Laptev felt inwardly oppressed; he even found his silence disagreeable.
‘‘You may congratulate Russia on the appearance of a new publicist,’’ said Fyodor. ‘‘However, joking aside, I’ve been delivered of a little article, brother, a trial of the pen, so to speak, and I’ve brought it to show you. Read it, dear heart, and tell me your opinion. Only frankly.’’
He took a notebook out of his pocket and handed it to his brother. The article was entitled ‘‘The Russian Soul.’’ It was written dully, in the colorless style usually employed by untalented, secretly vain people, and its main thought was this: an intelligent man has the right not to believe in the supernatural, but it is his duty to conceal this disbelief, so as not to cause temptation and shake people’s faith; without faith, there is no idealism, and idealism is predestined to save Europe and show mankind to the true path.
‘‘But you don’t write what Europe must be saved from,’’ said Laptev.
‘‘That’s self-evident.’’
‘‘Nothing is evident,’’ said Laptev, and he paced about in agitation. ‘‘It’s not evident what you wrote it for. However, that’s your affair.’’
‘‘I want to publish it as a separate brochure.’’
‘‘That’s your affair.’’
There was a moment’s silence. Fyodor sighed and said:
‘‘I’m deeply, infinitely sorry that you and I think differently. Ah, Alyosha, Alyosha, my dear brother! You and I are Russian people, broad Orthodox people; do all these little German and Jewish ideas suit us? We’re not some sort of scalawags, we represent a distinguished merchant family.’’
‘‘What sort of distinguished family?’’ Laptev said, restraining his irritation. ‘‘Distinguished family! Landowners thrashed our grandfather, and every last little official hit him in the mug. Grandfather thrashed our father, father thrashed you and me. What has this distinguished family given us? What nerves and blood have we inherited? For almost three years now you’ve been reasoning like a beadle, saying all sorts of nonsense, and here you’ve written it down—it’s boorish raving. And me? And me? Look at me... No resilience, no courage, no strength of will; I’m afraid at every step, as if I’m going to be whipped, I’m timid before nonentities, idiots, brutes who are incomparably beneath me mentally and morally; I’m afraid of caretakers, porters, policemen, gendarmes, I’m afraid of everybody, because I was born of a cowed mother, I’ve been beaten down and frightened since childhood!... You and I would do well not to have children. Oh, God grant that this distinguished merchant family ends with us!’’
Yulia Sergeevna came into the study and sat down by the desk.
‘‘You’ve been arguing about something?’’ she said. ‘‘Am I interfering?’’
‘‘No, little sister,’’ answered Fyodor, ‘‘our conversation is on principle. So you say our family is this and that,’’ he turned to his brother, ‘‘however, this family has created a million-rouble business. That’s something!’’
‘‘Big deal—a million-rouble business! A man of no special intelligence or ability happens to become a trader, then a rich man, he trades day in and day out with no system or goal, not even a lust for money, he trades mechanically, and money comes to him, not he to it. All his life he sits in his shop and loves it only because he can dominate his salesclerks and scoff at his customers. He’s a church warden because there he can dominate the choir and bend them to his will; he’s a school trustee because he likes to think the teacher is his subordinate and he can play the superior before him. The merchant doesn’t like to trade, he likes to dominate, and your warehouse is not a trading establishment but a torture chamber! Yes, for such trading as yours, you need depersonalized, deprived salesclerks, and you prepare them that way yourselves, making them bow at your feet from childhood on for a crust of bread, and from childhood on you accustom them to thinking that you’re their benefactors. No fear you’d take a university man into your warehouse!’’
‘‘University people are no use in our business.’’
‘‘Not true!’’ cried Laptev. ‘‘That’s a lie!’’
‘‘Excuse me, but it seems to me you’re fouling the well you drink from,’’ Fyodor said and got up. ‘‘Our business is hateful to you, and yet you make use of its income.’’
‘‘Aha, you’ve finally come out with it!’’ Laptev said and laughed, looking angrily at his brother. ‘‘If I didn’t belong to your distinguished family, if I had at least a pennyworth of will and courage, I’d have flung away that income long ago and gone to earn my bread. But you in your warehouse depersonalized me from childhood on! I’m yours!’’
Fyodor glanced at his watch and hastily began taking his leave. He kissed Yulia’s hand and went out, but instead of going to the front hall, he went to the drawing room, then to the bedroom.
‘‘I’ve forgotten the layout of the rooms,’’ he said in great perplexity. ‘‘A strange house, isn’t it? A strange house.’’
As he was putting on his coat, he looked as if stunned, and his face expressed pain. Laptev no longer felt angry; he was alarmed and, at the same time, sorry for Fyodor, and that warm, good love for his brother, which seemed to have been extinguished in those three years, now awakened in his breast, and he felt a strong desire to express that love.
‘‘Come for dinner tomorrow, Fedya,’’ he said and stroked his shoulder. ‘‘Will you?’’
‘‘Yes, yes. But give me some water.’’
Laptev himself ran to the dining room, took the first thing he happened upon in the sideboard—it was a tall beer mug— poured water into it, and brought it to his brother. Fyodor began drinking greedily, then suddenly bit the mug, there was a gnashing sound, then sobbing. Water poured onto his coat and frock coat. And Laptev, who had never seen a man cry before, stood confused and frightened and did not know what to do. He watched like a lost man as Yulia and the maid took Fyodor’s coat off and brought him back inside, and he walked after them, feeling himself to blame.
Yulia helped Fyodor to lie down and lowered herself onto her knees before him.
‘‘Never mind,’’ she comforted him. ‘‘It’s your nerves...’
‘‘Dear heart, it’s so hard for me!’’ he said. ‘‘I’m unhappy, unhappy...but I’ve been concealing it, concealing it all the while!’’
He put his arms around her neck and whispered in her ear:
