The Brothers Karamazov полностью

In such fervent and rapturous conversations we spent one evening after another. I even abandoned society and began visiting people much less frequently; besides, I was beginning to go out of fashion. I say that not in condemnation, for people went on loving me and receiving me cheerfully, but still one must admit that fashion is indeed the great queen of society. As for my mysterious visitor, I came finally to regard him with admiration, for, besides enjoying his intelligence, I began to feel that he was nursing some sort of design in himself, and was perhaps preparing for a great deed. Perhaps he liked it, too, that I did not express any curiosity about his secret, and did not question him either directly or through hints. But at last I noticed that he himself seemed to be longing to reveal something to me. In any case this became quite apparent about a month after the start of his visits. “Do you know,” he once asked me, “that there is great curiosity in town about the two of us? People marvel that I come to see you so often; but let them marvel, for soon everything will be explained.” Sometimes a great agitation suddenly came over him, and on such occasions he almost always would get up and leave. And sometimes he would look at me long and piercingly, as it were—I would think, “Now he is going to say something,” but suddenly he would catch himself and start talking about something familiar and ordinary. He also began to complain frequently of headaches. And then one day, even quite unexpectedly, after talking long and fervently, I saw him suddenly grow pale, his face became quite twisted, and he stared straight at me.

“What’s the matter?” I said, “are you ill?”

He had been complaining precisely of a headache.

“I ... do you know ... I killed a person.”

He said it and smiled, and his face was white as chalk. “Why is he smiling?” the thought suddenly pierced my heart even before I had understood anything. I turned pale myself.

“What are you saying?” I cried to him.

“You see,” he replied, still with a pale smile, “how much it cost me to say the first word. Now I have said it, and, it seems, have set out on the path. I shall keep on.”