"Let's leave that... of that later, don't say yet; but about the main thing, the main thing: I've been waiting two years for you."
"Really?"
"I've been waiting too long a time for you, I've been thinking ceaselessly about you. You are the only man who could ... I wrote you about it still in America."
"I remember well your long letter."
"Too long to read? I agree: six sheets of writing paper. Keep still, keep still! Tell me: can you give me ten more minutes, but right now, at once?... I've been waiting too long for you!"
"I can give you half an hour, if you like, but not more, if that's possible for you."
"And with this, by the way," Shatov went on fiercely, "that you change your tone. Do you hear? I demand, when I ought to implore ... Do you understand what it means to demand when one ought to implore?"
"I understand that you thereby rise above common things for the sake of higher purposes," Nikolai Vsevolodovich grinned slightly. "I also regret to see that you are in a fever."
"I ask, I demand to be respected!" Shatov went on shouting. "Not for my person—to hell with it—but for something else, just for now, for a few words... We are two beings, and we have come together in infinity... for the last time in the world. Abandon your tone and take a human one! At least for once in your life speak in a human voice. Not for my sake, but for your own. Do you understand that you should forgive me that slap in the face if only because with it I gave you an opportunity to know your infinite power... Again you smile that squeamish, worldly smile. Oh, when will you understand me! Away with the young squire! Understand that I demand it, I do, otherwise I'm not going to speak, not for anything!"
His frenzy was reaching the point of raving; Nikolai Vsevolodovich frowned and seemed to become more guarded.
"If I have agreed to stay for half an hour," he said imposingly and seriously, "when time is so precious to me, then you may believe that I intend to listen to you with interest at least, and... and I am sure I shall hear much that is new from you."
He sat down on a chair.
"Sit down!" Shatov cried, and somehow suddenly sat down himself.
"Allow me to remind you, however," Stavrogin recalled once again, "that I had begun a whole request to you concerning Marya Timofeevna, a very important one, for her at least..."
"Well?" Shatov suddenly frowned, looking like someone who has suddenly been interrupted at the most important point, and who, though he is looking at you, has still not quite managed to grasp your question.
"And you didn't let me finish," Nikolai Vsevolodovich concluded with a smile.
"Eh, well, nonsense—later!" Shatov waved his hand squeamishly, having finally understood the claim, and went straight on to his main theme.
VII
"Do you know," he began almost menacingly, leaning forward a little on his chair, flashing his eyes and raising the forefinger of his right hand in front of him (obviously without noticing it), "do you know which is now the only 'god-bearing' nation[90] on the whole earth, come to renew and save the world in the name of a new God, and to whom alone is given the keys of life and of a new word... Do you know which nation it is, and what is its name?"
"By the way you put it, I must inevitably conclude, and, I suppose, as quickly as possible, that it is the Russian nation ..."
"And you're laughing already—oh, what a tribe!" Shatov reared up.
"Calm yourself, I beg you; on the contrary, I precisely expected something of this sort."
"Expected something of this sort? And are these words not familiar to you?"
"Quite familiar; I see only too well what you're driving at. Your whole phrase and even the expression 'god-bearing' nation is simply the conclusion of our conversation that took place more than two years ago, abroad, not long before your departure for America ... At least as far as I now recall."
"The phrase is entirely yours, not mine. Your own, and not merely the conclusion of our conversation. There wasn't any 'our' conversation: there was a teacher uttering immense words, and there was a disciple who rose from the dead. I am that disciple and you are the teacher."
"But, if you recall, it was precisely after my words that you joined that society, and only then left for America."
"Yes, and I wrote to you about it from America; I wrote to you about everything. Yes, I could not all at once tear myself bloodily from what I had grown fast to since childhood, to which I had given all the raptures of my hopes and all the tears of my hatred ... It is hard to change gods. I did not believe you then because I did not want to believe, and I clung for the last time to this filthy cesspool... But the seed remained and grew. Seriously, tell me seriously, did you read to the end of my letter from America? Perhaps you didn't read it at all?"
"I read three pages of it, the first two and the last, and glanced quickly over the middle as well. Though I kept meaning to..."
"Eh, it makes no difference, to hell with it!" Shatov waved his hand. "If you've now renounced those words about the nation, how could you have uttered them then?... That's what weighs on me now."
"But I was not joking with you then, either; in persuading you, I was perhaps more concerned with myself than with you," Stavrogin said mysteriously.
"Not joking! In America I lay on straw for three months next to a certain... unfortunate man, and I learned from him that at the very same time as you were planting God and the motherland in my heart— at that very same time, perhaps even in those very same days, you were pouring poison into the heart of this unfortunate man, this maniac, Kirillov ... You confirmed lies and slander in him and drove his reason to frenzy... Go and look at him now, he's your creation... You've seen him, however."
"First, I shall note for you that Kirillov himself has just told me he is happy and he is beautiful. Your assumption that all this happened at one and the same time is almost correct; well, and what of it? I repeat, I was not deceiving either one of you."
"You are an atheist? An atheist now?"
"Yes."
"And then?"
"Exactly the same as then."
"I wasn't asking your respect for myself when I began this conversation; with your intelligence, you should have understood that," Shatov muttered indignantly.
"I didn't get up at your first word, didn't close the conversation, didn't walk out on you, but have sat here all the while humbly answering your questions and... shouts, which means that my respect for you is still intact."
Shatov interrupted him, waving his hand:
"Do you remember your expression: 'An atheist cannot be Russian, an atheist immediately ceases to be Russian'—remember that?"
"Really?" Nikolai Vsevolodovich seemed to want the question repeated.
"You ask? You've forgotten? And yet this is one of the most precise indications of one of the main peculiarities of the Russian spirit, which you figured out. You can't have forgotten it? I'll remind you of more— you said at the same time: 'He who is not Orthodox cannot be Russian.’”
"A Slavophil notion, I suppose."
"No, the Slavophils nowadays disavow it. People have grown smarter nowadays. But you went even further: you believed that Roman Catholicism was no longer Christianity; you affirmed that Rome proclaimed a Christ who had succumbed to the third temptation of the devil, and that, having announced to the whole world that Christ cannot stand on earth without an earthly kingdom, Catholicism thereby proclaimed the Antichrist, thus ruining the whole Western world. You precisely pointed out that if France is suffering, Catholicism alone is to blame, for she rejected the foul Roman God but has not found a new one. That is what you were able to say then! I remember our conversations."[91]
"If I had belief, I would no doubt repeat it now as well; I wasn't lying, speaking as a believer," Nikolai Vsevolodovich said very seriously. "But I assure you that this repetition of my past thoughts produces an all too unpleasant impression on me. Couldn't you stop?"