But in the drawing room the conversation was already coming to an end. Katerina Ivanovna was greatly excited, though she had a determined look. At the moment when Alyosha and Madame Khokhlakov entered, Ivan Fyodorovich was just getting up to leave. His face was somewhat pale, and Alyosha looked at him anxiously. The thing was that one of Alyosha’s doubts, a disturbing mystery that had been tormenting him for some time, was now being resolved. Over the past month it had been suggested to him several times and from different sides that his brother Ivan loved Katerina Ivanovna, and, most important, that he indeed meant to “win her away” from Mitya. Until very recently, this had seemed monstrous to Alyosha, though it troubled him very much. He loved both his brothers and feared such rivalry between them. But meanwhile, Dmitri Fyodorovich himself had suddenly declared outright to him yesterday that he was even glad of this rivalry with his brother Ivan and that it would be a great help to him, Dmitri. In what would it be a help? In marrying Grushenka? But this step Alyosha considered a desperate and last one. Besides all of which, Alyosha had unquestioningly believed until just the evening before that Katerina Ivanovna herself passionately and persistently loved his brother Dmitri—but he had believed it only until the evening before. Besides, he kept imagining for some reason that she could not love a man like Ivan, but loved his brother Dmitri precisely as he was, despite all the monstrosity of such a love. Yesterday, however, in the scene with Grushenka, he suddenly imagined, as it were, something different. The word “strain,” just uttered by Madame Khokhlakov, made him almost jump, because precisely that night, half-awake at dawn, probably in response to a dream, he had suddenly said: “Strain, strain!” He had been dreaming all night about yesterday’s scene at Katerina Ivanovna’s. Now suddenly the direct and persistent assurance of Madame Khokhlakov that Katerina Ivanovna loved his brother Ivan, and deliberately, out of some kind of play, out of “strain,” was deceiving herself and tormenting herself with her affected love for Dmitri, out of some kind of supposed gratitude—struck Alyosha: “Yes, perhaps the whole truth indeed is precisely in those words!” But in that case where did his brother Ivan stand? Alyosha sensed by some sort of instinct that a character like Katerina Ivanovna must rule, and that she could only rule over a man like Dmitri, but by no means over a man like Ivan. For only Dmitri (in the long run, let us say) might finally submit to her “for his own happiness” (which Alyosha even desired) , but not Ivan, Ivan could not submit to her, and such submission would not bring him happiness. Such was the notion that Alyosha had somehow involuntarily formed of Ivan. And so all these hesitations and considerations flew and flashed through his mind now, as he was entering the drawing room. And one more thought flashed—suddenly and irrepressibly: “What if she loves no one, neither one nor the other?” I will note that Alyosha was ashamed, as it were, of such thoughts, and had reproached himself for them whenever, during the past month, they had occurred to him. “What do I know of love and of women, and how can I resolve on such conclusions?” he thought in self-reproach after each such thought or conjecture. And yet it was impossible not to think. He understood instinctively that now, for example, this rivalry was all too important a question in the fate of his brothers, and all too much depended on it. “Viper will eat viper,” his brother Ivan had said yesterday, speaking with irritation about their father and Dmitri. So in his eyes their brother Dmitri was a viper, and perhaps had long been a viper? Perhaps since Ivan had first met Katerina Ivanovna? These words, of course, had es-caped Ivan unwittingly, but they were all the more important for that. If so, what sort of peace could there be? On the contrary, weren’t there only new pretexts for hatred and enmity in their family? And, above all, whom should he, Alyosha, feel pity for, and what should he wish for each of them? He loved them both, but what could he wish for each of them amid such terrible contradictions? One could get completely lost in this tangle, and Alyosha’s heart could not bear uncertainty, for the nature of his love was always active. He could not love passively; once he loved, he immediately also began to help. And for that one had to have a goal, one had to know firmly what was good and needful for each of them, and becoming firmly convinced of the correctness of the goal, naturally also to help each of them. But instead of a firm goal there was only vagueness and confusion in everything. “Strain” had just been uttered! But what could he understand even of this strain? He did not understand the first thing in all this tangle!
