II. For a Moment the Lie Becomes Truth

He hurried to the hospital where Mitya was now lying. On the second day after the court’s decision he had fallen ill with nervous fever and had been sent to our town hospital, to the prisoners’ ward. But the doctor Varvinsky, at the request of Alyosha and many others (Mrs. Khokhlakova, Liza, and so on), had placed Mitya not with the prisoners but separately, in that same little room in which Smerdyakov had lain before. True, at the end of the corridor stood a sentry, and the window had a grating, and Varvinsky could be at ease about his indulgence, which was not entirely legal, but he was a kind and compassionate young man. He understood how hard it was for someone like Mitya to step suddenly and directly into the company of murderers and swindlers, and that one had to get used to it first. Visits from relatives and acquaintances were permitted by the doctor, and by the warden, and even by the district police chief, all on the quiet. But during these days only Alyosha and Grushenka had visited Mitya. Rakitin had already tried twice to see him; but Mitya had insistently asked Varvinsky not to let him in.

Alyosha found him sitting on his cot, in a hospital robe, a little feverish, his head wrapped in a towel soaked in water and vinegar. He looked at Alyosha as he came in with a vague gaze, but in the gaze there nevertheless flashed something like fright.

In general, since the trial he had become terribly thoughtful. Sometimes he would be silent for half an hour, seeming to think something over laboriously and painfully, forgetting whoever was present. And if he came out of his thoughtfulness and began to speak, he always began somehow abruptly and invariably not about what he really needed to say. Sometimes he looked at his brother with suffering. With Grushenka he seemed to find it easier than with Alyosha. True, he hardly spoke with her, but the moment she came in, his whole face lit up with joy. Alyosha sat down silently beside him on the cot. This time Mitya had been waiting anxiously for Alyosha, but did not dare to ask anything. He considered Katya’s consent to come unthinkable, and at the same time he felt that if she did not come, something utterly impossible would happen. Alyosha understood his feelings.

“That Trifon,” Mitya began fussily, “that Borisych, they say, has wrecked his whole inn: he’s lifting up the floorboards, tearing off planks, they say he’s smashed the whole ‘galdery’ to splinters—he keeps looking for treasure, for that very money, the fifteen hundred, that the prosecutor said I hid there. The moment he got back, they say, he went right to it and started rampaging. Serves the swindler right! The watchman here told me yesterday; he’s from there.”

“Listen,” said Alyosha, “she will come, but I don’t know when, maybe today, maybe in the next few days, I don’t know that, but she’ll come, she’ll come, that’s certain.”

Mitya started, wanted to say something, but kept silent. The news had a terrible effect on him. It was evident that he would have given anything to learn the details of the conversation, but that again he was afraid to ask now: anything cruel and contemptuous from Katya would have been like the stab of a knife to him at that minute.

“Here is what she said, among other things: that I should be sure to set your conscience at rest about the escape. If Ivan doesn’t recover by that time, she will take it on herself.”

“You told me that already,” Mitya remarked pensively.

“And you’ve already told Grusha,” Alyosha remarked.

“Yes,” Mitya admitted. “She won’t come this morning,” he looked timidly at his brother. “She’ll come only in the evening. As soon as I told her yesterday that Katya is managing things, she said nothing; but her lips twisted. She only whispered: ‘Let her!’ She understood it was something important. I didn’t dare question her further. She does understand now, I think, that the other one loves not me but Ivan?”

“Is that so?” broke from Alyosha.

“Maybe it isn’t so. Only she won’t come this morning,” Mitya hastened to point out once more, “I gave her an errand… Listen, brother Ivan will outdo us all. It’s for him to live, not us. He’ll recover.”

“Imagine, though Katya trembles for him, she hardly doubts that he’ll recover,” said Alyosha.

“That means she’s convinced he’ll die. It’s out of fear that she’s sure he’ll recover.”

“Our brother has a strong constitution. And I too have great hope that he’ll recover,” Alyosha remarked anxiously.

“Yes, he’ll recover. But she is sure he’ll die. She has a lot of grief…”

A silence fell. Something very important was tormenting Mitya.

“Alyosha, I love Grusha terribly,” he suddenly said in a trembling voice full of tears.

“They won’t let her go there with you,” Alyosha at once took up.

“And here’s what else I wanted to tell you,” Mitya went on in a voice that had suddenly begun to ring somehow, “if they start beating me on the way or there, I won’t submit, I’ll kill someone, and they’ll shoot me. And it’s twenty years, after all! Here they’re already starting to call me by the familiar you. The guards say the familiar you to me. I lay here all last night and judged myself: I’m not ready! I haven’t the strength to accept it! I wanted to sing a ‘hymn,’ but I can’t get the better of a guard calling me by the familiar you! For Grusha I’d bear everything, everything… except, though, beatings… But they won’t let her go there.”

Alyosha smiled quietly.

“Listen, brother, once and for all,” he said, “here are my thoughts on this. And you know, after all, that I won’t lie to you. Listen, then: you’re not ready, and such a cross is not for you. More than that: you don’t need such a great martyr’s cross, not being ready. If you had killed our father, I would be sorry that you were rejecting your cross. But you are innocent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to regenerate another man in yourself through suffering; in my opinion, only always remember, all your life and wherever you may escape to, this other man—and that is enough for you. Your not having accepted the great suffering of the cross will only serve to make you feel an even greater duty in yourself, and by this ceaseless feeling, from now on, all your life, you will help your regeneration, perhaps more than if you had gone there. Because there you won’t bear it, and you’ll murmur, and perhaps you really will say in the end: ‘I am quits.’ The lawyer told the truth in this case. Heavy burdens are not for everyone; for some they are impossible… Those are my thoughts, if you need them so much. If others had to answer for your escape, officers, soldiers, then I would ‘not allow’ you to escape,” Alyosha smiled. “But they say and assure us (the head of the halting station told Ivan so himself) that, if it is done skillfully, there may not be any great penalty, and that people may get off with trifles. Of course, bribery is dishonest even in this case, but here I would never undertake to judge, precisely because if Ivan and Katya, for example, entrusted me with managing this business for you, I would go, I know it, and give the bribe; I must tell you the whole truth about that. And therefore I am not your judge in how you yourself act. But know that I will never condemn you either. And it’s strange, how could I possibly be your judge in this matter? Well, now I think I’ve gone over everything.”

“But I will condemn myself instead!” Mitya exclaimed. “I’ll escape, that was decided even without you: can Mitka Karamazov not escape? But I’ll condemn myself instead, and there I’ll pray off my sin forever! That’s how the Jesuits talk, isn’t it, that’s how? The way we are now, you and I, eh?”

“That’s how,” Alyosha smiled quietly.

“I love you for always telling the whole, entire truth and hiding nothing!” Mitya exclaimed, laughing joyfully. “So I’ve caught my Alyoshka being a Jesuit! I ought to kiss you all over for that, that’s what! Well, now listen to the rest, I’ll unfold to you the other half of my soul too. Here’s what I’ve thought up and decided: if I do escape, even with money and a passport, and even to America, I’m still encouraged by the thought that I won’t be escaping to joy, not to happiness, but truly to another penal servitude, no better, maybe, than this one! No better, Alexei, I tell you truly, no better! I already hate that America, the devil take it, even now. Suppose Grusha is with me, but look at her: is she an American woman? She’s Russian, Russian to the bone, she’ll pine for her native land, her mother earth, and every hour I’ll see that she’s pining for my sake, that she’s taken up such a cross for my sake, and what is she guilty of? And will I be able to stand the churls there, even if every last one of them is maybe better than me? I hate that America already now! And even if every single one of them over there were some boundless mechanical wizard or whatever—the devil take them, they’re not my people, not of my soul! I love Russia, Alexei, I love the Russian God, even though I’m a scoundrel myself! Why, I’ll croak there!” he suddenly exclaimed, his eyes flashing. His voice trembled with tears.

“Well, so here’s what I’ve decided, Alexei, listen!” he began again, suppressing his agitation. “We’ll go there with Grusha—and there, at once, plow, work, with the wild bears, in solitude, somewhere farther off. Why, even there there must be some place farther off! There are still redskins there, they say, somewhere out there at the edge of their horizon, well, so to that land, to the last of the Mohicans. And at once to the grammar, Grusha and I. Work and grammar, and so on for about three years. In those three years we’ll learn the English language like the most English of Englishmen. And as soon as we’ve learned it—an end to America! We’ll run back here, to Russia, as American citizens. Don’t worry, we won’t show up here in this little town. We’ll hide somewhere farther off, in the north or in the south. By that time I’ll have changed, and so will she; there, in America, a doctor will fake me some sort of wart, not for nothing are they mechanics. And if not, I’ll put out one of my eyes, grow a beard an arshin long, a gray one (I’ll turn gray pining for Russia)—maybe they won’t recognize me. And if they recognize me, let them send me into exile, it doesn’t matter, it means it wasn’t meant to be! Here too we’ll plow the land somewhere in the backwoods, and all my life I’ll pass myself off as an American. But at least we’ll die in our native land. That’s my plan, and it is irrevocable. Do you approve?”

“I approve,” said Alyosha, not wishing to contradict him.

Mitya fell silent for a minute and suddenly said:

“And how they framed me in court, eh? How they framed me!”

“Even if they hadn’t framed you, they would have convicted you all the same,” Alyosha said with a sigh.

“Yes, the public here is sick of me! God be with them, but it’s hard!” Mitya groaned with suffering.

Again they fell silent for a minute.

“Alyosha, cut my throat right now!” he suddenly exclaimed. “Will she come now or not, tell me! What did she say? How did she say it?”

“She said she would come, but I don’t know whether it will be today. It’s hard for her, you know!” Alyosha looked timidly at his brother.

“Well, how could it not be, how could it not be hard! Alyosha, I’ll go out of my mind over this. Grusha keeps looking at me. She understands. God, Lord, humble me: what am I demanding? I’m demanding Katya! Do I understand what I’m demanding? The Karamazov unrestraint, the impious one! No, I’m not capable of suffering! A scoundrel, and that says it all!”

“Here she is!” Alyosha exclaimed.

At that instant Katya suddenly appeared on the threshold. For a moment she stopped, looking at Mitya with a sort of lost gaze. He leapt to his feet impetuously, his face showed fright, he turned pale, but at once a timid, pleading smile began to flicker on his lips, and suddenly, irrepressibly, he held out both hands to Katya. Seeing this, she rushed impetuously toward him. She seized him by the hands and almost by force sat him down on the bed, sat down beside him herself, and, still not letting go of his hands, pressed them hard, convulsively. Several times they both tried to say something, but stopped, and again looked at each other silently, intently, as if riveted, with a strange smile; so two minutes or so went by.

“Have you forgiven me or not?” Mitya faltered at last, and at that same instant, turning to Alyosha, his face distorted with joy, he shouted to him:

“Do you hear what I’m asking, do you hear!”

“That is why I loved you, because you are generous in heart!” suddenly broke from Katya. “And you don’t need my forgiveness, nor I yours; it’s all the same whether you forgive me or not, all my life you will remain a wound in my soul, and I in yours—that is how it must be…” She stopped to catch her breath.

“What did I come for?” she began again, frenziedly and hurriedly. “To embrace your feet, to press your hands, like this, till it hurts, remember, the way I pressed them in Moscow, to tell you again that you are my god, my joy, to tell you that I love you madly,” she all but moaned in torment, and suddenly pressed her lips greedily to his hand. Tears gushed from her eyes.

Alyosha stood speechless and embarrassed; he had in no way expected what he saw.

“Love is gone, Mitya!” Katya began again. “But what is gone is dear to me to the point of pain. Know this forever. But now, for one little moment, let what might have been be,” she faltered with a twisted smile, again looking joyfully into his eyes. “And you love another woman now, and I love another man, and still I will love you forever, and you me, did you know that? Do you hear, love me, love me all your life!” she exclaimed with a sort of almost threatening tremor in her voice.

“I will love you, and… you know, Katya,” Mitya began too, catching his breath at every word, “you know, five days ago, that evening, I loved you… When you fell and they carried you out… All my life! So it will be, so it will be forever…”

So they both babbled to each other words that were almost senseless and frenzied, perhaps even untrue, but at that minute everything was the truth, and they themselves believed themselves wholeheartedly.

“Katya,” Mitya suddenly exclaimed, “do you believe that I killed him? I know you don’t believe it now, but then… when you testified… Can it be, can it really be that you believed it!”

“I didn’t believe it even then! I never believed it! I hated you, and suddenly I convinced myself, just for that instant… When I was testifying… I convinced myself and I believed… and when I finished testifying, I immediately stopped believing again. Know all this. I forgot that I came to punish myself!” she said with a suddenly quite new expression, quite unlike the loving babble of a moment before, of just now.

“It’s hard for you, woman!” suddenly broke from Mitya in a somehow completely unrestrained way.

“Let me go,” she whispered, “I’ll come again, it’s hard now!…”

She was about to rise from her place, but suddenly cried out loudly and recoiled. Grushenka had suddenly, though quite quietly, come into the room. No one had expected her. Katya stepped impetuously toward the door, but, coming level with Grushenka, she suddenly stopped, turned white as chalk, and softly, almost in a whisper, moaned to her:

“Forgive me!”

The other looked at her point-blank and, after waiting an instant, answered in a venomous voice poisoned with spite:

“We’re wicked, girl, you and me! Both of us are wicked! How could we forgive, you and me? You save him, and I’ll pray to you all my life.”

“And you won’t forgive her!” Mitya shouted to Grushenka with mad reproach.

“Don’t you worry, I’ll save him for you!” Katya whispered quickly, and ran out of the room.

“And you could not forgive her, after she herself said to you: ‘Forgive me’?” Mitya exclaimed again bitterly.

“Mitya, don’t you dare reproach her, you have no right!” Alyosha shouted hotly at his brother.

“It was her proud lips speaking, not her heart,” Grushenka said with a sort of loathing. “If she gets you out, I’ll forgive everything…”

She fell silent, as if stifling something in her soul. She still could not come to herself. She had come in, as it turned out afterward, quite by chance, suspecting nothing at all and not expecting to meet what she met.

“Alyosha, run after her!” Mitya turned impetuously to his brother. “Tell her… I don’t know what… don’t let her go like that!”

“I’ll come to you before evening!” Alyosha shouted, and ran after Katya. He caught up with her already outside the hospital fence. She was walking fast, hurrying, but as soon as Alyosha caught up with her, she said quickly to him:

“No, before that woman I cannot punish myself! I said ‘forgive me’ to her because I wanted to punish myself to the end. She did not forgive… I love her for that!” Katya added in a distorted voice, and her eyes flashed with wild spite.

“My brother didn’t expect it at all,” Alyosha began to mutter, “he was sure she wouldn’t come…”

“Without doubt. Let us drop it,” she snapped. “Listen: I cannot go with you to the funeral there now. I have sent them flowers for the little coffin. They still have money, I think. If need be, tell them that in the future I will never abandon them… Well, now leave me, leave me, please. You are already late there, they are ringing for the late liturgy… Leave me, please!”