The Brothers Karamazov

Chapter 3: The Confession of an Ardent Heart. In Verse

Alyosha, having heard the order his father shouted to him from the carriage as he was leaving the monastery, remained for a while in great perplexity. Not that he stood there like a post—such things did not happen to him. On the contrary, despite all his anxiety, he managed to go at once to the Superior’s kitchen and find out what his father had done upstairs. And then he set off for town, hoping that on the way he would somehow succeed in resolving the problem that oppressed him. I hasten to say that he was not in the least afraid of his father’s shouts or his order to move home with “pillows and mattress.” He understood very well that the order to move, given aloud and with such ostentatious shouting, was given “in passion,” even for the beauty of it, so to speak—just as recently in our town a tradesman who got a little too merry at his own birthday party, in front of his guests, became angry when they would not give him more vodka and suddenly began smashing his own dishes, tearing up his and his wife’s clothes, breaking his furniture, and, finally, the windows, and all, again, for the beauty of it. The same sort of thing, of course, had now happened with his father. And of course the next day the too-merry tradesman sobered up and was sorry for the broken cups and dishes. Alyosha knew that the old man, too, would surely let him return to the monastery the next day, or perhaps even that same day. He was also quite sure that he was the last person his father would want to offend. Alyosha was sure that no one in the whole world would ever want to offend him, and not only would not want to but even would not be able to. For him this was an axiom, it was given once and for all, without argument, and in that sense he went ahead without any hesitation.

But at that moment another fear was stirring in him, of quite another sort, and all the more tormenting since he himself was unable to define it: namely, the fear of a woman, and, namely, of Katerina Ivanovna, who so insistently pleaded with him, in the note just given him by Madame Khokhlakov, to visit her for some reason. This demand, and the absolute necessity of going, immediately awakened some tormenting feeling in his heart, and all morning as time went on this feeling grew more and more painful, despite all the subsequent scenes and adventures in the monastery, and just now at the Superior’s, and so on and so forth. He was afraid not because he did not know what she wanted to talk with him about or what he would answer. And generally it was not the woman in her that he was afraid of: he had little knowledge of women, of course, but still, all his life, from his very infancy right up to the monastery, he had lived only with women. It was this woman he was afraid of, precisely Katerina Ivanovna herself. He had been afraid of her ever since he saw her for the first time. And he had seen her only once or twice, perhaps even three times, and had even chanced to exchange a few words with her once. Her image he recalled as that of a beautiful, proud, and imperious girl. But it was not her beauty that tormented him, it was something else. It was precisely the inexplicable nature of his fear that now added to the fear itself. The girl’s aims were the noblest, that he knew; she was striving to save his brother Dmitri, who was already guilty before her, and she was striving solely out of magnanimity. And yet, despite this awareness and the justice he could not fail to do to all these beautiful and magnanimous feelings, a chill ran down his spine the closer he came to her house.

He reckoned that he would not find his brother Ivan Fyodorovich, who was so close with her, at her house: his brother Ivan was certainly with their father now. It was even more certain that he would not find Dmitri there, and he sensed why. So their conversation would be one to one. He would have liked very much to see his brother Dmitri, to run over to him before this fateful conversation. He would have a word with him without showing him the letter. But his brother Dmitri lived far away and most likely was not at home either. He stood still for a moment and at last made a final decision. He crossed himself with an accustomed and hasty cross, at once smiled at something, and firmly went to meet his terrible lady.