“For about a year, but it’s all nonsense. I’ll see a doctor. This is all nonsense, utter nonsense. It is myself in various aspects, and nothing else. But even as I use that phrase, you certainly think that I am still doubtful and am not sure that it is myself, and not really the devil.”
Tikhon gave him a questioning look.
“And … you actually see him?” he asked, dismissing, in fact, any question of its being a false and morbid hallucination. “Do you actually see a certain image?”
“It is strange that you should lay such stress upon this, when I have already told you that I do see it.” Stavrogin again began to grow more and more irritated with each word. “Of course I see it; I see it as plainly as I see you … and sometimes I see it and I’m not sure that I see it, although I do see it … and sometimes I do not know what is real: I or it … it’s all nonsense. And can’t you possibly believe that this is indeed the devil?” he added, breaking into a laugh and passing too abruptly into derision. “Surely that would be more in keeping with your profession.”
“It is more likely a disease, although….”
“Although what?”
“Devils certainly exist, but one’s conception of them may be very various.”
“And you have again just looked down,” Stavrogin broke in with an irritating laugh, “because you were ashamed that I should believe in the devil; but I made out that I did not believe and cunningly put the question to you: does he or does he not really exist?
Tikhon gave a vague smile.
“Well, know then that I am not at all ashamed, and to make up for my rudeness I will tell you, seriously and unblushingly: I do believe in the devil, I believe canonically, in a personal, not allegorical, devil, and I do not in the least want to extort an answer from any one; now that’s all.”
He gave a nervous, unnatural laugh. Tikhon looked at him with curiosity, with a rather timorous, yet gentle look.
“You believe in God?” Nikolai Vsevolodovich suddenly burst out.
“I do.”
“It is said, if you believe and bid a mountain move, it will move … though, pardon me this nonsense. Yet I am curious to know: could you move a mountain or not?”
“If God will, I could,” Tikhon uttered quickly and calmly, again beginning to look down at the ground.
“Well, it’s just the same as saying that God Himself could move it. But you, you, as a reward for your belief in God?”
“Perhaps I could move it.”
“‘Perhaps.’[16] Well, that is not bad, either. But you are still doubtful?”
“Through the imperfection of my belief I have doubts.”
“Why, do you believe incompletely?”
“Yes … perhaps; I do believe and not perfectly,” Tikhon replied.
“That is what I should not think, looking at you!”—he suddenly gave him a look of some surprise, a perfectly simple look which did not at all harmonize with the mocking tone of the preceding questions.
“Well, at any rate you do believe that, even if it be with God’s help, you could move it, and that is something, after all. At least, you wish to believe. And you take the mountain literally. It is a good principle. I observed that the progressives among our Levites are greatly inclined towards Lutheranism. Anyhow it is better than the très peu of the Archbishop, it is true, under the threat of the sword. You are, certainly, a Christian too.” Stavrogin spoke quickly, his words now serious, now mocking.
“May I not be ashamed, Lord, of Thy Cross.” Tikhon almost whispered it, with a passionate whisper, and bowed his head still lower.[17]
“And can one believe in the devil, without believing in God?” Stavrogin laughed.
“Oh, there are such people everywhere.” Tikhon raised his eyes and smiled.
“And I am sure that you find such belief more respectable after all than complete unbelief….”[18] Stavrogin began to laugh.
“On the contrary, complete atheism is more respectable than worldly indifference,” Tikhon answered, with visible gaiety and good-nature.
“Oho, that’s how you get round it!”
“A complete atheist stands on the last rung but one before absolute faith (he may or may not step higher), but an indifferent man has no longer any faith at all, nothing but an ugly fear, and that only on rare occasions, if he is a sentimental man.”
“Hm … you have read the Apocalypse?”
“I have.”
“Do you remember, ‘Write to the Angel of the Laodicean Church’?”
“I do.”[19]
“Where is the book?” Stavrogin began with a strange hurry and anxiety, searching with his eyes for the book on the table. “I want to read to you … you have a Russian translation?”
“I know the passage, I remember it,” Tikhon murmured.
“Do you know it by heart? Read it….”
He at once looked at the ground, rested both his hands on his knees, and impatiently prepared to listen. Tikhon repeated word for word:
“Write to the Angel of the Laodicean Church: The true and authoritative witness of the beginning of the creations of God says Amen. I know thy works; thou art neither cold nor hot. Would that thou wert cold or hot. But in so far as thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I shall spew thee out from my lips. For thou sayest: I am rich; I have everything and need nothing; but thou knowest not that thou art miserable, and poor and beggarly and blind and naked….”
“Enough,” Stavrogin cut him short.[20] “Do you know, I love you very much.”
“I love you too,” Tikhon replied in a low voice.
Stavrogin fell silent and suddenly lapsed again into his old reverie. This came as though in fits and now for the third time. And the “I love” he said to Tikhon was also said almost in an impulse, at any rate unexpectedly to himself. More than a minute passed.
“Do not be angry,” Tikhon whispered, touching his arm very lightly with his finger and as though his courage failed him.
Stavrogin shuddered and frowned angrily.
“How did you know that I was angry?” he said hastily. Tikhon was about to reply, when he suddenly interrupted him in inexplicable alarm:
“Why did you think that I must necessarily become angry? Yes, I was angry; you are right; and just because I had said to you ‘I love.’ You are right, but you are a crude cynic, you think slightingly of human nature. There might have been no anger, had it been any one else but myself…. Though, it does not matter about others; it concerns me. After all, you are a queer fellow and crazy.”
He grew more and more irritated, and, strangely, made no attempt to restrain his language:
“Listen, I do not like spies and thought-readers, at any rate those who creep into my soul. I do not invite any one into my soul; I need no one; I am able to shift for myself. You think I am afraid of you,” he raised his voice and looked up defiantly; “you are quite convinced that I have come to confide to you some ‘terrible’ secret, and you are waiting for it with all the hermit curiosity of which you are capable. Understand then that I will confide nothing to you, no secret, because I can perfectly well do without you….”[21]
Tikhon looked at him firmly.
“It surprised you that the Lamb prefers a cold man to a merely lukewarm one,” he said. “You don’t want to be merely lukewarm. I have a foreboding that you are possessed by an extraordinary intention, perhaps a terrible one. I implore you, don’t torment yourself and tell me everything.”[22]
“And you knew for certain that I had come with something.”
“I … guessed it,”[23] Tikhon replied in a whisper, looking down.
Nikolai Vsevolodovich was rather pale; his hands shook a little. For a few seconds he looked motionlessly and silently, as though coming to a final decision. At last he took out of the side pocket of his coat a few printed sheets and put them on the table.
“These sheets are meant for circulation,” he said in a tremulous voice. “If only one man reads them, then understand that I shall keep them back no longer, and they will be read by every one. That is settled. I don’t need you at all, for I have settled it. But read them … while you are reading them, say nothing; but after you have read them—say everything….”
“Shall I read them?” Tikhon asked irresolutely.
“Do; I am calm.”
“No; I shall not be able to read them without glasses; the printing is pale, foreign.”
“Here are your glasses.” Stavrogin took them from the table and handed them to him, and leant on the back of the sofa. Tikhon did not look at him, and plunged straight into the reading.
II
The printing was in fact foreign: three little sheets of ordinary small-sized writing-paper printed and stitched together. It must have been printed secretly at a Russian press abroad, and the sheets at the first glance looked very much like a political pamphlet. The title read: “From Stavrogin.”
I insert the document literally in my chronicle.[24] I have allowed myself to correct the spelling, for the mistakes are rather numerous and have surprised me a little, considering after all that the author was a man of education and even well-read (of course, relatively speaking). But in the style I have made no alterations whatever, in spite of its irregularities. It is at any rate clear that
