Page 982 - the-brothers-karamazov

‘Alyosha, I tell you, it’s awfully important,’ Lise went on,
with really excessive amazement. ‘It’s not the dream that’s
important, but your having the same dream as me. You nev-
er lie to me, don’t lie now; is it true? You are not laughing?’
‘It’s true.’
Lise seemed extraordinarily impressed and for half a
minute she was silent.
‘Alyosha, come and see me, come and see me more often,’
she said suddenly, in a supplicating voice.
‘I’ll always come to see you, all my life,’ answered Alyo-
sha firmly.
‘You are the only person I can talk to, you know,’ Lise
began again. ‘I talk to no one but myself and you. Only you
in the whole world. And to you more readily than to myself.
And I am not a bit ashamed with you, not a bit. Alyosha,
why am I not ashamed with you, not a bit? Alyosha, is it true
that at Easter the Jews steal a child and kill it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘There’s a book here in which I read about the trial of a
Jew, who took a child of four years old and cut off the fingers
from both hands, and then crucified him on the wall, ham-
mered nails into him and crucified him, and afterwards,
when he was tried, he said that the child died soon, within
four hours. That was ‘soon’! He said the child moaned, kept
on moaning and he stood admiring it. That’s nice!’
‘Nice?’
‘Nice; I sometimes imagine that it was I who crucified
him. He would hang there moaning and I would sit oppo-
site him eating pineapple compote. I am awfully fond of

1