I. Plans to Save Mitya

On the fifth day after Mitya’s trial, very early in the morning, still before nine o’clock, Alyosha came to Katerina Ivanovna in order to come to a final agreement about a certain matter important to both of them, and having, besides, a message for her. She sat and talked with him in the very room in which she had once received Grushenka; and next door, in another room, Ivan Fyodorovich lay in fever and unconscious. Katerina Ivanovna, immediately after that scene in court, had given orders for the sick and unconscious Ivan Fyodorovich to be carried to her house, disregarding all the future and inevitable talk of society and its censure. One of the two female relatives who lived with her had left for Moscow immediately after the scene in court; the other had stayed. But even if both had left, Katerina Ivanovna would not have changed her decision and would have stayed to nurse the sick man and sit by him day and night. Varvinsky and Herzenstube were treating him; the Moscow doctor had gone back to Moscow, having declined to foretell his opinion as to the possible outcome of the illness. The remaining doctors, though they encouraged Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha, evidently could not yet offer any firm hope. Alyosha came in to see his sick brother twice a day. But this time he had a special, most troublesome matter, and he sensed how hard it would be for him to bring it up, and meanwhile he was in a great hurry: he had another urgent matter that same morning in another place, and he had to hurry. They had already been talking for a quarter of an hour or so. Katerina Ivanovna was pale, greatly fatigued, and at the same time in an extreme state of morbid excitement: she sensed why, among other things, Alyosha had come to her now.

“Don’t worry about his decision,” she said to Alyosha with firm insistence. “One way or another, he will come to this way out all the same: he must escape! That unhappy man, that hero of honor and conscience—not that one, not Dmitri Fyodorovich, but the one who lies behind this door and who sacrificed himself for his brother,” Katya added with flashing eyes, “he told me this whole plan of escape long ago. You know, he had already been in touch with people… I have told you something already… You see, it will happen, in all probability, at the third halting station from here, when the convoy of exiles is led off to Siberia. Oh, that is still a long way off. Ivan Fyodorovich has already been to see the head of the third halting station. Only it is not known who will be the officer in charge of the convoy, and it is impossible to find that out so far in advance. Tomorrow, perhaps, I will show you the whole plan in detail, which Ivan Fyodorovich left with me on the eve of the trial, in case anything happened… That was the very time when, remember, you found us quarreling that evening: he was already going down the stairs, and I, seeing you, made him come back—remember? Do you know what we were quarreling about then?”

“No, I don’t,” said Alyosha.

“Of course, he hid it from you then: it was precisely about this plan of escape. He had revealed all the main points to me three days before that—that was when we began to quarrel, and from then on we quarreled for all three days. We quarreled because when he announced to me that in case of a conviction Dmitri Fyodorovich would escape abroad together with that creature, I suddenly got angry—I won’t tell you why, I don’t know myself why… Oh, of course, it was over that creature, over that creature that I got angry then, and precisely because she too, together with Dmitri, would escape abroad!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly exclaimed, her lips trembling with anger. “As soon as Ivan Fyodorovich saw then that I had got so angry over that creature, he instantly thought that I was jealous of Dmitri on her account and that, therefore, I still went on loving Dmitri. And so that was the first quarrel. I did not want to give explanations, I could not ask forgiveness; it was hard for me that such a man could suspect me of my former love for that… And this when I myself, long before that, had told him straight out that I did not love Dmitri, but loved only him alone! It was only out of spite at that creature that I got angry with him! Three days later, on that very evening when you came in, he brought me a sealed envelope, for me to open at once if anything happened to him. Oh, he foresaw his illness! He revealed to me that in the envelope were the details of the escape, and that in case he died or fell dangerously ill, I alone was to save Mitya. He left money with me at the same time, almost ten thousand—those very ones that the prosecutor, having learned from someone that he had sent them to be changed, mentioned in his speech. I was suddenly terribly struck that Ivan Fyodorovich, still jealous of me and still convinced that I loved Mitya, had nevertheless not abandoned the idea of saving his brother and was entrusting this business of saving him to me, to me myself! Oh, that was a sacrifice! No, you will not understand such self-sacrifice in all its fullness, Alexei Fyodorovich! I wanted to fall at his feet in reverence, but when I suddenly thought that he would take it only for my joy that Mitya was being saved (and he certainly would have thought so!), I was so irritated by the mere possibility of such an unjust thought on his part that I got irritated again, and instead of kissing his feet, I made a scene with him again! Oh, I am unhappy! That is my character—a terrible, unhappy character! Oh, you will see yet: I will make it happen, I will bring things to the point where he too will leave me for another woman, one who is easier to live with, as Dmitri did, but then… no, then I will not bear it, I will kill myself! And when you came in that time and I called you, and told him to come back, then, as he came in with you, I was so seized with anger at the hateful, contemptuous look he suddenly gave me that—remember—I suddenly shouted to you that it was he, he alone who had convinced me that his brother Dmitri was the murderer! I slandered him on purpose, to wound him once more, but he never, never convinced me that his brother was the murderer; on the contrary, it was I, I myself who convinced him of it! Oh, my fury is the cause of everything, everything! It was I, I who prepared that accursed scene in court! He wanted to prove to me that he was noble and that, even though I loved his brother, still he would not ruin him out of revenge and jealousy. So he came out in court… I am the cause of everything, I alone am guilty!”

Never yet had Katya made such confessions to Alyosha, and he felt that she was now in precisely that degree of unbearable suffering when the proudest heart painfully crushes its pride and falls, vanquished by grief. Oh, Alyosha knew one more terrible reason for her present torment, however she had hidden it from him during all these days since Mitya’s conviction; but for some reason it would have been too painful for him if she had brought herself to prostrate herself so far as to speak to him herself, now, at once, about this reason as well. She was suffering over her “betrayal” in court, and Alyosha sensed that her conscience was drawing her to confess, precisely before him, before Alyosha, with tears, with shrieks, with hysterics, with beating herself against the floor. But he feared this minute and wished to spare the suffering woman. All the harder became the message with which he had come. He began to speak about Mitya again.

“Never mind, never mind, don’t be afraid for him!” Katya began again, stubbornly and sharply. “All that is only for a minute with him, I know him, I know that heart all too well. You may be sure that he will agree to escape. And the main thing, it is not now; there will still be time for him to decide. By that time Ivan Fyodorovich will have recovered and will manage everything himself, so that I won’t have to do anything. Don’t worry, he will agree to escape. Why, he has agreed already: can he possibly leave his creature? And they won’t let her go to penal servitude, so how can he not escape? The main thing is that he is afraid of you, afraid that you will not approve of the escape from the moral side, but you must generously allow it to him, if your sanction is really so necessary here,” Katya added venomously. She was silent for a while and smiled.

“He goes on over there,” she began again, “about some hymns, about a cross he must bear, about some sort of duty, I remember, Ivan Fyodorovich told me a great deal about it then, and if you knew how he spoke!” Katya suddenly exclaimed with irrepressible feeling. “If you knew how he loved that unhappy man at the minute when he was telling me about him, and how he hated him, perhaps, at that same minute! And I, oh, I listened then to his story and his tears with a haughty smile! Oh, creature! It is I who am the creature, I! It was I who brought on his fever! And that one, the convicted one—is he ready for suffering?” Katya concluded irritably. “And is such a man one to suffer? Men like him never suffer!”

A sort of feeling of hatred by now, and of disgusted contempt, sounded in these words. And yet she was the one who had betrayed him. “Well, perhaps it is because she feels so guilty before him that she hates him at moments,” Alyosha thought to himself. He wanted it to be only “at moments.” In Katya’s last words he heard a challenge, but he did not take it up.

“That is why I summoned you today, so that you would promise me to persuade him yourself. Or do you think too that escaping would be dishonorable, not valiant, or whatever it is… not Christian, maybe?” Katya added, still more challengingly.

“No, nothing. I’ll tell him everything…” Alyosha muttered. “He is asking you to come to him today,” he suddenly blurted out, looking her firmly in the eyes. She started all over and drew back from him slightly on the sofa.

“Me… is that possible?” she faltered, turning pale.

“It is possible, and it must be done!” Alyosha began insistently, all animated. “He needs you very much, precisely now. I would not have begun about this and tormented you prematurely if there were no necessity. He is ill, he is like a madman, he keeps asking for you. He is not asking you to come to him to make peace, but only that you should come and show yourself at the threshold. Much has happened to him since that day. He understands how immeasurably guilty he is before you. He does not want your forgiveness: ‘I cannot be forgiven,’ he says himself, but only that you should show yourself at the threshold…”

“You suddenly…” Katya faltered. “All these days I sensed that you would come with this… I just knew he would call me!… It’s impossible!”

“Let it be impossible, but do it. Remember, for the first time he is struck by how he has insulted you, for the first time in his life; he never comprehended it so fully before! He says: if she refuses to come, then ‘I will be unhappy all my life now.’ Do you hear: a convict sentenced to twenty years is still getting ready to be happy—isn’t that pitiful? Think: you will be visiting a man who is perishing innocently,” broke from Alyosha challengingly. “His hands are clean, there is no blood on them! For the sake of his countless suffering to come, visit him now! Come, see him off into the darkness… stand at the threshold, and that is all… Why, you must, you must do it!” Alyosha concluded, stressing the word “must” with incredible force.

“I must, but… I can’t,” Katya all but moaned. “He will look at me… I can’t.”

“Your eyes must meet. How will you live all your life if you don’t make up your mind now?”

“Better to suffer all my life.”

“You must come, you must come,” Alyosha stressed again, implacably.

“But why today, why right now?… I can’t leave the sick man…”

“For a minute you can, it’s only a minute, after all. If you don’t come, he will be down with fever by night. I would not tell you an untruth: have pity!”

“Have pity on me,” Katya reproached him bitterly, and burst into tears.

“Then you will come!” Alyosha said firmly, seeing her tears. “I’ll go and tell him that you will come right away.”

“No, don’t tell him for anything!” Katya cried out in fright. “I’ll come, but don’t tell him beforehand, because I’ll come, but perhaps I won’t go in… I don’t know yet…”

Her voice broke off. She was breathing with difficulty. Alyosha got up to leave.

“And what if I meet someone?” she suddenly said softly, turning all pale again.

“That is why it has to be now, so that you won’t meet anyone there. There will be no one, I tell you truly. We will be waiting,” he concluded insistently, and went out of the room.