“What dream?”

“This bowing at the feet of your brother Dmitri Fyodorovich. He even bumped his forehead on the ground.”

“You mean Father Zosima?”

“Yes, Father Zosima.”

“His forehead ... ?”

“Ah, I was irreverent! Well, let it be. So, what does this dream signify?”

“I don’t know what it means, Misha.”

“I knew he wou’dn’t explain it to you! Of course, there’s nothing very subtle about it, just the usual blessed nonsense, it seems. But the trick had its purpose. Now all the pious frauds in town will start talking and spread it over the whole province, wondering ‘what is the meaning of this dream?’ The old man is really astute, if you ask me: he smelled crime. It stinks in your family.”

“What crime?”

Rakitin evidently wanted to speak his mind.

“A crime in your nice little family. It will take place between your dear brothers and your nice, rich papa. So Father Zosima bumps his forehead on the ground, for the future, just in case. Afterwards they’ll say, Ah, it’s what the holy elder foretold, prophesied,’ though bumping your forehead on the ground isn’t much of a prophecy. No, they’ll say, it was an emblem, an allegory, the devil knows what! They’ll proclaim it, they’ll remember: ‘He foresaw the crime and marked the criminal.’ It’s always like that with holy fools: they cross themselves before a tavern and cast stones at the temple. Your elder is the same: he drives the just man out with a stick and bows at the murderer’s feet.”

“What crime? What murderer? What are you saying?” Alyosha stopped dead. Rakitin also stopped.

“What murderer? As if you didn’t know. I bet you’ve already thought of it yourself. As a matter of fact, I’m curious. Listen, Alyosha, you always tell the truth, though you always fall between two stools: tell me, did you think of it or not?”

“I did,” Alyosha answered softly. Even Rakitin felt embarrassed.

“What? You thought of it, too?” he cried.

“I ... I didn’t really think of it,” Alyosha muttered, “but when you began speaking so strangely about it just now, it seemed to me that I had thought of it myself.”

“You see? (And how clearly you expressed it! ) You see? Today, looking at your papa and your brother Mitenka, you thought about a crime. So I’m not mistaken, then?”

“But wait, wait,” Alyosha interrupted uneasily, “where did you get all that ... ? And why does it concern you so much in the first place?”

“Two different questions, but natural ones. I shall answer them separately. Where did I get it? I’d have gotten nothing if today I hadn’t suddenly understood Dmitri Fyodorovich, your brother, fully for what he is, all at once and suddenly, fully for what he is. By one particular trait I grasped him all at once. Such honest but passionate people have a line that must not be crossed. Otherwise—otherwise he’ll even put a knife in his own papa. And the papa, a drunken and unbridled libertine, never knew any measure in anything— both of them unable to hold back, and both of them, plop, into the ditch...”

“No, Misha, no, if that’s all it is, then you’ve reassured me. It won’t come to that.”

“And why are you shaking all over? I’ll tell you one thing: granted he’s an honest man, Mitenka, I mean (he’s stupid but honest), still he’s a sensualist. That is his definition, and his whole inner essence. It’s his father who gave him his base sensuality. I’m really surprised at you, Alyosha: how can you be a virgin? You’re a Karamazov, too! In your family sensuality is carried to the point of fever. So these three sensualists are now eyeing each other with knives in their boots. The three of them are at loggerheads, and maybe you’re the fourth.”

“You are mistaken about that woman. Dmitri ... despises her,” Alyosha said, somehow shuddering.

“You mean Grushenka? No, brother, he doesn’t despise her. If he’s publicly traded his fiancée for her, he doesn’t despise her. It’s ... it’s something, brother, that you won’t understand yet. It’s that a man falls in love with some beautiful thing, with a woman’s body, or even with just one part of a woman’s body (a sensualist will understand that), and is ready to give his own children for it, to sell his father and mother, Russia and his native land, and though he’s honest, he’ll go and steal; though he’s meek, he’ll kill; though he’s faithful, he’ll betray. The singer of women’s little feet, Pushkin, sang little feet in verse;^[61]others don’t sing, but they can’t look at little feet without knots in the stomach. But it’s not just little feet ... Here, brother, contempt is no use, even if he does despise Grushenka. He may despise her, but he still can’t tear himself away from her.”

“I understand that,” Alyosha suddenly blurted out.

“Really? No doubt you do, if you blurt it out like that, at the first mention,” Rakitin said gleefully. “It escaped you, you just blurted it out inadvertently— which makes the confession all the more valuable. So for you it’s already a familiar theme, you’ve already thought about it—sensuality, I mean. Ah, you virgin! You, Alyoshka, are the quiet type, you’re a saint, I admit; you’re the quiet type, but the devil knows what hasn’t gone through your head, the devil knows what you don’t know already! A virgin, and you’ve already dug so deep—I’ve been observing you for a long time. You are a Karamazov yourself, a full-fledged Karamazov—so race and selection do mean something. You’re a sensualist after your father, and after your mother—a holy fool. Why are you trembling? Am I right? You know, Grushenka said to me: ‘Bring him over (meaning you), and I’ll pull his little cassock off She really asked me: bring him over! bring him over! And I wondered: what interests her so much in you? You know, she’s an unusual woman, too!”

“Give her my regards, and tell her I won’t come,” Alyosha grinned crookedly. “Finish what you were saying, Mikhail, then I’ll tell you what I think.”

“What is there to finish? It’s all clear. It’s all the same old tune, brother. If there’s a sensualist even in you, then what about your brother Ivan, your full brother? He’s a Karamazov, too. The whole question of you Karamazovs comes down to this: you’re sensualists, money-grubbers, and holy fools! Right now your brother Ivan is publishing little theological articles as a joke, for some unknown, stupid reason, since he himself is an atheist and admits the baseness of it—that’s your brother Ivan. Besides which, he’s stealing his dear brother Mitya’s fiancée, and it looks like he’ll reach that goal. And how? With Mitenka’s own consent, because Mitenka himself is giving her up to him, just to get rid of her, so that he can run to Grushenka. All the while being a noble and disinterested man—make note of that. Such people are the most fatal of all! The devil alone can sort you all out after that: he admits his own baseness even while he throws himself into it! But there’s more: now dear old papa crosses Mitenka’s path. He’s lost his mind over Grushenka, starts drooling the moment he sees her. Why do you think he caused such a scandal in the cell just now? Only because of her, because Miusov dared to call her a loose creature. He’s worse than a lovesick tomcat. Before, she only served him on salary in his shady tavern business, but now he suddenly sees and realizes, he goes wild, he pesters her with his propositions—not honorable ones, of course. So the papa and his boy will run into each other on that path. And Grushenka takes neither the one nor the other; so far she’s still hedging and teasing them both, trying to decide which of them will be more profitable, because while she might be able to grab a lot of money from the papa, still he won’t marry her, and maybe in the end he’ll get piggish and shut his purse. In which case, Mitenka, too, has his value; he has no money, but he’s capable of marrying her. Oh, yes, sir, he’s capable of marrying her! Of dropping his fiancée, an incomparable beauty, Katerina Ivanovna, rich, an aristocrat and a colonel’s daughter, and marrying Grushenka, formerly the kept woman of an old shopkeeper, a profligate peasant, the town mayor Samsonov. Out of all that some criminal conflict may indeed come. And that is what your brother Ivan is waiting for. He’ll be in clover. He’ll acquire Katerina Ivanovna, whom he’s pining for, and also grab her dowry of sixty thousand roubles. For a poor, bare little fellow like him, that’s rather tempting to start with. And note: not only will he not offend Mitya, he’ll even be doing him an undying service. Because I know for certain that Mitenka himself, just last week, when he got drunk with some gypsy women, shouted out loud in the tavern that he was not worthy of his fiancée Katenka, but that Ivan, his brother, he was worthy of her. And in the end, Katerina Ivanovna herself will not, of course, reject such a charmer as Ivan Fyodorovich; even now she’s already hesitating between the two of them. And how is it that Ivan has seduced you all, that you’re all so in awe of him? He’s laughing at you: he’s sitting there in clover, relishing at your expense!”