“The other day he said to him, ‘I’ll grind you in a mortar,’ “ Maria Kondratievna added.

“Well, if it’s in a mortar, it may just be talk .. . ,” Alyosha remarked. “If I could see him now, I might say something about that, too...”

“There’s only one thing I can tell you,” Smerdyakov suddenly seemed to make up his mind. “I come here sometimes as a customary neighborly acquaintance, and why shouldn’t I, sir? On the other hand, today at daybreak Ivan Fyodorovich sent me to his lodgings, on his Lake Street, without a letter, sir, so that in words Dmitri Fyodorovich should come to the local tavern, on the square, to have dinner together. I went, sir, but I didn’t find Dmitri Fyodorovich at home, and it was just eight o’clock. ‘He’s been and gone,’ his landlords informed me, in those very words. As if they had some kind of conspiracy, sir, a mutual one. And now, maybe at this very moment he’s sitting in that tavern with his brother Ivan Fyodorovich, because Ivan Fyodorovich did not come home for dinner, and Fyodor Pavlovich finished his dinner alone an hour ago, and then lay down to sleep. I earnestly request, however, that you not tell him anything about me and what I’ve told you, because he’d kill me for nothing, sir.”

“My brother Ivan invited Dmitri to a tavern today?” Alyosha quickly asked again.

“Right, sir.” “To the ‘Metropolis,’ on the square?”

“That’s the one, sir.”

“It’s quite possible!” Alyosha exclaimed in great excitement. “Thank you, Smerdyakov, that is important news, I shall go there now.”

“Don’t give me away, sir,” Smerdyakov called after him.

“Oh, no, I’ll come to the tavern as if by chance, don’t worry.”

“But where are you going? Let me open the gate for you,” cried Maria Kondratievna.

“No, it’s closer this way, I’ll climb over the fence.”

The news shook Alyosha terribly. He set off for the tavern. It would be improper for him to enter the tavern dressed as he was, but he could inquire on the stairs and ask them to come out. Just as he reached the tavern, however, a window suddenly opened and his brother Ivan himself shouted down to him:

“Alyosha, can you come in here, or not? I’d be awfully obliged.”

“Certainly I can, only I’m not sure, the way I’m dressed...”

“But I have a private room. Go to the porch, I’ll run down and meet you...”

A minute later Alyosha was sitting next to his brother. Ivan was alone, and was having dinner.

Chapter 3: The Brothers Get Acquainted :

Ivan was not, however, in a private room. It was simply a place at the window separated by screens, but those who sat behind the screens still could not be seen by others. It was the front room, the first, with a sideboard along the wall. Waiters kept darting across it every moment. There was only one customer, a little old man, a retired officer, and he was drinking tea in the corner. But in the other rooms of the tavern there was all the usual tavern bustle, voices calling, beer bottles popping, billiard balls clicking, a barrel organ droning. Alyosha knew that Ivan hardly ever went to this tavern, and was no lover of taverns generally; therefore he must have turned up here, Alyosha thought, precisely by appointment, to meet with his brother Dmitri. And yet there was no brother Dmitri.

“I’ll order some fish soup for you, or something—you don’t live on tea alone, do you?” cried Ivan, apparently terribly pleased that he had managed to lure Alyosha. He himself had already finished dinner and was having tea.

“I’ll have fish soup, and then tea, I’m hungry,” Alyosha said cheerfully.

“And cherry preserve? They have it here. Do you remember how you loved cherry preserve at Polenov’s when you were little?”

“You remember that? I’ll have preserve, too, I still love it.”

Ivan rang for the waiter and ordered fish soup, tea, and preserve.

“I remember everything, Alyosha, I remember you till you were eleven, I was nearly fifteen then. Fifteen and eleven, it’s such a difference that brothers of those ages are never friends. I don’t even know if I loved you. When I left for Moscow, in the first years I didn’t even think of you at all. Later, when you got to Moscow yourself, it seems to me that we met only once somewhere. And now it’s already the fourth month that I’ve been living here, and so far you and I have not exchanged a single word. I’m leaving tomorrow, and I was sitting here now, wondering how I could see you to say good-bye, and you came walking along.”

“So you wished very much to see me?”

“Very much. I want to get acquainted with you once and for all, and I want you to get acquainted with me. And with that, to say good-bye. I think it’s best to get acquainted before parting. I saw how you kept looking at me all these three months, there was a certain ceaseless expectation in your eyes, and that is something I cannot bear, which is why I never approached you. But in the end I learned to respect you: this little man stands his ground, I thought. Observe that I’m speaking seriously, though I may be laughing. You do stand your ground, don’t you? I love people who stand their ground, whatever they may stand upon, and even if they’re such little boys as you are. In the end, your expectant look did not disgust me at all; on the contrary, I finally came to love your expectant look ... You seem to love me for some reason, Alyosha?”

“I do love you, Ivan. Our brother Dmitri says of you: Ivan is a grave. I say: Ivan is a riddle. You are still a riddle to me, but I’ve already understood something about you, though only since this morning!”

“What is it?” Ivan laughed.

“You won’t be angry?” Alyosha laughed, too.

“Well?”

“That you are just a young man, exactly like all other young men of twenty-three—yes, a young, very young, fresh and nice boy, still green, in fact! Well, are you very offended?”

“On the contrary, you’ve struck me with a coincidence!” Ivan cried gaily and ardently. “Would you believe that after our meeting today at her place, I have been thinking to myself about just that, my twenty-three-year-old greenness, and suddenly you guessed it exactly, and began with that very thing. I’ve been sitting here now, and do you know what I was saying to myself? If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced, on the contrary, that everything is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos, if I were struck even by all the horrors of human disillusionment—still I would want to live, and as long as I have bent to this cup, I will not tear myself from it until I’ve drunk it all! However, by the age of thirty, I will probably drop the cup, even if I haven’t emptied it, and walk away ... I don’t know where. But until my thirtieth year, I know this for certain, my youth will overcome everything—all disillusionment, all aversion to life. I’ve asked myself many times: is there such despair in the world as could overcome this wild and perhaps indecent thirst for life in me, and have decided that apparently there is not—that is, once again, until my thirtieth year, after which I myself shall want no more, so it seems to me. Some snotty-nosed, consumptive moralists, poets especially, often call this thirst for life base. True, it’s a feature of the Karamazovs, to some extent, this thirst for life despite all; it must be sitting in you, too; but why is it base? There is still an awful lot of centripetal force on our planet, Alyosha. I want to live, and I do live, even if it be against logic. Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring^[126] are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one’s heart, out of old habit. Here, they’ve brought your fish soup—help yourself. It’s good fish soup, they make it well. I want to go to Europe, Alyosha, I’ll go straight from here. Of course I know that I will only be going to a graveyard, but to the most, the most precious graveyard, that’s the thing! The precious dead lie there, each stone over them speaks of such ardent past life, of such passionate faith in their deeds, their truth, their struggle, and their science, that I—this I know beforehand—will fall to the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them—being wholeheartedly convinced, at the same time, that it has all long been a graveyard and nothing more. And I will not weep from despair, but simply because I will be happy in my shed tears. I will be drunk with my own tenderness. Sticky spring leaves, the blue sky—I love them, that’s all! Such things you love not with your mind, not with logic, but with your insides, your guts, you love your first young strength ... Do you understand any of this blather, Alyoshka, or not?” Ivan suddenly laughed.