“How do you know all that? What makes you speak so certainly?” Alyosha suddenly asked curtly, frowning.

“Why are you asking now, and why are you afraid of my answer beforehand? It means you admit that I’m right.”

“You dislike Ivan. Ivan will not be tempted by money.”

“Is that so? And what of Katerina Ivanovna’s beauty? It’s not just a matter of money, though sixty thousand is tempting enough.”

“Ivan aims higher than that. Ivan won’t be tempted by thousands either. Ivan is not seeking money, or ease. Perhaps he is seeking suffering.”

“What sort of dream is that? Oh, you ... gentry!”

“Ah, Misha, his is a stormy soul. His mind is held captive. There is a great and unresolved thought in him. He’s one of those who don’t need millions, but need to resolve their thought.”

“Literary theft, Alyoshka. You’re paraphrasing your elder. Look what a riddle Ivan has set you!” Rakitin shouted with obvious spite. He even lost countenance, and his lips twisted. “And the riddle is a stupid one, there’s nothing to solve. Use your head and you’ll understand. His article is ridiculous and absurd. And did you hear his stupid theory just now: ‘If there is no immortality of the soul, then there is no virtue, and therefore everything is permitted.’ (And remember, by the way, how your brother Mitenka shouted, ‘I’ll remember!’) A tempting theory for scoundrels ... I’m being abusive, which is foolish .. . not for scoundrels, but for boasting schoolboys with ‘unresolved depths of thought.’ He’s just a show-off, and all it amounts to is: ‘On the one hand one can’t help admitting ... , on the other hand one can’t help confessing...!’^[62]His whole theory is squalid. Mankind will find strength in itself to live for virtue, even without believing in the immortality of the soul! Find it in the love of liberty, equality, fraternity...”

Rakitin became flushed and could hardly contain himself. But suddenly, as if remembering something, he stopped.

“Well, enough,” he smiled even more twistedly than before. “Why are you laughing? Do you think it’s all just platitudes?”

“No, I didn’t even think of thinking they were platitudes. You’re intelligent, but ... forget it, it was just a foolish grin. I understand why you get so flushed, Misha. From your excitement I guessed that you yourself are not indifferent to Katerina Ivanovna. I’ve long suspected it, brother, and that is why you don’t like my brother Ivan. Are you jealous of him?”

“And of her money, too? Go on, say it!”

“No, I won’t say anything about money. I’m not going to insult you.”

“I’ll believe it only because it’s you who say it, but still, the devil take you and your brother Ivan! Will no one understand that it’s quite possible to dislike him even without Katerina Ivanovna? Why should I like him, damn it? He deigns to abuse me. Don’t I have the right to abuse him?”

“I’ve never heard him say anything about you, good or bad. He never speaks of you at all.”

“But I have heard that the day before yesterday, at Katerina Ivanovna’s, he was trouncing me right and left—that’s how interested he is in your humble servant! And after that, brother, I don’t know who is jealous of whom! He was so good as to opine that if, perchance, I do not pursue the career of archimandrite in the very near future and have myself tonsured,^[63] then I will most certainly go to Petersburg and join some thick journal, most certainly in the criticism section; I will write for a dozen years and in the end take over the journal. And I will go on publishing it, most certainly with a liberal and atheistic slant, with a socialistic tinge, with even a little gloss of socialism, but with my ears open, that is, essentially, running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, and pulling the wool over the fools’ eyes. The aim of my career, according to your kind brother’s interpretation, will be not to allow that tinge of socialism to prevent me from laying aside the subscription money in my bank account and investing it occasionally under the guidance of some little Yid, until I’ve built myself a big town house in Petersburg, to which I can transfer my editorial office, while renting out the rest of the floors to tenants. He has even chosen the place for this house: by the New Stone Bridge over the Neva, which they say is being planned in Petersburg to connect the Liteiny Prospect with the Vyborg side...”

“Ah, Misha, maybe it will all be just as he says, to the last word!” Alyosha suddenly cried out, unable to resist and laughing gaily.

“So you, too, are venturing into sarcasm, Alexei Fyodorovich.”

“No, no, I’m joking, forgive me. I have something quite different on my mind. However, excuse me, but who could have informed you of all those details, or where could you have heard them? Surely you could not have been present at Katerina Ivanovna’s when he was talking about you?”

“I wasn’t, but Dmitri Fyodorovich was, and I heard it all with my own ears from the same Dmitri Fyodorovich; that is, if you like, he wasn’t telling it to me, but I was eavesdropping, unwillingly of course, because I was sitting at Grushenka’s, in her bedroom, and couldn’t leave all the while Dmitri Fyodorovich was in the next room.”

“Ah, yes, I forgot, she’s your relative...”

“My relative? Grushenka, my relative?” Rakitin suddenly cried out, blushing all over. “You must be crazy! Sick in the head!”

“What? Isn’t she your relative? I heard she was...”

“Where could you have heard that? No, you gentleman Karamazovs pose as some sort of great and ancient nobility, when your father played the fool at other men’s tables and got fed in the kitchen out of charity. Granted I’m only a priest’s son and a worm next to you noblemen, but still don’t go offending me so gaily and easily. I, too, have my honor, Alexei Fyodorovich. I could not be the relative of Grushenka, a loose woman, kindly understand that, sir!”

Rakitin was extremely irritated.

“Forgive me, for God’s sake, I had no idea, and besides, why is she a loose woman? Is she ... that sort?” Alyosha suddenly blushed. “I repeat, I heard she was your relative. You visit her often, and told me yourself that you have no amorous relations with her ... It never occurred to me that you of all people despised her so much! Does she really deserve it?”

“I may have my own reasons for visiting her; let that be enough for you. As for our relations, your good brother or even your own papa himself is more likely to foist her on you than on me. Well, here we are. Better march off to the kitchen. Hah, what’s this, what’s happening? Are we late? They couldn’t have finished dinner so soon! Or is it some more Karamazov mischief? That must be it. There goes your father, with Ivan Fyodorovich after him. They’ve bolted from the Father Superior’s. Look, Father Isidore is shouting something at them from the porch. And your father is shouting, too, and waving his arms—he must be swearing. Hah, and Miusov, too, has left in his carriage, there he goes. And the landowner Maximov is running—we’ve had a scandal! It means there wasn’t any dinner! Maybe they thrashed the Superior? Or got thrashed themselves? That would be a good one . . .!”

Rakitin’s exclamations were not without point. There had indeed been a scandal, unheard-of and unexpected. It all happened “by inspiration.”

Chapter 8: Scandal

Miusov and Ivan Fyodorovich were already entering the Superior’s rooms when a sort of delicate process quickly transpired in Pyotr Alexandrovich, a genuinely decent and delicate man: he felt ashamed of his anger. He felt within himself that, essentially, his contempt for the worthless Fyodor Pavlovich should have been such as to have kept him from losing his composure in the elder’s cell and getting as lost as he had done himself. “It was not at all the monks’ fault, in any case,” he suddenly decided on the Superior’s porch, “and if there are decent people here as well (this Father Nikolai, the Superior, seems to be of the gentry, too), then why not be nice, amiable, and courteous with them ... ? I shan’t argue, I shall even yes them in everything, I shall seduce them with amiability, and ... and ... finally prove to them that I am not of the same society as that Aesop, that buffoon, that Pierrot, and was taken in just as they all were...”