The Brothers Karamazov

“I’ve been to see Smerdyakov ... It was you, you who convinced me that he is a parricide. I believed only you, my dear!” she went on, still addressing Ivan Fyodorovich. The latter smiled as if with difficulty. Alyosha was startled to hear this “my dear.” He would not even have suspected they were on such terms.^[298]

“Well, enough, in any case,” Ivan snapped. “I’m going. I’ll come tomorrow.” And turning at once, he left the room and went straight to the stairs. Katerina Ivanovna, with a sort of imperious gesture, suddenly seized Alyosha by both hands.

“Go after him! Catch up with him! Don’t leave him alone for a minute!” she whispered rapidly. “He’s mad. Did you know he’s gone mad? He has a fever, a nervous fever! The doctor told me. Go, run after him...”

Alyosha jumped up and rushed after Ivan Fyodorovich. He was not even fifty paces away.

“What do you want?” he suddenly turned to Alyosha, seeing that he was catching up with him. “She told you to run after me because I’m crazy. I know it all by heart,” he added irritably.

“She’s mistaken, of course, but she’s right that you are ill,” said Alyosha. “I was looking at your face just now, when we were there; you look very ill, really, Ivan!”

Ivan walked on without stopping. Alyosha followed him.

“And do you know, Alexei Fyodorovich, just how one loses one’s mind?” Ivan asked in a voice suddenly quite soft, quite unirritated now, in which suddenly the most ingenuous curiosity could be heard. “No, I don’t know; I suppose there are many different kinds of madness.”

“And can one observe oneself losing one’s mind?”

“I think it must be impossible to watch oneself in such a case,” Alyosha answered with surprise. Ivan fell silent for half a minute.

“If you want to talk to me about something, please change the subject,” he said suddenly.

“Here, so that I don’t forget, is a letter for you,” Alyosha said timidly, and, pulling Liza’s letter from his pocket, he handed it to him. Just then they came up to a streetlamp. Ivan recognized the hand at once.

“Ah, it’s from that little demon!” he laughed maliciously, and, without unsealing the envelope, he suddenly tore it into several pieces and tossed them to the wind. The scraps flew all over.

“She’s not yet sixteen, I believe, and already offering herself!” he said contemptuously, and started down the street again.

“What do you mean, offering herself?” Alyosha exclaimed.

“You know, the way loose women offer themselves.”

“No, no, Ivan, don’t say that!” Alyosha pleaded ruefully and ardently. “She’s a child, you’re offending a child! She’s ill, she’s very ill; she, too, may be losing her mind ... I had no choice but to give you her letter ... I wanted, on the contrary, to hear something from you ... to save her.”

“You’ll hear nothing from me. If she’s a child, I’m not her nanny. Keep still, Alexei. Don’t go on. I’m not even thinking about it.”

They again fell silent for a minute or so.

“She’ll be praying all night now to the Mother of God, to show her how to act at the trial tomorrow,” he suddenly spoke again, sharply and spitefully.

“You ... you mean Katerina Ivanovna?”

“Yes. Whether to come as Mitenka’s savior, or as his destroyer. She will pray for her soul to be illumined. She doesn’t know yet, you see, she hasn’t managed to prepare herself. She, too, takes me for a nanny, she wants me to coo over her!”

“Katerina Ivanovna loves you, brother,” Alyosha said sorrowfully.

“Maybe. Only I don’t fancy her.”

“She’s suffering. Why, then, do you ... sometimes ... say things to her that give her hope?” Alyosha went on, with timid reproach. “I know you used to give her hope—forgive me for talking like this,” he added.

“I cannot act as I ought to here, break it off and tell her directly!” Ivan said irritably. “I must wait until they pass sentence on the murderer. If I break off with her now, she’ll take vengeance on me by destroying the scoundrel in court tomorrow, because she hates him and she knows she hates him. There are nothing but lies here, lie upon lie! But now, as long as I haven’t broken off with her, she still has hopes, and will not destroy the monster, knowing how much I want to get him out of trouble. Oh, when will that cursed sentence come!”

The words “murderer” and “monster” echoed painfully in Alyosha’s heart.

“But in what way can she destroy our brother?” he asked, pondering Ivan’s words. “What testimony can she give that would destroy Mitya outright?”

“You don’t know about it yet. She has hold of a document, in Mitenka’s own hand, which proves mathematically that he killed Fyodor Pavlovich.”

“That can’t be!” Alyosha exclaimed.

“Why can’t it? I’ve read it myself.”

“There can be no such document!” Alyosha repeated hotly. “There cannot be, because he is not the murderer. It was not he who murdered father, not he!”

Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly stopped.

“Then who is the murderer, in your opinion ?” he asked somehow with obvious coldness,^[299] and a certain haughty note even sounded in the tone of the question.