“No abuse, Grigory, no abuse!” Fyodor Pavlovich interrupted.

“You wait, Grigory Vasilievich, at least for a very short time, sir, and keep listening, because I haven’t finished yet. Because at the very time when I immediately become cursed by God, at that moment, at that highest moment, sir, I become a heathener, as it were, and my baptism is taken off me and counts for nothing—is that so, at least?”

“Come on, lad, get to the point,” Fyodor Pavlovich hurried him, sipping with pleasure from his glass.

“And since I’m no longer a Christian, it follows that I’m not lying to my tormentors when they ask am I a Christian or not, since God himself has already deprived me of my Christianity, for the sole reason of my intention and before I even had time to say a word to my tormentors. And if I’m already demoted, then in what way, with what sort of justice can they call me to account in the other world, as if I were a Christian, about my renunciation of Christ, when for the intention alone, even before the renunciation, I was deprived of my baptism? If I’m not a Christian, then I can’t renunciate Christ, because I’ll have nothing to renounce. Who, even in heaven, Grigory Vasilievich, will ask an unclean Tartar to answer for not being born a Christian, and who is going to punish him for that, considering that you can’t skin the same ox twice? And God Almighty himself, even if he does hold the Tartar to account when he dies, I suppose will only give him the smallest punishment (because it’s not possible not to punish him at all), considering that it’s surely not his fault that he came into the world unclean, and from unclean parents. The Lord God can’t take some Tartar by the neck and claim that he, too, was a Christian? That would mean that the Lord Almighty was saying a real untruth. And how can the Almighty Lord of heaven and earth tell a lie, even if it’s only one word, sir?”

Grigory was dumbfounded and stared wide-eyed at the orator. Though he did not understand very well what was being said, he did suddenly understand some of all this gibberish, and stood looking like a man who had just run his head into a wall. Fyodor Pavlovich emptied his glass and burst into shrill laughter.

“Alyoshka, Alyoshka, did you hear that? Ah, you casuist! He must have spent some time with the Jesuits, Ivan.^[98] Ah, you stinking Jesuit, who taught you all that? But it’s lies, casuist, lies, lies, lies. Don’t cry, Grigory, we’ll grind him to dust and ashes this very minute. Tell me something, ass: before your tormentors you may be right, but you yourself have still renounced your faith within yourself, and you yourself say that in that very hour you became anathema and cursed, and since you’re anathema, you won’t be patted on the back for that in hell. What do you say to that, my fine young Jesuit?”^[99]

“There’s no doubt, sir, that I renounced it within myself, but still there wasn’t any sin especially, and if there was a little sin, it was a rather ordinary one, sir.”

“What do you mean—rather ordinary, sir!”

“You’re lying, curssse you!” Grigory hissed.

“Consider for yourself, Grigory Vasilievich,” Smerdyakov went on gravely and evenly, conscious of his victory but being magnanimous, as it were, with the vanquished enemy, “consider for yourself: in the Scriptures it is said that if you have faith even as little as the smallest seed and then say unto this mountain that it should go down into the sea, it would go, without the slightest delay, at your first order.^[100] Well, then, Grigory Vasilievich, if I’m an unbeliever, and you are such a believer that you’re even constantly scolding me, then you, sir, try telling this mountain to go down, not into the sea (because it’s far from here to the sea, sir), but even just into our stinking stream, the one beyond our garden, and you’ll see for yourself right then that nothing will go down, sir, but everything will remain in its former order and security, no matter how much you shout, sir. And that means that you, too, Grigory Vasilievich, do not believe in a proper manner, and merely scold others for it in every possible way. And then, again, taken also the fact that no one in our time, not only you, sir, but decidedly no one, starting even from the highest persons down to the very last peasant, sir, can shove a mountain into the sea, except maybe one person on the whole earth, two at the most, and even they could be secretly saving their souls somewhere in the Egyptian desert, so they can’t even be found—and if that’s so, if all the rest come out as unbelievers, can it be that all the rest, that is, the population of the whole earth, sir, except those two desert hermits, will be cursed by the Lord, and in his mercy, which is so famous, he won’t forgive a one of them? So I, too, have hopes that though I doubted once, I’ll be forgiven if I shed tears of repentance.”

“Stop!” shrieked Fyodor Pavlovich in an apotheosis of delight. “So you still suppose that those two, the kind that can move mountains, really exist? Ivan, cut a notch, write it down: here you have the whole Russian man!”

“You are quite right in observing that this is a feature of popular faith,” Ivan concurred with an approving smile.

“So you agree! Well, it must be so if even you agree! Alyoshka, it’s true, isn’t it? Completely Russian faith is like that?”

“No, Smerdyakov’s faith is not Russian at all,” Alyosha spoke seriously and firmly.

“I don’t mean his faith, I mean that feature, those two desert dwellers, just that little detail alone: that is certainly Russian, Russian.”

“Yes, that detail is quite Russian,” Alyosha smiled.

“Your word, ass, is worth a gold piece, and I’ll see that you get it today, but for the rest, it’s all still lies, lies, lies; let it be known to you, fool, that we here are unbelievers only out of carelessness, because we don’t have time: first, we’re too beset with business, and second, God gave us too little time, he only allotted twenty-four hours to a day, so that there isn’t even time enough to sleep, let alone repent. And you went and renounced your faith before your tormentors when you had nothing else to think about, and when it was precisely the time to show your faith! And so, my lad, isn’t that tantamount?”

“Tantamount, it may be tantamount, but consider for yourself, Grigory Vasilievich, that if it is tantamount, it makes things easier. Because if I then believed in very truth, as one ought to believe, then it would really be sinful if I did not endure torments for my faith but converted to the unclean Mohammedan faith. But then it wouldn’t even come to torments, sir, for if at that moment I were to say unto that mountain: ‘Move and crush my tormentor,’ it would move and in that same moment crush him like a cockroach, and I would go off as if nothing had happened, praising and glorifying God. But if precisely at that moment I tried all that, and deliberately cried unto that mountain: ‘Crush my tormentors’—and it didn’t crush them, then how, tell me, should I not doubt then, in such a terrible hour of great mortal fear? I’d know even without that that I wasn’t going to reach the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven (because the mountain didn’t move at my word, so they must not trust much in my faith there, and no very great reward awaits me in the other world), so why, on top of that, should I let myself be flayed to no purpose? Because even if my back were already half flayed, that mountain still wouldn’t move at my word or cry. In such moments, you can not only get overcome by doubt, you can even lose your mind itself from fear, so it would be quite impossible to reason. And so, why should I come out looking so specially to blame, if, seeing no profit or reward either here or there, I at least keep my skin on? And therefore, trusting greatly in the mercy of God, I live in hopes that I’ll be completely forgiven, sir.”