The Brothers Karamazov

“Is it me you’re waiting for?” Alyosha asked, coming up to him.

“Precisely you,” Rakitin grinned. “You’re hurrying to the Father Superior’s. I know; there’s a dinner on. Not since he received the Bishop and General Pakhatov—remember?—has there been such a dinner. I won’t be there, but you go and serve the sauces. Tell me one thing, Alexei: what’s the meaning of this dream?^[60] That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

“What dream?”

“This bowing at the feet of your brother Dmitri Fyodorovich. He even bumped his forehead on the ground.”

“You mean Father Zosima?”

“Yes, Father Zosima.”

“His forehead ... ?”

“Ah, I was irreverent! Well, let it be. So, what does this dream signify?”

“I don’t know what it means, Misha.”

“I knew he wou’dn’t explain it to you! Of course, there’s nothing very subtle about it, just the usual blessed nonsense, it seems. But the trick had its purpose. Now all the pious frauds in town will start talking and spread it over the whole province, wondering ‘what is the meaning of this dream?’ The old man is really astute, if you ask me: he smelled crime. It stinks in your family.”

“What crime?”

Rakitin evidently wanted to speak his mind.

“A crime in your nice little family. It will take place between your dear brothers and your nice, rich papa. So Father Zosima bumps his forehead on the ground, for the future, just in case. Afterwards they’ll say, Ah, it’s what the holy elder foretold, prophesied,’ though bumping your forehead on the ground isn’t much of a prophecy. No, they’ll say, it was an emblem, an allegory, the devil knows what! They’ll proclaim it, they’ll remember: ‘He foresaw the crime and marked the criminal.’ It’s always like that with holy fools: they cross themselves before a tavern and cast stones at the temple. Your elder is the same: he drives the just man out with a stick and bows at the murderer’s feet.”

“What crime? What murderer? What are you saying?” Alyosha stopped dead. Rakitin also stopped.

“What murderer? As if you didn’t know. I bet you’ve already thought of it yourself. As a matter of fact, I’m curious. Listen, Alyosha, you always tell the truth, though you always fall between two stools: tell me, did you think of it or not?”

“I did,” Alyosha answered softly. Even Rakitin felt embarrassed.

“What? You thought of it, too?” he cried.

“I ... I didn’t really think of it,” Alyosha muttered, “but when you began speaking so strangely about it just now, it seemed to me that I had thought of it myself.”

“You see? (And how clearly you expressed it! ) You see? Today, looking at your papa and your brother Mitenka, you thought about a crime. So I’m not mistaken, then?”

“But wait, wait,” Alyosha interrupted uneasily, “where did you get all that ... ? And why does it concern you so much in the first place?”

“Two different questions, but natural ones. I shall answer them separately. Where did I get it? I’d have gotten nothing if today I hadn’t suddenly understood Dmitri Fyodorovich, your brother, fully for what he is, all at once and suddenly, fully for what he is. By one particular trait I grasped him all at once. Such honest but passionate people have a line that must not be crossed. Otherwise—otherwise he’ll even put a knife in his own papa. And the papa, a drunken and unbridled libertine, never knew any measure in anything— both of them unable to hold back, and both of them, plop, into the ditch...”

“No, Misha, no, if that’s all it is, then you’ve reassured me. It won’t come to that.”

“And why are you shaking all over? I’ll tell you one thing: granted he’s an honest man, Mitenka, I mean (he’s stupid but honest), still he’s a sensualist. That is his definition, and his whole inner essence. It’s his father who gave him his base sensuality. I’m really surprised at you, Alyosha: how can you be a virgin? You’re a Karamazov, too! In your family sensuality is carried to the point of fever. So these three sensualists are now eyeing each other with knives in their boots. The three of them are at loggerheads, and maybe you’re the fourth.”

“You are mistaken about that woman. Dmitri ... despises her,” Alyosha said, somehow shuddering.