IX. Черт. Кошмар Ивана Федоровича

Running ahead of myself, I will say only this: he was now, that evening, precisely on the very eve of brain fever, which had at last taken full possession of an organism long disordered yet stubbornly resisting the disease.

Knowing nothing of medicine, I will venture the supposition that perhaps, by a fearful straining of his will, he had indeed managed to hold the illness off for a time, dreaming, naturally, of overcoming it altogether.

He knew he was unwell, but it was with revulsion that he refused to be ill at this time, in these approaching, fateful minutes of his life, when he had to be present, to speak his word boldly and resolutely, and to "justify himself before himself".

He had, however, gone once to the new doctor newly arrived from Moscow, summoned by Katerina Ivanovna on account of a certain fancy of hers that I have already mentioned above.

Having listened to him and examined him, the doctor concluded that he was suffering from something like a disorder of the brain, and was not in the least surprised by a certain admission that Ivan made to him, though with revulsion.

"Hallucinations in your condition are quite possible," the doctor decided, "though they ought to be verified… in general, treatment must be begun in earnest, without losing a minute, or things will go badly." But Ivan Fyodorovich, on leaving him, did not follow the sensible advice and scorned the idea of taking to his bed for a cure: "I can still walk about, I have my strength for now — once I collapse, that's another matter, and then let whoever wants to treat me," he decided, with a wave of his hand.

And so he sat there now, almost aware himself that he was delirious, and, as I have already said, stared stubbornly at some object on the sofa by the opposite wall.

There, all at once, someone turned out to be sitting, God knows how he had gotten in, for he had not yet been in the room when Ivan Fyodorovich, on returning from Smerdyakov, had walked into it.

This was some sort of gentleman or, better to say, a Russian gentleman of a particular type, no longer young, "qui frisait la cinquantaine", as the French say, with not much gray in his dark, fairly long and still thick hair, and in a trimmed, wedge-shaped little beard.

He was dressed in a kind of brown jacket, evidently from the best of tailors, but already worn, cut roughly three years ago and by now wholly out of fashion, so that for two years already nobody among well-to-do society people had worn such a thing.

His linen, his long scarf-like cravat — everything was just as it is with all stylish gentlemen, but the linen, if you looked closer, was rather dirty, and the broad scarf badly frayed.

The guest's checked trousers fit superbly, but were again altogether too light and somehow too narrow, of a sort people had now stopped wearing, as was the soft white felt hat, far too out of season, that the guest had dragged along with him.

In a word, there was the appearance of respectability sustained on exceedingly slender pocket means.

It looked as though the gentleman belonged to the category of former idle-handed landowners who had flourished back under serfdom; one who had evidently seen the world and decent society, who had once had connections and had perhaps kept them even to this day, but who, little by little, with impoverishment after a merry youth and the recent abolition of serfdom, had turned into something like a hanger-on of good tone, drifting from one kindly old acquaintance to another, who receive him for his easygoing, accommodating character, and on the further ground that he is, after all, a respectable man whom one may seat at one's table in any company, though, of course, in a modest place.

Such hangers-on, gentlemen of accommodating character, who can tell a good story, make up a hand at cards, and are decidedly fond of no errands whatever should any be foisted on them, are commonly solitary creatures — either bachelors or widowers, perhaps even with children, but their children are always being brought up somewhere far away, at the homes of some aunt or other, of whom the gentleman almost never speaks in decent society, as though somewhat ashamed of such kinship.

From his children, too, he gradually grows quite estranged, now and then receiving from them, for his name-day and for Christmas, letters of congratulation, and occasionally even answering them.

The unexpected guest's countenance was not exactly good-natured, but again accommodating, and ready, as circumstances might require, for any obliging expression.

He had no watch on him, but he did have a tortoiseshell lorgnette on a black ribbon.

On the middle finger of his right hand there flaunted a massive gold ring set with an inexpensive opal.

Ivan Fyodorovich kept a malicious silence and would not begin to speak.

The guest waited, and sat there exactly like a hanger-on who has just come down from the room assigned to him upstairs to keep his host company at tea, but who keeps a meek silence in view of the fact that the host is occupied and brooding frowningly over something; ready, however, for any obliging conversation, the moment the host should begin it.

Suddenly his face expressed something like a sudden disquiet.

— Listen, — he began to Ivan Fyodorovich, — forgive me, I only want to remind you: you did go to Smerdyakov, you know, in order to find out about Katerina Ivanovna, and you came away without learning anything about her, you must have forgotten… — Ah yes!

— burst suddenly from Ivan, and his face clouded over with care, — yes, I forgot…

Still, it makes no difference now, it can all wait till tomorrow, — he muttered to himself. — And as for you, — he turned to the guest irritably, — I ought to have remembered that myself just now, for that is the very thing that was tormenting me with anguish!

Just because you piped up, am I to believe that it was you who prompted me, and not I who remembered it myself?

— Then don't believe it, — the gentleman smiled affably.

— What is faith got by force?

Besides, in matters of faith no proofs are of any help, especially material ones.

Thomas believed not because he saw the risen Christ, but because even before that he had wished to believe.

Take the spiritualists, for instance… I am very fond of them… imagine, they suppose they are useful to faith, because devils from the other world show them their little horns.

"This, you see, is by now, so to speak, a material proof that the other world exists."

The other world and material proofs, fiddle-de-dee!

And after all, if the devil is proven, is it yet known whether God is proven?

I want to enroll in an idealist society, I'll set up an opposition among them: "I'm a realist, you see, and not a materialist, heh-heh!"

— Listen, — Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly rose from the table.

— I am now exactly as if in a delirium… and, of course, I am in a delirium… lie all you want, it makes no difference to me!

You will not work me up into a frenzy, as you did the last time.

It is only that I am somehow ashamed…

I want to pace about the room…

Sometimes I do not see you and do not even hear your voice, as last time, and yet I always guess what you are babbling, because ''it is I, I myself, who am speaking, and not you!'' Only I do not know whether I was asleep last time, or saw you while awake.

I'll just wet a towel with cold water and press it to my head, and perhaps you will evaporate.

Ivan Fyodorovich went into the corner, took a towel, did as he had said, and, with the wet towel on his head, began to pace back and forth across the room.

— I like it that we have gone straight to addressing each other as ''thou,'' — the guest began.

— Fool, — Ivan laughed, — as if I'm going to address you as ''you,'' am I?

I'm cheerful now, only there's a pain in my temple… and the crown of my head… only, please, don't philosophize, as you did the last time.

If you can't clear off, then lie about something cheerful.

Gossip — you're a hanger-on, after all, so gossip.

What a nightmare to fasten itself on a man!

But I am not afraid of you.

I will get the better of you.

They won't cart me off to the madhouse!

— C’est charmant, a hanger-on.

Yes, I am precisely in my own character.

What am I on earth, if not a hanger-on?

By the way, I am listening to you, you know, and marveling a little: by God, you seem to be starting, little by little, to take me for something actually real, and not merely for your own fancy, as you insisted last time…

— Not for one minute do I take you for real truth, — Ivan cried out, even somehow furiously.

— You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a phantom.

Only I do not know how to destroy you, and I see that for some time I shall have to suffer through it.

You are my hallucination.

You are the embodiment of myself, though of only one side of me… of my thoughts and feelings, but only the most vile and stupid of them.

From that angle you might even be of some interest to me, if only I had the time to bother with you…