“I was leading a wild life there. Father said I used to pay several thousand to seduce girls. That’s a swinish phantom, it never happened, and as for what did happen, ‘that,’ in fact, never required any money. For me, money is an accessory, a fever of the soul, an ambience. Today, here she is, my lady—tomorrow a little street girl is in her place. I entertained the one and the other. I threw fistfuls of money around—music, noise, gypsy women. If need be, I’d give her something, because they do take it, they take it eagerly, one must admit, and are pleased, and grateful. The ladies used to love me, not all of them, but it happened, it happened; but I always liked the back lanes, dark and remote little crannies, away from the main square—there lay adventure, there lay the unexpected, nuggets in the dirt. I’m speaking allegorically, brother. In that little town there were no such back lanes, physically, but morally there were. If you were the same as me, you’d know what that means. I loved depravity, I also loved the shame of depravity. I loved cruelty: am I not a bedbug, an evil insect? In short—a Karamazov! Once there was a picnic for the whole town; we went in seven troikas; in the darkness, in winter, in the sleigh, I began squeezing a girl’s hand, the girl who was next to me, and forced her to kiss me—an official’s daughter, a poor, nice, meek, submissive girl. She let me, she let me do a lot in the darkness. She thought, the poor dear, that I would come the next day and propose (I was prized, above all, as an eligible young man); but after that I didn’t say a word to her for five months, not even half a word. I’d see her eyes watching me from the corner of the room when we used to dance (in that town they were always having dances), I saw them burning like little flames—flames of meek indignation. This game only amused my insect sensuality, which I was nurturing in myself. After five months she married an official and left ... angry, and maybe still in love with me. Now they’re living happily together. Note that I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t defame her; though I have base desires and love baseness, I’m not dishonorable. You’re blushing; your eyes flashed. Enough of this filth for you. And it’s all nothing yet, just Paul de Kock’s little flowers,[88] though the cruel insect was already growing, spreading out in my soul. I have a whole album of memories, brother. God bless the little dears. I preferred not to quarrel when breaking up. And I never gave them away, I never defamed even one of them. But enough. You don’t think I called you in here just for this trash, do you? No, I’ll tell you something more curious; but don’t be surprised that I’m not ashamed before you, but even seem to be glad.”
“You say that because I blushed,” Alyosha suddenly remarked. “I blushed not at your words, and not at your deeds, but because I’m the same as you.”
“You? Well, that’s going a bit too far.”
“No, not too far,” Alyosha said hotly. (Apparently the thought had been with him for some time.) “The steps are all the same. I’m on the lowest, and you are above, somewhere on the thirteenth. That’s how I see it, but it’s all one and the same, all exactly the same sort of thing. Whoever steps on the lowest step will surely step on the highest.”
“So one had better not step at all.” “Not if one can help it.”
“Can you?”
“It seems not.”
“Stop, Alyosha, stop, my dear, I want to kiss your hand, just out of tenderness. That rogue Grushenka has an eye for men; she once told me she’d eat you up some day. I’ll stop, I’ll stop! From abominations, from this flyblown margin, let us move on to my tragedy, another flyblown margin, covered with all kinds of baseness. The thing is that though the old man lied about seducing innocence, essentially, in my tragedy, that’s how it was, though only once, and even so it never took place. The old man reproached me with a fable, but this fact he doesn’t know: I’ve never told anyone, you’ll be the first, except for Ivan, of course, Ivan knows everything. He’s known it for a long time before you. But Ivan is a grave.”
“Ivan is a grave?”
“Yes.”
Alyosha was listening with great attention.
