Now it will be easy for me to write, for you will see them and explain everything. Oh, how glad I am! But I am only glad of that, believe me. Of course, no one can take your place… I will run at once to write the letter,” she finished suddenly, and took a step as though to go out of the room.
“And what about Alyosha and his opinion, which you were so desperately anxious to hear?” cried Madame Hohlakov. There was a sarcastic, angry note in her voice.
“I had not forgotten that,” cried Katerina Ivanovna, coming to a sudden standstill, “and why are you so antagonistic at such a moment?” she added, with warm and bitter reproachfulness. “What I said, I repeat. I must have his opinion. More than that, I must have his decision! As he says, so it shall be. You see how anxious I am for your words, Alexey Fyodorovitch… But what's the matter?”
“I couldn't have believed it. I can't understand it!” Alyosha cried suddenly in distress.
“What? What?”
“He is going to Moscow, and you cry out that you are glad. You said that on purpose! And you begin explaining that you are not glad of that but sorry to be – losing a friend. But that was acting, too – you were playing a part – as in a theater!”
“In a theater? What? What do you mean?” exclaimed Katerina Ivanovna, profoundly astonished, flushing crimson, and frowning.
“Though you assure him you are sorry to lose a friend in him, you persist in telling him to his face that it's fortunate he is going,” said Alyosha breathlessly. He was standing at the table and did not sit down.
“What are you talking about? I don't understand.”
“I don't understand myself… I seemed to see in a flash … I know I am not saying it properly, but I'll say it all the same,” Alyosha went on in the same shaking and broken voice. “What I see is that perhaps you don't love Dmitri at all … and never have, from the beginning… And Dmitri, too, has never loved you … and only esteems you… I really don't know how I dare to say all this, but somebody must tell the truth … for nobody here will tell the truth.”
“What truth?” cried Katerina Ivanovna, and there was an hysterical ring in her voice.
“I'll tell you,” Alyosha went on with desperate haste, as though he were jumping from the top of a house. “Call Dmitri; I will fetch him – and let him come here and take your hand and take Ivan's and join your hands. For you're torturing Ivan, simply because you love him – and torturing him, because you love Dmitri through ‘self-laceration’ – with an unreal love – because you've persuaded yourself.”
Alyosha broke off and was silent.
“You … you … you are a little religious idiot – that's what you are!” Katerina Ivanovna snapped. Her face was white and her lips were moving with anger.
Ivan suddenly laughed and got up. His hat was in his hand.
“You are mistaken, my good Alyosha,” he said, with an expression Alyosha had never seen in his face before – an expression of youthful sincerity and strong, irresistibly frank feeling. “Katerina Ivanovna has never cared for me! She has known all the time that I cared for her – though I never said a word of my love to her – she knew, but she didn't care for me. I have never been her friend either, not for one moment; she is too proud to need my friendship. She kept me at her side as a means of revenge. She revenged with me and on me all the insults which she has been continually receiving from Dmitri ever since their first meeting. For even that first meeting has rankled in her heart as an insult – that's what her heart is like! She has talked to me of nothing but her love for him. I am going now; but, believe me, Katerina Ivanovna, you really love him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him – that's your ‘laceration.’ You love him just as he is; you love him for insulting you. If he reformed, you'd give him up at once and cease to love him. But you need him so as to contemplate continually your heroic fidelity and to reproach him for infidelity. And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there's a great deal of humiliation and self-abasement about it, but it all comes from pride… I am too young and I've loved you too much. I know that I ought not to say this, that it would be more dignified on my part simply to leave you, and it would be less offensive for you. But I am going far away, and shall never come back… It is for ever. I don't want to sit beside a ‘laceration.’… But I don't know how to speak now. I've said everything… Good-by, Katerina Ivanovna; you can't be angry with me, for I am a hundred times more severely punished than you, if only by the fact that I shall never see you again. Good-by! I don't want your hand. You have tortured me too deliberately for me to be able to forgive you at this moment. I shall forgive you later, but now I don't want your hand. ‘Den Dank, Dame, begehr ich nicht,’ ” he added, with a forced smile, showing, however, that he could read Schiller, and read him till he knew him by heart – which Alyosha would never have believed. He went out of the room without saying good-by even to his hostess, Madame Hohlakov. Alyosha clasped his hands.
“Ivan!” he cried desperately after him. “Come back, Ivan! No, nothing will induce him to come back now!” he cried again, regretfully realizing it; “but it's my fault, my fault. I began it! Ivan spoke angrily, wrongly. Unjustly and angrily. He must come back here, come back,” Alyosha kept exclaiming frantically.
Katerina Ivanovna went suddenly into the next room.
“You have done no harm. You behaved beautifully, like an angel,” Madame Hohlakov whispered rapidly and ecstatically to Alyosha. “I will do my utmost to prevent Ivan Fyodorovitch from going.”
Her face beamed with delight, to the great distress of Alyosha, but Katerina Ivanovna suddenly returned. She had two hundred-rouble notes in her hand.
“I have a great favor to ask of you, Alexey Fyodorovitch,” she began, addressing Alyosha with an apparently calm and even voice, as though nothing had happened. “A week – yes, I think it was a week ago – Dmitri Fyodorovitch was guilty of a hasty and unjust action – a very ugly action. There is a low tavern here, and in it he met that discharged officer, that captain, whom your father used to employ in some business. Dmitri Fyodorovitch somehow lost his temper with this captain, seized him by the beard and dragged him out into the street and for some distance along it, in that insulting fashion. And I am told that his son, a boy, quite a child, who is at the school here, saw it and ran beside them crying and begging for his father, appealing to every one to defend him, while every one laughed. You must forgive me, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I cannot think without indignation of that disgraceful action of his … one of those actions of which only Dmitri Fyodorovitch would be capable in his anger … and in his passions! I can't describe it even… I can't find my words. I've made inquiries about his victim, and find he is quite a poor man. His name is Snegiryov. He did something wrong in the army and was discharged. I can't tell you what. And now he has sunk into terrible destitution, with his family – an unhappy family of sick children, and, I believe, an insane wife. He has been living here a long time; he used to work as a copying clerk, but now he is getting nothing. I thought if you … that is I thought … I don't know. I am so confused. You see, I wanted to ask you, my dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, to go to him, to find some excuse to go to them – I mean to that captain – oh, goodness, how badly I explain it! – and delicately, carefully, as only you know how to” (Alyosha blushed), “manage to give him this assistance, these two hundred roubles. He will be sure to take it… I mean, persuade him to take it… Or, rather, what do I mean? You see it's not by way of compensation to prevent him from taking proceedings (for I believe he meant to), but simply a token of sympathy, of a desire to assist him from me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch's betrothed, not from himself… But you know… I would go myself, but you'll know how to do it ever so much better. He lives in Lake Street, in the house of a woman called Kalmikov… For God's sake, Alexey Fyodorovitch, do it for me, and now … now I am rather … tired. Good-by!”
