“I understand it all too well, Ivan: to want to love with your insides, your guts—you said it beautifully, and I’m terribly glad that you want so much to live,” Alyosha exclaimed. “I think that everyone should love life beforeeverything else in the world. “

“Love life more than its meaning?”

“Certainly, love it before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will I also understand its meaning. That is how I’ve long imagined it. Half your work is done and acquired, Ivan: you love life. Now you need only apply yourself to the second half, and you are saved.”

“You’re already saving me, though maybe I wasn’t perishing. And what does this second half consist of?”

“Resurrecting your dead, who may never have died. Now give me some tea. I’m glad we’re talking, Ivan.”

“I see you’re feeling inspired. I’m terribly fond of such professions de foi^[127]from such ... novices. You’re a firm man, Alexei. Is it true that you want to leave the monastery?”

“Yes, it’s true. My elder is sending me into the world.”

“So we’ll see each other in the world, we’ll meet before my thirtieth year, when I will begin to tear myself away from the cup. Now, father doesn’t want to tear himself away from his cup until he’s seventy, he’s even dreaming of eighty, he said so himself, and he means it all too seriously, though he is a buffoon. He stands on his sensuality, also as on a rock ... though after thirty years, indeed, there may be nothing else to stand on ... But still, seventy is base; thirty is better: it’s possible to preserve ‘a tinge of nobility’^[128] while duping oneself. Have you seen Dmitri today?”

“No, I haven’t, but I did see Smerdyakov.” And Alyosha told his brother quickly and in detail about his meeting with Smerdyakov. Ivan suddenly began listening very anxiously, and even asked him to repeat certain things.

“Only he asked me not to tell brother Dmitri what he had said about him,” Alyosha added.

Ivan frowned and lapsed into thought.

“Are you frowning because of Smerdyakov?” asked Alyosha.

“Yes, because of him. Devil take him. Dmitri I really did want to see, but now there’s no need ... ,” Ivan spoke reluctantly.

“Are you really leaving so soon, brother?”

“Yes.”

“What about Dmitri and father? How will it end between them?” Alyosha said anxiously.

“Don’t drag that out again! What have I got to do with it? Am I my brother Dmitri’s keeper or something?” Ivan snapped irritably, but suddenly smiled somehow bitterly. “Cain’s answer to God about his murdered brother, eh? Maybe that’s what you’re thinking at the moment? But, devil take it, I can’t really stay on here as their keeper! I’ve finished my affairs and I’m leaving. Don’t think that I’m jealous of Dmitri and have been trying all these three months to win over his beauty Katerina Ivanovna! Damn it, I had my own affairs. I’ve finished my affairs and I’m leaving. I just finished my affairs today, as you witnessed.”

“You mean today at Katerina Ivanovna’s?”

“Yes, and I’m done with it all at once. And why not? What do I care about Dmitri? Dmitri has nothing to do with it. I had my own affairs with Katerina Ivanovna. You know yourself, on the contrary, that Dmitri behaved as if he were conspiring with me. I never asked, not at all, but he himself solemnly handed her over to me, with his blessing. It all smacks of the ludicrous! No, Alyosha, no, if only you knew how light I feel now! I was sitting here eating my dinner and, believe me, I almost wanted to order champagne to celebrate my first hour of freedom. Pah! half a year almost—and suddenly at once, I got rid of it all at once. Did I suspect, even yesterday, that it would cost me nothing to end it if I wanted?”

“Are you talking about your love, Ivan?”

“Love, if you wish, yes, I fell in love with a young lady, an institute girl. I tormented myself over her, and she tormented me. I sat over her ... and sud-denly it all blew away. This morning I spoke inspiredly, then I left—and burst out laughing, do you believe it? No, I’m speaking literally.”

“You’re also speaking quite cheerfully, now,” Alyosha remarked, looking closely at his face, which indeed had suddenly turned cheerful.

“But how could I know that I didn’t love her at all! Heh, heh! And it turns out that I didn’t. Yet I liked her so! How I liked her even today, as I was reciting my speech. And, you know, even now I like her terribly, and at the same time it’s so easy to leave her. Do you think it’s all fanfaronade?”

“No. Only maybe it wasn’t love.”

“Alyoshka,” laughed Ivan, “don’t get into arguments about love! It’s unseemly for you. But this morning, this morning, ai! how you jumped into it! I keep forgetting to kiss you for it ... And how she tormented me! I was sitting next to a strain, truly! Ah, she knew that I loved her! And she loved me, not Dmitri,” Ivan cheerfully insisted. “Dmitri is only a strain. Everything I said to her today is the very truth. But the thing is, the most important thing is, that she’ll need maybe fifteen or twenty years to realize that she doesn’t love Dmitri at all, and loves only me, whom she torments. And maybe she’ll never realize it, even despite today’s lesson. So much the better: I got up and left forever. By the way, how is she now? What happened after I left?” Alyosha told him about the hysterics and that she was now apparentlyunconscious and delirious.

“And Khokhlakov isn’t lying?”

“It seems not.”

“I’ll have to find out. No one, by the way, ever died of hysterics. Let her have hysterics, God loved woman when he sent her hysterics. I won’t go there at all. Why get myself into that again!”

“Yet you told her this morning that she never loved you.”

“I said it on purpose. Alyoshka, why don’t I call for champagne, let’s drink to my freedom. No, if only you knew how glad I am!”

“No, brother, we’d better not drink,” Alyosha said suddenly, “besides, I feel somehow sad.”

“Yes, you’ve been sad for a long time, I noticed it long ago.”

“So you’re definitely leaving tomorrow morning?”

“Morning? I didn’t say morning ... But, after all, maybe in the morning. Would you believe that I dined here today only to avoid dining with the old man, he’s become so loathsome to me. If it were just him alone, I would have left long ago. And why do you worry so much about my leaving? You and I still have God knows how long before I go. A whole eternity of time, immortality!”

“What eternity, if you’re leaving tomorrow?”

“But what does that matter to you and me?” Ivan laughed. “We still have time for our talk, for what brought us together here. Why do you look surprised? Tell me, what did we meet here for? To talk about loving Katerina Ivanovna, or about the old man and Dmitri? About going abroad? About the fatal situation in Russia? About the emperor Napoleon? Was it really for that?”

“No, not that.”

“So you know yourself what for. Some people need one thing, but we green youths need another, we need first of all to resolve the everlasting questions, that is what concerns us. All of young Russia is talking now only about the eternal questions. Precisely now, just when all the old men have suddenly gotten into practical questions. Why have you been looking at me so expectantly for these three months? In order to ask me: And how believest thou, if thou believest anything at all?’^[129] That is what your three months of looking come down to, is it not, Alexei Fyodorovich?”

“Maybe so,” Alyosha smiled. “You’re not laughing at me now, brother?”

“Me, laughing? I wouldn’t want to upset my little brother who has been looking at me for three months with so much expectation. Look me in the eye, Alyosha: I’m exactly the same little boy as you are, except that I’m not a novice. How have Russian boys handled things up to now? Some of them, that is. Take, for instance, some stinking local tavern. They meet there and settle down in a corner. They’ve never seen each other before in their whole lives, and when they walk out of the tavern, they won’t see each other again for forty years. Well, then, what are they going to argue about, seizing this moment in the tavern? About none other than the universal questions: is there a God, is there immortality? And those who do not believe in God, well, they will talk about socialism and anarchism, about transforming the whole of mankind according to a new order, but it’s the same damned thing, the questions are all the same, only from the other end. And many, many of the most original Russian boys do nothing but talk about the eternal questions, now, in our time. Isn’t it so?”