The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Novels, Short Stories and Autobiographical Writings. Федор Достоевский
staring at the floor with a look of suffering on his face and gave up attempting to answer. But Katya was relentless. I kept looking at her with the greatest interest. I was eager to get to know this strange girl. She was quite a child, but a strange child, a child of convictions, with steadfast principles, and with a passionate, innate love of goodness and justice. If one really might call her a child she belonged to that class of thinking children who are fairly numerous in our Russian families. It was evident that she had pondered on many subjects. It would have been interesting to peep into that little pondering head and to see the mixture there of quite childish images and fancies with serious ideas and notions gained from experience of life (for Katya really had lived), and at the same time with ideas of which she had no real knowledge or experience, abstract theories she had got out of books, though she probably mistook them for generalizations gained by her own experience. These abstract ideas must have been very numerous. In the course of that evening and subsequently I studied her, I believe, pretty thoroughly; her heart was ardent and receptive. In some cases she, as it were, disdained self-control, putting genuineness before everything, and looking upon every restraint on life as a conventional prejudice. And she seemed to pride herself on that conviction, which is often the case indeed with persons of ardent temperament, even in those who are not very young. But it was just that that gave her a peculiar charm. She was very fond of thinking and getting at the truth of things, but was so far from being pedantic, so full of youthful ways that from the first moment one began to love all these originalities in her, and to accept them. I thought of Levinka and Borinka, and it seemed to me that that was all in the natural order of things. And, strange to say, her face, in which I had seen nothing particularly handsome at first sight, seemed that evening to grow finer and more attractive every minute. This naive combination in her of the child and the thinking woman, this childlike and absolutely genuine thirst for truth and justice, and absolute faith in her impulses — all this lighted up her face with a fine glow of sincerity, giving it a lofty, spiritual beauty, and one began to understand that it was not so easy to gauge the full significance of that beauty which was not all at once apparent to every ordinary unsympathetic eye. And I realized that Alyosha was bound to be passionately attached to her. If he was himself incapable of thought and reasoning he was especially attracted by those who could do his thinking, and even wishing, for him, and Katya had already taken him under her wing. His heart was generous, and it instantly surrendered without a struggle to everything that was fine and honourable. And Katya had spoken openly of many things before him already with sympathy and all the sincerity of a child. He was absolutely without a will of his own. She had a very great deal of strong, insistent, and fervidly concentrated will; and Alyosha would only attach himself to one who could dominate and even command him. It was partly through this that Natasha had attracted him at the beginning of their relations, but Katya had a great advantage over Natasha in the fact that she was still a child herself and seemed likely to remain so for a long time. This childishness, her bright intelligence, and at the same time a certain lack of judgement, all this made her more akin to Alyosha. He felt this, and so Katya attracted him more and more. I am certain that when they talked alone together, in the midst of Katya’s earnest discussion of “propaganda” they sometimes relapsed into childish trivialities. And though Katya probably often lectured Alyosha and already had him under her thumb, he was evidently more at home with her than with Natasha. They were more equals, and that meant a great deal.
“Stop, Katya, stop. That’s enough; you always have the best of it, and I’m always wrong, That’s because your heart is purer than mine,” said Alyosha, getting up and giving her his hand at parting. I’m going straight to her and I won’t look in on Levinka….”
“There’s nothing for you to do at Levinka’s. But you’re very sweet to obey and go now.”
“And you’re a thousand times sweeter than anybody,” answered Alyosha sadly. “Ivan Petrovitch, I’ve a word or two I want to say to you.”
We moved a couple of paces away.
“I’ve behaved shamefully to-day,” he whispered to me. “I’ve behaved vilely, I’ve sinned against everyone in the world, and these two more than all. After dinner to-day father introduced me to Mlle. Alexandrine (a French girl) — a fascinating creature. I…was carried away and…but what’s the good of talking…. I’m unworthy to be with them…. Goodbye, Ivan Petrovitch!”
“He’s a kind, noble-hearted boy,” Katya began hurriedly, when I had sat down beside her again, “but we’ll talk a great deal about him later; first of all we must come to an understanding; what is your opinion of the prince?”
“He’s a very horrid man.”
“I think so too. So we’re agreed about that, and so we shall be able to decide better. Now, of Natalya Nikolaevna…. Do you know, Ivan Petrovitch, I am still, as it were, in the dark; I’ve been looking forward to you to bring me light. You must make it all clear to me, for about many of the chief points I can judge only by guesswork from what Alyosha tells me. There is no one else from whom I can learn anything. Tell me, in the first place (this is the chief point) what do you think: will Alyosha and Natasha be happy together or not? That’s what I must know before everything, that I may make up my mind once for all how I must act.”
“How can one tell that with any certainty?”
“No, of course, not with certainty,” she interrupted, “but what do you think, for you are a very clever man?”
“I think that they can’t be happy.”
“Why?”
“They’re not suited.”
“That’s just what I thought”
And she clasped her hands as though deeply distressed.
“Tell me more fully. Listen, I’m awfully anxious to see Natasha, for there’s a great deal I must talk over with her, and it seems to me that she and I can settle everything together. I keep picturing her to myself now. She must be very clever, serious, truthful, and beautiful. Isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“I was sure of it. Well, if she is like that how could she love a baby like Alyosha? Explain that. I often wonder about it.”
“That can’t be explained, Katerina Fyodorovna. It’s difficult to imagine how people can fall in love and what makes them. Yes, he’s a child. But you know how one may love a child.” (My heart melted looking at her and at her eyes fastened upon me intently with profound, earnest and impatient attention.) “And the less Natasha herself is like a child, the more serious she is, the more readily she might fall in love with him. He’s truthful, sincere, awfully naive, and sometimes charmingly naive! Perhaps she fell in love with him — how shall I express it? — as it were from a sort of compassion. A generous heart may love from compassion. I feel though that I can’t give any explanation, but I’ll ask you instead: do you love him?”
I boldly asked her this question and felt that I could not disturb the infinite childlike purity of her candid soul by the abruptness of such a question.
“I really don’t know yet,” she answered me quietly, looking me serenely in the face, “but I think I love him very much….”
“There, you see. And can you explain why you love him?”
“There’s no falsehood in him,” she answered after thinking a moment, “and I like it when he looks into my eyes and says something. Tell me, Ivan Petrovitch, here I’m talking about this to you, I’m a girl and you’re a man, am I doing right in this, or not?”
“Why, what is there in it?”
“Nothing. Of course there’s nothing in it. But they,” she glanced at the group sitting round the samovar, “they would certainly say it was wrong. Are they right or not?”
“No. Why, you don’t feel in your heart you’ve done wrong, so….”
“That’s how I always do,” she broke in, evidently in haste to get in as much talk with me as she could. “When I’m confused about anything I always look into my own heart, and