Alyosha smiled quietly.
“Listen, brother, once and for all,” he said, “here are my thoughts about it. And you know very well I won’t lie to you. Listen, then: you’re not ready, and such a cross is not for you. Moreover, unready as you are, you don’t need such a great martyr’s cross. If you had killed father, I would regret that you rejected your cross. But you’re innocent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to regenerate another man in yourself through suffering; I say just remember that other man always, all your life, and wherever you escape to— and that is enough for you. That you did not accept that great cross will only serve to make you feel a still greater duty in yourself, and through this constant feeling from now on, all your life, you will do more for your regeneration, perhaps, than if you went there. Because there you will not endure, you will begin to murmur, and in the end you may really say: ‘I am quits.’ The attorney was right about that. Heavy burdens are not for everyone, for some they are impossible ... These are my thoughts, if you need them so much. If others had to answer for your escape—officers, soldiers—then I ‘would not allow’ you to flee,” Alyosha smiled. “But they tell me and assure me (the head man there told Ivan himself) that if it’s managed well, there won’t be much penalty, and they can get off lightly. Of course, bribery is dishonest even in this case, but I wouldn’t make myself a judge here for anything, since, as a matter of fact, if Ivan and Katya asked me to take charge of it for you, for example, I know I would go and bribe; I must tell you the whole truth here. And therefore I am no judge of you in how you yourself act. But know, too, that I will never condemn you. And it would be strange, wouldn’t it, for me to be your judge in these things? Well, I think I’ve covered everything.”
“But I will condemn myself!” exclaimed Mitya. “I will run away, that’s already been decided without you: how could Mitka Karamazov not run away? But I will condemn myself in return, and sit there praying for my sin forever! This is how the Jesuits talk, right? The way you and I are talking now, eh?”
“Right,” Alyosha smiled quietly.
“I love you for always telling the whole complete truth and never hiding anything!” Mitya exclaimed, laughing joyfully. “So I’ve caught my Alyoshka being a Jesuit! You deserve kissing for that, that’s what! So, now listen to the rest, I’ll unfold the remaining half of my soul to you. This is what I’ve thought up and decided: if I do run away, even with money and a passport, and even to America, I still take heart from the thought that I will not be running to any joy or happiness, but truly to another penal servitude, maybe no better than this one! No better, Alexei, I tell you truly, no better! This America, devil take it, I hate it already! So Grusha will be with me, but look at her: is she an American woman? She’s Russian, every little bone of her is Russian, she’ll pine for her native land, and I’ll see all the time that she’s pining away for my sake, that she has taken up such a cross for my sake, and what has she done wrong? And I, will I be able to stand the local rabble, though every last one of them may be better than I am? I hate this America even now! And maybe every last one of them is some sort of boundless machinist or whatever—but, devil take them, they’re not my people, not of my soul! I love Russia, Alexei, I love the Russian God, though I myself am a scoundrel! But there I’ll just croak!” he exclaimed suddenly, flashing his eyes. His voice was trembling with tears.
“So this is what I’ve decided, Alexei, listen!” he began again, suppressing his excitement. “Grusha and I will arrive there—and there we’ll immediately set to work, digging the land, with the wild bears, in solitude, in some remote place. Surely there must be some remote places there. People say there are still redskins there, somewhere on the edge of the horizon, so we’ll go to that edge, to the last Mohicans. [361]And we’ll immediately start on the grammar, Grusha and I. Work and grammar—about three years like that. In three years we’ll learn Engullish as well as any downright Englishman. And as soon as we’ve learned it—good-bye America! We’ll flee here, to Russia, as American citizens. Don’t worry, we won’t come to this little town. We’ll hide somewhere far away, in the north or the south. I’ll have changed by then, and so will she; a doctor there, in America, will fabricate some kind of wart for me; it’s not for nothing they’re all mechanics. Or else I’ll blind myself in one eye, let my beard grow a yard long, a gray beard (I’ll go gray thinking of Russia), and maybe they won’t recognize me. And if they do, worse luck, let them exile me, I don’t care. Here, too, we’ll dig the land somewhere in the wilderness, and I’ll pretend to be an American all my life. But we will die in our native land. That’s my plan, and it will not be changed. Do you approve?”
“I do,” said Alyosha, not wishing to contradict him.
Mitya fell silent for a moment, and said suddenly:
“And how they set me up in court! They really set me up!”
“Even if they hadn’t set you up, you’d have been convicted anyway,” Alyosha said, sighing.
“Yes, the local public is sick of me! God help them, but it’s a heavy thing!” Mitya groaned with suffering.
Again they fell silent for a moment.
“Put me out of my misery, Alyosha!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Is she coming now or not, tell me! What did she say? How did she say it?”
“She said she would come, but I don’t know about today. It’s really hard for her!” Alyosha looked timidly at his brother.
“Of course it is, of course it’s hard for her! Alyosha, this is driving me crazy. Grusha keeps looking at me. She knows. Lord God, humble me: what am I asking for? I’m asking for Katya! Do I realize what I am asking? This impious Karamazov unrestraint! No, I’m not fit for suffering! A scoundrel, that says it all!”
“Here she is!” exclaimed Alyosha.
At that moment Katya suddenly appeared in the doorway. She stopped for a second, gazing at Mitya with a sort of lost expression. He jumped impetuously to his feet, a frightened look came to his face, he turned pale, but at once a shy, pleading smile flashed on his lips, and suddenly, irrepressibly, he reached out to Katya with both hands. Seeing this, she rushed impetuously to him. She seized his hands and almost by force sat him down on the bed, sat down beside him, and, still holding his hands, kept squeezing them strongly, convulsively. Several times they both tried to say something, but checked themselves and again sat silently, their eyes as if fastened on each other, gazing at each other with a strange smile; thus about two minutes passed.
“Have you forgiven or not?” Mitya murmured at last, and at the same moment, turning to Alyosha, his face distorted with joy, he cried to him:
“Do you hear what I’m asking, do you hear?”
“That’s why I loved you, for your magnanimous heart!” escaped suddenly from Katya. “And you do not need my forgiveness, nor I yours; it’s all the same whether you forgive or not, all my life you will remain a wound in my soul, and I in yours—that’s how it should be ... ,” she stopped to catch her breath.
“Why have I come?” she began again, frenziedly and hastily. “To embrace your feet, to squeeze your hands, like this, till it hurts—remember how I used to squeeze them in Moscow?—to say to you that you are my God, my joy, to tell you that I love you madly,” she nearly groaned from suffering, and suddenly, greedily pressed her lips to his hand. Tears streamed from her eyes.
Alyosha stood speechless and embarrassed; he had never expected to see what he was seeing.
“Love is gone, Mitya!” Katya began again, “but what is gone is painfully dear to me. Know that, for all eternity. But now, for one minute, let it be as it might have been,” she prattled with a twisted smile, again looking joyfully into his eyes. “You now love another, I love another, but still I shall love you eternally, and you me, did you know that? Love me, do you hear, love me all your life!” she exclaimed with some sort of almost threatening tremor in her voice.
“I shall love you, and ... you know, Katya,” Mitya also began to speak, catching his breath at each word, “five days ago, that evening, you know, I loved you ... When you collapsed, and they carried you out ... All my life! It will be so, eternally so...”
Thus they prattled to each other, and their talk was frantic, almost senseless, and perhaps also not even truthful, but at that moment everything was truth, and they both utterly believed what they were saying.
“Katya,” Mitya suddenly exclaimed, “do you believe I killed him? I know you don’t believe it now, but then ... when you were testifying ... Did you, did you really believe it!”
“I did not believe it then either! I never believed it! I hated you, and suddenly I persuaded myself, for that moment ... While I was testifying ... I persuaded myself and believed it. . . and as soon as I finished testifying, I stopped believing it again. You must know all that. I forgot that I came here to punish myself!” she said with some suddenly quite new expression, quite unlike her prattling of love just a moment before.