III. Братья знакомятся

This was the front room, the first one, with a buffet against the side wall.

Waiters kept darting across it every minute.

Of the customers there was only a single old man, a retired military officer, drinking his tea in a corner.

In the other rooms of the tavern, by contrast, all the usual tavern bustle was going on: there were shouts calling for service, the popping of beer bottles, the click of billiard balls, an organ droning away.

Alyosha knew that Ivan hardly ever came to this tavern, and had no taste for taverns in general; so he must have turned up here, Alyosha thought, only for the express purpose of keeping an appointment with their brother Dmitri.

And yet brother Dmitri was not there.

"Let me order you some fish soup, or whatever you like — you don't live on tea alone, after all," cried Ivan, evidently terribly pleased at having lured Alyosha in.

He himself had already finished his dinner and was drinking tea.

"Bring the fish soup, and tea afterward — I'm starving," said Alyosha cheerfully.

"And some cherry preserves?

They have it here.

Remember how, when you were little, you loved the cherry preserves at Polenov's?"

"You remember that?

Bring the preserves too — I love them even now."

Ivan rang for the waiter and ordered the fish soup, tea, and preserves.

"I remember everything, Alyosha — I remember you up to the age of eleven; I was about fifteen then.

Fifteen and eleven — that's such a difference that at those ages brothers are never companions.

I don't even know whether I loved you.

When I went off to Moscow, in the first years I didn't even think of you at all.

Then, when you yourself ended up in Moscow, we met only once, I think, somewhere.

And here I've already been living for a fourth month now, and so far we haven't exchanged a word.

Tomorrow I'm leaving, and just now, sitting here, I was thinking how I might see him to say goodbye — and then you come walking by."

"You really wanted to see me, then?"

"Very much. I want to get to know you once and for all, and to make myself known to you.

And with that, to say goodbye.

To my mind, the best time to get acquainted is right before parting.

I've watched how you've been looking at me all these three months; there was a kind of ceaseless expectation in your eyes — and that is the very thing I can't bear, which is why I never came up to you.

But in the end I learned to respect you: there's a little fellow, I'd say to myself, who stands firm.

Mind you, though I'm laughing now, I'm speaking in earnest.

You do stand firm, don't you?

I love such firm people, whatever it may be they stand on — even if they're such little boys as you.

Toward the end that expectant look of yours stopped repelling me altogether; on the contrary, I came at last to love your expectant look… You seem, for some reason, to love me, Alyosha?"

"I do, Ivan.

Brother Dmitri says of you: Ivan is a tomb.

I say of you: Ivan is a riddle.

Even now you are a riddle to me, but something in you I've already worked out — and only since this very morning!"

"And what's that?" Ivan laughed.

"You won't be angry?" Alyosha laughed too.

"Well?"

"That you're exactly the same sort of young man as all the other twenty-three-year-olds — just as young, youthful, fresh, and fine a boy, well, in the end a green boy!

Well — I haven't offended you too badly?"

"On the contrary, you've astounded me by the coincidence!" Ivan cried, gaily and with warmth.

"Would you believe it — ever since our meeting earlier today at her place, I've been thinking about just this to myself, about this twenty-three-year-old greenness of mine, and now you suddenly hit on it exactly and begin with that very thing.

I was just sitting here, and do you know what I was saying to myself: even if I were to lose my faith in life, even if I were to grow disillusioned with the woman I love, disillusioned with the order of things, even if I were to become convinced that everything, on the contrary, is a disorderly, accursed, and perhaps devilish chaos, even if I were struck by all the horrors of human disenchantment — still I would want to live, and having once put my lips to this cup, I won't tear myself from it until I've drained the whole thing!

Though by the time I'm thirty I'll surely throw the cup aside, even if I haven't drunk it all, and walk away… I don't know where.

But until I'm thirty, this I know for certain, my youth will conquer everything — every disillusionment, every revulsion against life.

I've asked myself many times: is there in the world any despair strong enough to overcome this frenzied and perhaps unseemly thirst for life in me — and I decided that, it seems, there is none — that is, again, only up until those thirty years, after which I myself won't want it anymore, or so it seems to me.

This thirst for life certain consumptive, sniveling little moralists often call base — the poets especially.

It's a trait that is partly Karamazov, that's true — this thirst for life in spite of everything; it surely lodges in you too — but why should it be base?

There is still a terrible deal of centripetal force on our planet, Alyosha.

One wants to live, and so I live, even if it's against all logic.

Let me grant that I don't believe in the order of things — still, the sticky little leaves unfurling in spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear, a certain person is dear, whom at times — would you believe it — you love without knowing why; a certain human deed is dear, in which one may long ago have ceased to believe, yet which, out of old memory, one still reveres in one's heart.

Here, they've brought your fish soup — eat it in good health.

The soup's first-rate; they cook well here.

I want to take a trip to Europe, Alyosha; I'll go straight from here — and you know, I know I'm going only to a graveyard, but to the dearest, the very dearest of graveyards, that's what!

Precious dead lie buried there; every stone above them speaks of so ardent a past life, of such passionate faith in their own deed, their own truth, their own struggle, and their own learning, that I know beforehand I shall fall to the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them — convinced, at the very same time, with all my heart, that all of it has long since been a graveyard, and nothing more.

And I shall weep not out of despair, but simply because I'll be happy with the tears I've shed.

I'll be drunk on my own tenderness.

The sticky little spring leaves, the blue sky — those I love, that's what!

It's not the mind, not logic — it's with the gut, with the entrails that you love; you love your first young powers… Do you understand anything of my nonsense, Alyoshka, or not?" Ivan laughed suddenly.

"I understand all too well, Ivan: to want to love with the gut and the entrails — that's beautifully put — and I'm terribly glad that you want so much to live," exclaimed Alyosha.

"I think that everyone ought, above all else in the world, to come to love life."

"To love life more than its meaning?"

"Yes, absolutely so — to love it before logic, as you say, absolutely before logic, and only then will I understand its meaning too.

That's what has long been dawning on me.

Half your task is done, Ivan, and won: you love life.

Now you must take pains over your second half, and you're saved."

"Already saving me, are you — though maybe I was never lost!

And what is it, this second half of yours?"

"It lies in this: that you must resurrect your dead, who perhaps never died at all.

Well, bring on the tea.

I'm glad we're talking, Ivan."

"You're in some sort of inspired mood, I see.

I'm terribly fond of such professions de foi from novices like you.

You're a firm man, Alexei.

Is it true that you want to leave the monastery?"

"It's true.

My elder is sending me out into the world."

"We'll see each other again, then, out in the world — we'll meet before I'm thirty, when I start to tear myself from the cup.

Father, now, doesn't want to tear himself from his cup until he's seventy — he even dreams of eighty, he said so himself; with him it's all too serious, buffoon though he is.

He has taken his stand on his sensuality, and on that too as though on rock… though after thirty, true enough, there's perhaps nothing else left to stand on but that…

But to keep at it till seventy is vile — better to stop at thirty: one can preserve "a tinge of nobility" while deceiving oneself.

Have you not seen Dmitri today?"

"No, I haven't seen him, but I did see Smerdyakov."

And Alyosha hurriedly but in detail recounted to his brother his meeting with Smerdyakov.