IX. The Sensualists

Right behind Dmitri Fyodorovich, Grigory and Smerdyakov ran into the room too. It was they who had been struggling with him in the entryway, not letting him in (in accordance with instructions given by Fyodor Pavlovich himself several days before). Taking advantage of the fact that Dmitri Fyodorovich, having burst into the room, stopped for a moment to look around, Grigory ran around the table, shut both halves of the doors on the opposite side of the room from the entrance, which led into the inner rooms, and stood before the closed door, his arms spread out crosswise, ready to defend the way in, so to speak, to the last drop. Seeing this, Dmitri did not cry out but rather, as it were, shrieked, and rushed at Grigory.

“So she’s in there! They’ve hidden her in there! Out of the way, scoundrel!” He made a lunge at Grigory, but Grigory pushed him back. Beside himself with rage, Dmitri swung and struck Grigory with all his might. The old man collapsed as though cut down, and Dmitri, jumping over him, broke through the door. Smerdyakov remained in the room, at the other end, pale and trembling, pressing close to Fyodor Pavlovich.

“She’s here,” Dmitri Fyodorovich was shouting. “I saw her myself just now, turning toward the house, only I couldn’t catch up with her. Where is she? Where is she?”

This cry, “She’s here!”, produced an incomprehensible effect on Fyodor Pavlovich. All his fright leaped off him.

“Hold him, hold him!” he howled, and dashed after Dmitri Fyodorovich. Meanwhile Grigory had got up from the floor, but was still, as it were, beside himself. Ivan Fyodorovich and Alyosha ran after their father to catch him. From the third room came the sound of something suddenly hitting the floor, smashing, and ringing: a big glass vase (not one of the costly ones) on a marble stand, which Dmitri Fyodorovich had caught in passing as he ran.

“Sic him!” howled the old man. “Help!”

Ivan Fyodorovich and Alyosha did catch up with the old man after all and forcibly brought him back to the room.

“Why are you chasing him! He really will kill you in there!” Ivan Fyodorovich shouted angrily at his father.

“Vanechka, Lyoshechka, so she’s here, Grushenka is here, he says he saw her himself running past…”

He was choking. He had not been expecting Grushenka this time, and the sudden news that she was here at once drove him out of his mind. He was trembling all over; he seemed to have gone mad.

“But you saw for yourself that she didn’t come!” Ivan was shouting.

“But maybe through the other entrance?”

“But it’s locked, that entrance, and you have the key…”

Dmitri suddenly appeared in the room again. Naturally he had found that other entrance locked, and the key to it really was in Fyodor Pavlovich’s pocket. All the windows in all the rooms were locked too; so there was nowhere Grushenka could have come in and nowhere she could have slipped out.

“Hold him!” Fyodor Pavlovich squealed as soon as he caught sight of Dmitri again. “He’s stolen money from my bedroom in there!” And, tearing himself away from Ivan, he again rushed at Dmitri. But Dmitri raised both hands and suddenly seized the old man by the last two tufts of hair that had survived on his temples, pulled him, and threw him crashing to the floor. He managed to kick the man lying there two or three times more in the face with his heel. The old man moaned piercingly. Ivan Fyodorovich, though not as strong as his brother Dmitri, threw his arms around him and with all his might tore him away from the old man. Alyosha, too, with all his slight strength, helped him, throwing his arms around his brother from in front.

“You madman, you’ve killed him!” cried Ivan.

“Serves him right!” Dmitri exclaimed, gasping. “And if I haven’t killed him, I’ll come back to kill him. You won’t be able to guard him!”

“Dmitri! Get out of here at once!” Alyosha cried commandingly.

“Alexei! You tell me, you alone, I’ll believe only you: was she here just now or not? I saw her myself just now, slipping past the fence from the lane in this direction. I shouted, she ran away…”

“I swear to you, she hasn’t been here, and nobody here was expecting her at all!”

“But I saw her… So she… I’ll find out at once where she is… Goodbye, Alexei! Not a word to Aesop about the money now, but go to Katerina Ivanovna right away and without fail: ‘He sends his bow, he sends his bow, his bow! Precisely his bow, and he bows out!’ Describe the scene to her.”

Meanwhile Ivan and Grigory had lifted the old man up and sat him in an armchair. His face was covered with blood, but he was conscious and was listening greedily to Dmitri’s shouts. It still seemed to him that Grushenka really was somewhere in the house. Dmitri Fyodorovich gave him a look of hatred as he left.

“I don’t repent of your blood!” he exclaimed. “Beware, old man, guard your dream, because I have a dream too! I curse you myself and renounce you completely…”

He ran out of the room.

“She’s here, she must be here! Smerdyakov, Smerdyakov,” the old man wheezed barely audibly, beckoning Smerdyakov with his little finger.

“She’s not here, no, you mad old man,” Ivan shouted at him angrily. “There, he’s fainted! Water, a towel! Look sharp, Smerdyakov!”

Smerdyakov rushed off for water. At last they undressed the old man, carried him into the bedroom, and put him to bed. They tied a wet towel around his head. Weakened by the cognac, the violent sensations, and the beating, he rolled up his eyes the instant his head touched the pillow and sank into oblivion. Ivan Fyodorovich and Alyosha went back into the reception room. Smerdyakov was carrying out the fragments of the broken vase, and Grigory was standing by the table, looking down gloomily.

“Shouldn’t you wet your head too and go to bed as well?” Alyosha said, turning to Grigory. “We’ll look after him here; my brother struck you terribly hard… on the head.”

“He dared strike me!” Grigory said gloomily and distinctly.

“He ‘dared strike’ his father too, never mind you!” Ivan Fyodorovich remarked, twisting his mouth.

“I washed him in a tub… and he dared strike me!” Grigory kept repeating.

“Devil take it, if I hadn’t pulled him off, he might well have killed him then and there. How much does Aesop need?” Ivan Fyodorovich whispered to Alyosha.

“God forbid!” exclaimed Alyosha.

“And why ‘forbid’?” Ivan went on in the same whisper, his face twisted spitefully. “One viper will devour the other, and serve them both right!”

Alyosha shuddered.

“I won’t let a murder take place, of course, just as I didn’t let it now. Stay here, Alyosha; I’ll go out and walk about the yard; my head has begun to ache.”

Alyosha went into his father’s bedroom and sat by his pillow behind the screen for an hour or so. All at once the old man opened his eyes and looked at Alyosha for a long time in silence, evidently remembering and reflecting. Suddenly an extraordinary agitation showed in his face.

“Alyosha,” he whispered apprehensively, “where is Ivan?”

“In the yard; he has a headache. He’s keeping watch over us.”

“Give me the little mirror, it’s standing over there, give it to me!”

Alyosha gave him a small, round, folding mirror that was standing on the chest of drawers. The old man studied himself in it: the nose had swollen up rather badly, and on his forehead, above the left eyebrow, there was a considerable crimson bruise.

“What is Ivan saying? Alyosha, dear boy, my one and only son, Ivan frightens me; Ivan frightens me more than the other one does. You’re the only one I’m not afraid of…”

“Don’t be afraid of Ivan either; Ivan is angry, but he will protect you.”

“Alyosha, and the other one? He’s run off to Grushenka! My dear angel, tell me the truth: was Grushenka here earlier or not?”

“Nobody saw her. It’s a delusion; she wasn’t here!”

“Mitka wants to marry her, you know, to marry her!”

“She won’t marry him.”

“She won’t, she won’t, she won’t, she won’t, not for anything will she marry him!…” The old man fairly fluttered all over with joy, as though nothing more comforting could have been said to him at that moment. In his delight he seized Alyosha’s hand and pressed it hard to his heart. Tears even shone in his eyes. “That little icon, the Mother of God one, the one I told you about earlier, take it for yourself, carry it away with you. And I allow you to go back to the monastery… I was joking earlier, don’t be angry. My head aches, Alyosha… Lyosha, ease my heart, be an angel, tell me the truth!”

“You keep on about the same thing: was she here or wasn’t she?” Alyosha said sorrowfully.

“No, no, no, I believe you, but here’s the thing: go to Grushenka yourself, or see her somehow; ask her quickly, as quickly as possible, guess with your own eye: whom does she want, me or him? Eh? What? Can you or can’t you?”

“If I see her, I’ll ask,” Alyosha began to mutter in embarrassment.

“No, she won’t tell you,” the old man interrupted. “She’s a fidget. She’ll start kissing you and say it’s you she wants to marry. She’s a deceiver, she’s shameless; no, you mustn’t go to her, you mustn’t!”

“And it wouldn’t be good, Father; it wouldn’t be good at all.”

“Where was he sending you earlier, when he shouted ‘Go’ as he ran off?”

“He was sending me to Katerina Ivanovna.”

“For money? To ask for money?”

“No, not for money.”

“He has no money, not a drop. Listen, Alyosha, I’ll lie here through the night and think it over, and you go along for now. Maybe you’ll meet her too… Only be sure to come and see me tomorrow morning; be sure to. I’ll tell you a certain little word tomorrow; will you come?”

“I’ll come.”

“If you come, pretend you came on your own, came to visit me. Don’t tell anyone that I called you. Don’t say a word to Ivan.”

“All right.”

“Goodbye, my angel; you stood up for me earlier, I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I’ll tell you a little word tomorrow… only I must think a bit more…”

“And how do you feel now?”

“Tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll get up and go out, quite well, quite well, quite well!…”

Crossing the yard, Alyosha met his brother Ivan on the bench by the gate: he was sitting and writing something in pencil in his notebook. Alyosha told Ivan that the old man had woken up and was in his right mind, and had let him go to spend the night at the monastery.

“Alyosha, I’d be very glad to meet you tomorrow morning,” Ivan said cordially, rising a little—a cordiality quite unexpected even for Alyosha.

“Tomorrow I’ll be at the Khokhlakovs’,” Alyosha answered. “I may be at Katerina Ivanovna’s tomorrow too, if I don’t find her in now…”

“But now you’re going to Katerina Ivanovna’s all the same! This ‘bowing out, bowing out’ business?” Ivan suddenly smiled. Alyosha was embarrassed.

“I think I understood everything from the exclamations earlier and from one thing and another before. Dmitri must have asked you to go to her and tell her that he… well… well, in a word, that he ‘bows out’?”

“Brother! How will all this horror between Father and Dmitri end?” exclaimed Alyosha.

“There’s no guessing for certain. In nothing, perhaps: the business will fizzle out. That woman is a beast. In any case, the old man must be kept in the house and Dmitri must not be let into the house.”

“Brother, let me ask you something more: does every man really have the right to decide, looking at other people, which of them is worthy to live and which is more unworthy?”

“Why bring a decision by worthiness into it? This question is most often decided in people’s hearts not at all on the basis of worthiness but for other reasons, much more natural ones. And as for the right, who hasn’t the right to wish?”

“Not for another’s death, surely?”

“And what if even for death? Why lie to oneself, when all people live so, and perhaps cannot even live otherwise? Are you thinking of what I said earlier, that ‘two vipers will devour each other’? Then let me ask you too, in that case: do you consider me, like Dmitri, capable of shedding Aesop’s blood, well, of killing him, eh?”

“What are you saying, Ivan! It never even entered my mind! And I don’t consider Dmitri…”

“Thanks at least for that,” Ivan grinned. “Know that I will always protect him. But in my wishes I reserve full latitude for myself in this case. Till tomorrow. Don’t judge me, and don’t look at me as if I were a villain,” he added, smiling.

They shook hands firmly, as never before. Alyosha felt that his brother had been the first to take a step toward him, and that he had done it for some reason, certainly with some intention.