IV. Исповедь горячего сердца. В анекдотах

Just now Father was saying that I paid several thousand each to seduce young girls.

That is a swinish phantom, and it never happened at all; and what did happen never needed money for "это" — for “that.”

With me money is an accessory, a fever of the soul, a setting.

Today she is my fine lady; tomorrow a streetwalking little wench takes her place.

I amuse both the one and the other, I fling money about by the fistful — music, uproar, gypsy girls.

And if need be I give to her too, because they take it — they take it greedily, that has to be admitted — and they are content, and they are grateful.

Fine ladies loved me — not all of them, but it happened, it happened; only I always loved the back alleys, the blind, dark little byways behind the square — there lie adventures, there lie the unexpected, there lie the nuggets of gold in the mire.

I am speaking allegorically, brother.

In our little town there were no such alleys in the literal sense, but there were moral ones.

But if you were what I am, you would understand what these mean.

I loved debauchery; I loved the shame of debauchery too.

I loved cruelty: am I not a bedbug, a malicious insect?

It is said and done — a Karamazov!

Once the whole town went on a picnic, we drove out in seven troikas; in the dark, in winter, in the sleigh, I began to press a certain neighbor girl's young hand and forced this little girl to kiss me — a clerk's daughter, poor, sweet, meek, defenseless.

She allowed it, allowed a great deal in the dark.

She thought, poor thing, that the next day I would come for her and make my proposal (for above all I was prized as a bridegroom); yet after that I never said a word to her, not half a word for five months.

I saw how her eyes used to follow me from the corner of the hall whenever there was dancing (and at our place there was dancing all the time) — I saw how they burned with a little flame, the little flame of meek indignation.

That game only tickled the insect's voluptuousness in me, the one I was feeding in myself.

Five months later she married the clerk and went away… still angry, and perhaps still loving.

Now they live happily.

Note that I told no one, that I did not disgrace her; for though I am base in my desires and love baseness, I am not dishonorable.

You are blushing, your eyes have flashed.

Enough of this filth for you.

And all this is still only so much — little Paul de Kock blossoms — though the cruel insect was already growing, already spreading wider within my soul.

There is a whole album of memories here, brother.

May God grant them health, the dear little things.

When I broke things off, I liked not to quarrel.

And I never betrayed any of them, never disgraced a single one.

But enough.

Did you really think I called you here only for this rubbish?

No, I will tell you a more curious thing; only do not be surprised that I am not ashamed before you, but seem almost even glad of it.

— That is because I blushed, — Alyosha suddenly remarked.

— I did not blush at your words, nor for your deeds, but because I am the very same as you.

— You? Well, that's reaching a bit far.

— No, not far, — Alyosha said fervently.

(Evidently this thought had long been in him.)

— They are all the same steps.

I am on the very lowest, and you are up above, somewhere around the thirteenth.

That is how I look at this matter, but it is all one and the same, entirely of one kind.

Whoever has set foot on the bottom step will, all the same, inevitably mount the top one as well.

— Then one should not step on at all?

— Whoever can — should not step on at all.

— And you — can you?

— It seems not.

— Hush, Alyosha, hush, dear boy; I feel like kissing your hand, just so, out of tenderness.

That rogue Grushenka is a connoisseur of people; she told me once that someday she would devour you.

I'm hushing, I'm hushing!

From these vile things, from a field befouled with flies, let us pass on to my tragedy — also a field befouled with flies, that is, with every kind of baseness.

For the thing is, you see, that although the old man lied about my seducing innocents, in essence, in my tragedy, that is just how it was — though it happened only once, and even then it never came to pass.

The old man, who reproached me with that very fiction, knows nothing of this part of it: I have never told anyone, you are the first I shall tell it to now — excepting Ivan, of course; Ivan knows everything.

He has known it long before you.

But Ivan — a tomb.

— Ivan — a tomb?

— Yes.

Alyosha was listening with extreme attention.

— You see, in that battalion, in the line regiment, though I held the rank of ensign, I was all the same as if under surveillance, like some sort of exile.

And yet the little town received me terribly well.

I threw a great deal of money about; they believed I was rich, and I believed it myself.

But besides, I must have pleased them in some other way too.

Though they shook their heads, they really did love me.

My lieutenant colonel, an old man by then, suddenly took a dislike to me.

He kept finding fault with me; but I had a pull, and besides the whole town stood behind me, so it was not easy to find much fault.

I was at fault myself too — I deliberately withheld the proper respect.

I was proud.

This old stubborn fellow — not at all a bad man, and the most good-natured of hosts — had once had two wives, both of whom had died.

The first one was from some simple folk and left him a daughter, also simple.

In my time she was already a maiden of twenty-four and lived with her father, together with her aunt, the sister of her late mother.

The aunt was speechless simplicity, while the niece, the lieutenant colonel's elder daughter, was a brisk, lively simplicity.

I love, when I remember, to put in a kind word: never, my dear fellow, did I know a more charming feminine character than that girl's — Agafya she was called, just imagine, Agafya Ivanovna; and she was not bad-looking at all, in the Russian taste — tall, full-figured, plump-bodied, with beautiful eyes, the face, let us say, rather coarse.

She did not marry, though two men courted her; she refused them, and lost none of her cheerfulness.

I became close with her — not in that fashion, no, here it was pure — but just so, in a friendly way.

For I often became close with women quite sinlessly, in a friendly way.

I would chatter such frank things to her — phew! — and she would only laugh.

Many women love frankness, mind you, and besides she was a virgin, which amused me greatly.

And here is another thing: one could in no way have called her a young lady.

They lived with the father and the aunt, somehow voluntarily abasing themselves, not setting themselves on a level with the rest of society.

Everyone loved her and had need of her, because she was a distinguished seamstress: there was a talent, she demanded no money for her services, she did it out of kindness, but when she was given a gift — she did not refuse to accept it.

But the lieutenant colonel — he was another matter altogether!

The lieutenant colonel was one of the foremost persons in our parts.

He lived on a grand scale, received the whole town, suppers, dances.

When I arrived and joined the battalion, the talk went all through the little town that the lieutenant colonel's second daughter would soon be coming to us from the capital — a beauty among beauties — and that she had only just, so they said, left some aristocratic institute in the capital.

This second daughter is the very same Katerina Ivanovna, and she was by the lieutenant colonel's second wife.

And this second wife, by then deceased, came of a noble line, of some great general's house, though, however, as I know for certain, she too brought the lieutenant colonel no money whatsoever.

So there was kin, and that was all — some expectations, perhaps, but in ready cash, nothing.

And yet, when the institute girl arrived (to stay a while, not for good), our whole little town fairly came alive: our most distinguished ladies — two of them wives of Excellencies, one a colonel's wife, and all the rest, all of them after these — at once took an interest, snatched her up, began to fête her — the queen of the balls, of the picnics; they got up tableaux vivants for the benefit of some governesses or other.

I keep silent, I carouse, and just at that time I pulled off a certain stunt that set the whole town clamoring.

I see her once measure me with a glance — it was at the battery commander's — but I did not go up to her then: I scorn, I implied, to make her acquaintance.

I went up to her only some while later, also at an evening party, struck up a conversation, she barely looked at me, set her lips contemptuously — and, I think, wait, I'll have my revenge!

A most frightful boor I was in most cases back then, and I felt it myself.

Above all, I felt that this "Катенька" was not exactly the kind of innocent institute girl one imagines, but a person of character — proud and genuinely virtuous, and, more than anything, with intelligence and education, while I had neither the one nor the other.

You think I wanted to make a proposal?

Not in the least — I simply wanted to take revenge for the fact that I was such a fine fellow and she did not feel it.