Brothers -- Fiction; Didactic fiction; Fathers and sons -- Fiction; Russia -- Social life and customs -- 1533-1917 -- Fiction
“How will you escape it? By what will you escape it? That’s impossible
with your ideas.”
“In the Karamazov way, again.”
“‘Everything is lawful,’ you mean? Everything is lawful, is that it?”
Ivan scowled, and all at once turned strangely pale.
“Ah, you’ve caught up yesterday’s phrase, which so offended Miüsov—and
which Dmitri pounced upon so naïvely, and paraphrased!” he smiled
queerly. “Yes, if you like, ‘everything is lawful’ since the word has
been said. I won’t deny it. And Mitya’s version isn’t bad.”
Alyosha looked at him in silence.
“I thought that going away from here I have you at least,” Ivan said
suddenly, with unexpected feeling; “but now I see that there is no
place for me even in your heart, my dear hermit. The formula, ‘all is
lawful,’ I won’t renounce—will you renounce me for that, yes?”
Alyosha got up, went to him and softly kissed him on the lips.
“That’s plagiarism,” cried Ivan, highly delighted. “You stole that from
my poem. Thank you though. Get up, Alyosha, it’s time we were going,
both of us.”
They went out, but stopped when they reached the entrance of the
restaurant.
“Listen, Alyosha,” Ivan began in a resolute voice, “if I am really able
to care for the sticky little leaves I shall only love them,
remembering you. It’s enough for me that you are somewhere here, and I
shan’t lose my desire for life yet. Is that enough for you? Take it as
a declaration of love if you like. And now you go to the right and I to
the left. And it’s enough, do you hear, enough. I mean even if I don’t
go away to-morrow (I think I certainly shall go) and we meet again,
don’t say a word more on these subjects. I beg that particularly. And
about Dmitri too, I ask you specially, never speak to me again,” he
added, with sudden irritation; “it’s all exhausted, it has all been
said over and over again, hasn’t it? And I’ll make you one promise in
return for it. When at thirty, I want to ‘dash the cup to the ground,’
wherever I may be I’ll come to have one more talk with you, even though
it were from America, you may be sure of that. I’ll come on purpose. It
will be very interesting to have a look at you, to see what you’ll be
by that time. It’s rather a solemn promise, you see. And we really may
be parting for seven years or ten. Come, go now to your Pater
Seraphicus, he is dying. If he dies without you, you will be angry with
me for having kept you. Good-by, kiss me once more; that’s right, now
go.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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