The countenance of the unexpected visitor was not so much good-natured, as accom-modating and ready to assume any amiable expression as occasion might arise. He had no watch, but he had a tortoise-shell lorgnette on a black ribbon. On the middle finger of his right hand was a massive gold ring with a cheap opal stone in it.
Ivan was angrily silent and would not begin the conversation. The visitor waited and sat exactly like a poor relation who had come down from his room to keep his host company at tea, and was discreetly silent, seeing that his host was frowning and preoccupied. But he was ready for any affable conversation as soon as his host should begin it. All at once his face expressed a sudden solicitude.
«I say,» he began to Ivan, «excuse me, I only mention it to remind you. You went to Smerdyakov’s to find out about Katerina Ivanovna, but you came away without finding out anything about her, you probably forgot-«
«Ah, yes.» broke from Ivan and his face grew gloomy with uneasiness. «Yes, I’d forgotten… but it doesn’t matter now, never mind, till to-morrow,» he muttered to himself, «and you,» he added, addressing his visitor, «I should have remembered that myself in a minute, for that was just what was tormenting me! Why do you interfere, as if I should believe that you prompted me, and that I didn’t remember it of myself?»
«Don’t believe it then,» said the gentleman, smiling amicably, «what’s the good of believing against your will? Besides, proofs are no help to believing, especially material proofs. Thomas believed, not because he saw Christ risen, but because he wanted to believe, before he saw. Look at the spiritualists, for instance…. I am very fond of them… only fancy, they imagine that they are serving the cause of religion, because the devils show them their horns from the other world. That, they say, is a material proof, so to speak, of the existence of another world. The other world and material proofs, what next! And if you come to that, does proving there’s a devil prove that there’s a God? I want to join an idealist society, I’ll lead the opposition in it, I’ll say I am a realist, but not a materialist, he he!»
564 book page, Chapter 9 — The Devil. Ivan’s Nightmare
«Listen,» Ivan suddenly got up from the table. «I seem to be delirious… I am delirious, in fact, talk any nonsense you like, I don’t care! You won’t drive me to fury, as you did last time. But I feel somehow ashamed… I want to walk about the room…. I sometimes don’t see you and don’t even hear your voice as I did last time, but I always guess what you are prating, for it’s I, I myself speaking, not you. Only I don’t know whether I was dreaming last time or whether I really saw you. I’ll wet a towel and put it on my head and perhaps you’ll vanish into air.»
Ivan went into the corner, took a towel, and did as he said, and with a wet towel on his head began walking up and down the room.
«I am so glad you treat me so familiarly,» the visitor began.
«Fool,» laughed Ivan, «do you suppose I should stand on ceremony with you? I am in good spirits now, though I’ve a pain in my forehead… and in the top of my head… only please don’t talk philosophy, as you did last time. If you can’t take yourself off, talk of something amusing. Talk gossip, you are a poor relation, you ought to talk gossip. What a nightmare to have! But I am not afraid of you. I’ll get the better of you. I won’t be taken to a mad-house!» «C’est charmant, poor relation. Yes, I am in my natural shape. For what am I on earth
but a poor relation? By the way, I am listening to you and am rather surprised to find you are actually beginning to take me for something real, not simply your fancy, as you persisted in declaring last time-«
«Never for one minute have I taken you for reality,» Ivan cried with a sort of fury. «You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a phantom. It’s only that I don’t know how to destroy you and I see I must suffer for a time. You are my hallucination. You are the incarnation of myself, but only of one side of me… of my thoughts and feelings, but only the nastiest and stupidest of them. From that point of view you might be of interest to me, if only I had time to waste on you-«
«Excuse me, excuse me, I’ll catch you. When you flew out at Alyosha under the lamp-post this evening and shouted to him, ‘You learnt it from him! How do you know that he visits me?’ You were thinking of me then. So for one brief moment you did believe that I really exist,» the gentleman laughed blandly.
«Yes, that was a moment of weakness… but I couldn’t believe in you. I don’t know whether I was asleep or awake last time. Perhaps I was only dreaming then and didn’t see you really at all-«
«And why were you so surly with Alyosha just now? He is a dear; I’ve treated him badly over Father Zossima.»
«Don’t talk of Alyosha! How dare you, you flunkey!» Ivan laughed again.
«You scold me, but you laugh- that’s a good sign. But you are ever so much more polite than you were last time and I know why: that great resolution of yours-«
«Don’t speak of my resolution,» cried Ivan, savagely.
565 book page, Chapter 9 — The Devil. Ivan’s Nightmare
«I understand, I understand, c’est noble, c’est charmant, you are going to defend your brother and to sacrifice yourself… C’est chevaleresque.»
«Hold your tongue, I’ll kick you!»
«I shan’t be altogether sorry, for then my object will be attained. If you kick me, you must believe in my reality, for people don’t kick ghosts. Joking apart, it doesn’t matter to me, scold if you like, though it’s better to be a trifle more polite even to me. ‘Fool, flunkey!’ what words!»
«Scolding you, I scold myself,» Ivan laughed again, «you are myself, myself, only with a different face. You just say what I am thinking… and are incapable of saying anything new!» «If I am like you in my way of thinking, it’s all to my credit,» the gentleman declared,
with delicacy and dignity.
«You choose out only my worst thoughts, and what’s more, the stupid ones. You are stupid and vulgar. You are awfully stupid. No, I can’t put up with you! What am I to do, what am I to do?» Ivan said through his clenched teeth.
«My dear friend, above all things I want to behave like a gentleman and to be recognised as such,» the visitor began in an access of deprecating and simple-hearted pride, typical of a poor relation. «I am poor, but… I won’t say very honest, but… it’s an axiom generally accep-ted in society that I am a fallen angel. I certainly can’t conceive how I can ever have been an angel. If I ever was, it must have been so long ago that there’s no harm in forgetting it. Now I only prize the reputation of being a gentlemanly person and live as I can, trying to make myself agreeable. I love men genuinely, I’ve been greatly calumniated! Here when I stay with you from time to time, my life gains a kind of reality and that’s what I like most of all. You see, like you, I suffer from the fantastic and so I love the realism of earth. Here, with you, everything is circumscribed, here all is formulated and geometrical, while we have nothing but indeterminate equations! I wander about here dreaming. I like dreaming. Besides, on earth I become superstitious. Please don’t laugh, that’s just what I like, to become supersti-tious. I adopt all your habits here: I’ve grown fond of going to the public baths, would you believe it? and I go and steam myself with merchants and priests. What I dream of is becom-ing incarnate once for all and irrevocably in the form of some merchant’s wife weighing eighteen stone, and of believing all she believes. My ideal is to go to church and offer a candle in simple-hearted faith, upon my word it is. Then there would be an end to my sufferings. I like being doctored too; in the spring there was an outbreak of smallpox and I went and was vaccinated in a foundling hospital- if only you knew how I enjoyed
