The Brothers Karamazov

“On the contrary, I am very pleased. I’ve just been thinking over for the thirtieth time how good it is that I refused you and am not going to be your wife. You’re unfit to be a husband: I’d marry you, and suddenly give you a note to take to someone I’d have fallen in love with after you, and you would take it and make sure to deliver it, and even bring back the reply. And you’d be forty years old and still carrying such notes.”

She suddenly laughed.

“There is something wicked and guileless about you at the same time,” Alyosha smiled at her.

“What’s guileless is that I’m not ashamed with you. Moreover, not only am I not ashamed, but I do not want to be ashamed, precisely before you, precisely with you. Alyosha, why don’t I respect you? I love you very much, but I don’t respect you. If I respected you, I wouldn’t talk like this without being ashamed, would I?”

“That’s true.”

“And do you believe that I’m not ashamed with you?”

“No, I don’t.”

Liza again laughed nervously; she was talking rapidly, quickly.

“I sent some candy to your brother, Dmitri Fyodorovich, in prison. Alyosha, you know, you are so nice! I will love you terribly for allowing me not to love you so soon.”

“Why did you send for me today, Lise?”

“I wanted to tell you a wish of mine. I want someone to torment me, to marry me and then torment me, deceive me, leave me and go away. I don’t want to be happy!”

“You’ve come to love disorder?”

“Ah, I want disorder. I keep wanting to set fire to the house. I imagine how I’ll sneak up and set fire to it on the sly, it must be on the sly. They’ll try to put it out, but it will go on burning. And I’ll know and say nothing. Ah, what foolishness! And so boring!”

She waved her hand in disgust.

“It’s your rich life,” Alyosha said softly.

“Why, is it better to be poor?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Your deceased monk filled you with all that. It’s not true. Let me be rich and everyone else poor, I’ll eat candy and drink cream, and I won’t give any to any of them. Ah, don’t speak, don’t say anything,” she waved her hand, though Alyosha had not even opened his mouth, “you’ve told me all that before, I know it all by heart. Boring. If I’m ever poor, I’ll kill somebody—and maybe I’ll kill somebody even if I’m rich—why just sit there? But, you know, what I want is to reap, to reap the rye. I’ll marry you, and you’ll become a peasant, a real peasant, we’ll keep a colt, would you like that? Do you know Kalganov?”

“Yes.”

“He walks about and dreams. He says: why live in reality, it’s better to dream. One can dream up the gayest things, but to live is boring. And yet he’s going to marry soon, he’s even made me a declaration of love. Do you know how to spin a top?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he’s like a top: spin him and set him down and then whip, whip, whip: I’ll marry him and keep him spinning all his life. Are you ashamed to sit with me?”

“No.”

“You’re terribly angry that I don’t talk about holy things. I don’t want to be holy. What will they do in that world for the greatest sin? You must know exactly.”

“God will judge,” Alyosha was studying her intently.

“That’s just how I want it to be. I’ll come, and they will judge me, and suddenly I’ll laugh them all in the face. I want terribly to set fire to the house, Alyosha, to our house—you still don’t believe me?”

“Why shouldn’t I? There are even children, about twelve years old, who want very much to set fire to something, and they do set fire to things. It’s a sort of illness.”

“That’s wrong, wrong; maybe there are children, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“You take evil for good, it’s a momentary crisis, perhaps it comes from your former illness.”

“So, after all, you do despise me! I just don’t want to do good, I want to do evil, and illness has nothing to do with it.”

“Why do evil?”

“So that there will be nothing left anywhere. Ah, how good it would be if there were nothing left! You know, Alyosha, I sometimes think about doing an awful lot of evil, all sorts of nasty things, and I’d be doing them on the sly for a long time, and suddenly everyone would find out. They would all surround me and point their fingers at me, and I would look at them all. That would be very pleasant. Why would it be so pleasant, Alyosha?”

“Who knows? The need to smash something good, or, as you said, to set fire to something. That also happens.”

“But I’m not just saying it, I’ll do it, too.”

“I believe you.”

“Ah, how I love you for saying you believe me. And you’re not lying at all, not at all. But maybe you think I’m saying all this on purpose, just to tease you?”

“No, I don’t think that. . . though maybe there’s a little of that need, too.”

“There is a little. I can never lie to you,” she said, her eyes flashing with some sort of fire.

Alyosha was struck most of all by her seriousness: not a shadow of laughter or playfulness was left on her face, though before gaiety and playfulness had not abandoned her even in her most “serious” moments.

“There are moments when people love crime,” Alyosha said pensively.