The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

How could I

help drawing my conclusions?”

 

Ivan sat scowling, both his fists convulsively pressed on his

knees.

 

“Yes, I am sorry I didn’t punch you in the face,” he said with a

bitter smile. “I couldn’t have taken you to the lock-up just then. Who

would have believed me and what charge could I bring against you?

But the punch in the face… oh, I’m sorry I didn’t think of it.

Though blows are forbidden, I should have pounded your ugly face to

a jelly.”

 

Smerdyakov looked at him almost with relish.

 

“In the ordinary occasions of life,” he said in the same

complacent and sententious tone in which he had taunted Grigory and

argued with him about religion at Fyodor Pavlovitch’s table, “in the

ordinary occasions of life, blows on the face are forbidden nowadays

by law, and people have given them up, but in exceptional occasions of

life people still fly to blows, not only among us but all over the

world, be it even the fullest republic of France, just as in the

time of Adam and Eve, and they never will leave off, but you, even

in an exceptional case, did not dare.”

 

“What are you learning French words for?” Ivan nodded towards

the exercise-book lying on the table.

 

“Why shouldn’t I learn them so as to improve my education,

supposing that I may myself chance to go some day to those happy parts

of Europe?”

 

“Listen, monster.” Ivan’s eyes flashed and he trembled all over.

“I am not afraid of your accusations; you can say what you like

about me, and if I don’t beat you to death, it’s simply because I

suspect you of that crime and I’ll drag you to justice. I’ll unmask

you.”

 

“To my thinking, you’d better keep quiet, for what can you

accuse me of, considering my absolute innocence? And who would believe

you? Only if you begin, I shall tell everything, too, for I must

defend myself.”

 

“Do you think I am afraid of you now?”

 

“If the court doesn’t believe all I’ve said to you just now, the

public will, and you will be ashamed.”

 

“That’s as much as to say, ‘It’s always worth while speaking to

a sensible man,’ eh?” snarled Ivan.

 

“You hit the mark, indeed. And you’d better be sensible.”

 

Ivan got up, shaking all over with indignation, put on his coat,

and without replying further to Smerdyakov, without even looking at

him, walked quickly out of the cottage. The cool evening air refreshed

him. There was a bright moon in the sky. A nightmare of ideas and

sensations filled his soul. “Shall I go at once and give information

against Smerdyakov? But what information can I give? He is not guilty,

anyway. On the contrary, he’ll accuse me. And in fact, why did I set

off for Tchermashnya then? What for? What for?” Ivan asked himself.

“Yes, of course, I was expecting something and he is right… ” And he

remembered for the hundredth time how, on the last night in his

father’s house, he had listened on the stairs. But he remembered it

now with such anguish that he stood still on the spot as though he had

been stabbed. “Yes, I expected it then, that’s true! I wanted the

murder, I did want the murder! Did I want the murder? Did I want it? I

must kill Smerdyakov! If I don’t dare kill Smerdyakov now, life is not

worth living!”

 

Ivan did not go home, but went straight to Katerina Ivanovna and

alarmed her by his appearance. He was like a madman. He repeated all

his conversation with Smerdyakov, every syllable of it. He couldn’t be

calmed, however much she tried to soothe him: he kept walking about

the room, speaking strangely, disconnectedly. At last he sat down, put

his elbows on the table, leaned his head on his hands and pronounced

this strange sentence: “If it’s not Dmitri, but Smerdyakov who’s the

murderer, I share his guilt, for I put him up to it. Whether I did,

I don’t know yet. But if he is the murderer, and not Dmitri, then,

of course, I am the murderer, too.”

 

When Katerina Ivanovna heard that, she got up from her seat

without a word, went to her writing-table, opened a box standing on

it, took out a sheet of paper and laid it before Ivan. This was the

document of which Ivan spoke to Alyosha later on as a “conclusive

proof” that Dmitri had killed his father. It was the letter written by

Mitya to Katerina Ivanovna when he was drunk, on the very evening he

met Alyosha at the crossroads on the way to the monastery, after the

scene at Katerina Ivanovna’s, when Grushenka had insulted her. Then,

parting from Alyosha, Mitya had rushed to Grushenka. I don’t know

whether he saw her, but in the evening he was at the Metropolis, where

he got thoroughly drunk. Then he asked for pen and paper and wrote a

document of weighty consequences to himself. It was a wordy,

disconnected, frantic letter, a drunken letter, in fact. It was like

the talk of a drunken man, who, on his return home, begins with

extraordinary heat telling his wife or one of his household how he has

just been insulted, what a rascal had just insulted him, what a fine

fellow he is on the other hand, and how he will pay that scoundrel

out; and all that at great length, with great excitement and

incoherence, with drunken tears and blows on the table. The letter was

written on a dirty piece of ordinary paper of the cheapest kind. It

had been provided by the tavern and there were figures scrawled on the

back of it. There was evidently not space enough for his drunken

verbosity and Mitya not only filled the margins but had written the

last line right across the rest. The letter ran as follows:

 

FATAL KATYA: To-morrow I will get the money and repay your three

thousand and farewell, woman of great wrath, but farewell, too, my

love! Let us make an end! To-morrow I shall try and get it from

everyone, and if I can’t borrow it, I give you my word of honour I

shall go to my father and break his skull and take the money from

under the pillow, if only Ivan has gone. It I have to go to Siberia

for it, I’ll give you back your three thousand. And farewell. I bow

down to the ground before you, for I’ve been a scoundrel to you.

Forgive me! No, better not forgive me, you’ll be happier and so shall

I! Better Siberia than your love, for I love another woman and you got

to know her too well to-day, so how can you forgive? I will murder the

man who’s robbed me! I’ll leave you all and go to the East so as to

see no one again. Not her either, for you are not my only tormentress;

she is too. Farewel!

 

P.S.- I write my curse, but I adore you! I hear it in my heart.

One string is left, and it vibrates. Better tear my heart in two! I

shall kill myself, but first of all that cur. I shall tear three

thousand from him and fling it to you. Though I’ve been a scoundrel to

you, I am not a thief! You can expect three thousand. The cur keeps it

under his mattress, in pink ribbon. I am not a thief, but I’ll

murder my thief. Katya, don’t look disdainful. Dmitri is not a

thief! but a murderer! He has murdered his father and ruined himself

to hold his ground, rather than endure your pride. And he doesn’t love

you.

 

P.P.S.- I kiss your feet, farewel!

 

P.P.P.S.- Katya, pray to God that someone’ll give me the money.

Then I shall not be steeped in gore, and if no one does-I shall! Kill

me!

 

Your slave and enemy,

 

D. KARAMAZOV

 

When Ivan read this “document” he was convinced. So then it was

his brother, not Smerdyakov. And if not Smerdyakov, then not he, Ivan.

This letter at once assumed in his eyes the aspect of a logical proof.

There could be no longer the slightest doubt of Mitya’s guilt. The

suspicion never occurred to Ivan, by the way, that Mitya might have

committed the murder in conjunction with Smerdyakov, and, indeed, such

a theory did not fit in with the facts. Ivan was completely reassured.

The next morning he only thought of Smerdyakov and his gibes with

contempt. A few days later he positively wondered how he could have

been so horribly distressed at his suspicions. He resolved to

dismiss him with contempt and forget him. So passed a month. He made

no further inquiry about Smerdyakov, but twice he happened to hear

that he was very ill and out of his mind.

 

“He’ll end in madness,” the young doctor Varvinsky observed

about him, and Ivan remembered this. During the last week of that

month Ivan himself began to feel very ill. He went to consult the

Moscow doctor who had been sent for by Katerina Ivanovna just before

the trial. And just at that time his relations with Katerina

Ivanovna became acutely strained. They were like two enemies in love

with one another. Katerina Ivanovna’s “returns” to Mitya, that is, her

brief but violent revulsions of feeling in his favour, drove Ivan to

perfect frenzy. Strange to say, until that last scene described above,

when Alyosha came from Mitya to Katerina Ivanovna, Ivan had never

once, during that month, heard her express a doubt of Mitya’s guilt,

in spite of those “returns” that were so hateful to him. It is

remarkable, too, that while he felt that he hated Mitya more and

more every day, he realised that it was not on account of Katya’s

“returns” that he hated him, but just because he was the murderer of

his father. He was conscious of this and fully recognised it to

himself

 

Nevertheless, he went to see Mitya ten days before the trial and

proposed to him a plan of escape-a plan he had obviously thought over

a long time. He was partly impelled to do this by a sore place still

left in his heart from a phrase of Smerdyakov’s, that it was to his,

Ivan’s, advantage that his brother should be convicted, as that

would increase his inheritance and Alyosha’s from forty to sixty

thousand roubles. He determined to sacrifice thirty thousand on

arranging Mitya’s escape. On his return from seeing him, he was very

mournful and dispirited; he suddenly began to feel that he was anxious

for Mitya’s escape, not only to heal that sore place by sacrificing

thirty thousand, but for another reason. “Is it because I am as much a

murderer at heart?” he asked himself. Something very deep down

seemed burning and rankling in his soul. His pride above all

suffered cruelly all that month. But of that later….

 

When, after his conversation with Alyosha, Ivan suddenly decided

with his hand on the bell of his lodging to go to Smerdyakov, he

obeyed a sudden and peculiar impulse of indignation. He suddenly

remembered how Katerina Ivanovna had only just cried out to him in

Alyosha’s presence: “It was you, you, persuaded me of his” (that is,

Mitya’s) “guilt!” Ivan was thunderstruck when he recalled it. He had

never once tried to persuade her that Mitya was the murderer; on the

contrary, he had suspected himself in her presence, that time when

he came back from Smerdyakov. It was she, she, who had produced that

“document” and proved his brother’s guilt. And now she suddenly

exclaimed: “I’ve been at Smerdyakov’s myself!” When had she been

there? Ivan had known nothing of it. So