The Brothers Karamazov

“Listen,” he began to Ivan Fyodorovich, “forgive me, it’s just a reminder: didn’t you go to Smerdyakov to find out about Katerina Ivanovna? Yet you left without finding out anything about her, you must have forgotten...”

“Ah, yes!” suddenly escaped from Ivan, and his face darkened with worry, “yes, I forgot ... Anyway, it’s all the same now, all till tomorrow,” he muttered to himself. “As for you,” he turned irritably to his visitor, “I’d have remembered it myself in a moment, because that’s exactly what has been causing me such anguish! Why did you have to come out with it? Do you think I’ll simply believe you prompted me and not that I remembered it myself?”

“Don’t believe it then,” the gentleman smiled sweetly, “what good is faith by force? Besides, proofs are no help to faith, especially material proofs. Thomas believed not because he saw the risen Christ but because he wanted to believe even before that.^[304] Spiritualists, for example ... I like them so much ... imagine, they think they’re serving faith because devils show their little horns to them from the other world. ‘This,’ they say, ‘is a material proof, so to speak, that the other world exists.’ The other world and material proofs, la-di-da! And, after all, who knows whether proof of the devil is also a proof of God? I want to join an idealist society and form an opposition within it: ‘I’m a realist,’ I’ll say, ‘not a materialist,’ heh, heh!”

“Listen,” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly got up from the table. “I seem to be delirious now ... and of course I am delirious ... you can lie as much as you like, it’s all the same to me! You won’t put me into a rage, as you did last time. Only I’m ashamed of something ... I feel like pacing the room ... I sometimes don’t see you, and don’t even hear your voice, as last time, but I always guess what you’re driveling, because i( is I, I myself who am talking, and not you! Only I don’t know whether I was asleep last time or actually saw you. I am now going to wet a towel with cold water and put it to my head, and maybe you’ll evaporate.”

Ivan Fyodorovich went to the corner, took a towel, carried out his intention, and with the wet towel on his head began pacing up and down the room.

“I’m glad we can be so informal with each other,” the visitor tried to begin.

“Fool,” Ivan laughed, “what, should I call you ‘sir’ or something? I feel fine now, only there’s a pain in my temple ... and in the top of my head ... only please don’t philosophize, as you did last time. Tell some pleasant lies, if you can’t clear out. Gossip, since you’re a sponger, go ahead and gossip. Why am I stuck with such a nightmare! But I’m not afraid of you. I will overcome you. They won’t take me to the madhouse!”

“C’est charmant—sponger! Yes, that is precisely my aspect. What am I on earth if not a sponger? Incidentally, I’m a little surprised listening to you: by God, it seems you’re gradually beginning to take me for something real, and not just your fantasy, as you insisted last time ...”

“Not for a single moment do I take you for the real truth,” Ivan cried, somehow even furiously. “You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a ghost. Only I don’t know how to destroy you, and I see I’ll have to suffer through it for a while. You are my hallucination. You are the embodiment of myself, but of just one side of me ... of my thoughts and feelings, but only the most loathsome and stupid of them. From that angle you could even be interesting to me, if I had time to bother with you...”

“I beg your pardon, I’m going to catch you now: earlier, under the street-lamp, when you jumped on Alyosha and shouted: ‘You learned it from him! How do you know that he has been coming to me?’ You were thinking of me then. It means that for one little moment you believed, you did believe that I really am,” the gentleman laughed softly.

“Yes, that was a lapse of character ... but I couldn’t believe in you. I don’t know whether I was asleep or awake the last time. Perhaps I only saw you in my sleep and not in reality at all.” “And why were you so severe with him today, with Alyosha, I mean? He’s a dear boy; I owe him one for the elder Zosima.”

“Shut up about Alyosha! How dare you, you lackey!” Ivan laughed again.

“You laugh while you’re abusing me—a good sign. By the way, you’re much more amiable with me today than you were last time, and I know why: that great decision...”

“Shut up about my decision!” Ivan cried ferociously.

“I understand, I understand, c’est noble, c’est charmant, you go to defend your brother tomorrow, and you sacrifice yourself ... c’est chevaleresque.”^[305]

“Shut up or I’ll kick you!”