"No, better if I send to your place for it now. It may disappear, or get stolen, finally."
"But, who needs it! And why are you so frightened? Yulia Mikhailovna says you always have several copies stashed away, one abroad with a notary, another in Petersburg, a third in Moscow, then you send one to the bank, or whatever."
"But Moscow can also burn down, and my manuscript with it. No, I'd better send right now."
"Wait, here it is!" Pyotr Stepanovich took a bundle of writing paper from his back pocket. "It got a bit crumpled. Imagine, it's been there in my back pocket all this time, along with my handkerchief, just as I took it from you then; I forgot."
Karmazinov greedily snatched the manuscript, carefully looked it over, counted the pages, and placed it respectfully beside him for the time being, on a special little table, but so as to keep it in view at all times.
"It seems you don't read so much," he hissed, unable to restrain himself.
"No, not so much."
"And in the line of Russian belles lettres—nothing?"
"In the line of Russian belles lettres? Let me see, I did read something ... On the Way ... or Make Way... or By the Wayside,[137] possibly—I don't remember. I read it long ago, five years or so. I have no time."
Some silence ensued.
"I assured them all, as soon as I arrived, that you are a great mind, and now it seems they've all lost their minds over you."
"Thank you," Pyotr Stepanovich replied calmly.
Lunch was brought. Pyotr Stepanovich fell upon the little cutlet with great appetite, ate it instantly, drank the wine, and gulped down the coffee.
"This ignoramus," Karmazinov studied him pensively out of the corner of his eye as he finished the last little morsel and drank the last little sip, "this ignoramus probably understood all the sharpness of my phrase just now... and he certainly read the manuscript eagerly and is just lying with something in mind. Yet it may also be that he's not lying, but is quite genuinely stupid. I like it when a man of genius is somewhat stupid. Isn't he really some sort of genius hereabouts? Devil take him, anyway."
He got up from the sofa and began pacing the room slowly, from corner to corner, for exercise—something he performed every day after lunch.
"Leaving soon?" Pyotr Stepanovich asked from the armchair, having lighted a cigarette.
"I came to sell my estate, actually, and am now entirely dependent on my manager."
"But it seems you came because an epidemic was expected there after the war?"
"N-no, it wasn't quite that," Mr. Karmazinov continued, scanning his words benignly, and kicking his right leg out briskly, though only slightly, each time he turned back from a corner. "Indeed," he grinned, not without venom, "I intend to live as long as possible. There is something in the Russian gentry that very quickly wears out, in all respects. But I want to wear out as late as possible, and am now moving abroad for good; the climate is better there, and they build in stone, and everything is stronger. Europe will last my lifetime, I think. What do you think?"
"How should I know?"
"Hm. If their Babylon is indeed going to collapse, and great will be its fall[138] (in which I fully agree with you, though I do think it will last my lifetime), here in Russia there is nothing to collapse, comparatively speaking. We won't have stones tumbling down, everything will dissolve into mud. Holy Russia is least capable in all the world of resisting anything. Simple people still hang on somehow by the Russian God; but the Russian God, according to the latest reports, is rather unreliable and even barely managed to withstand the peasant reform; anyway he tottered badly. And what with the railroads, and what with your... no, I don't believe in the Russian God at all."
"And in the European one?"
"I don't believe in any. I've been slandered to the Russian youth. I've always sympathized with every movement of theirs. I was shown these local tracts. They're regarded with perplexity because everyone is frightened by the form, but everyone is nonetheless certain of their power, though they may not be aware of it. Everyone has long been falling, and everyone has long known that there is nothing to cling to. I'm convinced of the success of this mysterious propaganda even owing to this alone, that Russia now is preeminently the place in the whole world where anything you like can happen without the least resistance. I understand only too well why the moneyed Russians have all been pouring abroad, more and more of them every year. It's simple instinct. If a ship is about to sink, the rats are the first to leave it. Holy Russia is a wooden country, a beggarly and... dangerous one, a country of vainglorious beggars in its upper strata, while the vast majority live in huts on chicken legs.[139] She'll be glad of any way out, once it has been explained to her. The government alone still wants to resist, but it brandishes its cudgel in the dark and strikes its own. Everything is doomed and sentenced here. Russia as she is has no future. I've become a German and count it an honor."
"No, but you began about the tracts; tell me everything, how do you look at them?"
"Everyone is afraid of them, which means they're powerful. They openly expose deceit and prove that we have nothing to cling to and nothing to lean on. They speak out, while everyone is silent. The most winning thing about them (despite the form) is this hitherto unheard-of boldness in looking truth straight in the face. This ability to look truth straight in the face belongs only to the Russian generation. No, in Europe they are still not so bold: theirs is a kingdom of stone, they still have something to lean on. As far as I can see and am able to judge, the whole essence of the Russian revolutionary idea consists in a denial of honor. I like the way it is so boldly and fearlessly expressed. No, in Europe they still won't understand it, but here it is precisely what they will fall upon. For the Russian, honor is simply a superfluous burden. And it has always been a burden, throughout his history. He can be all the sooner carried away by an open 'right to dishonor."[140] I am of the old generation and, I confess, still stand for honor, but only from habit. I simply like the old forms, say it's from faintheartedness; I do have to live my life out somehow."
He suddenly paused.
"I talk and talk, however," he thought, "and he says nothing and keeps an eye on me. He came so that I'd ask him a direct question. And I will ask it."
"Yulia Mikhailovna asked me to trick you somehow into telling what this surprise is that you're preparing for the ball the day after tomorrow," Pyotr Stepanovich said suddenly.
"Yes, it will indeed be a surprise, and I will indeed amaze..." Karmazinov assumed a dignified air, "but I won't tell you what the secret is."
Pyotr Stepanovich did not insist.
"There's some Shatov here," the great writer inquired, "and, imagine, I haven't seen him."
"A very nice person. So?"
"That's all. He's talking about something. Was he the one who slapped Stavrogin in the face?"
"Yes."
"And what do you think of Stavrogin?"
"I don't know—some sort of philanderer."
Karmazinov had come to hate Stavrogin, because he made a habit of taking no notice of him.
"This philanderer," he said, tittering, "will probably be the first to be hung from a limb, if what's preached in those tracts ever gets carried out."
"Maybe even sooner," Pyotr Stepanovich said suddenly.
"And so it should be," Karmazinov echoed, not laughing now, but somehow all too serious.
"You already said that once, and, you know, I told him so."
"What, you really told him?" Karmazinov laughed again.
"He said if it was hanging from a limb for him, a whipping would be enough for you, only not an honorary one, but painful, the way they whip a peasant."