Besides, he had no time. A thought flashed through him as he was saying good-bye to Lise—a thought about how he might contrive, now, to catch his brother Dmitri, who was apparently hiding from him. It was getting late, already past two in the afternoon. With his whole being Alyosha felt drawn to the monastery, to his”great” dying man, but the need to see his brother Dmitri outweighed everything: with each hour the conviction kept growing in Alyosha’s mind that an inevitable, terrible catastrophe was about to occur. What precisely the catastrophe consisted in, and what he would say at that moment to his brother, he himself would perhaps have been unable to define. “Let my benefactor die without me, but at least I won’t have to reproach myself all my life that I might have saved something and did not, but passed by, in a hurry to get home. In doing so, I shall be acting in accordance with his great word ...”
His plan consisted in taking his brother Dmitri unawares—namely, by climbing over the same wattle fence as yesterday, getting into the garden, and planting himself in that gazebo. “If he’s not there,” Alyosha thought, “then, without telling either Foma or the landladies, I’ll hide in the gazebo until evening, if need be. If he’s still keeping watch for Grushenka’s visit, most likely he’ll come to the gazebo . . .”By the way, Alyosha did not give too much thought to the details of the plan, but decided to carry it out, even if it meant he would not get back to the monastery that day . . .
Everything went without hindrance: he climbed over the wattle fence at almost the same spot as the day before and secretly stole into the gazebo. He did not want to be observed: both the landlady and Foma (if he was there) might be on his brother’s side and obey his orders, and therefore either not let Alyosha into the garden or forewarn his brother in good time that he was being sought and asked for. There was no one in the gazebo. Alyosha sat in the same place as the day before and began to wait. He looked around the gazebo, and for some reason it seemed to him much more decrepit than before; this time it seemed quite wretched to him. The day, by the way, was as fine as the day before. On the green table a circle was imprinted from yesterday’s glass of cognac, which must have spilled over. Empty and profitless thoughts, as always during a tedious time of waiting, crept into his head: for example, why, as he had come in now, had he sat precisely in the very same place as the day before, and not in some other place? Finally he became very sad, sad from anxious uncertainty. But he had not been sitting there for even a quarter of an hour when suddenly, from somewhere very close by, came the strum of a guitar. Some people were sitting, or had just sat down, about twenty paces away, certainly not more, somewhere in the bushes. Alyosha suddenly had a flash of recollection that the day before, when he had left his brother and gone out of the gazebo, he had seen, or there flashed before him, as it were, to the left, near the fence, a low, old green garden bench among the bushes. The visitors, therefore, must just have sat down on it. But who were they? A single male voice suddenly sang a verse in a sweet falsetto, accompanying himself on the guitar:
An invincible power
Binds me to my flower.
Lord have me-e-e-ercy
On her and me!
On her and me!
On her and me!’[122]
The voice stopped. A lackey tenor, with a lackey trill. Another voice, female this time, suddenly said caressingly and timidly, as it were, but still in a very mincing manner:
“And why, Pavel Fyodorovich, have you been staying away from us so much? Why do you keep neglecting us?”
“Not at all, miss,” a man’s voice answered, politely enough, but above all with firm and insistent dignity. Apparently the man had the upper hand and the woman was flirting with him. “The man seems to be Smerdyakov,” thought Alyosha, “judging by his voice at least. And the lady must be the daughter of the house, the one who came from Moscow, wears a dress with a train, and goes to get soup from Marfa Ignatievna...”
“I like any verses terribly, if it’s nicely put together,” the female voice went on. “Why don’t you go on?”
The voice sang again:
More than all a king’s wealth Is my dear one’s good health. Lord have me-e-e-ercy On her and me! On her and me!
“Last time it came out even better,” remarked the female voice. “After the king’s wealth, you sang: ‘Is my honey’s good health.’ It came out more tender. You must have forgotten today.” “Verse is nonsense, miss,” Smerdyakov said curtly. “Oh, no, I do so like a bit of verse.”
“As far as verse goes, miss, essentially it’s nonsense. Consider for yourself: who on earth talks in rhymes? And if we all started talking in rhymes, even by order of the authorities, how much would get said, miss? Verse is no good, Maria Kondratievna.”
