an angel. I could have sent anybody, but I need to send an angel. And here you are going to her and father yourself.”
“Did you really want to send me?” Alyosha let fall, with a pained expression on his face.
“Wait! You knew it! And I see that you understood everything at once. But not a word, not a word now. Don’t pity me, and don’t cry!”
Dmitri Fyodorovich stood up, thought for a moment, and put his finger to his forehead:
“She sent for you herself, she wrote you a letter or something like that, and that’s why you were going to see her, otherwise why would you go?”
“Here’s the note.” Alyosha took it from his pocket. Mitya quickly read it over.
“And you were going the back way! Oh, gods! I thank you that you sent him the back way and he got caught, like the golden fish in the tale who gets caught by an old fool of a fisherman. [81]Listen, Alyosha, listen, brother! Now I’m going to tell you everything. For I surely must tell at least somebody. I’ve already told it to an angel in heaven, but I must also tell it to an angel on earth. You are the angel on earth. You will listen, you will judge, and you will forgive ... And that is what I need, that someone higher forgive me. Listen: if two beings suddenly break away from everything earthly and fly off into the extraordinary, or at least one of them does, and before that, as he flies off or perishes, he comes to someone else and says: do this or that for me, something that one would never ask of anybody except on one’s deathbed—can that person refuse to do it ... if he’s a friend, a brother?”
“I’ll do it, but tell me what it is, and quickly,” said Alyosha.
“Quickly ... Hm. Don’t be in a hurry, Alyosha: you hurry and worry. There’s no rush now. Now the world has come out onto a new street. Hey, Alyosha, it’s a pity you never hit on ecstasy! But what am I saying? As if you hadn’t hit on it! What a babbler I am:
= man, be noble!
Whose line is that?” [82]
Alyosha decided to wait. He realized that all his business was now, indeed, perhaps only here. Mitya thought for a moment, leaning his elbow on the table and resting his head in his hand. Both were silent.
“Lyosha,” said Mitya, “you alone will not laugh. I wanted to begin ... my confession ... with Schiller’s hymn to joy. An die Freude! [83]But I don’t know German, I only know it’s An die Freude.And don’t think this is drunken nonsense. I’m not drunk at all. Cognac is cognac, but I need two bottles to get drunk—
And a ruddy-mugged Silenus Riding a stumbling ass— [84]
and I haven’t drunk even a quarter of a bottle, and I’m not Silenus. Not Silenus, but not silent either, because I’m telling you I’ve made a decision forever. Forgive the pun; you’ll have to forgive me a lot more than puns today. Don’t worry, I’m not losing the point, I’m talking business, and I’ll get to business at once. I won’t leave you hanging. Wait, how does it go ... ?”
He raised his head, thought for a moment, and suddenly began ecstatically:
Darkly hid in cave and cleft
Shy, the troglodyte abode; Earth a waste was found and left
Where the wandering nomad strode: Deadly with the spear and shaft,
Prowled the hunter through the land; Woe to the stranger waves may waft
On an ever-fatal strand!
Thus was all to Ceres, when Searching for her ravish’d child
(No green culture smiling then),
O’er the drear coast bleak and wild,
Never shelter did she gain,
Never friendly threshold trod;
All unbuilded then the fane,
All unheeded then the god!
Not with golden corn-ears strew’d
Were the ghastly altar stones; Bleaching there, and gore-imbued,
Lay unhallow’d human bones! Wide and far, where’er she roved,
Still reign’d Misery over all; And her mighty soul was moved At man’s universal fall. [85]
Sobs suddenly burst from Mitya’s breast. He seized Alyosha’s hand. “My friend, my friend, still fallen, still fallen even now. There’s so terribly much suffering for man on earth, so terribly much grief for him! Don’t think I’m just a brute of an officer who drinks cognac and goes whoring. No, brother, I hardly think of anything else, of anything but that fallen man, if only I’m not lying now. God keep me from lying, and from praising myself! I think about that man, because I myself am such a man.
That men to man again may soar,
Let man and Earth with one another Make a compact evermore—
Man the son, and Earth the mother ... [86]
There’s just one thing: how can I make a compact with the earth evermore? I don’t kiss the earth, I don’t tear open her bosom; what should I do, become a peasant or a shepherd? I keep going, and I don’t know: have I gotten into stench and shame, or into light and joy? That’s the whole trouble, because everything on earth is a riddle. And whenever I happened to sink into the deepest, the very deepest shame of depravity (and that’s all I ever happened to do), I always read that poem about Ceres and man. Did it set me right? Never! Because I’m a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn. Let me be cursed, let me be base and vile, but let me also kiss the hem of that garment in which my God is clothed; let me be following the devil at the same time, but still I am also your son, Lord, and I love you, and I feel a joy without which the world cannot stand and be.