III. A Little Demon

Going in to Liza, he found her half reclining in her former invalid chair, the one in which she had been wheeled about when she could not yet walk. She did not stir to meet him, but her keen, sharp gaze simply fastened on him. Her eyes were somewhat feverish, her face a pale yellow. Alyosha was astonished at how she had changed in three days; she had even grown thinner. She did not hold out her hand to him. He himself touched her thin, long little fingers, which lay motionless on her dress, then sat down facing her without a word.

“I know you’re in a hurry to get to the jail,” Liza said sharply, “and Mama kept you for two hours, she has just told you about me and about Yulia.”

“How did you find out?” asked Alyosha.

“I was eavesdropping. What are you staring at me for? I want to eavesdrop, so I eavesdrop, there’s nothing wrong in it. I don’t ask forgiveness.”

“Is something upsetting you?”

“On the contrary, I’m very glad. I was just thinking again, for the thirtieth time: how good it is that I turned you down and won’t be your wife. You’re no good as a husband: I’ll marry you, and suddenly I’ll give you a note to take to the one I fall in love with after you, and you’ll take it and you’ll be sure to deliver it, and bring back the answer too. And you’ll turn forty, and you’ll still be carrying these notes of mine just the same.”

She suddenly laughed.

“There is something spiteful in you and at the same time something simple-hearted,” Alyosha smiled at her.

“What’s simple-hearted is that I’m not ashamed in front of you. Not only am I not ashamed, I don’t want to be ashamed, precisely in front of you, precisely of you. Alyosha, why don’t I respect you? I love you very much, but I don’t respect you. If I respected you, I wouldn’t talk without shame, would I?”

“No.”

“And do you believe that I’m not ashamed in front of you?”

“No, I don’t.”

Liza laughed nervously again; she was talking fast, rapidly.

“I sent your brother Dmitri Fyodorovich some sweets in the jail. Alyosha, you know, how pretty you are! I shall love you terribly for having so quickly allowed me not to love you.”

“What did you send for me today for, Lise?”

“I wanted to tell you about a wish of mine. I want someone to torment me, to marry me and then torment me, deceive me, leave, and go away. I don’t want to be happy!”

“You have come to love disorder?”

“Ah, I want disorder. I keep wanting to set the house on fire. I imagine how I’ll go up and set it on fire quietly, it has to be quietly. They’ll be putting it out, and it’ll be burning. And I’ll know, but say nothing. Ah, what nonsense! And how boring!”

She waved her little hand in disgust.

“You live in wealth,” Alyosha said quietly.

“Is it better, then, to be poor?”

“It is.”

“That’s what your late monk talked you into. It’s not true. Let me be rich and everyone else poor, I’ll eat sweets and drink cream and won’t give any to anyone. Ah, don’t say it, don’t say anything,” she waved her little hand, though Alyosha had not even opened his mouth, “you’ve told me all this before, I know it all by heart. It’s boring. If I’m poor, I’ll kill somebody, and even if I’m rich, I may kill somebody; why sit around! And you know, I want to reap, to reap rye. I’ll marry you, and you become a peasant, a real peasant, we’ll have a little foal, shall we? Do you know Kalganov?”

“I do.”

“He keeps walking about and dreaming. He says: why live for real, it’s better to dream. You can dream up the merriest things, but living is a bore. And yet he’s going to get married soon himself, he’s even declared his love to me. Do you know how to spin a top?”

“I do.”

“Well, he’s just like a top: spin him and let him go and whip him, whip him, whip him with a little whip: I’ll marry him and spin him all my life. You’re not ashamed to sit with me?”

“No.”

“You’re terribly angry that I’m not talking about holy things. I have no wish to be a saint. What will they do in the other world for the very biggest sin? You must know that exactly.”

“God will condemn.” Alyosha was looking at her intently. “That’s just what I want,” said Liza. “I’d come, and they’d condemn me, and suddenly I’d laugh in all their faces. I terribly want to set the house on fire, Alyosha, our house, you still don’t believe me?”

“Why not? There are even children, twelve years old or so, who want very much to set something on fire, and they do. It’s like an illness.”

“That’s not true, not true, maybe there are children like that, but that’s not what I mean.”

“You take evil for good: it’s a passing crisis, perhaps your former illness is to blame for it.”

“So you do despise me! I simply don’t want to do good, I want to do evil, and there’s no illness in it at all.”

“Why do evil?”

“So that nothing should be left anywhere. Ah, how good it would be if nothing were left! You know, Alyosha, sometimes I think of doing a terrible lot of evil and everything vile, and I’ll go on doing it quietly for a long time, and suddenly everyone will find out. They’ll all crowd around me and point their fingers at me, and I’ll look at them all. That’s very pleasant. Why is it so pleasant, Alyosha?”

“It just is. A need to crush something good or, as you were saying, to set something on fire. That happens too.”

“But I wasn’t just saying it, I’ll do it.”

“I believe you.”

“Ah, how I love you for saying: I believe you. And you aren’t lying at all, not at all. But perhaps you think I’m saying all this on purpose, to tease you?”

“No, I don’t think so… though perhaps there is a little of that need too.”

“There is a little. I shall never lie to you,” she said, her eyes flashing with some sort of little fire.

What struck Alyosha most of all was her seriousness: there was not a shadow of laughter or playfulness in her face now, though before, gaiety and playfulness had never left her even in her most “serious” moments.

“There are moments when people love crime,” Alyosha said thoughtfully.

“Yes, yes! You’ve said my thought, they love it, everyone loves it and always loves it, not just in ‘moments.’ You know, it’s as though in this everyone agreed once to lie, and everyone has been lying ever since. Everyone says they hate what is bad, but inwardly they all love it.”

“And are you still reading bad books as before?”

“I am. Mama reads them and tucks them under her pillow, and I steal them.”

“Aren’t you ashamed to destroy yourself?”

“I want to destroy myself. There’s a boy here who lay under the rails while the train cars went over him. Lucky fellow! Listen, now they’re trying your brother for killing his father, and everyone loves it that he killed his father.”

“Loves it that he killed his father?”

“They love it, everyone loves it! Everyone says it’s horrible, but inwardly they love it horribly. I’m the first to love it.”

“There is some truth in what you say about everyone,” Alyosha said quietly.

“Ah, what thoughts you have!” Liza shrieked in delight. “And from a monk! You wouldn’t believe how I respect you, Alyosha, for never lying. Ah, I’ll tell you a funny dream of mine: sometimes I dream of devils, it’s as if it’s night, I’m in my room with a candle, and suddenly there are devils everywhere, in all the corners, and under the table, and they open the doors, and there’s a crowd of them outside the doors, and they want to come in and seize me. And they’re already coming up, already seizing me. And suddenly I cross myself, and they all draw back, they’re afraid, only they don’t go away entirely, they stand by the doors and in the corners, waiting. And suddenly I terribly want to start cursing God out loud, so I start cursing, and they suddenly come crowding at me again, so delighted, and now they’re seizing me again, and suddenly I cross myself again—and they all draw back. It’s terribly merry, it takes my breath away.”

“I have had that very same dream too,” Alyosha suddenly said.

“Really?” Liza cried out in surprise. “Listen, Alyosha, don’t laugh, this is terribly important: can two different people really have one and the same dream?”

“They can, it seems.”

“Alyosha, I tell you, this is terribly important,” Liza went on, in a kind of excessive surprise by now. “It isn’t the dream that matters, but that you could have this very same dream as I did. You never lie to me, don’t lie now either: is it true? You’re not laughing?”

“It’s true.”

Liza was terribly struck by something and fell silent for half a minute.

“Alyosha, come to see me, come to see me more often,” she suddenly said in a pleading voice.

“I will always come to see you, all my life,” Alyosha answered firmly.

“I tell this only to you, you know,” Liza began again. “I tell it to myself alone, and to you. To you alone in the whole world. And I tell you more willingly than I tell myself. And I’m not ashamed in front of you at all. Alyosha, why am I not ashamed in front of you at all, not at all? Alyosha, is it true that the Yids steal children at Passover and slaughter them?”

“I don’t know.”

“I have a book here, I read about some trial somewhere, and that a Yid first cut off all the little fingers on both hands of a four-year-old boy, and then crucified him on a wall, nailed him up and crucified him, and then at the trial said that the boy died quickly, in four hours. Quickly, indeed! He says: he moaned, he kept moaning, and the other stood there admiring him. That’s good!”

“Good?”

“Good. Sometimes I think that I crucified him myself. He hangs there and moans, and I’ll sit down facing him and eat pineapple compote. I’m very fond of pineapple compote. Are you?”

Alyosha was silent and looked at her. Her pale yellow face suddenly became distorted, her eyes caught fire.

“You know, when I read about that Yid, I shook in tears the whole night. I imagine how the little child screams and moans (four-year-old boys understand, after all), and this thought about the compote won’t leave me alone. In the morning I sent a letter to a certain man, telling him that he absolutely must come to me. He came, and suddenly I told him about the boy and about the compote, I told him everything, everything, and said that ‘this is good.’ He suddenly laughed and said that it really was good. Then he got up and left. He sat for five minutes in all. Did he despise me, did he? Tell me, tell me, Alyosha, did he despise me or not?” She drew herself up straight on the couch, her eyes flashing.

“Tell me,” Alyosha said in agitation, “did you yourself send for him, this man?”

“I did.”

“Sent him a letter?”

“A letter.”

“Specifically to ask about this, about the child?”

“No, not about that at all, not at all. But as soon as he came in, I asked him about it right away. He answered, laughed, got up, and left.”

“That man dealt honestly with you,” Alyosha said quietly.

“And did he despise me? Did he laugh at me?”

“No, because perhaps he himself believes in the pineapple compote. He is very ill now too, Lise.”

“Yes, he believes!” Liza’s eyes flashed.

“He doesn’t despise anyone,” Alyosha went on. “He just doesn’t believe anyone. And if he doesn’t believe, then of course he despises too.”

“So me as well? Me?”

“You as well.”

“That’s good,” Liza somehow ground out. “When he went out and laughed, I felt that it’s good to be despised. And the boy with the cut-off little fingers is good, and being despised is good…”

And she laughed somehow spitefully and feverishly in Alyosha’s face.

“You know, Alyosha, you know, I would like… Alyosha, save me!” She suddenly jumped up from the couch, rushed to him, and threw her arms tightly around him. “Save me,” she almost moaned. “Would I tell anyone in the world what I’ve told you? And yet I’ve been telling the truth, the truth, the truth! I’ll kill myself, because everything is loathsome to me! I don’t want to live, because everything is loathsome to me! Everything is loathsome to me, everything is loathsome! Alyosha, why don’t you love me at all, not at all!” she finished in a frenzy.

“But I do love you!” Alyosha answered hotly.

“And will you weep for me, will you?”

“I will.”

“Not because I didn’t want to be your wife, but just weep for me, just like that?”

“I will.”

“Thank you! It’s only your tears I need. And let all the rest execute me and crush me underfoot, all of them, all, not excepting anyone! Because I don’t love anyone. Do you hear, an-y-one! On the contrary, I hate them! Go, Alyosha, it’s time for you to go to your brother!” She suddenly tore herself away from him.

“But how can you stay like this?” Alyosha said, almost in fright.

“Go to your brother, they’ll lock up the jail, go, here’s your hat! Kiss Mitya for me, go, go!”

And with force she all but pushed Alyosha out of the door. He was looking at her in sorrowful bewilderment when suddenly he felt in his right hand a letter, a small little letter, tightly folded and sealed. He looked down and in an instant read the address: To Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov. He looked quickly at Liza. Her face had become almost menacing.

“Give it to him, be sure to give it to him!” she commanded in a frenzy, shaking all over. “Today, at once! Otherwise I’ll poison myself! That’s why I sent for you!”

And she quickly slammed the door. The latch clicked. Alyosha put the letter in his pocket and went straight to the stairs without going in to Mrs. Khokhlakova, even forgetting about her. And Liza, as soon as Alyosha had gone, at once undid the latch, opened the door a tiny crack, put her finger in the crack, and, slamming the door, crushed it with all her might. Some ten seconds later, freeing her hand, she walked quietly, slowly, to her chair, sat down, drawing herself up very straight, and began to stare intently at her blackened little finger and the blood that had squeezed out from under the nail. Her lips were trembling, and she was whispering to herself quickly, quickly:

“Vile, vile, vile, vile!”