The Brothers Karamazov

“Lies. Your goal is precisely to convince me that you are in yourself and are not my nightmare, and so now you yourself assert that you’re a dream.” “My friend, today I’ve adopted a special method, I’ll explain it to you later. Wait, where was I? Oh, yes, so I caught a cold, only not here, but there ...”

“There where? Tell me, are you going to stay long, couldn’t you go away?” Ivan exclaimed almost in despair. He stopped pacing, sat down on the sofa, rested his elbows on the table again, and clutched his head with both hands. He tore the wet towel off and threw it aside in vexation: obviously it did not help.

“Your nerves are unstrung,” the gentleman remarked, with a casually familiar and yet perfectly amiable air, “you’re angry with me even for the fact that I could catch cold, whereas it happened in the most natural way. I was then hurrying to a diplomatic soirée at the home of a most highly placed Petersburg lady, who had designs on a ministry. Well, evening dress, white tie, gloves—and yet I was God knows where, and to get to your earth I still had to fly through space ... of course it only takes a moment, but then a sun’s ray takes a full eight minutes, and, imagine, in a dinner jacket, with an open vest. Spirits don’t freeze, but when one’s incarnate, then ... in short, it was flighty of me, I just set out, and in those spaces, I mean, the ether, the waters above the firmament,^[309] it’s so freezing cold ... that is, don’t talk about freezing— you can’t call it freezing anymore, just imagine: a hundred and fifty degrees below zero! You know how village girls amuse themselves: they ask some unsuspecting novice to lick an axe at thirty degrees below zero; the tongue instantly sticks to it, and the dolt has to tear it away so that it bleeds; and that’s just at thirty below, but at a hundred and fifty, I suppose, if you just touched your finger to an axe, there would be no more finger, that is ... that is, if there happened to be an axe ...”

“And could there happen to be an axe?” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly interrupted, absently and disgustedly. He was trying with all his might not to believe in his delirium and not to fall into complete insanity.

“An axe?” the visitor repeated in surprise.

“Yes, what would an axe be doing there?” Ivan Fyodorovich cried with a sort of fierce and persistent stubbornness.

“What would an axe be doing in space? Quelle idée! If it got far enough away, I suppose it would begin flying around the earth, without knowing why, like a satellite. The astronomers would calculate the rising and setting of the axe, Gattsuk would introduce it into the calendar,^[310] and that’s all.”

“You are stupid, you are terribly stupid!” Ivan said cantankerously. “Put more intelligence into your lies, or I won’t listen. You want to overcome me with realism, to convince me that you are, but I don’t want to believe that you are! I won’t believe it!!”

“But I’m not lying, it’s all true; unfortunately, the truth is hardly ever witty. You, I can see, are decidedly expecting something great from me, and perhaps even beautiful.^[311] That’s a pity, because I give only what I can...”

“Stop philosophizing, you ass!”