I. An Understanding

Mrs. Khokhlakova was again the first to meet Alyosha. She was in a hurry: something important had occurred: Katerina Ivanovna’s fit of hysterics had ended in a swoon, followed by “a terrible, dreadful weakness, she lay down, her eyes rolled back, and she began to be delirious. Now she has a fever, they’ve sent for Herzenstube, they’ve sent for the aunts. The aunts are here already, but Herzenstube isn’t yet. Everyone is sitting in her room, waiting. Something is going to happen, and she’s unconscious. What if it’s brain fever!”

As she exclaimed this, Mrs. Khokhlakova had a look of serious alarm: “This is serious now, serious!” she added to every word, as though everything that had happened to her before had not been serious. Alyosha listened to her with sorrow; he began to tell her of his own adventures, but she cut him off at the first words: she had no time, she asked him to sit with Lise and wait for her at Lise’s.

“Lise, dearest Alexei Fyodorovich,” she whispered to him almost in his ear, “Lise has just surprised me strangely, but she touched me too, and so my heart forgives her everything. Imagine, the moment you left, she suddenly began sincerely repenting that she had supposedly been laughing at you yesterday and today. But she wasn’t laughing, she was only joking. But she repented so seriously, almost to tears, that I was surprised. She has never before seriously repented when she laughed at me, it was always in jest. And you know she laughs at me every minute. But now she’s serious, now everything has turned serious. She values your opinion extremely, Alexei Fyodorovich, and if you can, don’t be offended with her and don’t hold it against her. I myself do nothing but spare her, because she’s such a clever little thing—would you believe it? She was saying just now that you were the friend of her childhood, ‘the most serious friend of my childhood,’ imagine that, the most serious, and what about me? She has extremely serious feelings on that score, and even memories, and above all these phrases and little words, the most unexpected little words, so that you never expect it, and suddenly out it pops. Just recently, for instance, about a pine tree: there was a pine tree standing in our garden in her earliest childhood, perhaps it still stands there, so there’s no call for the past tense. Pines aren’t people, they don’t change for a long time, Alexei Fyodorovich. ‘Mama,’ she says, ‘I remember that pine as if I’d pined for it in a dream,’ that is, ‘pine, pined for in a dream,’ she put it somehow differently, because there’s a muddle here, ‘pine’ is a silly word, only she told me something so original on that subject that I definitely won’t undertake to repeat it. Besides, I’ve forgotten it all. Well, goodbye, I’m very shaken and I’m surely going out of my mind. Ah, Alexei Fyodorovich, I’ve gone out of my mind twice in my life, and they treated me for it. Go to Lise. Cheer her up, as you always know how to do so charmingly. Lise,” she cried, going up to her door, “here, I’ve brought you Alexei Fyodorovich, whom you insulted so, and he isn’t the least bit angry, I assure you; on the contrary, he’s amazed that you could think so!”

“Merci, maman; come in, Alexei Fyodorovich.”

Alyosha went in. Lise looked somehow embarrassed and suddenly blushed all over. She was evidently ashamed of something and, as always happens in such cases, began talking very, very fast about something quite unrelated, exactly as if that unrelated thing were the only thing that interested her at the moment.

“Mama has just suddenly told me, Alexei Fyodorovich, the whole story about those two hundred rubles and that errand of yours… to that poor officer… and she told me that whole terrible story of how he was insulted, and, you know, although Mama tells things very muddle-headedly… she keeps skipping about… I listened and cried. Well, what then, how did it go, did you give him that money, and how is the unhappy man now?…”

“That’s just it, I didn’t give it to him, and there’s a whole story there,” answered Alyosha, as if for his part he too were concerned above all precisely with not having given the money, and yet Lise noticed perfectly well that he too was looking aside and evidently trying to talk about something unrelated. Alyosha sat down at the table and began telling, but from the first words he stopped being embarrassed altogether and carried Lise away in her turn. He was speaking under the influence of strong feeling and of an extraordinary recent impression, and he managed to tell it well and in detail. Even before, back in Moscow, in Lise’s early childhood, he had loved to come to her and tell her now about something that had just happened to him, now about something he had read, or to recall things from his own childhood. Sometimes they even dreamed together and made up whole stories between the two of them, mostly merry and funny ones. Now they both seemed suddenly carried back to the old Moscow days, some two years before. Lise was extraordinarily moved by his story. Alyosha, with warm feeling, managed to paint for her the image of “Ilyushechka.” And when he had finished, in every detail, the scene of how that unhappy man had trampled the money, Lise clasped her hands and cried out in irrepressible feeling:

“So you didn’t give him the money, so you just let him run away! My God, you might at least have run after him yourself and caught up with him…”

“No, Lise, it’s better this way, that I didn’t run,” said Alyosha, getting up from his chair and pacing the room with a worried air.

“How better, why better? Now they’re without bread and they’ll perish!”

“They won’t perish, because those two hundred rubles won’t pass them by all the same. He’ll take them tomorrow anyway. Tomorrow he’ll surely take them,” said Alyosha, pacing in thought. “You see, Lise,” he went on, suddenly stopping in front of her, “I made a mistake myself in this, but even the mistake turned out for the better.”

“What mistake, and why for the better?”

“Here’s why: he’s a cowardly man and weak in character. He’s so worn out and very kind. I keep thinking now: what was it that suddenly offended him so that he trampled the money, because, I assure you, until the very last moment he didn’t know he was going to trample it. And it seems to me that many things offended him here… and it couldn’t have been otherwise in his position… In the first place, he was offended simply because he was too glad of the money in front of me and didn’t hide it from me. If he’d been glad, but not very, and hadn’t shown it, if he’d started putting on airs, the way others do when they accept money, making faces, well, then he might still have borne it and accepted, but he was too truthfully glad, and that’s just what hurts. Ah, Lise, he’s a truthful and kind man, and that’s the whole trouble in such cases! All the while he was talking then, his voice was so weak, so faint, and he talked so fast, so fast, kept giggling with a sort of little laugh, or else he was crying… really, he was crying, he was in such raptures… and he spoke of his daughters… and about the post he would be given in another town… And the moment he had poured out his soul, he suddenly felt ashamed of having shown me his whole soul like that. And so right away he hated me. And he’s one of those terribly bashful poor people. Above all, he was offended because he took me for his friend too soon and gave in to me too soon; first he was flying at me, trying to frighten me, and then suddenly, the moment he saw the money, he began embracing me. Because he did embrace me, he kept touching me with his hands. It was precisely in that state that he was bound to feel the whole humiliation of it, and just then I made that mistake, a very important one: I suddenly up and told him that if he didn’t have enough money to move to another town, he would be given more, and that I myself would even give him as much as he liked out of my own money. That is what suddenly struck him: why, he thinks, did I have to jump in and help him too? You know, Lise, it’s terribly hard for an injured man when everyone starts looking at him as his benefactors… I’ve heard that, the elder told me so. I don’t know how to put it, but I’ve often seen it myself. Why, I feel exactly the same way myself. And the main thing is that although he didn’t know until the very last moment that he would trample the notes, he still had a presentiment of it, that’s certain. That’s why his rapture was so strong, because he had a presentiment… And so, though all this is so bad, it’s still for the better. I even think it’s for the very best, it couldn’t have been better…”

“Why, why couldn’t it have been better?” exclaimed Lise, looking at Alyosha in great surprise.

“Because, Lise, if he hadn’t trampled the money but had taken it, then, coming home, within an hour or so he would have wept over his humiliation, that’s what would surely have happened. He would have wept and very likely come to me at daybreak tomorrow and thrown the notes at me, perhaps, and trampled them as he did just now. But now he’s gone away terribly proud and triumphant, though he knows he has ‘ruined himself.’ And so, now nothing could be easier than to make him accept those same two hundred rubles no later than tomorrow, because he has already proved his honor, he has flung the money down, trampled it… He couldn’t have known, when he was trampling it, that I would bring it to him again tomorrow. And meanwhile he needs that money terribly, you know. Though he’s proud now, still, even today he’ll be thinking of the help he has lost. At night he’ll think of it even harder, he’ll see it in his dreams, and by tomorrow morning he may well be ready to run to me and ask forgiveness. And that’s just when I’ll appear: ‘Here,’ I’ll say, ‘you are a proud man, you have proved it, well, now take it, forgive us.’ And that’s when he’ll take it!”

Alyosha uttered with a kind of rapture: “And that’s when he’ll take it!” Lise clapped her hands.

“Oh, that’s true, oh, I’ve suddenly understood it terribly! Oh, Alyosha, how do you know all this? So young, and he already knows what’s in the soul… I would never have thought of it…”

“The main thing now is to convince him that he’s on an equal footing with all of us, in spite of taking money from us,” Alyosha went on in his rapture, “and not only on an equal footing, but even on a higher footing…”

“‘On a higher footing,’ that’s lovely, Alexei Fyodorovich, but go on, go on!”

“That is, I didn’t put it right… about the higher footing… but it doesn’t matter, because…”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, of course it doesn’t matter! Forgive me, Alyosha, dear… You know, until now I hardly respected you… that is, I respected you, but on an equal footing, and now I’ll respect you on a higher one… Dear, don’t be angry that I’m ‘being witty,’” she took up at once with strong feeling. “I’m silly and little, but you, you… Listen, Alexei Fyodorovich, isn’t there in all this reasoning of ours, that is, of yours… no, better, of ours… isn’t there contempt for him, for that unhappy man… in our taking his soul apart like this now, as if from above, eh? In our having decided so surely now that he’ll accept the money, eh?”

“No, Lise, there’s no contempt,” Alyosha answered firmly, as though he had been prepared for this question already. “I thought about it myself on the way here. Consider, what contempt can there be, when we ourselves are just like him, when everyone is just like him. Because we’re just the same, you know, no better. And even if we were better, in his place we’d still be just the same… I can’t speak for you, Lise, but for my part I think that in many ways I have a petty soul. And his isn’t petty at all; on the contrary, it’s very delicate… No, Lise, there’s no contempt for him in it at all! You know, Lise, my elder said once: people must all be looked after like children, and some of them like the sick in hospitals…”

“Oh, Alexei Fyodorovich, oh, my dear, let’s look after people like the sick!”

“Let’s, Lise, I’m ready, only I’m not quite ready myself; sometimes I’m very impatient, and other times I have no eye for it at all. Now with you it’s different.”

“Oh, I don’t believe it! Alexei Fyodorovich, how happy I am!”

“How good that you say so, Lise.”

“Alexei Fyodorovich, you’re wonderfully good, but sometimes you seem like a pedant… and yet, look again, and you’re not a pedant at all. Go and look at the door, open it quietly and see whether Mamma is eavesdropping,” Lise suddenly whispered in a sort of nervous, hurried whisper.

Alyosha went, opened the door a little, and reported that no one was eavesdropping.

“Come here, Alexei Fyodorovich,” Lise went on, blushing more and more, “give me your hand, like this. Listen, I must make you a great confession: I didn’t write you yesterday’s letter as a joke, but seriously…”

And she covered her eyes with her hand. It was plain that she was very ashamed to make this confession. Suddenly she seized his hand and impetuously kissed it three times.

“Oh, Lise, that’s wonderful,” Alyosha exclaimed joyfully. “And I was perfectly sure, you know, that you wrote it seriously.”

“Sure, imagine that!” she suddenly pushed his hand away, without letting go of it, though, blushing terribly and laughing a small, happy little laugh. “I kiss his hand, and he says, ‘That’s wonderful.’” But her reproach was unjust: Alyosha too was in great confusion.

“I would like always to please you, Lise, but I don’t know how to do it,” he muttered somehow, blushing too.

“Alyosha, dear, you are cold and impertinent. You see, sir. He has deigned to choose me for his spouse and rests content with that! He was already sure I wrote it seriously, how do you like that! Why, that’s impertinence—that’s what it is!”

“But is it so bad that I was sure?” Alyosha suddenly laughed.

“Oh, Alyosha, on the contrary, it’s terribly good,” Lise looked at him tenderly and happily. Alyosha stood, still holding his hand in hers. Suddenly he bent down and kissed her right on her little lips.

“What’s this now? What’s the matter with you?” cried Lise. Alyosha was utterly at a loss.

“Well, forgive me if it was wrong… Perhaps I did something terribly stupid… You said I was cold, so I up and kissed you… Only I see it came out stupid…”

Lise laughed and covered her face with her hands.

“And dressed like that!” broke from her in the midst of her laughter, but suddenly she stopped laughing and became all serious, almost stern.

“Well, Alyosha, we’ll wait a while yet with kisses, because neither of us knows how to do it yet, and we still have a very long time to wait,” she concluded suddenly. “Tell me instead, why are you taking me, such a fool, a sick little fool, you, so clever, so thoughtful, so observant? Oh, Alyosha, I’m terribly happy, because I’m not worthy of you at all!”

“You are, Lise. In a few days I’ll be leaving the monastery for good. Once out in the world, one must marry, that much I know. That’s what he told me to do, too. Whom could I take who is better than you… and who would take me, except you? I’ve already thought it over. In the first place, you’ve known me since childhood, and in the second, you have a great many abilities that I don’t have at all. Your soul is merrier than mine; above all, you are more innocent than I am, while I have already touched on many, many things… Oh, you don’t know, but I’m a Karamazov too! What does it matter that you laugh and joke, and at me too; on the contrary, laugh, I’m so glad of it… But you laugh like a little girl, and inside yourself you think like a martyr…”

“Like a martyr? How so?”

“Yes, Lise, your question just now: isn’t there contempt in us for that unhappy man, because we anatomize his soul like that: that is a martyr’s question… you see, I just can’t put it, but whoever has such questions is capable of suffering himself. Sitting in your chair, you must already have thought a great deal…”

“Alyosha, give me your hand, why are you taking it away,” Lise said softly, in a little voice weakened by happiness, a sort of sinking voice. “Listen, Alyosha, what will you wear when you leave the monastery, what sort of clothes? Don’t laugh, don’t be angry, it’s very, very important to me.”

“I haven’t thought about clothes yet, Lise, but I’ll wear whatever you like.”

“I want you to have a dark blue velvet jacket, a white piqué waistcoat, and a soft, fluffy gray hat… Tell me, did you really believe earlier that I didn’t love you, when I disowned yesterday’s letter?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Oh, unbearable man, incorrigible!”

“You see, I knew that you… it seems, love me, but I pretended to believe you, that you didn’t love me, so that it would be… more comfortable for you…”

“Even worse! Worse and best of all. Alyosha, I love you terribly. Before you came earlier, I made a wish: I’ll ask him for yesterday’s letter, and if he calmly takes it out and gives it back to me (as one can always expect of him), that means he doesn’t love me at all, doesn’t feel anything, and is simply a stupid, unworthy boy, and I am lost. But you left the letter in your cell, and that cheered me up: isn’t it true that you left it in your cell because you had a presentiment that I would demand the letter back, so as not to give it back? Isn’t that so? It is so, isn’t it?”

“Oh, Lise, it isn’t so at all, the letter is with me now, and it was earlier too, right here in this pocket, here it is.”

Alyosha, laughing, took out the letter and showed it to her from a distance.

“Only I won’t give it to you; look at it from my hands.”

“What? So you lied earlier, you, a monk, you lied?”

“I dare say I lied,” Alyosha laughed too, “I lied so as not to give you the letter. It’s very dear to me,” he added suddenly with strong feeling, blushing again, “it’s forever now, and I’ll never give it to anyone!”

Lise looked at him in delight.

“Alyosha,” she babbled again, “look at the door, isn’t Mamma eavesdropping?”

“All right, Lise, I’ll look, only wouldn’t it be better not to, eh? Why suspect your mother of such baseness?”

“What baseness? Baseness how? If she eavesdrops on her daughter, that’s her right, not baseness,” Lise flared up. “You may be sure, Alexei Fyodorovich, that when I am a mother myself and have a daughter just like me, I shall certainly eavesdrop on her.”

“Really, Lise? That isn’t good.”

“Oh, my God, what baseness is there in it? If it were some ordinary society conversation and I eavesdropped, that would be baseness, but here her own daughter has locked herself in with a young man… Listen, Alyosha, you should know that I’ll be spying on you too, as soon as we’re married, and you should know besides that I’ll open all your letters and read everything… So consider yourself forewarned…”

“Yes, of course, if that’s how it is…” Alyosha muttered, “only it isn’t good…”

“Oh, what contempt! Alyosha, dear, let’s not quarrel the very first time; I’d better tell you the whole truth: of course, it’s very bad to eavesdrop, and of course I’m wrong and you’re right, but all the same I’ll eavesdrop.”

“Go ahead. You won’t spy out anything of that sort about me,” Alyosha laughed.

“Alyosha, and will you obey me? That must be decided beforehand too.”

“With great pleasure, Lise, and certainly, only not in the most important things. In the most important things, if you disagree with me, I will still do as my duty bids me.”

“That’s as it should be. Then know that I, on the contrary, am ready not only to obey in the most important things, but to give way to you in everything, and I swear it to you now—in everything and for my whole life,” Lise cried ardently, “and with happiness, with happiness! What’s more, I swear to you that I will never eavesdrop on you, not once and never, I won’t read a single letter of yours, because you are right and I am not. And though I’ll want terribly to eavesdrop, I know that, I still won’t, because you consider it ignoble. You are like my providence now… Listen, Alexei Fyodorovich, why have you been so sad all these days, both yesterday and today; I know you have troubles, misfortunes, but I see that besides that you have some special sadness, a secret one perhaps, eh?”

“Yes, Lise, there is a secret one too,” Alyosha said sadly. “I see that you love me, since you’ve guessed it.”

“What sadness, then? About what? Can you tell me?” Lise said with timid entreaty.

“I’ll tell you later, Lise… afterward…” Alyosha was embarrassed. “Now perhaps it wouldn’t even be understood. And perhaps I couldn’t even put it into words myself.”

“I know, besides, that your brothers are tormenting you, your father?”

“Yes, my brothers too,” said Alyosha, as if in thought.

“I don’t like your brother Ivan Fyodorovich, Alyosha,” Lise suddenly remarked.

Alyosha noted this remark with some surprise, but did not take it up.

“My brothers are ruining themselves,” he continued, “and Father too. And they ruin others together with themselves. Here is ‘the earthy Karamazov force,’ as Father Paisy put it the other day, earthy and frenzied, unhewn… I don’t even know whether the spirit of God moves above that force. I only know that I myself am a Karamazov too… I’m a monk, a monk? Am I a monk, Lise? Didn’t you say a moment ago that I was a monk?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And maybe I don’t even believe in God.”

“You don’t believe, what’s the matter with you?” Lise said quietly and cautiously. But Alyosha did not answer this. There was something here, in these too sudden words of his, something too mysterious and too subjective, perhaps unclear even to himself, but already undoubtedly tormenting him.

“And now, on top of everything, my friend is going away, the first man in the world is leaving the earth. If you only knew, if you only knew, Lise, how bound I am, how welded in soul to that man! And now I shall be left alone… I’ll come to you, Lise… From now on we’ll be together…”

“Yes, together, together! From now on always together, for our whole lives. Listen, kiss me, I allow it.”

Alyosha kissed her.

“Well, go now, Christ be with you!” (And she blessed him with the sign of the cross.) “Go quickly to him while he’s alive. I see I’ve kept you cruelly. I’ll pray for him and for you today. Alyosha, we shall be happy! We shall be happy, shall we?”

“It seems we shall, Lise.”

Coming out from Lise’s, Alyosha did not see fit to go in to Mrs. Khokhlakova and, without taking leave of her, was making his way out of the house. But the moment he opened the door and stepped out onto the stairs, out of nowhere there before him was Mrs. Khokhlakova herself. From her first word Alyosha guessed that she had been lying in wait for him there on purpose.

“Alexei Fyodorovich, this is terrible. This is childish nonsense and all rubbish. I hope you won’t take it into your head to dream… Foolishness, foolishness, and foolishness!” she fell upon him.

“Only don’t tell her that,” said Alyosha, “or she’ll be upset, and that’s bad for her now.”

“I hear the sensible word of a sensible young man. Am I to understand that you agreed with her only because, out of compassion for her sickly condition, you did not want to anger her by contradicting her?”

“Oh no, not at all, I was talking with her perfectly seriously,” Alyosha declared firmly.

“Seriousness is impossible here, unthinkable, and in the first place I shall never receive you again, not once, and in the second place I shall go away and take her with me, you should know that.”

“But why,” said Alyosha, “it’s still such a long way off; perhaps we’ll have to wait a year and a half yet.”

“Ah, Alexei Fyodorovich, that’s true, of course, and in a year and a half you’ll quarrel with her and part a thousand times. But I am so unhappy, so unhappy! Let it all be nonsense, but it has struck me down. Now I’m like Famusov in the last scene, you are Chatsky, she is Sofya,¹ and imagine, I ran out here to the stairs on purpose to meet you, and there too, you know, the whole fatal thing happened on the stairs. I heard everything, I could barely stay on my feet. So this is the explanation of the horrors of this whole night and of all the hysterics today! Love for the daughter, and death for the mother. Lie down in your coffin. Now the second and most important thing: what is this letter she wrote you, show it to me at once, at once!”

“No, there’s no need. Tell me, how is Katerina Ivanovna’s health, I very much need to know.”

“She is still lying in delirium, she hasn’t come to; her aunts are here and only gasp and are haughty with me, and Herzenstube came and was so frightened that I didn’t know what to do with him or how to save him, I even wanted to send for a doctor. They took him away in my carriage. And suddenly, to crown it all, you suddenly come with this letter. True, all this is still a year and a half off. In the name of everything great and holy, in the name of your dying elder, let me see that letter, Alexei Fyodorovich, me, her mother! If you like, hold it in your fingers, and I’ll read it from your hands.”

“No, I won’t show it, Katerina Osipovna, even if she allowed it, I won’t show it. I’ll come tomorrow and, if you like, I’ll talk over many things with you, but now—goodbye!”

And Alyosha ran down the stairs and out into the street.

Notes

1. 1. In the last act of Alexander Griboyedov’s verse comedy Woe from Wit (1824), Famusov comes upon his daughter Sofya at night in the entrance hall by the staircase, where Chatsky has just learned the truth about her.