“There is a force that will endure everything,” said Ivan, this time with a cold smirk.

“What force?”

“The Karamazov force ... the force of the Karamazov baseness.”

“To drown in depravity, to stifle your soul with corruption, is that it?”

“That, too, perhaps ... only until my thirtieth year maybe I’ll escape it, and then ...”

“How will you escape it? By means of what? With your thoughts, it’s impossible.”

“Again, in Karamazov fashion.”

“You mean ‘everything is permitted’? Everything is permitted, is that right, is it?”

Ivan frowned, and suddenly turned somehow strangely pale.

“Ah, you caught that little remark yesterday, which offended Miusov so much ... and that brother Dmitri so naively popped up and rephrased?” he grinned crookedly. “Yes, perhaps ‘everything is permitted,’ since the word has already been spoken. I do not renounce it. And Mitenka’s version is not so bad.”

Alyosha was looking at him silently.

“I thought, brother, that when I left here I’d have you, at least, in all the world,” Ivan suddenly spoke with unexpected feeling, “but now I see that in your heart, too, there is no room for me, my dear hermit. The formula, ‘everything is permitted,’ I will not renounce, and what then? Will you renounce me for that? Will you?”

Alyosha stood up, went over to him in silence, and gently kissed him on the lips.

“Literary theft!” Ivan cried, suddenly going into some kind of rapture. “You stole that from my poem! Thank you, however. Get up, Alyosha, let’s go, it’s time we both did.”

They went out, but stopped on the porch of the tavern.

“So, Alyosha,” Ivan spoke in a firm voice, “if, indeed, I hold out for the sticky little leaves, I shall love them only remembering you. It’s enough for me that you are here somewhere, and I shall not stop wanting to live. Is that enough for you? If you wish, you can take it as a declaration of love. And now you go right, I’ll go left—and enough, you hear, enough.^[182] I mean, even if I don’t go away tomorrow (but it seems I certainly shall), and we somehow meet again, not another word to me on any of these subjects. An urgent request. And with regard to brother Dmitri, too, I ask you particularly, do not ever even mention him to me again,” he suddenly added irritably. “It’s all exhausted, it’s all talked out, isn’t it? And in return for that, I will also make you a promise: when I’m thirty and want ‘to smash the cup on the floor,’ then, wherever you may be, I will still come to talk things over with you once more ... even from America, I assure you. I will make a point of it. It will also be very interesting to have a look at you by then, to see what’s become of you. Rather a solemn promise, you see. And indeed, perhaps we’re saying goodbye for some seven or ten years. Well, go now to your Pater Seraphicus;^[183] he’s dying, and if he dies without you, you may be angry with me for having kept you. Good-bye, kiss me once more—so—and now go...”

Ivan turned suddenly and went his way without looking back. It was similar to the way his brother Dmitri had left Alyosha the day before, though the day before it was something quite different. This strange little observation flashed like an arrow through the sad mind of Alyosha, sad and sorrowful at that moment. He waited a little, looking after his brother. For some reason he suddenly noticed that his brother Ivan somehow swayed as he walked, and that his right shoulder, seen from behind, appeared lower than his left. He had never noticed it before. But suddenly he, too, turned and almost ran to the monastery. It was already getting quite dark, and he felt almost frightened; something new was growing in him, which he would have been unable to explain. The wind rose again as it had yesterday, and the centuries-old pine trees rustled gloomily around him as he entered the hermitage woods. He was almost running. “Pater Seraphicus—he got that name from somewhere—but where?” flashed through Alyosha’s mind. “Ivan, poor Ivan, when shall I see you again ... ? Lord, here’s the hermitage! Yes, yes, that’s him, Pater Seraphicus, he will save me ... from him, and forever!”

Several times, later in his life, in great perplexity, he wondered how he could suddenly, after parting with his brother Ivan, so completely forget about his brother Dmitri, when he had resolved that morning, only a few hours earlier, that he must find him, and would not leave until he did, even if it meant not returning to the monastery that night.

Chapter 6: A Rather Obscure One for the Moment

And Ivan Fyodorovich, on parting from Alyosha, went home to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house. But, strangely, an unbearable anguish suddenly came over him, and, moreover, the closer he came to home, the worse it grew with every step. The strangeness lay not in the anguish itself, but in the fact that Ivan Fyodorovich simply could not define what the anguish consisted of. He had often felt anguish before, and it would be no wonder if it came at such a moment, when he was preparing, the very next day, having suddenly broken with everything that had drawn him there, to make another sharp turn, entering upon a new, completely unknown path, again quite as lonely as before, having much hope, but not knowing for what, expecting much, too much, from life, but unable himself to define anything either in his expectations or even in his desires. And yet at that moment, though the anguish of the new and unknown was indeed in his soul, he was tormented by something quite different. “Can it be loathing for my father’s house?” he thought to himself. “Very likely. I’m so sick of it, and though today I shall cross that vile threshold for the last time, still it makes me sick ...” But no, that was not it. Was it the parting with Alyosha and the conversation he had had with him? “For so many years I was silent with the whole world and did not deign to speak, and suddenly I spewed out so much gibberish!” Indeed, it could have been the youthful vexation of youthful inexperience and youthful vanity, vexation at having been unable to speak his mind, especially with such a being as Alyosha, on whom he undoubtedly counted a great deal in his heart. Of course there was that, too, that is, this vexation, there even had to be, but it was not that either, not that at all. “Anguish to the point of nausea, yet it’s beyond me to say what I want. Perhaps I shouldn’t think ...”

Ivan Fyodorovich tried “not to think,” but that, too, was no use. Above all, this anguish was vexing and annoyed him by the fact that it had some sort of accidental, completely external appearance; this he felt. Somewhere some being or object was standing and sticking up, just as when something sometimes sticks up in front of one’s eye and one doesn’t notice it for a long time, being busy or in heated conversation, and meanwhile one is clearly annoyed, almost suffering, and at last it dawns on one to remove the offending object, often quite trifling and ridiculous, something left in the wrong place, a handkerchief dropped on the floor, a book not put back in the bookcase, or whatever. At last, in a very bad and irritated state of mind, Ivan Fyodorovich reached his father’s house, and suddenly, glancing at the gate from about fifty paces away, he at once realized what was tormenting and worrying him so.

On the bench by the gate, idly enjoying the cool of the evening, sat the lackey Smerdyakov, and Ivan Fyodorovich realized at the first sight of him that the lackey Smerdyakov was also sitting in his soul, and that it was precisely this man that his soul could not bear. It all suddenly became bright and clear. Earlier, with Alyosha’s story of his encounter with Smerdyakov, something gloomy and disgusting had suddenly pierced his heart and immediately evoked a reciprocal malice. Later, during their conversation, Smerdyakov was temporarily forgotten, but remained in his soul nonetheless, and as soon as Ivan Fyodorovich parted with Alyosha and headed for home alone, the forgotten feeling at once began suddenly and quickly to reemerge. “But can it be that this worthless scoundrel troubles me so much!” he thought with unbearable malice.