The Brothers Karamazov полностью

Seeing Alyosha, Katerina Ivanovna quickly and joyfully said to Ivan Fyodorovich, who had already gotten up from his place to leave: “One minute! Stay for just one more minute. I want to hear the opinion of this man, whom I trust with my whole being. Don’t you leave either, Katerina Osipovna,” she added, addressing Madame Khokhlakov. She sat Alyosha down next to herself, and Khokhlakov sat opposite them next to Ivan Fyodorovich. “Here are all my friends, the only ones I have in the world, my dear friends,” she began ardently, in a voice that trembled with tears of genuine suffering, and again Alyosha’s heart went out to her at once. “You, Alexei Fyodorovich, were a witness yesterday to that ... horror, and you saw how I was. You did not see it, Ivan Fyodorovich, but he did. What he thought of me yesterday I do not know, but one thing I do know—that if the same thing were to repeat itself today, now, I should express the same feelings as yesterday—the same feelings, the same words, and the same movements. You remember my movements, Alexei Fyodorovich, you yourself restrained me in one of them . . .” (saying this, she blushed, and her eyes flashed). “I declare to you, Alexei Fyodorovich, that I cannot be reconciled with anything. Listen, Alexei Fyodorovich, I do not even know whether I love him now. He has become pitiful to me, which is a poor sign of love. If I loved him, if I still loved him, then perhaps I should not pity him now, but, on the contrary, should hate him...”

Her voice trembled, and tears glistened on her eyelashes. Alyosha started inwardly: “This girl is truthful and sincere,” he thought, “and ... and she no longer loves Dmitri!”

“That’s right! Right!” Madame Khokhlakov exclaimed.

“Wait, my dear Katerina Osipovna, I haven’t said the main thing, I haven’t said the final thing that I decided during the night. I feel that my decision, perhaps, is terrible—terrible for me—but I have a feeling that I shall never change it for anything, not for anything, for the rest of my life it will be so. My dear, my kind, my constant and generous advisor and profound reader of hearts, my only friend in the world, Ivan Fyodorovich, approves of me in everything and praises my decision ... He knows what it is.”

“Yes, I approve of it,” Ivan Fyodorovich said in a quiet but firm voice.

“But I wish that Alyosha, too (ah, Alexei Fyodorovich, forgive me for calling you simply Alyosha), I wish Alexei Fyodorovich to tell me now, before my two friends, whether I am right or not. I have an instinctive feeling that you, Alyosha, my dear brother (because you are my dear brother),” she said again rapturously, grasping his cold hand with her hot one, “I have a feeling that your decision, your approval, in spite of all my torments, will bring me peace, because after your words I shall calm down and be reconciled—I feel it.”

“I don’t know what you are going to ask me,” Alyosha spoke out, his face burning, “I only know that I love you, and at this moment I wish for your happiness more than for my own...! But I know nothing about these affairs ... ,” he suddenly hastened to add for some reason.