III. The Brothers Get Acquainted

Ivan, however, was not in a private room. It was only a place by the window, partitioned off by screens, but those sitting behind the screens still could not be seen by outsiders. This room was the front one, the first as you came in, with a sideboard along the side wall. Waiters were scurrying through it every minute. Of the customers there was only one little old man, a retired military man, drinking tea in a corner. In the other rooms of the tavern, on the other hand, all the usual tavern bustle was going on: calls for the waiter could be heard, the uncorking of beer bottles, the click of billiard balls; an organ was droning. Alyosha knew that Ivan almost never went to this tavern and was no lover of taverns in general; so, he thought, he had ended up here precisely for this reason alone, to meet brother Dmitri as arranged. And yet brother Dmitri was not there.

“Shall I order you some fish soup or something? You don’t live on tea alone, after all,” cried Ivan, apparently terribly pleased to have lured Alyosha in. He himself had already finished his dinner and was drinking tea.

“Let’s have fish soup, and then tea too, I’m hungry,” Alyosha said cheerfully.

“And cherry jam? They have it here. Do you remember how, when you were little, you loved cherry jam at Polenov’s?”

“You remember that? Let’s have the jam too, I still love it.”

Ivan rang for the waiter and ordered fish soup, tea, and jam.

“I remember everything, Alyosha, I remember you up to the age of eleven, I was going on fifteen then. Fifteen and eleven, that is such a difference that brothers at those ages are never companions. I don’t know whether I even loved you. When I went off to Moscow, for the first few years I didn’t even think of you at all. Then, when you yourself came to Moscow, we met only once somewhere, it seems. And here I’ve been living for over three months now, and up to now you and I haven’t said a word to each other. Tomorrow I’m leaving, and I was just thinking, sitting here: how can I see him to say goodbye, and there you were, passing by.”

“And did you want very much to see me?”

“Very much. I want to get acquainted with you once and for all, and to acquaint you with me. And with that, to say goodbye. In my view, it’s best of all to get acquainted before parting. I saw how you were looking at me all these three months; there was a sort of ceaseless expectation in your eyes, and that is just what I can’t stand, that’s why I didn’t come near you. But in the end I learned to respect you: the little fellow stands firm, I thought. Mind you, though I’m laughing now, I’m speaking seriously. You do stand firm, don’t you? I love people who stand firm like that, whatever it is they stand on, even if they’re such little lads as you. Toward the end your expectant look stopped being repugnant to me altogether; on the contrary, I came to love your expectant look at last… You seem to love me for some reason, Alyosha?”

“I do love you, Ivan. Brother Dmitri says about you: Ivan is a tomb. I say about you: Ivan is a riddle. You are a riddle to me even now, but I’ve already grasped something in you, and only since this morning!”

“And what is that?” laughed Ivan.

“You won’t be angry?” Alyosha laughed too.

“Well?”

“That you are just exactly as young a man as all other young men of twenty-three, just as young, youthful, fresh, and nice a boy, well, a boy still wet behind the ears, in fact! Did I offend you much?”

“On the contrary, you struck me by a coincidence!” Ivan cried gaily and with heat. “Would you believe that ever since our meeting at her house earlier, I’ve been thinking only of that to myself, of this greenness of mine at twenty-three, and now you suddenly guess it exactly and start with that very thing. I was sitting here just now, and do you know what I was saying to myself: if I didn’t believe in life, if I lost faith in a woman I cherish, lost faith in the order of things, were even convinced that everything, on the contrary, is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos, if all the horrors of human disillusionment struck me—I would still want to live, and once I have set my lips to this cup, I won’t tear myself away from it until I have drained it all! However, by the time I’m thirty I shall probably throw down the cup, even if I haven’t emptied it, and walk away… I don’t know where. But until I’m thirty, I know this firmly, my youth will overcome everything—every disillusionment, every aversion to life. I’ve asked myself many times: is there such despair in the world as would overcome this frenzied and, perhaps, indecent thirst for life in me, and I’ve decided that, it seems, there is none, that is, again, until I’m thirty, and after that I won’t want it myself, so it seems to me. This thirst for life is often called base by certain consumptive, snot-nosed moralists, especially poets. It’s a Karamazov trait in part, that’s true, this thirst for life in spite of everything; it is surely in you too, but why is it base? There is still a terrible amount of centripetal force on our planet, Alyosha. One wants to live, and I live, even if it goes against logic. Though I don’t believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that open in spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom, would you believe, you sometimes love without knowing why, some human deed of greatness is dear to me, in which one may perhaps have long since stopped believing, but which one still honors in one’s heart from old habit. Here, they’ve brought your fish soup, eat and enjoy it. The fish soup is excellent, they cook well here. I want to go to Europe, Alyosha, I’ll go straight from here; and I know, of course, that I shall be going only to a graveyard, but to the most, the most precious graveyard, that’s what! Precious are the dead who lie there, every stone over them speaks of such ardent past life, of such passionate faith in their deed, in their truth, in their struggle and their science, that I know beforehand I shall fall to the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them, while at the same time convinced with all my heart that it has all long been a graveyard and nothing more. And I shall weep not from despair, but simply because I shall be happy in my shed tears. I shall get drunk on my own tender feeling. The sticky little spring leaves, the blue sky, I love them, that’s what! It isn’t intellect here, it isn’t logic, here one loves with one’s insides, with one’s belly, one loves one’s first young strength… Do you understand anything of my drivel, Alyoshka, or not?” Ivan suddenly laughed.

“I understand it only too well, Ivan: one wants to love with one’s insides and one’s belly—you put that beautifully, and I’m terribly glad that you want so much to live,” exclaimed Alyosha. “I think everyone should love life before everything else in the world.”

“Love life more than its meaning?”

“Certainly so, love it before logic, as you say, it must certainly be before logic, and only then will I understand its meaning too. That’s what I’ve been dimly seeing for a long time now. Half of your work is done, Ivan, and won: you love to live. Now you must take pains over your second half, and you are saved.”

“You’re saving me already, and perhaps I wasn’t even perishing! And what does it consist in, this second half of yours?”

“In this: that your dead must be raised, those who perhaps never died. Well, let’s have tea. I’m glad we’re talking, Ivan.”

“You’re in some sort of inspiration, I see. I terribly love such professions de foi from such… novices. You are a firm man, Alexei. Is it true that you want to leave the monastery?”

“It’s true. My elder is sending me into the world.”

“So we’ll see each other again in the world, we’ll meet before I’m thirty, when I begin tearing myself away from the cup. Now Father doesn’t want to tear himself away from his cup until he’s seventy, he even dreams of eighty, he said so himself; with him it’s all too serious, though he is a buffoon. He has planted himself on his sensuality as though on a rock too… though after thirty, it’s true, perhaps there’s nothing to plant oneself on except that… But until seventy is base, better until thirty: one can keep up ‘a touch of nobility’ while deceiving oneself. Have you seen Dmitri today?”

“No, I haven’t, but I saw Smerdyakov.” And Alyosha told his brother, hastily but in detail, about his meeting with Smerdyakov. Ivan suddenly began to listen with great concern, and even asked him to repeat a few things.

“Only he asked me not to tell brother Dmitri what he had said about him,” Alyosha added.

Ivan frowned and fell to thinking.

“Is it because of Smerdyakov that you’re frowning?” asked Alyosha.

“Yes, because of him. To hell with him. I did want to see Dmitri, but now there’s no need…” Ivan said reluctantly.

“And are you really leaving so soon, brother?”

“Yes.”

“But what about Dmitri and Father? How will it end between them?” Alyosha said anxiously.

“You and your same old tune! What have I got to do with it? Am I my brother Dmitri’s keeper, or what?” Ivan snapped irritably, but suddenly smiled somehow bitterly. “Cain’s answer to God about his murdered brother, eh? Perhaps that’s what you’re thinking this minute? But, damn it, I can’t really stay here as their keeper, can I? I’ve finished my business and I’m going. You don’t think, do you, that I’m jealous of Dmitri, that all these three months I’ve been trying to win his beauty, Katerina Ivanovna, away from him? Eh, devil take it, I had my own business. I’ve finished my business and I’m going. I finished my business earlier today, you were a witness.”

“You mean earlier, at Katerina Ivanovna’s?”

“Yes, at hers, and I got free of it all at once. And so what? What business is Dmitri of mine? Dmitri has nothing to do with it. I had only my own business with Katerina Ivanovna. You know yourself that, on the contrary, Dmitri behaved as if he were in a conspiracy with me. I never asked him at all, and he himself made a solemn handing-over of her to me, with his blessing. The whole thing is a joke. No, Alyosha, no, if you knew how light I feel now! I was sitting here eating my dinner, and, would you believe it, I almost asked for champagne to celebrate my first hour of freedom. Pah, nearly half a year—and suddenly, all at once, I’ve thrown it all off at once. Well, did I even suspect yesterday that, if one wanted to, it would cost nothing to end it!”

“Are you speaking of your love, Ivan?”

“Love, if you like, yes, I fell in love with a young lady, an institute girl. I suffered over her, and she made me suffer. I sat over her… and suddenly it all flew off. Earlier I spoke with inspiration, but I came out and burst out laughing—would you believe it? No, I mean it literally.”

“You’re saying it so cheerfully even now,” remarked Alyosha, studying his face, which had indeed suddenly grown cheerful.

“But how was I to know that I didn’t love her at all! Heh-heh! And it turned out I don’t. And yet how I liked her! How I liked her even earlier, when I was making my speech. And do you know, I like her terribly even now, and yet how easy it is to leave her. Do you think I’m bragging?”

“No. Only perhaps it wasn’t love.”

“Alyoshka,” Ivan laughed, “don’t go launching into discussions about love! It isn’t proper for you. Earlier, though, earlier you jumped in, ay! I even forgot to kiss you for it… And how she tormented me! Truly, I sat keeping watch over a strain. Oh, she knew I loved her! She loved me, not Dmitri,” Ivan insisted cheerfully. “Dmitri is only a strain. Everything I told her earlier is the very truth. But the whole point, the main thing, is that she will need perhaps fifteen or twenty years to realize that she doesn’t love Dmitri at all, but loves only me, whom she torments. And perhaps she’ll never realize it, even in spite of today’s lesson. Well, so much the better: I got up and left forever. By the way, how is she now? What happened there after I left?”

Alyosha told him about the hysterics and that she was now, it seemed, unconscious and delirious.

“Isn’t Khokhlakova lying?”

“It seems not.”

“I must find out. Though no one has ever died of hysterics. And let her have hysterics, God sent woman hysterics out of love. I won’t go there at all. Why push myself in again.”

“But earlier you told her that she had never loved you.”

“I did that on purpose. Alyoshka, what if I order some champagne, let’s drink to my freedom. No, if you only knew how glad I am!”

“No, brother, better not drink,” Alyosha said suddenly, “besides, I feel sad somehow.”

“Yes, you’ve been sad for a long time, I’ve seen it for a long time.”

“So you’re certainly going tomorrow morning?”

“In the morning? I didn’t say in the morning… But then, perhaps in the morning. Would you believe it, I dined here today solely so as not to dine with the old man, he has become so repulsive to me. I’d have left long ago on his account alone. But why are you so worried that I’m leaving? You and I still have God knows how much time before I go. A whole eternity of time, immortality!”

“If you’re leaving tomorrow, what kind of eternity is that?”

“But what has that to do with you and me?” Ivan laughed. “We’ll still have time to talk over our own business, our own, the thing we came here for, won’t we? Why are you staring in surprise? Answer: why did we meet here? To talk about love for Katerina Ivanovna, about the old man and Dmitri? About going abroad? About Russia’s fatal situation? About the Emperor Napoleon? Is that it, is that what we came for?”

“No, not for that.”

“So you understand yourself what for. Others have one thing, but we greenhorns have another; first of all we must resolve the questions that are before all time, that is our concern. All young Russia is talking now about nothing but the everlasting questions. Precisely now, when the old men have all suddenly gone in for practical questions. Why did you spend all three months looking at me in expectation? To interrogate me: ‘What is your faith, or have you none at all?’ That is what your three months of looks came down to, Alexei Fyodorovich, isn’t that so?”

“Perhaps that is so,” Alyosha smiled. “You aren’t laughing at me now, are you, brother?”

“Me, laughing? I don’t want to grieve my little brother, who has looked at me for three months in such expectation. Alyosha, look straight at me: I am exactly the same little boy as you, after all, except perhaps not a novice. How do Russian boys go about things up to now? Some of them, that is? Here, for instance, is this stinking tavern; they come together here, sit down in a corner. All their lives before they didn’t know each other, and when they walk out of the tavern they won’t know each other again for forty years, well, and so what, what will they discuss while they’ve snatched a moment in the tavern? The universal questions, nothing less: is there a God, is there immortality? And those who don’t believe in God, well, they’ll start talking about socialism and anarchism, about remaking all mankind on a new pattern, but that comes to the same devil, the very same questions, only from the other end. And a great many, a great many of the most original Russian boys do nothing but talk about the everlasting questions in our day. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes, for real Russians the questions of whether there is a God and whether there is immortality, or, as you say, the questions from the other end, of course they come first and before everything, and that is how it should be,” said Alyosha, still gazing at his brother with the same quiet, searching smile.

“Here’s the thing, Alyosha: being a Russian is sometimes not at all clever, but still nothing more foolish can be imagined than what Russian boys busy themselves with now. But there is one Russian boy, Alyoshka, whom I love terribly.”

“How neatly you brought that round,” Alyosha suddenly laughed.

“Well, tell me, then, where to begin, give your orders yourself: with God? Does God exist, or what?”

“Begin wherever you like, even from ‘the other end.’ You proclaimed yesterday at Father’s that there is no God, you know,” Alyosha looked searchingly at his brother.

“Yesterday at dinner at the old man’s I teased you with that on purpose, and I saw how your little eyes lit up. But now I’m not at all against talking it over with you, and I say so very seriously. I want to become friends with you, Alyosha, because I have no friends; I want to try. Well, imagine, then, perhaps I too accept God,” laughed Ivan. “That’s unexpected for you, eh?”

“Yes, of course, if you aren’t joking even now.”

“‘Joking.’ Yesterday at the elder’s they said I was joking. You see, my dear, in the eighteenth century a certain old sinner pronounced that if God did not exist, one would have to invent him: s’il n’existait pas Dieu il faudrait l’inventer. And in fact man did invent God. And it isn’t that which is strange, it wouldn’t be so marvelous that God really exists; what is marvelous is that such an idea—the idea of the necessity of God—could creep into the head of such a savage and wicked animal as man, so holy is it, so touching, so wise, and so much does it do honor to man. As for me, I resolved long ago not to think about whether man created God or God created man. Of course, I won’t go through all the modern axioms of Russian boys on this score, all of them derived from European hypotheses; because what is a hypothesis there becomes at once an axiom for a Russian boy, and not only for the boys but perhaps for their professors too, because Russian professors here nowadays are very often the same Russian boys. And so I bypass all the hypotheses. What is our task now, yours and mine? The task is for me to explain to you as quickly as possible my essence, that is, what sort of man I am, what I believe in and what I hope for, isn’t that so, isn’t it? And so I declare that I accept God plainly and simply. But here is something that must be noted, however: if God exists and if he really created the earth, then, as we know perfectly well, he created it according to Euclidean geometry, and the human mind with a conception of only three dimensions of space. Yet there have been and there are even now geometers and philosophers, and even among the most remarkable, who doubt that the whole universe, or, more broadly still—all being, was created only according to Euclidean geometry; they even make so bold as to dream that two parallel lines, which by Euclid cannot possibly meet on earth, might perhaps come together somewhere in infinity. I have decided, my dear, that if I can’t understand even that, then how am I to understand about God. I humbly confess that I have no ability to resolve such questions, I have a Euclidean mind, an earthly one, and so how can we decide about what is not of this world. My advice to you, Alyosha my friend, is never to think about it either, and least of all about God: does he exist or not? All these are questions entirely unsuited to a mind created with a conception of only three dimensions. And so I accept God, and not only willingly, but, what’s more, I accept his wisdom too, and his purpose, which are utterly unknown to us; I believe in order, in life having a meaning, I believe in an eternal harmony into which we are all supposedly to flow together; I believe in the Word, toward which the universe strives and which itself ‘was with God’ and is itself God, well, and so on and so on, and so forth to infinity. A great many words have been made on this score. It seems I’m already on the right road—eh? Well, then, imagine that in the final result I do not accept this world of God’s—and though I know that it exists, I don’t admit it at all. It isn’t God that I don’t accept, understand that, it is the world created by him, God’s world, that I don’t accept and cannot agree to accept. Let me make a reservation: I am convinced, like a babe, that the sufferings will heal and be smoothed over, that the whole offensive comedy of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the vile invention of a feeble and puny, atom-small human Euclidean mind, that, at last, in the finale of the world, at the moment of eternal harmony, there will occur and appear something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, for the quenching of all indignation, for the atonement of all men’s villainies, of all the blood they have shed; it will suffice so that it will be possible not only to forgive but even to justify everything that has happened with men; let it, let it all be and appear, but I do not accept it and do not want to accept it! Even if the parallel lines meet and I see it myself: I shall see and say that they have met, and still I shall not accept it. That is my essence, Alyosha, that is my thesis. This I have told you seriously. I deliberately began this conversation of ours as stupidly as it could possibly be begun, but I have brought it round to my confession, because that is all you need. It wasn’t God that you needed to hear about, you only needed to know what this brother whom you love lives by. And I have told you.”

Ivan concluded his long tirade suddenly with a kind of special and unexpected feeling.

“And why did you begin ‘as stupidly as it could possibly be begun’?” asked Alyosha, looking at him thoughtfully.

“Well, in the first place, if only for the sake of Russianism: Russian conversations on these subjects are all carried on as stupidly as they possibly can be. And in the second place, again, the stupider, the closer to the point. The stupider, the clearer. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence twists and hides. Intelligence is a scoundrel, but stupidity is straight and honest. I have brought the matter round to my despair, and the more stupidly I present it, the better for me.”

“Will you explain to me why you ‘do not accept the world’?” said Alyosha.

“Of course I’ll explain, it’s no secret, that’s what I was leading up to. My dear little brother, it isn’t you I want to corrupt and push off your foundation; perhaps I would like to heal myself by you,” Ivan suddenly smiled, just like a meek little boy. Never before had Alyosha seen such a smile on his face.