The Brothers Karamazov

BOOK IV: STRAINS

Chapter 1: Father Ferapont

Early in the morning, before dawn, Alyosha was awakened. The elder had gotten up, feeling quite weak, though he still wished to move from his bed to the armchair. He was fully conscious; his face, though quite tired, was bright, almost joyful, and his eyes were merry, cordial, welcoming. “I may not survive this coming day,” he said to Alyosha; then he desired to make a confession and receive communion immediately. His confessor had always been Father Paissy. After the completion of both sacraments, the rite of holy unction began.^[107] The hieromonks gathered, and the cell gradually filled with monks from the hermitage. Meanwhile day came. Monks began to arrive from the monastery as well. When the service was over, the elder desired to take leave of everyone and kissed them all. As the cell was small, the first visitors went out to make room for others. Alyosha stood near the elder, who had moved back to the armchair. He spoke and taught as much as he could; his voice, though weak, was still quite firm. “I have taught you for so many years, and therefore spoken aloud for so many years, that it has become a habit, as it were, to speak, and, speaking, to teach you, so much so that I would find it almost more difficult to be silent than to speak, my dear fathers and brothers, even now in my weakness,” he joked, looking tenderly upon those who crowded around him. Later Alyosha recalled something of what he said then. But though he spoke distinctly and in a sufficiently firm voice, his talk was rather incoherent. He spoke of many things, he seemed to want to say everything, to speak one last time before the moment of death, to say all that had not been said in his life, and not only for the sake of instruction, but as if he wished to share his joy and ecstasy with all, to pour out his heart once more in this life . . .

“Love one another, fathers,” the elder taught (as far as Alyosha could recall afterwards). “Love God’s people. For we are not holier than those in the world because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, but, on the contrary, anyone who comes here, by the very fact that he has come, already knows himself to be worse than all those who are in the world, worse than all on earth ... And the longer a monk lives within his walls, the more keenly he must be aware of it. For otherwise he had no reason to come here. But when he knows that he is not only worse than all those in the world, but is also guilty before all people, on behalf of all and for all,^[108] for all human sins, the world’s and each person’s, only then will the goal of our unity be achieved. For you must know, my dear ones, that each of us is undoubtedly guilty on behalf of all and for all on earth, not only because of the common guilt of the world, but personally, each one of us, for all people and for each person on this earth. This knowledge is the crown of the monk’s path, and of every man’s path on earth. For monks are not a different sort of men, but only such as all men on earth ought also to be. Only then will our hearts be moved to a love that is infinite , universal, and that knows no satiety. Then each of us will be able to gain the whole world by love and wash away the world’s sins with his tears ... Let each of you keep close company with his heart, let each of you confess to himself untiringly. Do not be afraid of your sin, even when you perceive it, provided you are repentant, but do not place conditions on God. Again I say, do not be proud. Do not be proud before the lowly, do not be proud before the great either. And do not hate those who reject you, disgrace you, revile you, and slander you. Do not hate atheists, teachers of evil, materialists, not even those among them who are wicked, nor those who are good, for many of them are good, especially in our time. Remember them thus in your prayers: save, Lord, those whom there is no one to pray for, save also those who do not want to pray to you. And add at once: it is not in my pride that I pray for it, Lord, for I myself am more vile than all ... Love God’s people, do not let newcomers draw your flock away, for if in your laziness and disdainful pride, in your self-interest most of all, you fall asleep, they will come from all sides and lead your flock away. Teach the Gospel to the people untiringly ... Do not engage in usury ... Do not love silver and gold, do not keep it ... Believe, and hold fast to the banner. Raise it high ...”

The elder spoke, however, in a more fragmentary way than has been set forth here or in the notes that Alyosha later wrote down. Sometimes he stopped speaking altogether, as if gathering his strength, and gasped for breath, yet he seemed to be in ecstasy. He was listened to with great feeling, though many wondered at his words and saw darkness in them ... Afterwards they all remembered these words. When Alyosha happened to leave the cell for a moment, he was struck by the general excitement and anticipation among the brothers crowding in and near the cell. Some were almost anxious in their anticipation, others were solemn. Everyone expected something immediate and great upon the elder’s falling asleep.^[109] This expectation was, from the one point of view, almost frivolous, as it were, yet even the sternest old monks suffered from it. Sternest of all was the face of the old hieromonk Paissy. Alyosha happened to leave the cell only because he had been mysteriously summoned, through a monk, by Rakitin, who came from town with a strange letter sent to Alyosha by Madame Khokhlakov. She informed Alyosha of a curious piece of news, which came at a highly opportune moment. It so happened that the day before, among the faithful peasant women who had come to venerate the elder and receive his blessing, there was a little old lady from town, Prokhorovna, a noncommissioned officer’s widow. She had asked the elder if in a prayer for the dead she could remember her dear son Vasenka, who had gone on official duty far away to Siberia, to Irkutsk, and from whom she had received no news for a year. To which the elder had replied sternly, forbidding it, and likening this sort of commemoration to sorcery. But then, forgiving her because of her ignorance, he had added, “as if looking into the book of the future” (so Madame Khokhlakov put it in her letter), the consolation “that her son Vasya was undoubtedly alive, and that he would either come himself or send a letter shortly, and she should go home and wait for that. And what do you think?” Madame Khokhlakov added ecstatically, “the prophecy came true even literally, and even more than that.” The moment the old lady returned home, she was at once handed a letter from Siberia, which was there waiting for her. And that was not all: in this letter, written en route from Ekaterinburg, Vasya informed his mother that he was coming to Russia, that he was returning with some official, and that in about three weeks after she received this letter “he hoped to embrace his mother.” Madame Khokhlakov insistently and ardently begged Alyosha to report this newly occurred “miracle of prediction” immediately to the Superior and all the brothers: “It must be made known to everyone, everyone!” she exclaimed in conclusion. Her letter had been written hastily, in a rush; the writer’s excitement rang in every line of it. But there was nothing for Alyosha to tell the brothers: everyone already knew everything. Rakitin, as he sent the monk for Alyosha, charged him, besides, “most respectfully to notify his reverence Father Paissy as well, that he, Rakitin, had some business with him, of such importance that he could not postpone informing him of it even for a minute, asking him with a low bow to forgive his boldness.” Since the monk had brought Rakitin’s request to Father Paissy before finding Alyosha, it only remained for Alyosha, after reading the letter, to hand it over to Father Paissy as a document. And then even that stern and mistrustful man, as he read, frowning, the news of the “miracle,” could not quite contain a certain inner emotion. His eyes flashed, and a solemn and knowing smile suddenly came to his lips.

“Shall we not behold greater things?” he suddenly let fall.

“We shall, we shall!” the monks around him repeated, but Father Paissy frowned again and asked them all to tell no one about it for the time being, “not until we have more confirmation, for there is much frivolousness among people in the world, and this incident also may have taken place naturally,” he added prudently, as if for the sake of conscience, but almost not believing in his own reservation, as his listeners very well saw. Within an hour, of course, the “miracle” became known to the whole monastery, and even to many of the laymen who had come there for the liturgy. More than anyone else, the new miracle seemed to have struck the little monk “from St. Sylvester’s,” who had come to the monastery the day before from his small Obdorsk monastery in the far north. The day before, standing near Madame Khokhlakov, he had bowed to the elder and, pointing to that lady’s “healed” daughter, had asked him with great feeling: “How do you dare do such deeds?”

He was already in some perplexity as it was, and almost did not know what to believe. The previous evening he had visited the monastery’s Father Ferapont in his private cell beyond the apiary, and was struck by this meeting, which had made an extraordinary and terrifying impression on him. This old Father Ferapont was that same aged monk, the great faster and keeper of silence, whom we have already mentioned as an adversary of the elder Zosima, and above all of the institution of elders, which he regarded as a harmful and frivolous innovation. He was an extremely dangerous adversary, even though, as a keeper of silence, he hardly ever spoke a word to anyone. He was dangerous mainly because many brothers fully sympathized with him, and among visiting laymen many honored him as a great ascetic and a righteous man, even though they regarded him as unquestionably a holy fool. Indeed, it was this that fascinated them. Father Ferapont never went to the elder Zosima. Though he lived in the hermitage, he was not much bothered by hermitage rules, again because he behaved like a real holy fool. He was about seventy-five years old, if not more, and lived beyond the hermitage apiary, in a corner of the wall, in an old, half-ruined wooden cell built there in ancient times, back in the last century, for a certain Father Iona, also a great faster and keeper of silence, who had lived to be a hundred and five and of whose deeds many curious stories were still current in the monastery and its environs. Father Ferapont had so succeeded that he, too, was finally placed, about seven years earlier, in this same solitary little cell, really just a simple hut, but which rather resembled a chapel because it housed such a quantity of donative icons with donative icon lamps eternally burning before them, which Father Ferapont was appointed, as it were, to look after and keep lit. He ate, it was said (and in fact it was true), only two pounds of bread in three days, not more; it was brought to him every three days by the beekeeper who lived there in the apiary, but even with this beekeeper who served him, Father Ferapont rarely spoke a word. These four pounds of bread, together with a prosphora,^[110] which the Superior regularly sent the blessed man after the late Sunday liturgy,^[111] constituted his entire weekly sustenance. The water in his jug was changed every day. He rarely appeared at a liturgy. Visiting admirers sometimes saw him spend the whole day in prayer without rising from his knees or turning around. And even if he occasionally got into conversation with them, he was brief, curt, strange, and almost always rude. There were, however, very rare occasions when he would start talking with visitors, but for the most part he merely uttered some one strange saying, which always posed a great riddle for the visitor, and then, despite all entreaties, would give no further explanation. He was not a priest but just a simple monk. There was, however, a very strange rumor among the most ignorant people that Father Ferapont was in communication with the heavenly spirits and conversed only with them, which was why he was silent with people. The Obdorsk monk found his way to the apiary on directions from the beekeeper, also rather a silent and surly monk, and went to the corner where Father Ferapont’s cell stood. “Maybe he’ll speak, since you’re a visitor, or maybe you’ll get nothing out of him,” the beekeeper warned him. The monk, as he himself recounted later, approached in great fear. It was already rather late. This time Father Ferapont was sitting by the door of the cell on a low bench. Over him a huge old elm was lightly rustling. The evening was turning cool. The Obdorsk monk prostrated before the holy man and asked for his blessing.

“Do you want me to prostrate in front of you, too, monk?” said Father Ferapont. “Arise!”

The monk stood up.

“Blessing wilt thou bless thyself, have a seat here. Where’d you drop from?”

What struck the poor monk most was that Father Ferapont, with his undoubtedly great fasting, and though he was of such an advanced age, still looked to be a vigorous old man. He was tall, held himself erect, without stooping, and had a fresh face, thin but healthy. He also undoubtedly still preserved considerable strength. And he was of athletic build. Despite his great age, he was not even completely gray yet, and his hair and beard, formerly quite black, were still very thick. His eyes were gray, large, luminous, but extremely bulging, even strikingly so. He spoke with a strong northern accent. He was dressed in a long, reddish peasant coat made from coarse convict broadcloth, as it used to be called, with a thick rope for a belt. His neck and chest were bare. An almost completely blackened shirt of the thickest canvas, which had not been taken off for months, stuck out from under the coat. It was said that underneath he wore thirty pounds of chain. On his bare feet he wore a pair of old shoes, which were almost in pieces.

“From the small Obdorsk monastery of St. Selivester,” the visiting monk replied humbly, watching the hermit with his quick, curious, though somewhat frightened eyes.

“I was at your Selivester’s. Used to live there. How’s Selivester’s health?”

The monk faltered.

“Eh, what muddleheads you peoples are! How do you keep Lent?”

“This is the refectory rule, according to the ancient order of the monastery: for all forty days of Lent there are no meals on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we have white bread, stewed fruit with honey, cloudberries or salt cabbage and oatmeal gruel, and on Saturdays white cabbage soup, noodles with peas, and hot kasha, all made with oil. On Sundays we have cabbage soup, dried fish, and kasha. During Holy Week,^[112]from Monday until Saturday evening, for six days, we eat only bread and water and uncooked vegetables, and that with restraint; eating is permitted, but not every day, just as in the first week. On Great and Holy Friday we eat nothing, and on Great Saturday, too, we fast until the third hour and then have a little bread and water and one cup of wine. On Great and Holy Thursday we eat uncooked food or boiled food without oil, and drink wine. For the rule of the Council of Laodicea^[113] says of Great Thursday: ‘It is not worthy during the Great Lent to relax on the Thursday of the last week and so dishonor all forty days.’^[114] That’s how it is with us. But what’s that compared to you, great father,” the little monk added, taking courage, “for all year round, and even on Holy Easter, you eat just bread and water, and as much bread as we’d eat in two days lasts you a whole week. Truly marvelous is your great abstinence!”

“And mushrooms?” Father Ferapont suddenly asked.

“Mushrooms?” the surprised monk repeated.

“Right. I can do without their bread, I don’t need it at all, I can go to the forest and live on mushrooms and berries, but they can’t do without their bread here, that’s why they’re in bondage to the devil. Nowadays these unclean ones say there’s no need to fast so much. Arrogant and unclean is their reasoning.”

“Ah, true,” sighed the little monk.

“Did you see all the devils around there?” asked Father Ferapont.

“Around where?” the monk timidly inquired.

“I was up at the Superior’s last year, at Pentecost,^[115] and haven’t been back since. I saw one sitting on one monk’s chest, hiding under his cassock, with only his little horns sticking out; another monk had one peeking out of his pocket, looking shifty-eyed, because he was afraid of me; another had one living in his stomach, his unclean belly; and there was one who had one hanging on his neck, clinging to him, and he was carrying him around without even seeing him.”

“And you ... could see?” the monk inquired. “I’m telling you—I see, I see throughout. As I was leaving the Superior’s, I looked—there was one hiding from me behind the door, a real beefy one, a yard and a half tall or more, with a thick tail, brown, long, and he happened to stick the tip of it into the doorjamb, and me being no fool, I suddenly slammed the door shut and pinched his tail. He started squealing, struggling, and I crossed him to death with the sign of the Cross, the triple one. He dropped dead on the spot, like a squashed spider. He must be rotten and stinking in that corner now, and they don’t see, they don’t smell a thing. I haven’t gone back for a year. I reveal it to you only because you’re a foreigner. “

“Terrible are your words! And tell me, great and blessed father,” the monk took more and more heart, “is it true, this great fame that has spread even to faraway lands, that you are in constant communication with the Holy Spirit? “

“He flies down. He does.”

“How does he fly down? In what form?”

“As a bird.”

“The Holy Spirit in the form of a dove?”^[116]

“There is the Holy Spirit, and there is the Holispirit. The Holispirit is different, he can descend as some other bird—a swallow, a goldfinch, a tomtit.”

“And how can you tell him from a tomtit?”

“He speaks.”

“How does he speak? In what language?”

“Human language.”

“And what does he tell you?”

“Well, today he announced that a fool would visit me and ask improper questions. You want to know too much, monk.”

“Dreadful are your words, most blessed and holy father,” the monk shook his head. In his fearful little eyes, however, there seemed to be some doubt.

“And do you see this tree?” asked Father Ferapont, after a short silence.

“I see it, most blessed father.”

“For you it’s an elm, but for me the picture is different.”

“What is it for you?” the little monk asked after pausing in vain expectation.

“It happens during the night. Do you see those two branches? In the night, behold, Christ stretches forth his arms to me, searching for me with those arms, I see it clearly and tremble. Fearsome, oh, fearsome!”

“Why is it fearsome, if it’s Christ himself?”

“He may grab hold of me and ascend me.”

“Alive?”

“What, haven’t you heard of the spirit and power of Elijah?^[117] He may seize me and carry me off ...” Though following this conversation the Obdorsk monk returned to the cell assigned him with one of the brothers in a state of considerable perplexity, his heart was still undoubtedly inclined more towards Father Ferapont than towards Father Zosima. The Obdorsk monk was above all in favor of fasting, and it was no wonder that such a great faster as Father Ferapont should “behold marvels.” Of course, his words were absurd, as it were, but the Lord knew what was hidden in those words, and Father Ferapont’s words and even his deeds were no stranger than those of other holy fools. The devil’s pinched tail he was ready to believe, sincerely and with pleasure, not only figuratively but literally as well. Besides, even earlier, before coming to the monastery, he had been strongly biased against the institution of elders, which until then he had known only from hearsay, and, along with many others, regarded it as a decidedly harmful innovation. Having spent one day in the monastery, he had already managed to take note of the secret murmuring of some light-minded brothers who were not accepting of elders. Besides, this monk was meddlesome and adroit by nature, and extremely curious about everything. That was why the great news of the new “miracle” performed by the elder Zosima threw him into such perplexity. Alyosha recalled later that among the monks crowding near the elder and around his cell, the little figure of the inquisitive Obdorsk visitor, darting everywhere from group to group, listening to everything, and questioning everyone, kept flashing before him. But at the time he paid little attention to him and only later remembered it all ... And indeed he could not be bothered with that: the elder Zosima, who felt tired again and went back to bed, suddenly, as he was closing his eyes, remembered him and called him to his side. Alyosha came running at once. Only Father Paissy, Father Iosif, and the novice Porfiry were with the elder then. The elder, opening his tired eyes and glancing attentively at Alyosha, suddenly asked him:

“Are your people expecting you, my son?”

Alyosha hesitated.

“Do they need you? Did you promise anyone yesterday that you would come today?”

“I promised ... my father ... my brothers ... others, too.”

“You see, you must go. Do not be sad. I assure you I will not die without saying my last word on earth in your presence. I will say this word to you, my son, to you I will bequeath it. To you, my dear son, because you love me. But for now, go to those you have promised to see.”

Alyosha obeyed at once, though it was hard for him to go. But the promise of hearing his last word on earth, and above all that it would be a bequest, as it were, to him, Alyosha, shook his soul with rapture. He hurried so that he could finish everything in town and come back the sooner. And just then Father Paissy, too, spoke some parting words to him, which made a rather strong and unexpected impression on him. They had both just left the elder’s cell.

“Remember, young man, unceasingly,” Father Paissy began directly, without any preamble, “that the science of this world, having united itself into a great force, has, especially in the past century, examined everything heavenly that has been bequeathed to us in sacred books, and, after hard analysis, the learned ones of this world have absolutely nothing left of what was once holy. But they have examined parts and missed the whole, and their blindness is even worthy of wonder. Meanwhile the whole stands before their eyes as immovably as ever, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Did it not live for nineteen centuries, does it not live even now in the movements of individual souls and in the movements of the popular masses? Even in the movements of the souls of those same all-destroying atheists, it lives, as before, immovably! For those who renounce Christianity and rebel against it are in their essence of the same image of the same Christ, and such they remain, for until now neither their wisdom nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create another, higher image of man and his dignity than the image shown of old by Christ. And whatever their attempts, the results have been only monstrosities. Remember this especially, young man, since you are being assigned to the world by your departing elder. Perhaps, remembering this great day, you will not forget my words either, given as cordial words of parting for you, because you are young and the temptations of the world are heavy and your strength will not endure them. Well, go now, my orphan.”

With these words Father Paissy gave him a blessing. As he was leaving the monastery, thinking over all these unexpected words, Alyosha suddenly understood that in this monk, who had hitherto been stern and severe with him, he had now met a new and unlooked-for friend, a new director who ardently loved him—as if the elder Zosima, in dying, had bequeathed him Paissy. “And perhaps that is indeed what happened between them,” Alyosha suddenly thought. The unexpected learned discourse he had just heard, precisely that and not some other sort, testified to the ardor of Father Paissy’s heart: he had hastened to arm the young mind as quickly as possible for its struggle with temptations, to surround the young soul bequeathed to him with a wall stronger than any other he could imagine.

Chapter 2: At His Father’s

Alyosha went first of all to his father’s. As he was nearing the house, he remembered his father insisting very much the day before that he come somehow in secret from his brother Ivan. “I wonder why?” the thought suddenly occurred to Alyosha. “If father wants to say something to me alone, in secret, still why should I have to come secretly? He must have meant to say something else, but in his excitement yesterday he didn’t manage to,” he decided. Nevertheless he was very glad when Marfa Ignatievna, who opened the gate for him (Grigory, it turned out, had fallen ill and was in bed in the cottage), in answer to his question, informed him that Ivan Fyodorovich had gone out two hours before.

“And father?”

“He’s up, he’s having his coffee,” Marfa Ignatievna answered somehow drily. Alyosha went in. The old man was sitting alone at the table, in his slippers and an old coat, looking through some accounts for diversion, but without much interest. He was quite alone in the house (Smerdyakov, too, had gone out, to buy things for dinner). It was not the accounts that concerned him. Though he had gotten up early in the morning, and was trying to keep himself cheerful, he still looked tired and weak. His forehead, on which huge purple bruises had come out overnight, was wrapped with a red handkerchief. His nose had also become badly swollen overnight, and several patchy bruises had formed on it, insignificant but decidedly giving his whole face an especially wicked and irritated look. The old man was aware of it himself and shot Alyosha an unfriendly glance as he entered.

“The coffee’s cold,” he cried sharply, “I’m not offering you any. Today, my friend, it’s just lenten fish soup for me, and nobody’s invited. Why have you come?”

“To ask about your health,” said Alyosha.

“Yes. And, besides, yesterday I told you to come. It’s all nonsense. You’ve troubled yourself for nothing. I knew, by the way, that you’d drag yourself here first thing...”

He spoke with the most inimical feeling. Meanwhile he got up worriedly and looked in the mirror (perhaps already for the fortieth time that morning) at his nose. He also began to arrange the red handkerchief on his forehead in a more becoming way.

“Red’s better; white would be too much like a hospital,” he observed sententiously. “Well, what’s with you? How is your elder?”

“He’s very bad; he may die today,” Alyosha replied, but his father did not even hear him, and at once forgot his question as well.

“Ivan left,” he said suddenly. “He’s doing his best to win over Mitka’s fiancée, that’s why he’s staying here,” he added maliciously, and, twisting his mouth, looked at Alyosha.

“Can he have told you so himself?” asked Alyosha.

“Yes, he told me long ago. Three weeks ago, in fact. It can’t be that he’s come here to put a knife in me, too, can it? So he must have some reason!”

“What? How can you say such things?” Alyosha was terribly dismayed.

“It’s true he’s never asked for money, and he won’t get a fig out of me anyway. I, my dearest Alexei Fyodorovich, plan to live on this earth as long as possible, let it be known to you, and therefore I need every kopeck, and the longer I live, the more I’ll need it,” he continued, pacing from one corner of the room to the other, keeping his hands in the pockets of his loose, greasy, yellow cotton coat. “At the moment I’m still a man, only fifty-five years old, but I want to occupy that position for about twenty years longer; I’ll get old and disgusting and they won’t come to me then of their own free will, and that’s when I’ll need my dear money. So now I’m saving up more and more, for myself alone, sir, my dear son, Alexei Fyodorovich, let it be known to you, because let it be known to you that I want to live in my wickedness to the very end. Wickedness is sweet: everyone denounces it, but everyone lives in it, only they all do it on the sly and I do it openly. And for this ingenuousness of mine, the wicked ones all attack me. And I don’t want your paradise, Alexei Fyodorovich, let it be known to you; it’s even unfitting for a decent man to go to your paradise, if there really is such a place. I say a man falls asleep and doesn’t wake up, and that’s all; remember me in your prayers if you want to, and if not, the devil take you. That’s my philosophy. Ivan spoke well here yesterday, though we were all drunk. Ivan’s a braggart, and he doesn’t have so much learning ... or any special education either; he’s silent, and he grins at you silently—that’s how he gets by.”

Alyosha listened to him in silence.

“He won’t even speak to me! And when he does, it’s all put on; he’s a scoundrel, your Ivan! I could marry Grushka right now if I wanted to. Because with money one only needs to want, Alexei Fyodorovich, sir, and one gets everything. That’s just what Ivan is afraid of, and he’s keeping an eye on me to see that I don’t get married, and that’s why he’s pushing Mitka to marry Grushka: he wants to keep me from Grushka that way (as if I’d leave him any money even if I don’t marry Grushka!), and on the other hand, if Mitka marries Grushka, then Ivan can take his rich fiancée for himself—that’s how he figures! He’s a scoundrel, your Ivan!”

“How irritable you are. It’s because of yesterday. Why don’t you go and lie down?” said Alyosha.

“You say that,” the old man suddenly remarked, as if it had just entered his head for the first time, “you say that, and it doesn’t make me angry, but if Ivan said the same thing to me, I’d get angry. With you alone I have kind moments, otherwise I’m an evil man.”

“You’re not an evil man, you’re just twisted,” Alyosha smiled.

“Listen, I was about to have that robber Mitka locked up today, and I still haven’t made up my mind. Of course, in these fashionable times it’s customary to count fathers and mothers as a prejudice, but the law, it seems, even in our time, does not allow people to pull their old fathers by the hair and kick them in the mug with their heels, on the floor, in their own house, and boast about coming back and killing them completely—and all in the presence of witnesses, sir! I could break him if I wanted, I could have him put away right now for what he did yesterday!”

“But you’re not going to make a complaint, are you?”

“Ivan talked me out of it. To hell with Ivan, but one thing I do know ...” And bending close to Alyosha, he went on in a confidential half-whisper: “If I had him put away, the scoundrel, she’d hear that I had him put away and go running to him at once. But if she hears today that he beat me, a weak old man, within an inch of my life, then maybe she’ll drop him and come to visit me ... We’re like that—we do everything contrary. I know her through and through. Say, how about a little cognac? Have some cold coffee and I’ll add a little shot of cognac—it improves the taste, my friend.”

“No, no, thank you. But I’ll take this bread with me, if I may,” said Alyosha, and picking up the three-kopeck French loaf, he put it in the pocket of his cassock. “And you’d better not have any cognac either,” he advised cautiously, looking intently into the old man’s face.

“True enough; the truth hurts, but there it is. Still, maybe just one little glass. From the little cupboard...”

He opened the “little cupboard” with a key, poured a glass, drank it off, then locked the cupboard and put the key back in his pocket.

“That’s enough. One glass won’t do me in.”

“You see, you’re feeling kinder now,” Alyosha smiled.

“Hm. I love you even without cognac, but with scoundrels I’m a scoundrel. Vanka won’t go to Chermashnya—why? He’s got to spy on me, to see how much I’ll give Grushenka when she comes. They’re all scoundrels! I refuse to acknowledge Ivan. Where did he come from? He’s not our kind at all. Why should I leave him anything? I won’t even leave a will, let it be known to you. And Mitka I’ll squash like a cockroach. I squash black cockroaches at night with my slipper: they make a little pop when you step on them. And your Mitka will make a little pop, too. Your Mitka, because you love him. You see, you love him, and I’m not afraid that you love him. If Ivan loved him, I’d fear for myself because he loved him. But Ivan loves nobody, Ivan is not one of us; people like Ivan are not our people, my friend, they’re a puff of dust ... The wind blows, and the dust is gone ... Some foolishness almost came into my head yesterday, when I told you to come today: I wanted to find out through you about Mitka—what if I counted him out a thousand, or maybe two, right now: would he agree, beggar and scoundrel that he is, to clear out altogether, for about five years, or better for thirty-five, without Grushka, and give her up completely, eh, what?”

“I ... I’ll ask him,”Alyosha murmured. “I fit were all three thousand, then maybe he...”

“Lies! There’s no need to ask him now, no need at all! I’ve changed my mind. It was yesterday that this foolishness crept into my noddle, out of foolishness. I’ll give him nothing, not a jot, I need my dear money myself,” the old man began waving his arm. “I’ll squash him like a cockroach even without that. Tell him nothing, or he’ll get his hopes up. And you can go, there’s absolutely nothing for you to do here. This fiancée, Katerina Ivanovna, that he’s been hiding from me so carefully all this time, is she going to marry him or not? You saw her yesterday, didn’t you?”

“She won’t leave him for anything.”

“These delicate young ladies love just his sort, rakes and scoundrels! They’re trash, let me tell you, these pale young ladies; a far cry from ... Ah! With his youth and the looks I had then (I was much better looking than he is at twenty-eight), I’d have just as many conquests. Canaille! But he still won’t get Grushenka, sir, no, he won’t ... I’ll make mud out of him!”

With the last words he got into a rage again.

“And you can go, too, there’s nothing for you to do here today,” he snapped abruptly.

Alyosha went up to him to say good-bye and kissed him on the shoulder.

“What are you doing?” the old man was slightly astonished. “We’ll still see each other. Or do you think we won’t?”

“Not at all, I just did it for no reason.”

“And me, too, I just did it. . . ,” the old man looked at him. “Listen,” he called after him, “come sometime soon, do you hear? For fish soup, I’ll make fish soup, a special one, not like today. You must come! Listen, come tomorrow, I’ll see you tomorrow!”

And as soon as Alyosha stepped out the door, he again went to the little cupboard and tossed off another half-glass.

“No more!” he muttered, granting, and again locked the cupboard, and again put the key in his pocket. Then he went to the bedroom, lay exhausted on the bed, and the next moment was asleep.

Chapter 3: He Gets Involved with Schoolboys

“Thank God he didn’t ask me about Grushenka,” Alyosha thought for his part, as he left his father’s and headed for Madame Khokhlakov’s house, “otherwise I might have had to tell him about meeting Grushenka yesterday.” Alyosha felt painfully that the combatants had gathered fresh strength overnight and their hearts had hardened again with the new day: “Father is angry and irritated, he’s come up with something and he’s sticking to it. And Dmitri? He, too, has gained strength overnight; he, too, must be angry and irritated; and of course he, too, has thought up something ... Oh, I must find him today at all costs...”

But Alyosha did not have a chance to think for long: on the way something suddenly happened to him that, while it did not seem very important, greatly struck him. As soon as he had crossed the square and turned down the lane leading to Mikhailovsky Street, which runs parallel to Main Street but is separated from it by a ditch (the whole town is crisscrossed by ditches), he saw down at the foot of the little bridge a small gang of schoolboys, all young children, from nine to twelve years old, not more. They were going home from school with satchels on their backs, or with leather bags on straps over their shoulders, some wearing jackets, others coats, some even in high leather boots creased around the ankles, in which little boys spoiled by their well-to-do fathers especially like to parade around. The whole group was talking animatedly about something, apparently holding a council. Alyosha could never pass children by with indifference; it had been the same when he was in Moscow, and though he loved children of three or so most of all, he also very much liked tenor eleven-year-old schoolboys. And so, preoccupied though he was at the moment, he suddenly felt like going over and talking with them. As he came up, he peered into their rosy, animated faces and suddenly saw that each boy had a stone in his hand, and some had two. Across the ditch, about thirty paces away from the group, near a fence, stood another boy, also a schoolboy with a bag at his side, no more than ten years old, or even less, judging by his height—pale, sickly, with flashing black eyes. He was attentively and keenly watching the group of six schoolboys, obviously his comrades who had just left school with him but with whom he was apparently at odds. Alyosha came up and, addressing one curly, blond, ruddy-cheeked boy in a black jacket, looked him up and down and remarked:

“I used to carry a bag just like yours, but we always wore it on the left side, so that you could get to it quickly with your right hand; if you wear yours on the right like that, it won’t be so easy to get to.”

Alyosha began with this practical remark, without any premeditated guile, which, incidentally, is the only way for an adult to begin if he wants to gain the immediate confidence of a child, and especially of a whole group of children. One must begin precisely in a serious and practical way so as to be altogether on an equal footing. Alyosha instinctively understood this.

“But he’s left-handed,” another boy, a cocky and healthy eleven-year-old, answered at once. The other five boys all fixed their eyes on Alyosha.

“He throws stones with his left hand, too,” remarked a third. Just then a stone flew into the group, grazed the left-handed boy, and flew by, though it was thrown deftly and forcefully. The boy across the ditch had thrown it.

“Go on, Smurov, give it to him!” they all shouted. But Smurov (the left-handed boy) did not need any encouragement; he retaliated at once and threw a stone at the boy across the ditch, but unsuccessfully. It landed in the dirt. The boy across the ditch immediately threw another stone at the group, this time directly at Alyosha, and hit him rather painfully on the shoulder. The boy across the ditch had a whole pocket full of stones ready. The bulging of his pockets could be seen even from thirty paces away.

“He was aiming at you, he did it on purpose. You’re Karamazov, Karamazov, aren’t you?” the boys shouted, laughing. “Hey, everybody, fire at once!”

And six stones shot out of the group. One caught the boy on the head and he fell, but he jumped up immediately and in a rage began flinging stones back at them. A steady exchange of fire came from both sides, and many in the group turned out to have stones ready in their pockets.

“What are you doing! Aren’t you ashamed, gentlemen? Six against one! Why, you’ll kill him!” Alyosha cried.

He leaped forward and faced the flying stones, trying to shield the boy across the ditch with himself. Three or four of them stopped for a moment.

“He started it!” a boy in a red shirt cried in an angry child’s voice. “He’s a scoundrel, he just stabbed Krasotkin in class with a penknife, he was bleeding. Only Krasotkin didn’t want to squeal on him, but he needs to get beaten up...”

“But why? I’ll bet you tease him.”

“Look, he threw another stone at your back! He knows who you are!” the boys shouted. “It’s you he’s throwing at now, not us. Hey, everybody, at him again! Don’t miss, Smurov!”

And another exchange of fire began, this time a very savage one. The boy across the ditch was hit in the chest by a stone; he cried out, burst into tears, and ran up the hill towards Mikhailovsky Street. A clamor came from the group: “Aha, coward! He ran away! Whiskbroom!”

“You still don’t know what a scoundrel he is, Karamazov. Killing’s too good for him,” a boy in a jacket, who seemed to be the oldest of them, repeated with burning eyes.

“What’s wrong with him?” asked Alyosha. “Is he a squealer?”

The boys glanced knowingly at one another.

“You’re going the same way, to Mikhailovsky?” the boy went on. “Catch up with him, then ... You see, he’s stopped again, he’s waiting and looking at you.”

“Looking at you, looking at you!” the other boys chimed in.

“Ask him how he likes the whiskbroom, the ratty old whiskbroom. Just go and ask him that!”

They all burst out laughing. Alyosha looked at them and they at him.

“Don’t go, he’ll hurt you,” Smurov cried warningly.

“I will not ask him about the whiskbroom, gentlemen, because I’m sure you tease him with that somehow, but I will find out from him why you hate him so much ...”

“Go on, find out, find out!” the boys laughed.

Alyosha crossed the bridge and went up the hill, past the fence, straight to the banished boy.

“Watch out,” they shouted after him warningly, “he won’t be afraid of you, he’ll stab you suddenly, on the sly, like he did Krasotkin.”

The boy waited for him without moving from the spot. Coming close, Alyosha saw facing him a child not more than nine years old, weak and undersized, with a pale, thin, oblong little face, and large, dark eyes that looked at him angrily. He was dressed in a very threadbare old coat, which he had awkwardly outgrown. His bare arms stuck out of the sleeves. On the right knee of his trousers there was a large patch, and on his right boot, over the big toe, there was a big hole, and one could see that it had been heavily daubed with ink. There were stones in both bulging pockets of his coat. Alyosha stood facing him, two paces away, looking at him questioningly. The boy, guessing at once from Alyosha’s eyes that he was not going to beat him, dropped his guard a little and even began speaking first.

“There’s one of me and six of them ... I’ll beat them all by myself,” he said suddenly, his eyes flashing.

“One of those stones must have hurt you very badly,” Alyosha remarked.

“And I got Smurov in the head!” exclaimed the boy.

“They told me that you know me and threw a stone at me for some reason?” Alyosha asked.

The boy gave Alyosha a dark look.

“I don’t know you. Do you really know me?” Alyosha kept asking.

“Leave me alone!” the boy suddenly cried irritably, not moving from the spot, however, as if he were waiting for something, and again his eyes flashed angrily.

“Well, then, I’ll go,” said Alyosha. “Only I don’t know you, and I’m not teasing you. They told me how they tease you, but I don’t want to tease you. Goodbye!”

“Fancy pants, the monk can dance!” cried the boy, following Alyosha with the same angry and defiant look, and readying himself, besides, expecting that now Alyosha would certainly attack. But Alyosha turned, looked at him, and walked away. He had not gone three steps when he was hit painfully in the back by the biggest stone the boy had in his pocket.

“From behind, eh? So you do attack people on the sly, like they say!” Alyosha turned around to him, but this time the boy, in a rage, threw a stone right at his face. Alyosha had just time to shield himself, and the stone hit him on the elbow.

“Shame on you! What have I done to you?” he cried.

The boy stood silently and defiantly, waiting for one thing only—that now Alyosha would certainly attack him. But, seeing that he did not attack him even now, the boy went wild, like a little beast: he tore from his place and threw himself at Alyosha, and before Alyosha could make a move, the wicked boy bent down, seized his left hand in both hands, and bit his middle finger badly. He sank his teeth into it and would not let go for about ten seconds. Alyosha howled in pain, pulling his finger away with all his might. The boy finally let go and jumped back to his former distance. The finger was badly bitten, near the nail, deeply, to the bone; blood began to flow. Alyosha took his handkerchief and tightly wrapped his wounded hand. He spent almost a whole minute bandaging it. All the while the boy stood waiting. At last Alyosha raised his quiet eyes to him.

“All right,” he said, “you see how badly you’ve bitten me. That’s enough, isn’t it? Now tell me what I’ve done to you.” The boy looked at him in surprise.

“Though I don’t know you at all, and it’s the first time I’ve seen you,” Alyosha went on in the same gentle way, “it must be that I did something to you—you wouldn’t have hurt me like this for nothing. What was it that I did, and how have I wronged you, tell me?”

Instead of answering, the boy suddenly burst into loud sobs, and suddenly ran from Alyosha. Alyosha slowly walked after him towards Mikhailovsky Street, and for a long time saw the boy running far ahead, without slowing down, without turning around, and no doubt still crying loudly. He resolved that he must seek the boy out, as soon as he could find time, and clear up this mystery, which greatly struck him. But he had no time now.

Chapter 4: At the Khokhlakovs’

He soon reached the house of Madame Khokhlakov, a stone house, privately owned, two-storied, beautiful, one of the best houses in our town. Although Madame Khokhlakov spent most of her time in another district, where she had an estate, or in Moscow, where she had her own house, she still kept her house in our town, which she had inherited from her fathers and grandfathers . The estate she owned in our district was the largest of her three estates, yet until now she had come to our district quite rarely. She ran out to Alyosha while he was still in the front hall.

“Did you get it, did you get it, my letter about the new miracle?” she began nervously, quickly.

“Yes, I got it.”

“Did you spread it around? Did you show everyone? He restored the son to his mother!”

“He will die today,” said Alyosha.

“I know, I’ve heard, oh, how I long to talk with you! With you or with someone about it all. No, with you, with you! And what a pity there’s no way I can see him! The whole town is excited, everyone is expecting something. But now ... do you know that Katerina Ivanovna is here with us now ... ?”

“Ah, that’s lucky!” Alyosha exclaimed. “I can see her here, then. She asked me yesterday to be sure to come and see her today.” “I know everything, everything. I’ve heard all the details of what happened there yesterday ... and of all those horrors with that. . . creature. C’est tragique, and in her place, I—I don’t know what I’d have done in her place! But your brother, too, your Dmitri Fyodorovich is a fine one—oh, God! Alexei Fyodorovich, I’m getting confused, imagine: right now your brother, I mean, not that one, the terrible one yesterday, but the other one, Ivan Fyodorovich, is sitting and talking with her: they’re having a solemn conversation ... And you wouldn’t believe what’s happening between them now—it’s terrible, it’s a strain, I’m telling you, it’s such a terrible tale that one simply cannot believe it: they’re destroying themselves, who knows why, and they know they’re doing it, and they’re both reveling in it. I’ve been waiting for you! I’ve been thirsting for you! The main thing is, I cannot bear it. I’ll tell you everything now; but wait, there’s something else, and it’s really the main thing—ah, I even forgot that this is the main thing: tell me, why is Lise in hysterics? The moment she heard you were coming, she immediately had hysterics!”

“Maman, it is you who are having hysterics, not me,” Lise’s little voice suddenly chirped through the crack of the door to one of the side rooms. The crack was very small, and the voice was strained, exactly as when one wants terribly to laugh but tries hard to suppress it. Alyosha at once noticed the little crack, and Lise was surely peeking at him through it from her chair, but that he could not see.

“And no wonder, Lise, no wonder ... your caprices will have me in hysterics, too. But anyway, Alexei Fyodorovich, she’s so sick, she was sick all night, in a fever, moaning! I could hardly wait for morning and Herzenstube. He says he can make nothing of it and that we should wait. This Herzenstube always comes and says he can make nothing of it. As soon as you neared the house, she screamed and had a fit, and demanded to be taken here to her old room ...”

“Mama, I had no idea he was coming. It wasn’t because of him at all that I wanted to move to this room.”

“That is not true, Lise. Yulia ran to tell you that Alexei Fyodorovich was coming; she was keeping watch for you.”

“Dear, darling mama, that is terribly unwitty on your part. And if you want to make up for it now and say something very intelligent, dear mama, then please tell my dear sir, the newly arrived Alexei Fyodorovich, that he has shown his complete lack of wit by this alone, that he has ventured to come to us today after what happened yesterday, and despite the fact that everyone is laughing at him.”

“Lise, you are going too far, and I assure you that I shall finally take strict measures. Who is laughing at him? I am very glad that he has come, I need him, I cannot do without him. Oh, Alexei Fyodorovich, I’m extremely unhappy!”

“But what is the matter with you, mama darling?”

“Ah, these caprices of yours, Lise, your fickleness, your illness, this terrible night of fever, this terrible and eternal Herzenstube most of all, eternal, eternal, eternal! And, then, everything, everything ... And then even this miracle! Oh, how it struck me, how it shook me, this miracle, dear Alexei Fyodorovich! And now this tragedy there in the drawing room, which I cannot bear, I cannot, I declare to you beforehand that I cannot! A comedy, perhaps, not a tragedy. Tell me, the elder Zosima will live until tomorrow, won’t he? Oh, my God! What is happening to me? I close my eyes every moment and see that it’s all nonsense, all nonsense.”

“I should like very much to ask you,” Alyosha suddenly interrupted, “for a clean rag to wrap my finger with. I injured it badly, and it hurts very much now.”

Alyosha unwrapped his bitten finger. The handkerchief was soaked with blood. Madame Khokhlakov screamed and shut her eyes tightly.

“God, what a wound, it’s terrible!”

But Lise, as soon as she saw Alyosha’s finger through the crack, immediately swung the door open.

“Come in, come in here to me,” she cried insistently and commandingly. “And no foolishness now! Oh, Lord, why did you stand there all this time and say nothing? He might have bled to death, mama! Where did you do it? How did you do it? Water, water first of all! The wound should be washed, just put it in cold water to stop the pain, and keep it there, keep it there ... Water, quick, quick, mama, in a basin. Hurry!” she finished nervously. She was completely frightened. Alyosha’s wound struck her terribly.

“Shouldn’t we send for Herzenstube?” cried Madame Khokhlakov.

“Mama, you’ll be the death of me! Your Herzenstube will come and say he can make nothing of it! Water, water! Mama, for God’s sake, go yourself, make Yulia hurry! She’s bogged down somewhere, and can never come quickly! Please hurry, mama, or I’ll die...”

“But it’s nothing!” Alyosha exclaimed, frightened by their fright.

Yulia came running in with water. Alyosha put his finger in it.

“Mama, for God’s sake, bring some lint; lint and that stingy, muddy lotion—what’s it called?—for cuts! We have it, we do, we do ... Mama, you know where the bottle is, it’s in your bedroom, in the little cabinet on the right, a big bottle next to the lint...”

“I’ll bring everything right away, Lise, only don’t shout so, and don’t worry. See how firmly Alexei Fyodorovich endures his misfortune. Where could you have gotten such a terrible wound, Alexei Fyodorovich?”

Madame Khokhlakov hastened from the room. This was just what Lise was waiting for.

“First of all, answer the question,” she began talking quickly to Alyosha, “where did you manage to get yourself such a wound? And then I shall speak with you about quite different matters. Well?”

Alyosha, feeling instinctively that the time before her mama’s return was precious to her, hastily, with many omissions and abbreviations, but nonetheless precisely and clearly, told her of his mysterious encounter with the schoolboys. Having heard him out, Lise clasped her hands:

“But how could you, how could you get involved with schoolboys—and in that dress, too!” she cried angrily, as if she had some rights over him. “You’re just a boy yourself after that, the littlest boy there could be! But you must find out for me somehow about this bad boy, and tell me the whole story, because there’s some secret in it. Now for the second thing—but first a question: are you able, Alexei Fyodorovich, despite the pain you are suffering, to speak about perfect trifles, but to speak sensibly?”

“Perfectly able. And there’s not so much pain now.”

“That’s because you’ve kept your finger in water. It should be changed right now, because it gets warm immediately. Yulia, bring a piece of ice from the cellar at once, and a fresh basin of water. Well, now that she’s gone, I’ll get to business: this instant, dear Alexei Fyodorovich, be so good as to give me back the letter I sent you yesterday—this instant, because mama may come back any minute, and I don’t want...”

“I haven’t got the letter with me.”

“It’s not true, you do have it with you. I just knew you’d say that. You have it there in your pocket. I so regretted this silly joke all night! Return the letter to me right now, give it back!”

“I left it there.”

“But you must consider me a girl, a little, little girl after such a silly joke as that letter! I ask your forgiveness for the silly joke, but you must bring me the letter, if you really don’t have it—bring it today, you must, you must!”

“Today I simply cannot, because I’ll be going back to the monastery, and won’t be able to visit you for another two, three, maybe four days, because the elder Zosima ...”

“Four days? What nonsense! Listen, did you laugh at me very much?”

“I didn’t laugh a bit.”

“Why not?”

“Because I believed everything completely.” “You’re insulting me!”

“Not at all. As soon as I read it, I thought at once that that was how everything would be, because as soon as the elder Zosima dies, I must immediately leave the monastery. Then I’ll finish my studies and pass the exam, and when the legal time comes, we’ll get married. I will love you. Though I haven’t had much time to think yet, I don’t think I could find a better wife than you, and the elder told me to get married...”

“But I’m a freak, I’m driven around in a wheelchair!” Liza laughed, a blush coming to her cheeks.

“I’ll wheel you around myself, but I’m sure you’ll be well by then.”

“But you’re crazy,” Liza said nervously, “to make such nonsense suddenly out of such a joke! Ah, here’s mama, maybe just in time. Mama, you’re always late, how can you take so long! Here’s Yulia with the ice!”

“Oh, Lise, do not shout—above all, do not shout. All this shouting makes me ... I cannot help it if you yourself stuck the lint somewhere else ... I’ve been hunting and hunting ... I suspect you did it on purpose.”

“But how could I know he’d come with a bitten finger, otherwise maybe I really would have done it on purpose. Angel mama, you’re beginning to say extremely witty things.”

“They may be witty, Lise, but what a to-do over Alexei Fyodorovich’s finger and all that! Oh, my dear Alexei Fyodorovich, it’s not the particulars that are killing me, not some Herzenstube, but all of it together, the whole of it, that is what I cannot bear!”

“Enough, mama, enough about Herzenstube,” Liza laughed gaily. “Give me the lint quickly, mama, and the lotion. This is just Goulard’s water, Alexei Fyodorovich, now I remember the name, but it’s wonderful water. Imagine, mama, on his way here he had a fight with some boys and one of the boys bit him, now isn’t he a little, little fellow himself, and how can he get married after that, mama, because imagine, mama, he wants to get married! Imagine him married—isn’t it funny, isn’t it terrible?”

And Lise kept laughing her nervous little laugh, looking coyly at Alyosha.

“Why married, Lise? Why this all of a sudden? And why are you all of a sudden ... Besides, that boy may be rabid.”

“Oh, mama, can there be rabid boys?”

“Why can’t there be, Lise? As if I would say something silly! Your boy might have been bitten by a rabid dog, and become a rabid boy, and then he might go and bite someone around him. How well she has bandaged you, Alexei Fyodorovich, I would never have been able to do it. Does it still hurt?”

“Very little now.”

“And are you afraid of water?” asked Lise. “That’s enough, Lise. Perhaps I did speak too hastily about the rabid boy, and you have your conclusions ready. Katerina Ivanovna just learned that you are here, Alexei Fyodorovich, and rushed to me, she’s thirsting, thirsting to see you.”

“Oh, mama! Go and see her yourself, he can’t go now, he’s suffering too much.”

“I’m not suffering at all, I’m quite able to go ... ,” said Alyosha.

“What? You’re leaving? So that’s how you are! That’s how you are!”

“Why not? When I’m through, I’ll come back here, and we can talk again as much as you please. But I would like to see Katerina Ivanovna now, because in any event I want very much to return to the monastery as soon as possible today.”

“Mama, take him and go at once. Alexei Fyodorovich, you needn’t bother to stop and see me after Katerina Ivanovna, but go straight back to your monastery where you belong! And I want to sleep, I didn’t sleep all night.”

“Oh, Lise, these are more of your jokes, but I wish you really would sleep!” Madame Khokhlakov exclaimed.

“I don’t know what I ... I’ll stay for another three minutes if you wish, even five,” Alyosha muttered.

“Even five! Take him away, mama! Quickly! He’s a monster!”

“Lise, you have lost your mind! Let us go, Alexei Fyodorovich, she is too capricious today, I’m afraid of upsetting her. Oh, what grief a nervous woman is, Alexei Fyodorovich! And maybe she really does want to sleep after seeing you. How quickly you managed to make her sleepy, and how lucky it is!”

“Ah, mama, what a nice thing to say! I kiss you for it, dear mama!”

“And I kiss you, too, Lise. Listen, Alexei Fyodorovich,” Madame Khokhlakov began speaking mysteriously and importantly, in a quick whisper, as she left with Alyosha, “I don’t want to suggest anything, or to lift the veil, but you go in and you will see for yourself what’s going on in there, it’s terrible, it’s the most fantastic comedy: she loves your brother Ivan Fyodorovich, and is persuading herself as hard as she can that she loves your brother Dmitri Fyodorovich. It’s terrible! I’ll go in with you, and if they don’t send me away, I’ll stay to the end.”

Chapter 5: Strain in the Drawing Room

But in the drawing room the conversation was already coming to an end. Katerina Ivanovna was greatly excited, though she had a determined look. At the moment when Alyosha and Madame Khokhlakov entered, Ivan Fyodorovich was just getting up to leave. His face was somewhat pale, and Alyosha looked at him anxiously. The thing was that one of Alyosha’s doubts, a disturbing mystery that had been tormenting him for some time, was now being resolved. Over the past month it had been suggested to him several times and from different sides that his brother Ivan loved Katerina Ivanovna, and, most important, that he indeed meant to “win her away” from Mitya. Until very recently, this had seemed monstrous to Alyosha, though it troubled him very much. He loved both his brothers and feared such rivalry between them. But meanwhile, Dmitri Fyodorovich himself had suddenly declared outright to him yesterday that he was even glad of this rivalry with his brother Ivan and that it would be a great help to him, Dmitri. In what would it be a help? In marrying Grushenka? But this step Alyosha considered a desperate and last one. Besides all of which, Alyosha had unquestioningly believed until just the evening before that Katerina Ivanovna herself passionately and persistently loved his brother Dmitri—but he had believed it only until the evening before. Besides, he kept imagining for some reason that she could not love a man like Ivan, but loved his brother Dmitri precisely as he was, despite all the monstrosity of such a love. Yesterday, however, in the scene with Grushenka, he suddenly imagined, as it were, something different. The word “strain,” just uttered by Madame Khokhlakov, made him almost jump, because precisely that night, half-awake at dawn, probably in response to a dream, he had suddenly said: “Strain, strain!” He had been dreaming all night about yesterday’s scene at Katerina Ivanovna’s. Now suddenly the direct and persistent assurance of Madame Khokhlakov that Katerina Ivanovna loved his brother Ivan, and deliberately, out of some kind of play, out of “strain,” was deceiving herself and tormenting herself with her affected love for Dmitri, out of some kind of supposed gratitude—struck Alyosha: “Yes, perhaps the whole truth indeed is precisely in those words!” But in that case where did his brother Ivan stand? Alyosha sensed by some sort of instinct that a character like Katerina Ivanovna must rule, and that she could only rule over a man like Dmitri, but by no means over a man like Ivan. For only Dmitri (in the long run, let us say) might finally submit to her “for his own happiness” (which Alyosha even desired) , but not Ivan, Ivan could not submit to her, and such submission would not bring him happiness. Such was the notion that Alyosha had somehow involuntarily formed of Ivan. And so all these hesitations and considerations flew and flashed through his mind now, as he was entering the drawing room. And one more thought flashed—suddenly and irrepressibly: “What if she loves no one, neither one nor the other?” I will note that Alyosha was ashamed, as it were, of such thoughts, and had reproached himself for them whenever, during the past month, they had occurred to him. “What do I know of love and of women, and how can I resolve on such conclusions?” he thought in self-reproach after each such thought or conjecture. And yet it was impossible not to think. He understood instinctively that now, for example, this rivalry was all too important a question in the fate of his brothers, and all too much depended on it. “Viper will eat viper,” his brother Ivan had said yesterday, speaking with irritation about their father and Dmitri. So in his eyes their brother Dmitri was a viper, and perhaps had long been a viper? Perhaps since Ivan had first met Katerina Ivanovna? These words, of course, had es-caped Ivan unwittingly, but they were all the more important for that. If so, what sort of peace could there be? On the contrary, weren’t there only new pretexts for hatred and enmity in their family? And, above all, whom should he, Alyosha, feel pity for, and what should he wish for each of them? He loved them both, but what could he wish for each of them amid such terrible contradictions? One could get completely lost in this tangle, and Alyosha’s heart could not bear uncertainty, for the nature of his love was always active. He could not love passively; once he loved, he immediately also began to help. And for that one had to have a goal, one had to know firmly what was good and needful for each of them, and becoming firmly convinced of the correctness of the goal, naturally also to help each of them. But instead of a firm goal there was only vagueness and confusion in everything. “Strain” had just been uttered! But what could he understand even of this strain? He did not understand the first thing in all this tangle!

Seeing Alyosha, Katerina Ivanovna quickly and joyfully said to Ivan Fyodorovich, who had already gotten up from his place to leave: “One minute! Stay for just one more minute. I want to hear the opinion of this man, whom I trust with my whole being. Don’t you leave either, Katerina Osipovna,” she added, addressing Madame Khokhlakov. She sat Alyosha down next to herself, and Khokhlakov sat opposite them next to Ivan Fyodorovich. “Here are all my friends, the only ones I have in the world, my dear friends,” she began ardently, in a voice that trembled with tears of genuine suffering, and again Alyosha’s heart went out to her at once. “You, Alexei Fyodorovich, were a witness yesterday to that ... horror, and you saw how I was. You did not see it, Ivan Fyodorovich, but he did. What he thought of me yesterday I do not know, but one thing I do know—that if the same thing were to repeat itself today, now, I should express the same feelings as yesterday—the same feelings, the same words, and the same movements. You remember my movements, Alexei Fyodorovich, you yourself restrained me in one of them . . .” (saying this, she blushed, and her eyes flashed). “I declare to you, Alexei Fyodorovich, that I cannot be reconciled with anything. Listen, Alexei Fyodorovich, I do not even know whether I love him now. He has become pitiful to me, which is a poor sign of love. If I loved him, if I still loved him, then perhaps I should not pity him now, but, on the contrary, should hate him...”

Her voice trembled, and tears glistened on her eyelashes. Alyosha started inwardly: “This girl is truthful and sincere,” he thought, “and ... and she no longer loves Dmitri!”

“That’s right! Right!” Madame Khokhlakov exclaimed.

“Wait, my dear Katerina Osipovna, I haven’t said the main thing, I haven’t said the final thing that I decided during the night. I feel that my decision, perhaps, is terrible—terrible for me—but I have a feeling that I shall never change it for anything, not for anything, for the rest of my life it will be so. My dear, my kind, my constant and generous advisor and profound reader of hearts, my only friend in the world, Ivan Fyodorovich, approves of me in everything and praises my decision ... He knows what it is.”

“Yes, I approve of it,” Ivan Fyodorovich said in a quiet but firm voice.

“But I wish that Alyosha, too (ah, Alexei Fyodorovich, forgive me for calling you simply Alyosha), I wish Alexei Fyodorovich to tell me now, before my two friends, whether I am right or not. I have an instinctive feeling that you, Alyosha, my dear brother (because you are my dear brother),” she said again rapturously, grasping his cold hand with her hot one, “I have a feeling that your decision, your approval, in spite of all my torments, will bring me peace, because after your words I shall calm down and be reconciled—I feel it.”

“I don’t know what you are going to ask me,” Alyosha spoke out, his face burning, “I only know that I love you, and at this moment I wish for your happiness more than for my own...! But I know nothing about these affairs ... ,” he suddenly hastened to add for some reason.

“In these affairs, Alexei Fyodorovich, in these affairs the main thing now is honor and duty, and something else, I don’t know what, but something higher, even perhaps higher than duty itself. My heart tells me of this irresistible feeling, and it draws me irresistibly. But it can all be said in two words. I’ve already made up my mind: even if he marries that ... creature,” she began solemnly, “whom I can never, never forgive, I still will not leave him! From now on I will never, never leave him!” she spoke with a sort of strain, in a sort of pale, forced ecstasy. “I do not mean that I shall drag myself after him, trying to throw myself in front of his eyes every minute, tormenting him—oh, no, I shall go to another town, anywhere you like, but I will watch him all my life, all my life, untiringly. And when he becomes unhappy with that woman, and he certainly will and very soon, then let him come to me and he will find a friend, a sister ... Only a sister, of course, and that will be so forever, but he will finally be convinced that this sister really is his loving sister, who has sacrificed her whole life for him. I will do it, I will insist that he finally know me and tell me everything without being ashamed!” she exclaimed as if in frenzy. “I will be his god, to whom he shall pray—that, at least, he owes me for his betrayal and for what I suffered yesterday because of him. And let him see throughout his whole life, that all my life I will be faithful to him and to the word I once gave, despite the fact that he was faithless and betrayed me. I shall ... I shall become simply the means of his happiness (or how should I say it?), the instrument, the mechanism of his happiness, and that for my whole life, my whole life, so that he may see it from now on, all his life! That is the whole of my decision. Ivan Fyodorovich approves of me in the highest degree.”

She was breathless. She might have wished to express her thought in a more dignified, artful, and natural way, but it came out too hastily and too baldly. There was too much youthful uncontrol, too much that still echoed with yesterday’s irritation and the need to show her pride—she felt it herself. Her face suddenly somehow darkened, an ugly look came into her eyes. Alyosha noticed it all immediately, and his heart was moved to compassion. And just then his brother Ivan added to it.

“I only expressed my thought,” he said. “In any other woman, all of that would have come out in a broken and forced way—but not so in you. Another woman would be wrong, but you are right. I do not know what is behind it, but I see that you are sincere in the highest degree, and therefore you are right ...”

“But only for this moment ... And what is this moment? Just yesterday’s insult—that’s all it is!” Madame Khokhlakov, though she obviously did not want to interfere, could not contain herself and suddenly spoke this very correct thought. “Yes, yes,” Ivan interrupted, with a sort of sudden passion, clearly angry that he had been interrupted, “yes, and in another woman this moment would be only yesterday’s impression, and no more than a moment, but with Katerina Ivanovna’s character, this moment will last all her life. What for others would be just a promise, for her is an everlasting, heavy, perhaps grim, but unfailing, duty. And she will be nourished by this feeling of fulfilled duty! Your life, Katerina Ivanovna, will now be spent in the suffering contemplation of your own feelings, of your own high deed and your own grief, but later this suffering will mellow, and your life will then turn into the sweet contemplation of a firm and proud design, fulfilled once and for all, truly proud in its own way, and desperate in any case, but which you have carried through, and this awareness will finally bring you the most complete satisfaction and will reconcile you to all the rest ...”

He spoke decidedly with a sort of malice, evidently deliberate, and even, perhaps, not wishing to conceal his intentions—that is, that he was speaking deliberately and in mockery.

“Oh God, how all that is wrong!” Madame Khokhlakov again exclaimed.

“You speak, Alexei Fyodorovich! I desperately need to know what you will tell me!” exclaimed Katerina Ivanovna, and she suddenly dissolved in tears. Alyosha got up from the sofa.

“It’s nothing, nothing!” she went on crying. “It’s because I’m upset, because of last night, but near two such friends as you and your brother, I still feel myself strong ... for I know ... you two will never leave me ...”

“Unfortunately, I must go to Moscow, tomorrow perhaps, and leave you for a long time ... And that, unfortunately, cannot be changed ... ,” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly said.

“To Moscow, tomorrow!” suddenly Katerina Ivanovna’s whole face became distorted. “But ... but, my God, how fortunate!” she cried in a voice instantly quite changed and having instantly chased away her tears so that no trace of them was left. Precisely in an instant an astonishing change took place in her, which greatly amazed Alyosha: instead of the poor, insulted girl who had just been crying in a sort of strain of emotion, there suddenly appeared a woman in complete possession of herself and even greatly pleased, as if she were suddenly rejoicing at something.

“Oh, not fortunate that I must abandon you, of course not that,” she suddenly corrected herself, as it were, with a charming worldly smile, “a friend like you could not think that; on the contrary, I am only too unhappy to be losing you” (she suddenly dashed impulsively to Ivan Fyodorovich and, grasping both his hands, pressed them with ardent feeling), “but what is fortunate is that you yourself, personally, will now be able to tell auntie and Agasha, in Moscow, of my whole situation, my whole present horror, with complete frankness to Agasha, but sparing dear auntie, as you will know how to do. You cannot imagine how unhappy I was yesterday and this morning, wondering how I could ever write them this terrible letter ... because there was no way in the world to say it in a letter ... But now it will be easy for me to write, because you are going to be there in person and will explain it all. Oh, how glad I am! But I am only glad for that, again believe me. You yourself, of course, are irreplaceable for me ... I’ll run at once and write the letter,” she suddenly concluded, and even turned to leave the room.

“And what of Alyosha? What of Alexei Fyodorovich’s opinion, which it was so necessary for you to hear?” Madame Khokhlakov cried. There was a caustic and angry note in her words.

“I haven’t forgotten that,” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly halted, “and why are you so hostile to me in such a moment, Katerina Osipovna?” she said with bitter, burning reproach. “What I said before, I will say again: his opinion is necessary to me; moreover, I need his decision! It shall be as he says—that is how much, on the contrary, I thirst for your words, Alexei Fyodorovich ... But what’s wrong?”

“I never thought, I could not have imagined it!” Alyosha suddenly exclaimed ruefully.

“What? What?”

“He is going to Moscow, and you cry that you’re glad—you cried it on purpose! And then you immediately started explaining that you are not glad about that, but, on the contrary, are sorry to be ... losing a friend, but this, too, you acted on purpose ... acted as if you were in a comedy, in a theater .. .!”

“In a theater? Why? What do you mean?” Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed, deeply astonished, frowning, and blushing all over.

“But no matter how much you assure him that you will miss him as a friend, you still insist right in his face that you are happy he’s going away ... ,” Alyosha spoke somehow quite breathlessly now. He was standing at the table and would not sit down.

“What are you saying? I don’t understand ...”

“I don’t know myself ... I suddenly had a sort of illumination. I know I’m not putting it well, but I’ll still say everything,” Alyosha continued in the same trembling and faltering voice. “My illumination is that you perhaps do not love my brother Dmitri at all ... from the very beginning ... And Dmitri perhaps does not love you at all either ... from the very beginning ... but only honors you ... I really don’t know how I dare to say all this now, but someone has to speak the truth ... because no one here wants to speak the truth ...”

“What truth?” cried Katerina Ivanovna, and something hysterical rang in her voice.

“This truth,” Alyosha stammered, as if throwing himself off the roof. “Call Dmitri now—I’ll go and find him—and let him come here and take you by the hand, and then take my brother Ivan by the hand, and let him unite your hands. For you are tormenting Ivan only because you love him ... and you are tormenting him because you love Dmitri from strain ... not in truth ... because you’ve convinced yourself of it ...”

Alyosha suddenly broke off and fell silent.

“You ... you ... you’re a little holy fool, that’s what you are!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly snapped, her face pale now and her lips twisted in anger. Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly laughed and got up from his seat. His hat was in his hand.

“You are mistaken, my good Alyosha,” he said, with an expression on his face that Alyosha had never seen there before—an expression of some youthful sincerity and strong, irresistibly frank emotion. “Katerina Ivanovna has never loved me! She knew all along that I loved her, though I never said a word to her about my love—she knew, but she did not love me. Nor have I been her friend, not even once, not even for one day; the proud woman did not need my friendship. She kept me near her for constant revenge. She took revenge on me and was revenged through me for all the insults she endured continually and every moment throughout all this time from Dmitri, insults that started with their very first meeting ... Because their very first meeting, too, remained in her heart as an insult. That is what her heart is like! All I did all the time was listen to her love for him. I am leaving now; but know, Katerina Ivanovna, that you indeed love only him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him. That is your strain. You precisely love him as he is, you love him insulting you. If he reformed, you would drop him at once and stop loving him altogether. But you need him in order to continually contemplate your high deed of faithfulness, and to reproach him for his unfaithfulness. And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there is much humility and humiliation in it, but all of it comes from pride ... I am too young and loved you too much. I know I shouldn’t be telling you this, that it would be more dignified on my part simply to walk out of here; it would not be so insulting to you. But I am going far away and shall never come back. It is forever ... I do not want to sit next to a strain ... However, I cannot even speak anymore, I’ve said everything. . . Farewell, Katerina Ivanovna, you must not be angry with me, because I am punished a hundred times more than you: punished already by this alone, that I shall never see you again. Farewell. I do not want your hand. You’ve been tormenting me so consciously that I am unable to forgive you at the moment. Later I shall forgive you, but no hand now:

Den Dank, Dame, begehr ich nicht,”^[118] he added with a crooked smile, incidentally proving, quite unexpectedly, that he, too, could read Schiller, enough so as to learn him by heart, which Alyosha would not have believed before. He walked out of the room without even saying good-bye to the hostess, Madame Khokhlakov. Alyosha clasped his hands.

“Ivan,” he called after him desperately, “come back, Ivan! No, no, nothing will bring him back now!” he exclaimed again in a rueful illumination; “but it’s my fault, mine, I started it! Ivan spoke spitefully, wrongly. Unjustly and spitefully ... ,” Alyosha kept exclaiming like a half-wit.

Katerina Ivanovna suddenly went into the other room.

“You did nothing wrong, you were lovely, like an angel,” Madame Khokhlakov whispered quickly and ecstatically to the rueful Alyosha. “I will do all I can to keep Ivan Fyodorovich from leaving ...”

Joy shone in her face, to Alyosha’s great chagrin; but Katerina Ivanovna suddenly returned. In her hands she had two hundred-rouble bills.

“I have a great favor to ask of you, Alexei Fyodorovich,” she began, addressing Alyosha directly, in a seemingly calm and level voice, quite as though nothing had just happened. “A week ago—yes, a week, I think— Dmitri Fyodorovich committed a rash and unjust act, a very ugly act. There is a bad place here, a tavern. In it he met that retired officer, that captain, whom your father employed in some business of his. Dmitri Fyodorovich got very angry with this captain for some reason, seized him by the beard in front of everyone, led him outside in that humiliating position, and led him a long way down the street, and they say that the boy, the captain’s son, who goes to the local school, just a child, saw it and went running along beside them, crying loudly and begging for his father, and rushing up to everyone asking them to defend him, but everyone laughed. Forgive me, Alexei Fyodorovich, I cannot recall without indignation this shameful act of his ... one of those acts that Dmitri Fyodorovich alone could bring himself to do, in his wrath ... and in his passions! I cannot even speak of it, I am unable to ... my words get confused. I made inquiries about this offended man, and found out that he is very poor. His last name is Snegiryov. He did something wrong in the army and was expelled, I can’t talk about that, and now he and his family, a wretched family of sick children and a wife—who, it seems, is insane— have fallen into abject poverty. He has been living in town for a long time, he was doing something, worked somewhere as a scrivener, and now suddenly he’s not being paid. I looked at you ... that is, I thought—I don’t know, I’m somehow confused—you see, I wanted to ask you, Alexei Fyodorovich, my kindest Alexei Fyodorovich, to go to him, to find an excuse, to visit them, this captain, I mean—oh, God! I’m so confused—and delicately, carefully—precisely as only you could manage” (Alyosha suddenly blushed)—”manage to give him this assistance, here, two hundred roubles. He will surely accept ... I mean, persuade him to accept ... Or, no, what do I mean? You see, it’s not a payment to him for conciliation, so that he will not complain (because it seems he wanted to lodge a complaint), but simply compassion, a wish to help, from me, from me, Dmitri Fyodorovich’s fiancée, not from him ... Well, you’ll find away ... I would go myself, but you will know much better how to do it. He lives on Lake Street, in the house of a woman named Kalmykov ... For God’s sake, Alexei Fyodorovich, do this for me, and now ... now I’m a little tired. Good-bye...”

She suddenly turned and disappeared again behind the portière, so quickly that Alyosha did not have time to say a word—and he wanted to. He wanted to ask forgiveness, to blame himself, to say at least something, because his heart was full, and he decidedly did not want to go from the room without that. But Madame Khokhlakov seized his hand and herself led him out. In the front hall she stopped him again as before.

“She’s proud, fighting against herself, but kind, lovely, magnanimous!” exclaimed Madame Khokhlakov in a half-whisper. “Oh, how I love her, especially sometimes, and how glad I am now once more again about everything, everything! Dear Alexei Fyodorovich, you did not know this, but you must know that all of us, all of us—I, and her two aunts—well, all of us, even Lise, for as much as a whole month now, have been wishing and praying for one thing only: that she would break with your beloved Dmitri Fyodorovich, who does not even want to know her and does not love her in the least, and marry Ivan Fyodorovich, an educated and excellent young man, who loves her more than anything in the world. We’ve joined in a whole conspiracy here, and that is perhaps the only reason I haven’t gone away ...”

“But she was crying, she’s been insulted again!” Alyosha exclaimed.

“Don’t believe in women’s tears, Alexei Fyodorovich—I’m always against the women in such cases, and for the men.”

“Mama, you are spoiling and ruining him,” Lise’s thin little voice came from behind the door.

“No, I was the cause of it all, I am terribly to blame!” the inconsolable Alyosha repeated in a burst of agonizing shame for his escapade, and even covered his face with his hands in shame. “On the contrary, you acted like an angel, an angel, I will gladly say it a thousand times over.”

“Mama, how did he act like an angel?” once more Lise’s voice was heard.

“I suddenly fancied for some reason, looking at all that,” Alyosha continued as if he hadn’t heard Liza, “that she loves Ivan, and so I said that foolishness ... and now what will happen?”

“To whom, to whom?” Lise exclaimed. “Mama, you really will be the death of me. I’m asking you and you don’t even answer.”

At that moment the maid ran in.

“Katerina Ivanovna is sick ... She’s crying ... hysterics, thrashing.”

“What is it?” cried Lise, her voice alarmed now. “Mama, it’s I who am going to have hysterics, not her!”

“Lise, for God’s sake, don’t shout, don’t destroy me. You are still too young to know everything that grown-ups know. I’ll run and tell you everything you ought to know. Oh, my God! I must run, run ... Hysterics! It’s a good sign, Alexei Fyodorovich, it’s excellent that she’s in hysterics. It’s precisely as it should be. In such cases I am always against the women, against all these hysterics and women’s tears. Yulia, run and tell her I’m flying. And it’s her own fault that Ivan Fyodorovich walked out like that. But he won’t go away. Lise, for God’s sake, stop shouting! Oh, yes, you’re not shouting, it’s I who am shouting, forgive your mama, but I’m in ecstasy, ecstasy, ecstasy! And did you notice, Alexei Fyodorovich, what youthfulness came out in Ivan Fyodorovich just now, he said it all and walked out! I thought he was such a scholar, an academician, and he suddenly spoke so ardently—ardently, openly, and youthfully, naively and youthfully, and it was all so beautiful, beautiful, just like you ... And he recited that little German verse, just like you! But I must run, run. Hurry, Alexei Fyodorovich, do that errand for her quickly and come back soon. Lise, do you need anything? For God’s sake don’t keep Alexei Fyodorovich for a minute, he will come back to you right away ...”

Madame Khokhlakov finally ran off. Alyosha, before leaving, was about to open the door to Lise’s room.

“No you don’t!” Lise cried out. “Not now you don’t! Speak like that, through the door. How did you get to be an angel? That’s all I want to know.”

“For my terrible foolishness, Lise! Good-bye.”

“Don’t you dare go like that!” cried Lise.

“Lise, I am in real grief! I’ll come back right away, but I am in great, great grief!”

And he ran out of the room.

Chapter 6: Strain in the Cottage

He was indeed in real grief, of a kind he had seldom experienced before. He had gone and “put his foot in it”—and in what? An affair of the heart!”But what do I know of that, what kind of judge am I in such matters?” he repeated to himself for the hundredth time, blushing. “Oh, shame would be nothing, shame would be only the punishment I deserve—the trouble is that now I will undoubtedly be the cause of new misfortunes ... And the elder sent me to reconcile and unite. Is this any way to unite?” Here again he recalled how he had “united” their hands, and again he felt terribly ashamed. “Though I did it all sincerely, I must be smarter in the future,” he suddenly concluded, and did not even smile at his conclusion.

For Katerina Ivanovna’s errand he had to go to Lake Street, and his brother Dmitri lived just on the way there, not far from Lake Street, in a lane. Alyosha decided to stop at his place in any case, before going to the captain’s, though he had a premonition that he would not find him at home. He suspected that his brother would perhaps somehow be deliberately hiding from him now, but he had to find him at all costs. Time was passing: the thought of the dying elder had never left him, not for a minute, not for a second, from the moment he left the monastery.

There was one fleeting detail in Katerina Ivanovna’s errand that also interested him greatly: when Katerina Ivanovna mentioned that a little boy, a schoolboy, the captain’s son, had run beside his father, crying loudly, the thought flashed through Alyosha’s mind even then that this boy must be the same schoolboy who had bitten his finger when he, Alyosha, asked him how he had offended him. Now Alyosha was almost sure of it, though he did not know why. Thus, drawn to other thoughts, he became distracted and decided not to “think” about the “disaster” he had just caused, not to torment himself with remorse, but to go about his business, and let be what came. With that thought, he finally cheered up. Incidentally, as he turned into the lane where his brother Dmitri lived, he felt hungry, pulled from his pocket the loaf he had taken from his father, and ate it as he walked. This fortified him.

Dmitri was not at home. The owners of the little house—an old cabinetmaker, his son, and an old woman, his wife—even looked at Alyosha with suspicion. “It’s three days now since he’s slept here, maybe he’s vacated somewhere,” the old man replied to Alyosha’s urgent inquiries. Alyosha realized that he was answering on instructions. When he asked whether he might be at Grushenka’s, or hiding at Foma’s again (Alyosha used these confidences deliberately), the owners all even looked at him with alarm. “So they love him, they’re on his side,” thought Alyosha, “that’s good.”

At last he found Mrs. Kalmykov’s house on Lake Street, a decrepit, lopsided little house, with only three windows looking out onto the street, and a dirty courtyard, in the middle of which a cow stood solitarily. The entry to the front hall was through the courtyard; on the left side of the hall lived the old landlady with her elderly daughter, both apparently deaf. In reply to his question about the captain, repeated several times, one of them finally understood that he was asking for the tenants and jabbed with her finger across the hall, pointing at the door to the front room. Indeed, the captain’s lodgings turned out to be just a peasant cottage. Alyosha already had his hand on the iron door-pull when he was suddenly struck by the unusual silence behind the door. Yet he knew from what Katerina Ivanovna had told him that the retired captain was a family man: “Either they’re all asleep, or perhaps they heard me come and are waiting for me to open the door. I’d better knock first,” and he knocked. An answer came, though not at once but perhaps even ten seconds later.

“Who are you?” someone shouted in a loud and forcedly angry voice.

Alyosha then opened the door and stepped across the threshold. He found himself in a room that was rather spacious but extremely cluttered both with people and with all kinds of domestic chattels. To the left was a big Russian stove. From the stove to the window on the left, across the entire room, a line was strung, on which all sorts of rags were hanging. Along the two walls to left and right stood beds covered with knitted blankets. On one of them, the left one, was erected a pile of four cotton-covered pillows, each one smaller than the next. On the other bed, to the right, only one very small pillow could be seen. Further, in the front corner, there was a small space closed off by a curtain or a sheet, also thrown over a line stretched across the corner. Behind this curtain could be glimpsed another bed, made up against the wall on a bench with a chair placed beside it. A simple, rectangular wooden peasant table had been moved from the front corner to the middle window. The three windows, each with four small, green, mildewed panes, were very dim and tightly shut, so that the room was rather stuffy and none too bright. On the table sat a frying pan with the remains of some fried eggs in it, a bitten piece of bread, and, in addition, a half-pint bottle with the faint remnants of earthly blessings at the bottom. On a chair by the left bed sat a woman who looked like a lady, wearing a cotton dress. Her face was very thin and yellow; her extremely sunken cheeks betrayed at first glance her sickly condition. But most of all Alyosha was struck by the look in the poor lady’s eyes—an intensely questioning, and at the same time terribly haughty, look. And until the moment when the lady herself began to speak, all the while Alyosha was talking with the husband, she kept looking in the same haughty and questioning way, with her large brown eyes, from one speaker to the other. Next to this lady, at the left window, stood a young girl with a rather homely face and thin, reddish hair, poorly, though quite neatly, dressed. She eyed Alyosha with disgust as he came in. To the right, also near the bed, sat yet another female person. This was a very pitiful creature, also a young girl, about twenty years old, but hunchbacked and crippled, with withered legs, as Alyosha was told later. Her crutches stood nearby, in the corner, between the bed and the wall. The remarkably beautiful and kind eyes of the poor girl looked at Alyosha with a sort of quiet meekness. At the table, finishing the fried eggs, sat a gentleman of about forty-five, small, lean, weakly built, with reddish hair, and a thin red beard rather like an old whiskbroom (this comparison, and particularly the word whiskbroom, for some reason flashed through Alyosha’s mind at first glance, as he later recalled). Obviously it was this same gentleman who had shouted, “Who are you?” from behind the door, since there was no other man in the room. But when Alyosha entered, he all but flew from the bench on which he was sitting at the table, and, hastily wiping his mouth with a tattered napkin, rushed up to Alyosha.

“A monk begging for the monastery—he’s come to the right place!” the girl standing in the left corner meanwhile said loudly. But the gentleman who had run up to Alyosha immediately turned on his heel to her, and in an excited, somehow faltering voice, answered her:

“No, ma’am, Varvara Nikolaevna, that’s not it, you’ve got it wrong! Allow me to ask in my turn, sir,” he suddenly wheeled around to Alyosha again, “what has urged you, sir, to visit ... these depths?”

Alyosha looked at him attentively; it was the first time in his life he had seen the man. There was something angular, hurried, and irritable in him. Although he had obviously just been drinking, he was not drunk. His face expressed a sort of extreme insolence, and at the same time—which was strange—an obvious cowardice. He looked like a man who had been submissive for a long time and suffered much, but had suddenly jumped up and tried to assert himself. Or, better still, like a man who wants terribly to hit you, but is terribly afraid that you are going to hit him. In his speech and the intonations of his rather shrill voice could be heard a sort of crack-brained humor, now spiteful, now timid, faltering, and unable to sustain its tone. The question about “depths” he had asked all atremble, as it were, rolling his eyes, and jumping up to Alyosha, so close that Alyosha mechanically took a step back. The gentleman was wearing a coat of some sort of dark, rather shabby nankeen, stained and mended. His trousers were of a sort of extremely light color, such as no one had even been wearing for a long time, checkered, and made of some thin fabric, crumpled at the cuffs and therefore bunched upwards, as if he had outgrown them like a little boy.

“I am ... Alexei Karamazov ... ,” Alyosha said in reply.

“That I am quite able to understand, sir,” the gentleman immediately snapped, letting it be known that he was aware, even without that, of who Alyosha was. “And I am Captain, sir, for my part, Snegiryov, sir; but still it would be desirable to know precisely what has urged you to...”

“Oh, I just stopped by. As a matter of fact, I’d like very much to have a word with you ... if I may...”

“In that case, here is a chair, sir, pray be seated, sir. As they used to say in the old comedies: ‘Pray be seated ...,’” and with a quick gesture the captain seized an empty chair (a simple peasant one, all wood, not upholstered with anything) and placed it almost in the middle of the room; then, seizing another chair, just like the first, for himself, he sat facing Alyosha, as close up to him as before, so that their knees almost touched.

“Nikolai Ilyich Snegiryov, sir, former captain in the Russian infantry, sir, disgraced by his vices, but still a captain. I should have said Captain Yessirov instead of Snegiryov, because it’s only in the second half of my life that I’ve started saying ‘Yessir.’ ‘Yessir’ is acquired in humiliation.”

“That’s very true,” Alyosha smiled, “but is it acquired unwillingly or deliberately?”

“Unwillingly, God knows. I never used to say it, all my life I never used to say ‘sir.’ Suddenly I fell down and got up full of ‘sirs.’ It’s the work of a higher power. I see that you’re interested in contemporary problems. Yet how can I have aroused such curiosity, living as I do in conditions that render the exercise of hospitality impossible?”

“I’ve come ... about that matter...”

“About what matter?” the captain interrupted impatiently.

“Concerning that encounter of yours with my brother, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” Alyosha blurted out awkwardly.

“Which encounter, sir? You mean that one, sir? The one concerning the whiskbroom, the old whiskbroom?” he suddenly moved so close that this time he positively hit Alyosha with his knees. His lips somehow peculiarly compressed themselves into a thread.

“What whiskbroom?” Alyosha mumbled.

“He came to complain to you about me, papa!” a boy’s voice, already familiar to Alyosha, cried from behind the curtain in the corner. “It was his finger I bit today!”

The curtain was pulled aside, and Alyosha saw his recent enemy, in the corner, under the icons, on the little bed made up on a bench and a chair. The boy was lying under his own coat and an old quilted cotton blanket. He was obviously not well, and, judging by his burning eyes, was in a fever. He looked fearlessly at Alyosha now, unlike the first time: “See, I’m at home now, you can’t get me.”

“Bit what finger?” the captain jumped up a little from his chair. “Was it your finger he bit, sir?”

“Yes, mine. Today he was throwing stones with some boys in the street; the six of them were throwing at him, and he was alone. I came up to him, and he threw a stone at me, too, then another one, at my head. I asked him what I had done to him. He suddenly rushed at me and bit my finger badly, I don’t know why.”

“A whipping, right now, sir! A whipping this very minute, sir,” the captain now jumped all the way out of his chair.

“But I’m not complaining at all, I was simply telling you ... I don’t want you to whip him at all. Besides, he seems to be ill now ...”

“And did you think I’d whip him, sir? That I’d take Ilyushechka and whip him right now, in front of you, for your full satisfaction? How soon would you like it done, sir?” said the captain, suddenly turning to Alyosha with such a gesture that he seemed as if he were going to leap at him. “I am sorry, my dear sir, about your poor little finger, but before I go whipping Ilyushechka maybe you’d like me to chop off these four fingers, right here, in front of your eyes, for your righteous satisfaction, with this very knife? Four fingers, I think, should be enough for you, sir, to satisfy your thirst for revenge, you won’t demand the fifth one, sir ... ?” he suddenly stopped as if he were suffocating. Every feature of his face was moving and twitching, and he looked extremely defiant. He was as if in a frenzy.

“I think I understand it all now,” Alyosha replied softly and sadly, without getting up. “So your boy is a good boy, he loves his father, and he attacked me as your offender’s brother ... I understand it now,” he repeated, pondering. “But my brother, Dmitri Fyodorovich, repents of his act, I know, and if it were only possible for him to come to you, or, best of all, to meet you again in the same place, he would ask your forgiveness in front of everyone ... if you wish.”

“You mean he pulls my beard out and then asks my forgiveness ... and it’s all over and everyone’s satisfied, is that it, sir?” “Oh, no, on the contrary, he will do whatever you want and however you want!”

“So if I asked his excellency to go down on his knees to me in that very tavern, sir—the ‘Metropolis’ by name—or in the public square, he would do it?”

“Yes, he would even go down on his knees.”

“You’ve pierced me, sir. Pierced me to tears, sir. I’m too inclined to be sensitive . Allow me to make a full introduction: my family, my two daughters and my son—my litter, sir. If I die, who will so love them, sir, and while I live, who will so love me, a little wretch, if not them? This great thing the Lord has provided for every man of my sort, sir. For it’s necessary that at least someone should so love a man of my sort, sir...”

“Ah, that is perfectly true!” exclaimed Alyosha.

“Enough of this clowning! Some fool comes along and you shame us all,” the girl at the window suddenly cried out, addressing her father with a disgusted and contemptuous look.

“Wait a little, Varvara Nikolaevna, allow me to sustain my point,” her father cried to her in a peremptory tone, looking at her, however, quite approvingly. “It’s our character, sir,” he turned again to Alyosha.

“And in all nature there was nothing He would give his blessing to—^[119] only it should be in the feminine: that she would give her blessing to, sir. But allow me to introduce you to my wife: this is Arina Petrovna, sir, a crippled lady, about forty-three years old, she can walk, but very little, sir. From simple people. Arina Petrovna, smooth your brow; this is Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov. Stand up, Alexei Fyodorovich,” he took him by the arm and, with a force one would not have suspected in him, suddenly raised him up. “You are being introduced to a lady, you should stand up, sir. Not that Karamazov, mama, the one who ... hm, and so on, but his brother, shining with humble virtues. Allow me, Arina Petrovna, allow me, mama, allow me preliminarily to kiss your hand.”

And he kissed his wife’s hand respectfully and even tenderly. The girl at the window indignantly turned her back on the scene; the haughtily questioning face of the wife suddenly took on a remarkably sweet expression.

“How do you do, sit down, Mr. Chernomazov,”^[120] she said.

“Karamazov, mama, Karamazov—we’re from simple people, sir,” he whispered again.

“Well, Karamazov, or whatever it is, but I always say Chernomazov ... But sit down, why did he get you up? A crippled lady, he says, but my legs still work, only they’re swollen like buckets, and the rest of me is dried up. Once I was good and fat, but now it’s as if I swallowed a needle...”

“We’re from simple people, sir, simple people,” the captain prompted once again.

“Papa, oh, papa!” the hunchbacked girl, who until then had been silent on her chair, said suddenly, and suddenly hid her eyes in her handkerchief.

“Buffoon!” the girl at the window flung out.

“You see what sort of news we have,” the mother spread her arms, pointing at her daughters, “like clouds coming over; the clouds pass, and we have our music again. Before, when we were military, we had many such guests. I’m not comparing, dear father. If someone loves someone, let him love him. The deacon’s wife came once and said: ‘Alexander Alexandrovich is a man of excellent soul, but Nastasya,’ she said, ‘Nastasya Petrovna is a hellcat.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we all have our likes, and you’re a little pile, but you smell vile.’ And you need to be kept in your place,’ she said. ‘Ah, you black sword,’ I said to her, ‘who are you to teach me?”I’m letting in fresh air,’ she said, ‘yours is foul.”Go and ask all the gentlemen officers,’ I told her, ‘whether the air in me is foul or otherwise.’ And from that time on it’s been weighing on my heart, and the other day I was sitting here, like now, and saw the same general come in who visited us in Holy Week: ‘Tell me, now, Your Excellency,’ I said to him, ‘can a noble lady let in free air?”Yes,’ he said to me, ‘you should open the window or the door, because that the air in here is not clean.’ And it’s always like that! What’s wrong with my air? The dead smell even worse. ‘I’m not spoiling your air,’ I tell them, ‘I’ll order some shoes and go away.’ My dear ones, my darlings, don’t reproach your own mother! Nikolai llyich, dear father, don’t I please you? I have only one thing left—that Ilyushechka comes home from school and loves me. Yesterday he brought me an apple. Forgive me, my dears, forgive me, my darlings, forgive your own mother, I’m quite lonely, and why is my air so offensive to you?”

And the poor woman suddenly burst into sobs, tears streamed from her eyes. The captain quickly leaped to her side.

“Mama, mama, darling, enough, enough! You’re not lonely. Everyone loves you, everyone adores you!” and he again began kissing both her hands and tenderly caressing her face with his palms; and taking a napkin, he suddenly began wiping the tears from her face. Alyosha even fancied that there were tears shining in his eyes, too. “Well, sir, did you see? Did you hear, sir?” he suddenly turned somehow fiercely to Alyosha, pointing with his hand to the poor, feebleminded woman.

“I see and hear,” murmured Alyosha. “Papa, papa! How can you ... with him ... stop it, papa!” the boy suddenly cried, rising in his bed and looking at his father with burning eyes.

“Enough of your clowning, showing off your stupid antics, which never get anywhere...!” Varvara Nikolaevna shouted from the same corner, quite furious now, and even stamping her foot.

“You are perfectly justified, this time, to be so good as to lose your temper, Varvara Nikolaevna, and I shall hasten to satisfy you. Put on your hat, Alexei Fyodorovich, and I’ll take my cap—and let us go, sir. I have something serious to tell you, only outside these walls. This sitting girl here—she’s my daughter, sir, Nina Nikolaevna, I forgot to introduce her to you—is God’s angel in the flesh ... who has flown down to us mortals ... if you can possibly understand that ...”

“He’s twitching all over, as if he had cramps,” Varvara Nikolaevna went on indignantly.

“And this one who is now stamping her little foot and has just denounced me as a clown—she, too, is God’s angel in the flesh, sir, and rightly calls me names. Let us go, Alexei Fyodorovich, we must bring this to an end, sir...”

And seizing Alyosha’s arm, he led him from the room and straight outside.

Chapter 7: And in the Fresh Air

“The air is fresh, sir, and in my castle it is indeed not clean, not in any sense. Let’s walk slowly, sir. I should very much like to enlist your interest, sir.”

“And I, too, have some extraordinary business with you ... .”Alyosha remarked, “only I don’t know how to begin.”

“Didn’t I know that you must have some business with me, sir? Without some business, you would never come to call on me. Unless you came, indeed, only to complain about the boy, sir? But that is improbable. By the way, about the boy, sir: I couldn’t explain everything in there, but here I will describe that scene to you. You see, the whiskbroom used to be thicker, sir, just a week ago—I’m referring to my beard, sir; my beard is nicknamed a whiskbroom, mostly by the schoolboys, sir. Well, and so, sir, your good brother, Dmitri Fyodorovich, dragged me by my beard that day, he dragged me out of the tavern to the square, and just then the schoolboys were getting out of school, and Ilyusha with them. When he saw me in such a state, sir, he rushed up to me: ‘Papa,’ he cried, ‘papa! ‘ He caught hold of me, hugged me, tried to pull me away, crying to my offender: ‘Let go, let go, it’s my papa, my papa, forgive him’—that was what he cried: ‘Forgive him!’ And he took hold of him, too, with his little hands, and kissed his hand, that very hand, sir ... I remember his face at that moment, I have not forgotten it, sir, and I will not forget it...!”

“I swear to you,” exclaimed Alyosha, “that my brother will express his repentance in the most sincere, the fullest manner, even if it means going down on his knees in that very square ... I will make him, or he is no brother of mine!”

“Aha, so it’s still in the planning stage! And proceeds not directly from him, but only from the nobility of your fervent heart. Why didn’t you say so, sir? No, in that case, allow me to finish telling you about the highly chivalrous and soldierly nobility of your good brother, for he showed it that time, sir. So he finished dragging me by my whiskbroom and set me free: ‘You,’ he said, ‘are an officer, and I am an officer; if you can find a second, a decent man, send him to me—I shall give you satisfaction, though you are a scoundrel! ‘ That is what he said, sir. Truly a chivalrous spirit! Ilyusha and I withdrew then, but this genealogical family picture forever imprinted itself in the memory of Ilyusha’s soul. No, it’s not for us to stay gentry, sir. And judge for yourself, sir, you were just so good as to visit my castle—what did you see, sir? Three ladies sitting there, sir, one crippled and feebleminded, another crippled and hunchbacked, the third not a cripple, but too smart, sir, a student, longing to go back to Petersburg and search for the rights of the Russian woman, there on the banks of the Neva. Not to mention Ilyusha, sir, he’s only nine years old, alone in the world, for if I were to die, what would become of those depths, that’s all I ask, sir. And so, if I challenge him to a duel, what if he kills me on the spot— well, what then? Then what will happen to them all, sir? Still worse, if he doesn’t kill me but just cripples me: work would be impossible, but there would still be a mouth to feed, and who will feed my mouth then, who will feed them all, sir? Or should I then send Ilyusha out daily to beg instead of going to school? So that’s what it means for me to challenge him to a duel, sir. It’s foolish talk, sir, and nothing else.”

“He will ask your forgiveness, he will bow at your feet in the middle of the square,” Alyosha again cried, his eyes glowing.

“I thought of taking him to court,” the captain went on, “but open our code of law, how much compensation would I get from the offender for a personal offense, sir? And then suddenly Agrafena Alexandrovna summoned me and shouted: ‘Don’t you dare think of it! If you take him to court, I’ll fix it so that the whole world will publicly know that he beat you for your own cheating, and you’ll wind up in the dock yourself.’ But the Lord knows who was the source of this cheating, sir, and on whose orders some small fry like me was acting—wasn’t it her own orders and Fyodor Pavlovich’s? And besides,’ she added, ‘I’ll turn you out forever, and you’ll never earn anything from me again. And I’ll tell my merchant, too’—that’s what she calls the old man: ‘my merchant’—’and he will turn you out as well.’ So I thought to myself, if even the merchant turns me out, then where will I earn any money? Because I only had the two of them left, since your father, Fyodor Pavlovich, not only stopped trusting me for some unrelated reason, sir, but even wants to drag me into court himself, on the strength of some receipts he has from me. As a result of all that, I’ve kept quiet, sir, and the depths, sir, you’ve seen for yourself. And now, allow me to ask: did he bite your finger badly, my Ilyusha? Inside my castle, in his presence, I didn’t dare go into such details.”

“Yes, very badly, and he was very angry. He took revenge for you upon me, as a Karamazov, it’s clear to me now. But if you had seen how he was fighting with his schoolmates, throwing stones! It’s very dangerous, they might kill him, they’re children, stupid, a stone goes flying and could break his head.”

“Yes, he got it, sir, not in the head but in the chest, over the heart, a stone hit him today, bruised him, he came home crying, groaning, and now he’s fallen sick.”

“And you know, he starts it himself, he attacks everyone, he’s bitter because of you; they say the other day he stabbed a boy, Krasotkin, in the side with a penknife ...”

“I heard about that, too, it’s dangerous, sir: Krasotkin is a local official, there could still be trouble ...”

“I would advise you,” Alyosha continued fervently, “not to send him to ‘ school at all for a while, until he calms down ... and this wrath in him passes ...”

“Wrath, sir!” the captain chimed in, “wrath indeed, sir! A small creature, but a great wrath, sir! You don’t know all of it. Allow me to explain the story more particularly. The thing is that after that event all the children at school began calling him whiskbroom. Schoolchildren are merciless people: separately they’re God’s angels, but together, especially in school, they’re quite often merciless. They began teasing him, and a noble spirit arose in Ilyusha. An ordinary boy, a weak son, would have given in, would have felt ashamed of his father, but this one stood up for his father, alone against everyone. For his father, and for the truth, sir, for justice, sir. Because what he suffered then, as he kissed your brother’s hand and cried to him: ‘Forgive my papa, forgive my papa’—that only God alone knows, and I, sir. And that is how our children—I mean, not yours but ours, sir, the children of the despised but noble poor—learn the truth on earth when they’re just nine years old, sir. The rich ones—what do they know? In their whole lives they never sound such depths, and my Ilyushka, at that very moment in the square, sir, when he kissed his hand, at that very moment he went through the whole truth, sir. This truth, sir, entered into him and crushed him forever,” the captain said fervently, again as if in a frenzy, hitting his left palm with his right fist, as if he wished to show physically how “the truth” had crushed his Ilyusha. “That same day he came down with a fever, he was delirious all night. All that day he hardly spoke to me, he was even quite silent, only I noticed him looking, looking at me from the corner, but he kept leaning more towards the window, pretending he was doing his homework, but I could see that he didn’t have homework on his mind. The next day I did some drinking, sir, and forgot a lot, I’m a sinful man, from grief, sir. Mama there also began crying—and I love mama very much, sir—well, from grief I had a drop on my last few kopecks. Don’t despise me, my good sir: in Russia, drunks are our kindest people. Our kindest people are also the most drunk. So I was lying there and I didn’t much remember Ilyusha that day, and it was precisely that day when the boys started jeering at him in school, that morning, sir: ‘Whiskbroom,’ they shouted at him, ‘your father was dragged out of the tavern by his whiskbroom, and you ran along asking forgiveness.’ On the third day he came home from school, and I saw that he looked pale, awful. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. Silence. Well, there was no talking about it in our castle, otherwise mama and the girls would immediately take part—and besides, the girls already knew all about it even on the first day. Varvara Nikolaevna was already grumbling: ‘Clowns, buffoons, can you never be reasonable?’ ‘Right,’ I said, ‘Varvara Nikolaevna, we can never be reasonable. ‘ I got off with that at the time. So, sir, towards evening I took my boy out for a walk. And you should know, sir, that even before that, every evening he and I used to take a walk, just the same way we’re going now, from our gate to that big stone over there, standing like an orphan in the road near the wattle fence, where the town common begins: the place is deserted and beautiful, sir. We were walking along, Ilyusha and I, his little hand in my hand, as usual; he has such a tiny hand, his little fingers are so thin and cold—my boy suffers from a weak chest. ‘Papa,’ he said, ‘papa! ‘ ‘What?’ I said to him, and I could see that his eyes were flashing. ‘Papa, the way he treated you, papa!’ ‘It can’t be helped, Ilyusha,’ I said. ‘Don’t make peace with him, papa, don’t make peace. The boys say he gave you ten roubles for it.’ ‘No, Ilyusha,’ I said, ‘I won’t take any money from him, not for anything.’ Then he started shaking all over, seized my hand in both his hands, and kissed it again. ‘Papa,’ he said, ‘papa, challenge him to a duel; they tease me at school, they say you’re a coward and won’t challenge him to a duel, but you’ll take his ten roubles.’ ‘It’s not possible for me to challenge him to a duel, Ilyusha,’ I answered, and explained to him briefly all that I just explained to you about that. He listened. ‘Papa,’ he said, ‘papa, even so, don’t make peace with him: I’ll grow up, I’ll challenge him myself, and I’ll kill him!’ And his eyes were flashing and shining. Well, I’m still his father for all that, I had to tell him the right thing. ‘It’s sinful to kill,’ I said, ‘even in a duel.’ ‘Papa,’ he said, ‘papa, I’ll throw him down when I’m big, I’ll knock the sword out of his hand with my sword, I’ll rush at him, throw him down, hold my sword over him and say: I could kill you now, but I forgive you, so there! ‘ You see, sir, you see what a process went on in his little head over those two days! Day and night he was thinking precisely about that revenge with the sword, and that must have been in his delirium at night, sir. Only he started coming home from school badly beaten up, I learned of it the day before yesterday, and you’re right, sir, I won’t send him to that school any more. When I learned that he was going alone against the whole class, and was challenging everyone, and that he was so bitter, that his heart was burning-—I was afraid for him. Again we went for a walk. ‘Papa,’ he asked, ‘papa, is it true that the rich are stronger than anybody in the world?’ ‘Yes, Ilyusha,’ I said, ‘no one in the world is stronger than the rich.’ ‘Papa,’ he said, ‘I’ll get rich, I’ll become an officer, and I’ll beat everybody, and the tsar will reward me. Then I’ll come back, and nobody will dare . . .’He was silent for a while, then he said, and his little lips were still trembling as before: ‘Papa,’ he said, ‘our town is not a good town, papa!”Yes, Ilyushechka,’ I said, ‘it’s really not a very good town.”Papa, let’s move to another town, a good one,’ he said, ‘a town where they don’t know about us.”We will,’ I said, ‘we will move, Ilyusha, as soon as I save some money.’ I was glad to be able to distract him from his dark thoughts, and so we began dreaming of how we’d move to another town, how we’d buy our own horse and cart. ‘We’ll sit mama and your sisters in the cart and cover them, and we ourselves will walk beside it, and from time to time you’ll get in and ride and I’ll walk beside, because we must spare our horse, we shouldn’t all ride, and so we’ll set off.’ He was delighted with that, most of all because we’d have our own horse and he could ride it. Everyone knows that a Russian boy is born with a horse. We chattered for a long time: thank God, I thought, I’ve diverted him, comforted him. That was two days ago, in the evening, but by yesterday evening it all turned out differently. That morning he went to school again and came back gloomy, much too gloomy. In the evening I took him by the hand, we went for a walk; he was silent, he didn’t speak. The breeze picked up, the sun clouded over, there was autumn in the air, and dusk was already coming—we walked along, both feeling sad. ‘Well, my boy,’ I said, ‘how are we going to get ourselves ready for the road?’—thinking to bring him around to our conversation of the day before. Silence. But I could feel his little fingers trembling in my hand. Eh, I thought, that’s bad, there’s something new. We came to this very stone, just as we are now, I sat on the stone, and in the sky there were kites humming and flapping on their strings, about thirty of them. It’s the season for kites, sir. ‘Look, Ilyusha,’ I said, ‘it’s time we flew our kite from last year. I’ll mend it. Where do you keep it?’ My boy was silent, he looked away, turned aside from me. And suddenly the wind whistled and blew up some sand ... He rushed to me suddenly, threw his little arms around my neck, and hugged me. You know, when children are silent and proud, and have been holding back their tears for a long time, when they suddenly burst out, if a great grief comes, the tears don’t just flow, sir, they pour out in streams. With these warm streams he suddenly wet my whole face. He suddenly sobbed as if he were in convulsions, and began shaking and pressing me to him as I sat there on the stone. ‘Papa,’ he cried, ‘papa, dear papa, how he humiliated you! ‘Then I began weeping, too, sir. We were sitting, holding each other, and sobbing. ‘Papa,’ he said, ‘dear papa! ‘ ‘Ilyusha,’ I said, ‘dear Ilyusha! ‘ No one saw us then, sir, only God saw us—let’s hope he’ll enter it into my record, sir. Thank your good brother, Alexei Fyodorovich. No, sir, I will not whip my boy for your satisfaction, sir!”

He ended on the same note of cracked and spiteful humor. Alyosha felt, however, that he already trusted him, and that if someone else were in his, Alyosha’s, place, with someone else the man would not have “talked” as he had, would not have said all that he had just said to him. This encouraged Alyosha, whose soul was trembling with tears.

“Ah, how I wish I could make peace with your boy!” he exclaimed. “If only you could arrange it...”

“Right, sir,” the captain muttered.

“But something else now, something quite different,” Alyosha went on exclaiming. “Listen: I’ve come with an errand. This same brother of mine, this Dmitri, has also insulted his fiancée, a most noble girl, of whom you’ve probably heard. I have the right to tell you of this insult, I even must do so, because when she learned of your offense and learned everything about your unfortunate situation, she charged me at once ... just now ... to bring you this assistance from her ... but just from her alone, not from Dmitri, who has abandoned her as well, not at all, and not from me, his brother, or from anyone else, but from her, just from her alone! She entreats you to accept her help ... you have both been offended by one and the same man ... She thought of you only when she suffered the same offense from him (the same in intensity) as you! It means that a sister is coming to the aid of a brother ... She precisely charged me to persuade you to accept these two hundred roubles from her as from a sister. No one will know of it, no unjust gossip will arise from it ... here are the two hundred roubles, and, I swear, you must accept them, otherwise ... otherwise it follows that everyone in the world must be enemies of each other! But there are brothers in the world, too ... You have a noble soul ... you must understand, you must . . .!”

And Alyosha held out to him two new, iridescent hundred-rouble bills. They were both standing precisely by the big stone near the fence, and there was no one around. The bills seemed to make a terrible impression on the captain: he started, but at first only as if from astonishment; he had not imagined anything of the sort and did not at all expect such an outcome. Even in sleep he did not dream of anyone’s help, not to mention so large a sum. He took the bills, and for a moment almost could not reply; something quite new flashed in his face.

“Is this for me, for me, sir, so much money, two hundred roubles? Good heavens! But I haven’t seen so much money for the past four years—Lord! And she says that a sister ... and it’s true ... really true?”

“I swear that everything I told you is true!” Alyosha cried. The captain blushed.

“Listen, sir, my dear, listen, if I do accept it, won’t that make me dishonorable? In your eyes, Alexei Fyodorovich, won’t it, won’t it make me dishonorable? No, Alexei Fyodorovich, listen, listen to me, sir,” he was hurrying, touching Alyosha all the time with both hands, “here you are persuading me to accept it, telling me that a ‘sister’ has sent it, but inside, in your own heart— won’t you hold me in contempt if I accept it, sir, eh?”

“But, no, of course not! I swear to you by my own salvation, I will not! And no one will ever know of it but us: you, I, and she, and one other lady, her great friend ...”

“Forget the lady! Listen, Alexei Fyodorovich, listen to me, sir, because the moment has now come for you to listen, sir, because you cannot even understand what these two hundred roubles can mean for me now,” the poor man went on, gradually getting into a sort of confused, almost wild ecstasy. He was befuddled, as it were, and was speaking extremely quickly and hastily, as if he were afraid he might not be allowed to get it all out. “Besides the fact that it has been acquired honestly, from such a respected and holy ‘sister,’ sir, do you know that I can now get treatment for mama and Ninochka—my hunchbacked angel, my daughter? Dr. Herzenstube came once out of the goodness of his heart, and examined them both for a whole hour. ‘I can make nothing of it,’ he said, but still, the mineral water they sell at the local pharmacy (he gave a prescription for it) will undoubtedly do her good, and he also prescribed a footbath with medications. The mineral water costs thirty kopecks, and she would have to drink maybe forty jugs of it. So I took the prescription and put it on the shelf under the icons, and it’s still there. And for Ninochka he prescribed baths in some solution, hot baths, every day, morning and evening, but how could we dream of such a treatment, sir, in our place, in our castle, with no maid, with no help, with no tub or water, sir? And Ninochka is rheumatic all over, I didn’t even tell you that yet, at night her whole right side aches, she suffers, and would you believe it, God’s angel, she keeps it in, so as not to disturb us, she doesn’t groan, so as not to wake us up. We eat whatever we can get, and she always takes the worst piece, what should only be thrown to a dog: ‘I’m not worthy of it,’ is what she means, ‘I’m taking food from you, I’m just a burden to you.’ That’s what her angelic eyes mean to say. It weighs on her that we serve her: ‘I don’t deserve it, I don’t deserve it, I’m a worthless cripple, I’m useless,’ but I wouldn’t say she was worthless, sir, when she’s been the salvation of us all with her angelic meekness; without her, without her quiet word, we’d have hell, sir, she’s even softened Varya. And don’t condemn Varvara Nikolaevna either, sir; she, too, is an angel, she, too, is an offended one. She came home this summer and brought sixteen roubles with her that she’d earned giving lessons and set aside so that in September, now, that is, she could go back to Petersburg. And we took her money and lived on it, and she has nothing to go back with, that’s how things are, sir. And she can’t go back, because she slaves for us—we’ve saddled and harnessed her like a nag, she takes care of everything, mends, washes, sweeps the floor, puts mama to bed, and mama is fussy, sir, mama is tearful, sir, and mama is mad, sir...! But now, with these two hundred roubles, I can hire a maid, sir, do you understand, Alexei Fyodorovich, I can undertake treatment for my dear ones, sir, send the student to Petersburg, sir, and buy beef, and introduce a new diet, sir. Lord, but this is a dream!”

Alyosha was terribly glad that he had caused so much happiness and that the poor man had agreed to be made happy.

“Wait, Alexei Fyodorovich, wait,” the captain again seized upon a new dream that had just come to him, and again rattled on in a frenzied patter, “do you know, perhaps now Ilyushka and I will indeed realize our dream: we’ll buy a horse and a covered cart, and the horse will be black, he asked that it be black, and we’ll set off as we were picturing it two days ago. I know a lawyer

in B------province, my childhood friend, sir, and I was told by a reliable man

that if I came he might give me a position as a clerk in his office, and who knows, maybe he would ... So I could put mama in the cart, and Ninochka in the cart, and let Ilyushechka drive, and I’d go by foot, by foot, and so I’d take them all away, sir ... Lord, if only I could get one miserable debt paid back to me, then maybe there would even be enough for that, sir!” “There will be enough, there will be!” Alyosha exclaimed. “Katerina Ivanovna will send you more, as much as you want, and, you know, I have some money, too, take what you need, as you would from a brother, from a friend, you can pay it back later ... (You’ll get rich, you will!) And, you know, you could never have thought of anything better than this move to another province! It will be your salvation, and, above all, your boy’s—and, you know, you should hurry, before winter, before the cold, and you will write to us from there, and we will remain brothers ... No, it’s not a dream!”

Alyosha was about to embrace him, he was so pleased. But glancing at him, he suddenly stopped: the man stood, stretching his neck, stretching his lips, with a pale and frenzied face, whispering something with his lips, as if he were trying to utter something; there was no sound, but he kept whispering with his lips. It was somehow strange.

“What’s wrong with you?” Alyosha suddenly started for some reason.

“Alexei Fyodorovich ... I ... you ... ,” the captain muttered and broke off, staring strangely and wildly straight in his face, with the look of a man who has decided to throw himself off a cliff, and at the same time smiling, as it were, with his lips only. “I, sir ... you, sir ... And would you like me to show you a nice little trick, sir?” he suddenly whispered in a quick, firm whisper, his voice no longer faltering.

“What little trick?”

“A little trick, a bit of hocus-pocus,” the captain kept whispering; his mouth became twisted to the left side, his left eye squinted, he went on staring at Alyosha as if his eyes were riveted to him.

“But what’s wrong with you? What trick?” Alyosha cried, now quite alarmed.

“Watch this!” the captain suddenly shrieked.

And holding up both iridescent bills, which all the while, during the whole conversation, he had been holding by the corner between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, he suddenly seized them in some kind of rage, crumpled them, and clutched them tightly in his right fist.

“See that, sir, see that?” he shrieked to Alyosha, pale and frenzied, and suddenly, raising his fist, he threw both crumpled bills with all his might on the sand. “See that, sir?” he shrieked again, pointing at them with his finger. “Well, so, there, sir...!”

And suddenly raising his right foot, he fell to trampling them with his heel, in wild anger, gasping and exclaiming each time his foot struck:

“There’s your money, sir! There’s your money, sir! There’s your money, sir! There’s your money, sir!” Suddenly he leaped back and straightened up before Alyosha. His whole figure presented a picture of inexplicable pride. “Report to those who sent you that the whiskbroom does not sell his honor, sir!” he cried out, raising his arm in the air. Then he quickly turned and broke into a run; but he had not gone even five steps when, turning all the way around, he suddenly made a gesture to Alyosha with his hand. Then, before he had gone even five more steps, he turned around again, this time for the last time, and now there was no twisted laugh on his face, but, on the contrary, it was all shaken with tears. In a weeping, faltering, spluttering patter, he cried out:

“And what would I tell my boy, if I took money from you for our disgrace?” And having said this, he broke into a run, this time without turning around. Alyosha looked after him with inexpressible sadness. Oh, he understood that the captain had not known until the very last moment that he would crumple the bills and fling them down. The running man did not once look back, and Alyosha knew that he would not look back. He did not want to pursue him or call out to him, and he knew why. When the captain was out of sight, Alyosha picked up the two bills. They were just very crumpled, flattened, and pressed into the sand, but were perfectly intact and crisp as new when Alyosha spread them and smoothed them out. Having smoothed them out, he folded them, put them in his pocket, and went to report to Katerina Ivanovna on the success of her errand.