“Well, that’s an idea; of course all are scoundrels; and since life is a beastly thing for a decent man …”
“Fool, I am just such a scoundrel as you, as all, not a decent man. There’s never been a decent man anywhere.”
“He’s guessed the truth at last! Can you, Kirillov, with your sense, have failed to see till now that all men are alike, that there are none better or worse, only some are stupider, than others, and that if all are scoundrels (which is nonsense, though) there oughtn’t to be any people that are not?”
“Ah! Why, you are really in earnest?” Kirillov looked at him with some wonder. “You speak with heat and simply. … Can it be that even fellows like you have convictions?”
“Kirillov, I’ve never been able to understand why you mean to kill yourself. I only know it’s from conviction … strong conviction. But if you feel a yearning to express yourself, so to say, I am at your service. … Only you must think of the time.”
“What time is it?”
“Oh oh, just two.” Pyotr Stepanovitch looked at his watch and lighted a cigarette.
“It seems we can come to terms after all,” he reflected.
“I’ve nothing to say to you,” muttered Kirillov.
“I remember that something about God comes into it … you explained it to me once—twice, in fact. If you stopped yourself, you become God; that’s it, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I become God.”
Pyotr Stepanovitch did not even smile; he waited. Kirillov looked at him subtly.
“You are a political impostor and intriguer. You want to lead me on into philosophy and enthusiasm and to bring about a reconciliation so as to disperse my anger, and then, when I am reconciled with you, beg from me a note to say I killed Shatov.”
Pyotr Stepanovitch answered with almost natural frankness.
“Well, supposing I am such a scoundrel. But at the last moments does that matter to you, Kirillov? What are we quarrelling about? Tell me, please. You are one sort of man and I am another—what of it? And what’s more, we are both of us …”
“Scoundrels.”
“Yes, scoundrels if you like. But you know that that’s only words.”
“All my life I wanted it not to be only words. I lived because I did not want it to be. Even now every day I want it to be not words.”
“Well, everyone seeks to be where he is best off. The fish … that is, everyone seeks his own comfort, that’s all. That’s been a commonplace for ages and ages.”
“Comfort, do you say?”
“Oh, it’s not worth while quarrelling over words.”
“No, you were right in what you said; let it be comfort. God is necessary and so must exist.”
“Well, that’s all right, then.”
“But I know He doesn’t and can’t.”
“That’s more likely.”
“Surely you must understand that a man with two such ideas can’t go on living?”
“Must shoot himself, you mean?”
“Surely you must understand that one might shoot oneself for that alone? You don’t understand that there may be a man, one man out of your thousands of millions, one man who won’t bear it and does not want to.”
“All I understand is that you seem to be hesitating. … That’s very bad.”
“Stavrogin, too, is consumed by an idea,” Kirillov said gloomily, pacing up and down the room. He had not noticed the previous remark.
“What?” Pyotr Stepanovitch pricked up his ears. “What idea? Did he tell you something himself?”
“No, I guessed it myself: if Stavrogin has faith, he does not believe that he has faith. If he hasn’t faith, he does not believe that he hasn’t.”
“Well, Stavrogin has got something else worse than that in his head,” Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered peevishly, uneasily watching the turn the conversation had taken and the pallor of Kirillov.
“Damn it all, he won’t shoot himself!” he was thinking. “I always suspected it; it’s a maggot in the brain and nothing more; what a rotten lot of people!”
“You are the last to be with me; I shouldn’t like to part on bad terms with you,” Kirillov vouchsafed suddenly.
Pyotr Stepanovitch did not answer at once. “Damn it all, what is it now?” he thought again.
“I assure you, Kirillov, I have nothing against you personally as a man, and always …”
“You are a scoundrel and a false intellect. But I am just the same as you are, and I will shoot myself while you will remain living.”
“You mean to say, I am so abject that I want to go on living.”
He could not make up his mind whether it was judicious to keep up such a conversation at such a moment or not, and resolved “to be guided by circumstances.” But the tone of superiority and of contempt for him, which Kirillov had never disguised, had always irritated him, and now for some reason it irritated him more than ever—possibly because Kirillov, who was to die within an hour or so (Pyotr Stepanovitch still reckoned upon this), seemed to him, as it were, already only half a man, some creature whom he could not allow to be haughty.
“You seem to be boasting to me of your shooting yourself.”
“I’ve always been surprised at everyone’s going on living,” said Kirillov, not hearing his remark.
“H’m! Admitting that’s an idea, but …”
“You ape, you assent to get the better of me. Hold your tongue; you won’t understand anything. If there is no God, then I am God.”
“There, I could never understand that point of yours: why are you God?”
“If God exists, all is His will and from His will I cannot escape. If not, it’s all my will and I am bound to show self-will.”
“Self-will? But why are you bound?”
“Because all will has become mine. Can it be that no one in the whole planet, after making an end of God and believing in his own will, will dare to express his self-will on the most vital point? It’s like a beggar inheriting a fortune and being afraid of it and not daring to approach the bag of gold, thinking himself too weak to own it. I want to
