X. “It Was He Who Said That!”

Alyosha, coming in, informed Ivan Fyodorovich that a little over an hour before, Marya Kondratyevna had come running to his lodgings and announced that Smerdyakov had taken his own life. “I go in to him, see, to clear away the samovar, and there he is hanging on a little nail by the wall.” To Alyosha’s question, “Had she reported it to the proper person?” she answered that she had reported it to no one, but “rushed straight to you first and ran the whole way.” She was like a madwoman, Alyosha related, and was trembling all over like a leaf. And when Alyosha ran with her to their cottage, Smerdyakov was still hanging. A note lay on the table: “I do away with my life of my own free will and desire, so that no one is to be blamed.” Alyosha left the note just as it was on the table and went straight to the district police chief, reported everything to him, “and from there straight to you,” Alyosha concluded, looking intently into Ivan’s face. And all the while he was telling it he did not take his eyes off him, as if something in the expression of his face had struck him very much.

“Brother,” he cried suddenly, “you must be terribly ill! You look at me and it’s as if you don’t understand what I’m saying.”

“It’s good that you’ve come,” Ivan said, as if pensively and as if he had not heard Alyosha’s exclamation at all. “And yet I knew he had hanged himself.”

“From whom?”

“I don’t know from whom. But I knew. Did I know? Yes, he told me. He was telling me just now…”

Ivan stood in the middle of the room and went on speaking just as pensively and looking at the floor.

“Who is he?” asked Alyosha, involuntarily looking around.

“He slipped away.”

Ivan raised his head and smiled quietly:

“He was afraid of you, of you, my dove. You are a ‘pure cherub.’ Dmitri calls you a cherub. A cherub… The thundering cry of rapture of the seraphim! What is a seraph? Perhaps a whole constellation. And perhaps that whole constellation is nothing but some chemical molecule… There is a constellation of the Lion and the Sun, don’t you know?”

“Brother, sit down!” Alyosha said in alarm. “Sit down on the sofa, for God’s sake. You’re delirious, lie back on the pillow, there. Do you want a wet towel for your head? Maybe it will make you feel better?”

“Give me the towel, here on the chair, I threw it here a while ago.”

“It isn’t here. Don’t worry, I know where it is; here it is,” said Alyosha, finding a clean towel, still folded and unused, in another corner of the room, by Ivan’s washstand. Ivan looked strangely at the towel; his memory seemed to come back to him in an instant.

“Wait,” he half rose from the sofa, “a while ago, an hour ago, I took this very towel from that same place and wet it with water. I put it to my head and threw it here… how can it be dry? There wasn’t any other.”

“You put this towel to your head?” asked Alyosha.

“Yes, and walked about the room, an hour ago… Why have the candles burned down so? What time is it?”

“Almost twelve.”

“No, no, no!” Ivan suddenly cried. “It was not a dream! He was here, he sat here, there on that sofa. When you were knocking at the window I flung a glass at him… this one… Wait, I was asleep before too, but this dream is not a dream. It’s happened before as well. Alyosha, I have dreams now… but they aren’t dreams, they’re real: I walk, I talk, and I see… and yet I’m asleep. But he sat here, he was here, on this very sofa… He’s terribly stupid, Alyosha, terribly stupid,” Ivan suddenly laughed and began pacing the room.

“Who is stupid? Whom are you talking about, brother?” Alyosha asked again in anguish.

“The devil! He’s taken to visiting me. He’s been twice, even almost three times. He taunted me, saying I’m angry that he’s simply a devil and not Satan with scorched wings, in thunder and blaze. But he isn’t Satan, he’s lying about that. He’s an impostor. He’s simply a devil, a trashy, petty devil. He goes to the baths. Undress him and you’re sure to find a tail, long and smooth, like a Great Dane’s, an arshin long, brown… Alyosha, you’re chilled, you’ve been out in the snow, do you want some tea? What? It’s cold? Do you want me to have some made? C’est à ne pas mettre un chien dehors.”

Alyosha quickly ran to the washstand, wet the towel, persuaded Ivan to sit down again, and wrapped his head in the wet towel. He sat down beside him himself.

“What were you telling me this evening about Liza?” Ivan began again. (He was becoming very talkative.) “I like Liza. I said something nasty to you about her. I lied, I like her… I’m afraid for Katya tomorrow, more afraid than of anything. For the future. Tomorrow she’ll throw me over and trample me underfoot. She thinks that I am ruining Mitya out of jealousy over her! Yes, she thinks that! Well, it’s not so! Tomorrow is the cross, but not the gallows. No, I won’t hang myself. Do you know, Alyosha, that I can never take my own life! Out of baseness, or what? I’m not a coward. Out of a thirst for life! Why was it that I knew Smerdyakov had hanged himself? Yes, he was the one who told me…”

“And you are firmly convinced that someone was sitting here?” asked Alyosha.

“There on that sofa, in the corner. You would have driven him away. Why, you did drive him away: he vanished as soon as you appeared. I love your face, Alyosha. Did you know that I love your face? And he is I, Alyosha, my own self. All that is low in me, all that is base and contemptible! Yes, I am a ‘romantic,’ he noticed that… though it’s a slander. He’s terribly stupid, but that is what gives him his hold. He’s cunning, cunning like an animal, he knew how to drive me wild. He kept taunting me that I believe in him, and that was how he made me listen to him. He took me in like a little boy. He told me, though, a great deal of truth about myself. I would never have said it to myself. You know, Alyosha, you know,” Ivan added terribly seriously and as if in confidence, “I would very much like him really to be he, and not I!”

“He has worn you out,” said Alyosha, looking at his brother with compassion.

“He taunted me! And, you know, cleverly, cleverly: ‘Conscience! What is conscience? I make it myself. Why do I torment myself, then? Out of habit. Out of the universal human habit of seven thousand years. So let us get out of the habit, and we shall be gods.’ It was he who said that, it was he who said that!”

“And not you, not you?” Alyosha cried irrepressibly, looking clearly at his brother. “Well, let him be, drop him and forget about him! Let him take away with him everything you curse now, and never come back!”

“Yes, but he’s wicked. He laughed at me. He was insolent, Alyosha,” Ivan said, with a shudder of resentment. “But he slandered me, he slandered me in many things. He lied about me to my own face. ‘Oh, you are going to perform a great deed of virtue, you will announce that you killed your father, that the lackey killed your father at your instigation…’”

“Brother,” Alyosha interrupted, “get hold of yourself: it wasn’t you who killed. It isn’t true!”

“That is what he says, he, and he knows it: ‘You are going to perform a great deed of virtue, and yet you don’t believe in virtue—that is what makes you angry and torments you, that is why you are so vindictive.’ That is what he said to me about myself, and he knows what he’s saying…”

“It’s you who are saying it, not he!” Alyosha exclaimed sorrowfully. “And you’re saying it in illness, in delirium, tormenting yourself!”

“No, he knows what he’s saying. You are going out of pride, he says, you will stand up and say, ‘It was I who killed him, and why are you writhing with horror, you are lying! Your opinion I despise, your horror I despise.’ That is what he says about me, and suddenly he says, ‘And you know, you want them to praise you: a criminal, they’ll say, a murderer, but what magnanimous feelings he has, he wanted to save his brother and confessed!’ Now that is a lie, Alyosha!” Ivan suddenly cried, his eyes flashing. “I don’t want to be praised by churls! He lied about that, Alyosha, he lied, I swear to you! I threw a glass at him for it, and it smashed against his mug.”

“Brother, calm yourself, stop!” Alyosha begged.

“No, he knows how to torment, he’s cruel,” Ivan went on without listening. “I always had a foreboding of why he comes. ‘Granted,’ he says, ‘you were going out of pride, but still there was also the hope that Smerdyakov would be exposed and sent to penal servitude, that Mitya would be acquitted, and that you would be condemned only morally (do you hear, he laughed at that point!), and others would even praise you. But now Smerdyakov is dead, he’s hanged himself—well, and who is going to believe you alone there in court now? And yet you are going, you are going, you will go all the same, you have decided to go. What are you going for, then, after this?’ It’s terrible, Alyosha, I can’t endure such questions. Who dares put such questions to me!”

“Brother,” Alyosha interrupted, sinking with fear but still as though hoping to bring Ivan to his senses, “how could he have told you about Smerdyakov’s death before I came, when no one knew about it yet, and there wasn’t time for anyone to find out?”

“He told me,” Ivan said firmly, not admitting even a doubt. “If you like, that was all he talked about. ‘And it would be fine,’ he says, ‘if you believed in virtue: let them not believe me, I’m going for the sake of principle. But you’re a piglet, just like Fyodor Pavlovich, and what is virtue to you? Why will you drag yourself there, if your sacrifice will serve no purpose? Why, because you yourself don’t know what you are going for! Oh, you would give a great deal to know yourself what you are going for! And you think you’ve made up your mind? You haven’t made up your mind yet. You will sit all night deciding: to go or not? But you will go all the same, and you know that you will go, you know yourself that however you decide, the decision no longer depends on you. You will go because you don’t dare not to go. Why you don’t dare—that you must guess for yourself, there’s a riddle for you!’ He got up and left. You came, and he left. He called me a coward, Alyosha! Le mot de l’énigme (the answer to the riddle) is that I’m a coward! ‘It’s not for such eagles to soar above the earth!’ He added that, he added that! And Smerdyakov said the same thing. He must be killed! Katya despises me, I’ve seen it for a month now, and Liza will begin to despise me too! ‘You are going so that they will praise you’—that is a brutal lie! And you despise me too, Alyosha. Now I shall hate you again. And the monster I hate, the monster I hate! I don’t want to save the monster, he can rot in penal servitude! He’s started singing a hymn! Oh, tomorrow I shall go, I shall stand before them and spit in all their faces!”

He jumped up in a frenzy, threw off the towel, and began pacing the room again. Alyosha remembered his words of a while before: “As if I am asleep while awake… I walk, I talk, and I see, and yet I’m asleep.” It was precisely as if that were happening now. Alyosha did not leave his side. The thought flashed through his mind of running for a doctor and bringing him, but he was afraid to leave his brother alone: there was absolutely no one to leave him with. At last Ivan little by little began to lose consciousness altogether. He kept on talking, talked without stopping, but now quite incoherently. He even had trouble pronouncing his words, and suddenly he swayed violently where he stood. But Alyosha managed to hold him up. Ivan let himself be led to his bed, Alyosha somehow undressed him and put him to bed. He sat over him himself for another two hours or so. The sick man slept soundly, without stirring, breathing quietly and evenly. Alyosha took a pillow and, without undressing, lay down on the sofa. Falling asleep, he prayed for Mitya and for Ivan. Ivan’s illness was becoming clear to him: “The torments of a proud decision, a deep conscience!” God, in whom he did not believe, and his truth were overpowering his heart, which still did not want to submit. “Yes,” raced through Alyosha’s head, now lying on the pillow, “yes, since Smerdyakov is dead, then no one will believe Ivan’s testimony anymore; but he will go and testify!” Alyosha smiled quietly: “God will win!” he thought. “Either he will rise in the light of truth, or… perish in hatred, taking revenge on himself and on everyone for having served what he does not believe in,” Alyosha added bitterly, and again prayed for Ivan.