“And now, on top of all that, my friend is going, the first of men in the world is leaving the earth! If you knew, if you knew, Lise, how bound I am, how welded my soul is to this man! And now I shall be left alone ... I will come to you, Lise ... Henceforth we will be together ...”

“Yes, together, together! From now on, always together, for the whole of our lives. Listen, kiss me, I allow you to.”

Alyosha kissed her.

“Well, go now, Christ be with you!” (and she made a cross over him). “Go to him, quickly, while he is alive. I see that I’ve delayed you cruelly. I will pray today for him and for you. Alyosha, we shall be happy! We shall be happy, shan’t we?”

“It seems we shall be, Lise.”

On parting from Lise, Alyosha chose not to go and see Madame Khokhlakov, and he was about to leave the house without saying good-bye to her. But as soon as he opened the door and went to the stairs, Madame Khokhlakov appeared before him from nowhere. Alyosha could tell from her very first words that she had been waiting there for him on purpose.

“Alexei Fyodorovich, this is terrible. It’s a child’s trifles and all nonsense. I hope you won’t take it into your head to dream ... Foolishness, foolishness, and more foolishness!” she pounced on him.

“Only don’t say that to her,” said Alyosha, “or she will get upset, and that is bad for her now.”

“Sensible words from a sensible young man. Shall I take it that you agreed with her only because, out of compassion for her sickly condition, you did not want to anger her by contradicting her?”

“Oh, no, not at all, I spoke perfectly seriously with her,” Alyosha declared firmly.

“Seriousness is impossible, unthinkable here, and first of all let me tell you that now I will not receive you again, not even once, and second, I will go away and take her with me.”

“But why?” said Alyosha. “It’s still so far off, we’ll have to wait perhaps a year and a half.”

“Ah, Alexei Fyodorovich, that’s true, of course, and in a year and a half you will quarrel and break up with her a thousand times. But I’m so unhappy, so unhappy! Perhaps it’s all a trifle, but it is a great blow to me. Now I’m like Famusov in the last scene, you are Chatsky, and she is Sophia,^[121] and just imagine, I ran out here to the stairs on purpose to meet you, and there, too, all the fatal things take place on the stairs. I heard everything, I almost fell over. This explains the horrors of that whole night and all these recent hysterics! For the daughter—love, and for the mother—death. Go lie in your coffin. Now, the second and most important thing: what is this letter she wrote to you? Show it to me at once, at once!”

“No, there’s no need. Tell me, how is Katerina Ivanovna’s health? I very much need to know.”

“She’s still delirious, she hasn’t come to herself; her aunts are here and do nothing but say ‘Ah’ and put on airs in front of me, and Herzenstube came and got so frightened that I didn’t know what to do with him or how to save him, I even thought of sending for a doctor. He was taken away in my carriage. And suddenly, to crown it all, suddenly you, with this letter! True, it won’t be for a year and a half. In the name of all that’s great and holy, in the name of your dying elder, show me the letter, Alexei Fyodorovich, show me, her mother! Hold it up, if you wish, and I shall read it from your hand.”

“No, I won’t show it to you, Katerina Osipovna, even with her permission I would not show it to you. I’ll come tomorrow, and, if you wish, I’ll discuss many things with you, but now—farewell!”

And Alyosha ran downstairs into the street.

Chapter 2: Smerdyakov with a Guitar

Besides, he had no time. A thought flashed through him as he was saying good-bye to Lise—a thought about how he might contrive, now, to catch his brother Dmitri, who was apparently hiding from him. It was getting late, already past two in the afternoon. With his whole being Alyosha felt drawn to the monastery, to his”great” dying man, but the need to see his brother Dmitri outweighed everything: with each hour the conviction kept growing in Alyosha’s mind that an inevitable, terrible catastrophe was about to occur. What precisely the catastrophe consisted in, and what he would say at that moment to his brother, he himself would perhaps have been unable to define. “Let my benefactor die without me, but at least I won’t have to reproach myself all my life that I might have saved something and did not, but passed by, in a hurry to get home. In doing so, I shall be acting in accordance with his great word ...”

His plan consisted in taking his brother Dmitri unawares—namely, by climbing over the same wattle fence as yesterday, getting into the garden, and planting himself in that gazebo. “If he’s not there,” Alyosha thought, “then, without telling either Foma or the landladies, I’ll hide in the gazebo until evening, if need be. If he’s still keeping watch for Grushenka’s visit, most likely he’ll come to the gazebo . . .”By the way, Alyosha did not give too much thought to the details of the plan, but decided to carry it out, even if it meant he would not get back to the monastery that day . . .

Everything went without hindrance: he climbed over the wattle fence at almost the same spot as the day before and secretly stole into the gazebo. He did not want to be observed: both the landlady and Foma (if he was there) might be on his brother’s side and obey his orders, and therefore either not let Alyosha into the garden or forewarn his brother in good time that he was being sought and asked for. There was no one in the gazebo. Alyosha sat in the same place as the day before and began to wait. He looked around the gazebo, and for some reason it seemed to him much more decrepit than before; this time it seemed quite wretched to him. The day, by the way, was as fine as the day before. On the green table a circle was imprinted from yesterday’s glass of cognac, which must have spilled over. Empty and profitless thoughts, as always during a tedious time of waiting, crept into his head: for example, why, as he had come in now, had he sat precisely in the very same place as the day before, and not in some other place? Finally he became very sad, sad from anxious uncertainty. But he had not been sitting there for even a quarter of an hour when suddenly, from somewhere very close by, came the strum of a guitar. Some people were sitting, or had just sat down, about twenty paces away, certainly not more, somewhere in the bushes. Alyosha suddenly had a flash of recollection that the day before, when he had left his brother and gone out of the gazebo, he had seen, or there flashed before him, as it were, to the left, near the fence, a low, old green garden bench among the bushes. The visitors, therefore, must just have sat down on it. But who were they? A single male voice suddenly sang a verse in a sweet falsetto, accompanying himself on the guitar:

An invincible power

Binds me to my flower.

Lord have me-e-e-ercy

On her and me!

On her and me!

On her and me!’^[122]

The voice stopped. A lackey tenor, with a lackey trill. Another voice, female this time, suddenly said caressingly and timidly, as it were, but still in a very mincing manner:

“And why, Pavel Fyodorovich, have you been staying away from us so much? Why do you keep neglecting us?”

“Not at all, miss,” a man’s voice answered, politely enough, but above all with firm and insistent dignity. Apparently the man had the upper hand and the woman was flirting with him. “The man seems to be Smerdyakov,” thought Alyosha, “judging by his voice at least. And the lady must be the daughter of the house, the one who came from Moscow, wears a dress with a train, and goes to get soup from Marfa Ignatievna...”