The Peasants Stand Firm
This was how Fetyukovitch concluded his speech, and the enthusiasm of
the audience burst like an irresistible storm. It was out of the
question to stop it: the women wept, many of the men wept too, even two
important personages shed tears. The President submitted, and even
postponed ringing his bell. The suppression of such an enthusiasm would
be the suppression of something sacred, as the ladies cried afterwards.
The orator himself was genuinely touched.
And it was at this moment that Ippolit Kirillovitch got up to make
certain objections. People looked at him with hatred. “What? What’s the
meaning of it? He positively dares to make objections,” the ladies
babbled. But if the whole world of ladies, including his wife, had
protested he could not have been stopped at that moment. He was pale,
he was shaking with emotion, his first phrases were even
unintelligible, he gasped for breath, could hardly speak clearly, lost
the thread. But he soon recovered himself. Of this new speech of his I
will quote only a few sentences.
“... I am reproached with having woven a romance. But what is this
defense if not one romance on the top of another? All that was lacking
was poetry. Fyodor Pavlovitch, while waiting for his mistress, tears
open the envelope and throws it on the floor. We are even told what he
said while engaged in this strange act. Is not this a flight of fancy?
And what proof have we that he had taken out the money? Who heard what
he said? The weak-minded idiot, Smerdyakov, transformed into a Byronic
hero, avenging society for his illegitimate birth—isn’t this a romance
in the Byronic style? And the son who breaks into his father’s house
and murders him without murdering him is not even a romance—this is a
sphinx setting us a riddle which he cannot solve himself. If he
murdered him, he murdered him, and what’s the meaning of his murdering
him without having murdered him—who can make head or tail of this?
“Then we are admonished that our tribune is a tribune of true and sound
ideas and from this tribune of ‘sound ideas’ is heard a solemn
declaration that to call the murder of a father ‘parricide’ is nothing
but a prejudice! But if parricide is a prejudice, and if every child is
to ask his father why he is to love him, what will become of us? What
will become of the foundations of society? What will become of the
family? Parricide, it appears, is only a bogy of Moscow merchants’
wives. The most precious, the most sacred guarantees for the destiny
and future of Russian justice are presented to us in a perverted and
frivolous form, simply to attain an object—to obtain the justification
of something which cannot be justified. ‘Oh, crush him by mercy,’ cries
the counsel for the defense; but that’s all the criminal wants, and
to-morrow it will be seen how much he is crushed. And is not the
counsel for the defense too modest in asking only for the acquittal of
the prisoner? Why not found a charity in the honor of the parricide to
commemorate his exploit among future generations? Religion and the
Gospel are corrected—that’s all mysticism, we are told, and ours is the
only true Christianity which has been subjected to the analysis of
reason and common sense. And so they set up before us a false semblance
of Christ! ‘What measure ye mete so it shall be meted unto you again,’
cried the counsel for the defense, and instantly deduces that Christ
teaches us to measure as it is measured to us—and this from the tribune
of truth and sound sense! We peep into the Gospel only on the eve of
making speeches, in order to dazzle the audience by our acquaintance
with what is, anyway, a rather original composition, which may be of
use to produce a certain effect—all to serve the purpose! But what
Christ commands us is something very different: He bids us beware of
doing this, because the wicked world does this, but we ought to forgive
and to turn the other cheek, and not to measure to our persecutors as
they measure to us. This is what our God has taught us and not that to
forbid children to murder their fathers is a prejudice. And we will not
from the tribune of truth and good sense correct the Gospel of our
Lord, Whom the counsel for the defense deigns to call only ‘the
crucified lover of humanity,’ in opposition to all orthodox Russia,
which calls to Him, ‘For Thou art our God!’”
At this the President intervened and checked the over-zealous speaker,
begging him not to exaggerate, not to overstep the bounds, and so on,
as presidents always do in such cases. The audience, too, was uneasy.
The public was restless: there were even exclamations of indignation.
Fetyukovitch did not so much as reply; he only mounted the tribune to
lay his hand on his heart and, with an offended voice, utter a few
words full of dignity. He only touched again, lightly and ironically,
on “romancing” and “psychology,” and in an appropriate place quoted,
“Jupiter, you are angry, therefore you are wrong,” which provoked a
burst of approving laughter in the audience, for Ippolit Kirillovitch
was by no means like Jupiter. Then, _à propos_ of the accusation that
he was teaching the young generation to murder their fathers,
Fetyukovitch observed, with great dignity, that he would not even
answer. As for the prosecutor’s charge of uttering unorthodox opinions,
Fetyukovitch hinted that it was a personal insinuation and that he had
expected in this court to be secure from accusations “damaging to my
reputation as a citizen and a loyal subject.” But at these words the
President pulled him up, too, and Fetyukovitch concluded his speech
with a bow, amid a hum of approbation in the court. And Ippolit
Kirillovitch was, in the opinion of our ladies, “crushed for good.”
Then the prisoner was allowed to speak. Mitya stood up, but said very
little. He was fearfully exhausted, physically and mentally. The look
of strength and independence with which he had entered in the morning
had almost disappeared. He seemed as though he had passed through an
experience that day, which had taught him for the rest of his life
something very important he had not understood till then. His voice was
weak, he did not shout as before. In his words there was a new note of
humility, defeat and submission.
“What am I to say, gentlemen of the jury? The hour of judgment has come
for me, I feel the hand of God upon me! The end has come to an erring
man! But, before God, I repeat to you, I am innocent of my father’s
blood! For the last time I repeat, it wasn’t I killed him! I was
erring, but I loved what is good. Every instant I strove to reform, but
I lived like a wild beast. I thank the prosecutor, he told me many
things about myself that I did not know; but it’s not true that I
killed my father, the prosecutor is mistaken. I thank my counsel, too.
I cried listening to him; but it’s not true that I killed my father,
and he needn’t have supposed it. And don’t believe the doctors. I am
perfectly sane, only my heart is heavy. If you spare me, if you let me
go, I will pray for you. I will be a better man. I give you my word
before God I will! And if you will condemn me, I’ll break my sword over
my head myself and kiss the pieces. But spare me, do not rob me of my
God! I know myself, I shall rebel! My heart is heavy, gentlemen ...
spare me!”
He almost fell back in his place: his voice broke: he could hardly
articulate the last phrase. Then the judges proceeded to put the
questions and began to ask both sides to formulate their conclusions.
But I will not describe the details. At last the jury rose to retire
for consultation. The President was very tired, and so his last charge
to the jury was rather feeble. “Be impartial, don’t be influenced by
the eloquence of the defense, but yet weigh the arguments. Remember
that there is a great responsibility laid upon you,” and so on and so
on.
The jury withdrew and the court adjourned. People could get up, move
about, exchange their accumulated impressions, refresh themselves at
the buffet. It was very late, almost one o’clock in the night, but
nobody went away: the strain was so great that no one could think of
repose. All waited with sinking hearts; though that is, perhaps, too
much to say, for the ladies were only in a state of hysterical
impatience and their hearts were untroubled. An acquittal, they
thought, was inevitable. They all prepared themselves for a dramatic
moment of general enthusiasm. I must own there were many among the men,
too, who were convinced that an acquittal was inevitable. Some were
pleased, others frowned, while some were simply dejected, not wanting
him to be acquitted. Fetyukovitch himself was confident of his success.
He was surrounded by people congratulating him and fawning upon him.
“There are,” he said to one group, as I was told afterwards, “there are
invisible threads binding the counsel for the defense with the jury.
One feels during one’s speech if they are being formed. I was aware of
them. They exist. Our cause is won. Set your mind at rest.”
“What will our peasants say now?” said one stout, cross-looking,
pock-marked gentleman, a landowner of the neighborhood, approaching a group
of gentlemen engaged in conversation.
“But they are not all peasants. There are four government clerks among
them.”
“Yes, there are clerks,” said a member of the district council, joining
the group.
“And do you know that Nazaryev, the merchant with the medal, a
juryman?”
“What of him?”
“He is a man with brains.”
“But he never speaks.”
“He is no great talker, but so much the better. There’s no need for the
Petersburg man to teach him: he could teach all Petersburg himself.
He’s the father of twelve children. Think of that!”
“Upon my word, you don’t suppose they won’t acquit him?” one of our
young officials exclaimed in another group.
“They’ll acquit him for certain,” said a resolute voice.
“It would be shameful, disgraceful, not to acquit him!” cried the
official. “Suppose he did murder him—there are fathers and fathers!
And, besides, he was in such a frenzy.... He really may have done
nothing but swing the pestle in the air, and so knocked the old man
down. But it was a pity they dragged the valet in. That was simply an
absurd theory! If I’d been in Fetyukovitch’s place, I should simply
have said straight out: ‘He murdered him; but he is not guilty, hang it
all!’”
“That’s what he did, only without saying, ‘Hang it all!’”
“No, Mihail Semyonovitch, he almost said that, too,” put in a third
voice.
“Why, gentlemen, in Lent an actress was acquitted in our town who had
cut the throat of her lover’s lawful wife.”
“Oh, but she did not finish cutting it.”
“That makes no difference. She began cutting it.”
“What did you think of what he said about children? Splendid, wasn’t
it?”
“Splendid!”
“And about mysticism, too!”
“Oh, drop mysticism, do!” cried some one else; “think of Ippolit and
his fate from this day forth. His wife will scratch his eyes out
to-morrow for Mitya’s sake.”
“Is she here?”
“What an idea! If she’d been here she’d have scratched them out in
court. She is at home with toothache. He he he!”
“He he he!”
In a third group:
“I dare say they will acquit Mitenka, after all.”
“I should not be surprised if he turns the ‘Metropolis’ upside down
to-morrow. He will be drinking for ten days!”
“Oh, the devil!”
“The devil’s bound to have a hand in it. Where should he be if not
here?”
“Well, gentlemen, I admit it was eloquent. But still it’s not the thing
to break your father’s head with a pestle! Or what are we coming to?”
“The chariot! Do you remember the chariot?”
“Yes; he turned a cart into a chariot!”
“And to-morrow he will turn a chariot into a cart, just to suit his
purpose.”
“What cunning chaps there are nowadays! Is there any justice to be had
in Russia?”
But the bell rang. The jury deliberated for exactly an hour, neither
more nor less. A profound silence reigned in the court as soon as the
public had taken their seats. I remember how the jurymen walked into
the court. At last! I won’t repeat the questions in order, and, indeed,
I have forgotten them. I remember only the answer to the President’s
first and chief question: “Did the prisoner commit the murder for the
sake of robbery and with premeditation?” (I don’t remember the exact
words.) There was a complete hush. The foreman of the jury, the
youngest of the clerks, pronounced, in a clear, loud voice, amidst the
deathlike stillness of the court:
“Yes, guilty!”
And the same answer was repeated to every question: “Yes, guilty!” and
without the slightest extenuating comment. This no one had expected;
almost every one had reckoned upon a recommendation to mercy, at least.
The deathlike silence in the court was not broken—all seemed petrified:
those who desired his conviction as well as those who had been eager
for his acquittal. But that was only for the first instant, and it was
followed by a fearful hubbub. Many of the men in the audience were
pleased. Some were rubbing their hands with no attempt to conceal their
joy. Those who disagreed with the verdict seemed crushed, shrugged
their shoulders, whispered, but still seemed unable to realize this.
But how shall I describe the state the ladies were in? I thought they
would create a riot. At first they could scarcely believe their ears.
Then suddenly the whole court rang with exclamations: “What’s the
meaning of it? What next?” They leapt up from their places. They seemed
to fancy that it might be at once reconsidered and reversed. At that
instant Mitya suddenly stood up and cried in a heartrending voice,
stretching his hands out before him:
“I swear by God and the dreadful Day of Judgment I am not guilty of my
father’s blood! Katya, I forgive you! Brothers, friends, have pity on
the other woman!”
He could not go on, and broke into a terrible sobbing wail that was
heard all over the court in a strange, unnatural voice unlike his own.
From the farthest corner at the back of the gallery came a piercing
shriek—it was Grushenka. She had succeeded in begging admittance to the
court again before the beginning of the lawyers’ speeches. Mitya was
taken away. The passing of the sentence was deferred till next day. The
whole court was in a hubbub but I did not wait to hear. I only remember
a few exclamations I heard on the steps as I went out.
“He’ll have a twenty years’ trip to the mines!”
“Not less.”
“Well, our peasants have stood firm.”
“And have done for our Mitya.”
EPILOGUE
Chapter I.
Plans For Mitya’s Escape
Very early, at nine o’clock in the morning, five days after the trial,
Alyosha went to Katerina Ivanovna’s to talk over a matter of great
importance to both of them, and to give her a message. She sat and
talked to him in the very room in which she had once received
Grushenka. In the next room Ivan Fyodorovitch lay unconscious in a high
fever. Katerina Ivanovna had immediately after the scene at the trial
ordered the sick and unconscious man to be carried to her house,
disregarding the inevitable gossip and general disapproval of the
public. One of the two relations who lived with her had departed to
Moscow immediately after the scene in court, the other remained. But if
both had gone away, Katerina Ivanovna would have adhered to her
resolution, and would have gone on nursing the sick man and sitting by
him day and night. Varvinsky and Herzenstube were attending him. The
famous doctor had gone back to Moscow, refusing to give an opinion as
to the probable end of the illness. Though the doctors encouraged
Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha, it was evident that they could not yet
give them positive hopes of recovery.
Alyosha came to see his sick brother twice a day. But this time he had
specially urgent business, and he foresaw how difficult it would be to
approach the subject, yet he was in great haste. He had another
engagement that could not be put off for that same morning, and there
was need of haste.
They had been talking for a quarter of an hour. Katerina Ivanovna was
pale and terribly fatigued, yet at the same time in a state of
hysterical excitement. She had a presentiment of the reason why Alyosha
had come to her.
“Don’t worry about his decision,” she said, with confident emphasis to
Alyosha. “One way or another he is bound to come to it. He must escape.
That unhappy man, that hero of honor and principle—not he, not Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, but the man lying the other side of that door, who has
sacrificed himself for his brother,” Katya added, with flashing
eyes—“told me the whole plan of escape long ago. You know he has
already entered into negotiations.... I’ve told you something
already.... You see, it will probably come off at the third _étape_
from here, when the party of prisoners is being taken to Siberia. Oh,
it’s a long way off yet. Ivan Fyodorovitch has already visited the
superintendent of the third _étape_. But we don’t know yet who will be
in charge of the party, and it’s impossible to find that out so long
beforehand. To-morrow perhaps I will show you in detail the whole plan
which Ivan Fyodorovitch left me on the eve of the trial in case of
need.... That was when—do you remember?—you found us quarreling. He had
just gone down-stairs, but seeing you I made him come back; do you
remember? Do you know what we were quarreling about then?”
“No, I don’t,” said Alyosha.
“Of course he did not tell you. It was about that plan of escape. He
had told me the main idea three days before, and we began quarreling
about it at once and quarreled for three days. We quarreled because,
when he told me that if Dmitri Fyodorovitch were convicted he would
escape abroad with that creature, I felt furious at once—I can’t tell
you why, I don’t know myself why.... Oh, of course, I was furious then
about that creature, and that she, too, should go abroad with Dmitri!”
Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed suddenly, her lips quivering with anger.
“As soon as Ivan Fyodorovitch saw that I was furious about that woman,
he instantly imagined I was jealous of Dmitri and that I still loved
Dmitri. That is how our first quarrel began. I would not give an
explanation, I could not ask forgiveness. I could not bear to think
that such a man could suspect me of still loving that ... and when I
myself had told him long before that I did not love Dmitri, that I
loved no one but him! It was only resentment against that creature that
made me angry with him. Three days later, on the evening you came, he
brought me a sealed envelope, which I was to open at once, if anything
happened to him. Oh, he foresaw his illness! He told me that the
envelope contained the details of the escape, and that if he died or
was taken dangerously ill, I was to save Mitya alone. Then he left me
money, nearly ten thousand—those notes to which the prosecutor referred
in his speech, having learnt from some one that he had sent them to be
changed. I was tremendously impressed to find that Ivan Fyodorovitch
had not given up his idea of saving his brother, and was confiding this
plan of escape to me, though he was still jealous of me and still
convinced that I loved Mitya. Oh, that was a sacrifice! No, you cannot
understand the greatness of such self-sacrifice, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I
wanted to fall at his feet in reverence, but I thought at once that he
would take it only for my joy at the thought of Mitya’s being saved
(and he certainly would have imagined that!), and I was so exasperated
at the mere possibility of such an unjust thought on his part that I
lost my temper again, and instead of kissing his feet, flew into a fury
again! Oh, I am unhappy! It’s my character, my awful, unhappy
character! Oh, you will see, I shall end by driving him, too, to
abandon me for another with whom he can get on better, like Dmitri. But
... no, I could not bear it, I should kill myself. And when you came in
then, and when I called to you and told him to come back, I was so
enraged by the look of contempt and hatred he turned on me that—do you
remember?—I cried out to you that it was he, he alone who had persuaded
me that his brother Dmitri was a murderer! I said that malicious thing
on purpose to wound him again. He had never, never persuaded me that
his brother was a murderer. On the contrary, it was I who persuaded
him! Oh, my vile temper was the cause of everything! I paved the way to
that hideous scene at the trial. He wanted to show me that he was an
honorable man, and that, even if I loved his brother, he would not ruin
him for revenge or jealousy. So he came to the court ... I am the cause
of it all, I alone am to blame!”
Katya never had made such confessions to Alyosha before, and he felt
that she was now at that stage of unbearable suffering when even the
proudest heart painfully crushes its pride and falls vanquished by
grief. Oh, Alyosha knew another terrible reason of her present misery,
though she had carefully concealed it from him during those days since
the trial; but it would have been for some reason too painful to him if
she had been brought so low as to speak to him now about that. She was
suffering for her “treachery” at the trial, and Alyosha felt that her
conscience was impelling her to confess it to him, to him, Alyosha,
with tears and cries and hysterical writhings on the floor. But he
dreaded that moment and longed to spare her. It made the commission on
which he had come even more difficult. He spoke of Mitya again.
“It’s all right, it’s all right, don’t be anxious about him!” she began
again, sharply and stubbornly. “All that is only momentary, I know him,
I know his heart only too well. You may be sure he will consent to
escape. It’s not as though it would be immediately; he will have time
to make up his mind to it. Ivan Fyodorovitch will be well by that time
and will manage it all himself, so that I shall have nothing to do with
it. Don’t be anxious; he will consent to run away. He has agreed
already: do you suppose he would give up that creature? And they won’t
let her go to him, so he is bound to escape. It’s you he’s most afraid
of, he is afraid you won’t approve of his escape on moral grounds. But
you must generously _allow_ it, if your sanction is so necessary,”
Katya added viciously. She paused and smiled.
“He talks about some hymn,” she went on again, “some cross he has to
bear, some duty; I remember Ivan Fyodorovitch told me a great deal
about it, and if you knew how he talked!” Katya cried suddenly, with
feeling she could not repress, “if you knew how he loved that wretched
man at the moment he told me, and how he hated him, perhaps, at the
same moment. And I heard his story and his tears with sneering disdain.
Brute! Yes, I am a brute. I am responsible for his fever. But that man
in prison is incapable of suffering,” Katya concluded irritably. “Can
such a man suffer? Men like him never suffer!”
There was a note of hatred and contemptuous repulsion in her words. And
yet it was she who had betrayed him. “Perhaps because she feels how
she’s wronged him she hates him at moments,” Alyosha thought to
himself. He hoped that it was only “at moments.” In Katya’s last words
he detected a challenging note, but he did not take it up.
“I sent for you this morning to make you promise to persuade him
yourself. Or do you, too, consider that to escape would be
dishonorable, cowardly, or something ... unchristian, perhaps?” Katya
added, even more defiantly.
“Oh, no. I’ll tell him everything,” muttered Alyosha. “He asks you to
come and see him to-day,” he blurted out suddenly, looking her steadily
in the face. She started, and drew back a little from him on the sofa.
“Me? Can that be?” she faltered, turning pale.
“It can and ought to be!” Alyosha began emphatically, growing more
animated. “He needs you particularly just now. I would not have opened
the subject and worried you, if it were not necessary. He is ill, he is
beside himself, he keeps asking for you. It is not to be reconciled
with you that he wants you, but only that you would go and show
yourself at his door. So much has happened to him since that day. He
realizes that he has injured you beyond all reckoning. He does not ask
your forgiveness—‘It’s impossible to forgive me,’ he says himself—but
only that you would show yourself in his doorway.”
“It’s so sudden....” faltered Katya. “I’ve had a presentiment all these
days that you would come with that message. I knew he would ask me to
come. It’s impossible!”
“Let it be impossible, but do it. Only think, he realizes for the first
time how he has wounded you, the first time in his life; he had never
grasped it before so fully. He said, ‘If she refuses to come I shall be
unhappy all my life.’ Do you hear? though he is condemned to penal
servitude for twenty years, he is still planning to be happy—is not
that piteous? Think—you must visit him; though he is ruined, he is
innocent,” broke like a challenge from Alyosha. “His hands are clean,
there is no blood on them! For the sake of his infinite sufferings in
the future visit him now. Go, greet him on his way into the
darkness—stand at his door, that is all.... You ought to do it, you
ought to!” Alyosha concluded, laying immense stress on the word
“ought.”
“I ought to ... but I cannot....” Katya moaned. “He will look at me....
I can’t.”
“Your eyes ought to meet. How will you live all your life, if you don’t
make up your mind to do it now?”
“Better suffer all my life.”
“You ought to go, you ought to go,” Alyosha repeated with merciless
emphasis.
“But why to-day, why at once?... I can’t leave our patient—”
“You can for a moment. It will only be a moment. If you don’t come, he
will be in delirium by to-night. I would not tell you a lie; have pity
on him!”
“Have pity on _me!_” Katya said, with bitter reproach, and she burst
into tears.
“Then you will come,” said Alyosha firmly, seeing her tears. “I’ll go
and tell him you will come directly.”
“No, don’t tell him so on any account,” cried Katya in alarm. “I will
come, but don’t tell him beforehand, for perhaps I may go, but not go
in.... I don’t know yet—”
Her voice failed her. She gasped for breath. Alyosha got up to go.
“And what if I meet any one?” she said suddenly, in a low voice,
turning white again.
“That’s just why you must go now, to avoid meeting any one. There will
be no one there, I can tell you that for certain. We will expect you,”
he concluded emphatically, and went out of the room.
Chapter II.
For A Moment The Lie Becomes Truth
He hurried to the hospital where Mitya was lying now. The day after his
fate was determined, Mitya had fallen ill with nervous fever, and was
sent to the prison division of the town hospital. But at the request of
several persons (Alyosha, Madame Hohlakov, Lise, etc.), Doctor
Varvinsky had put Mitya not with other prisoners, but in a separate
little room, the one where Smerdyakov had been. It is true that there
was a sentinel at the other end of the corridor, and there was a
grating over the window, so that Varvinsky could be at ease about the
indulgence he had shown, which was not quite legal, indeed; but he was
a kind-hearted and compassionate young man. He knew how hard it would
be for a man like Mitya to pass at once so suddenly into the society of
robbers and murderers, and that he must get used to it by degrees. The
visits of relations and friends were informally sanctioned by the
doctor and overseer, and even by the police captain. But only Alyosha
and Grushenka had visited Mitya. Rakitin had tried to force his way in
twice, but Mitya persistently begged Varvinsky not to admit him.
Alyosha found him sitting on his bed in a hospital dressing-gown,
rather feverish, with a towel, soaked in vinegar and water, on his
head. He looked at Alyosha as he came in with an undefined expression,
but there was a shade of something like dread discernible in it. He had
become terribly preoccupied since the trial; sometimes he would be
silent for half an hour together, and seemed to be pondering something
heavily and painfully, oblivious of everything about him. If he roused
himself from his brooding and began to talk, he always spoke with a
kind of abruptness and never of what he really wanted to say. He looked
sometimes with a face of suffering at his brother. He seemed to be more
at ease with Grushenka than with Alyosha. It is true, he scarcely spoke
to her at all, but as soon as she came in, his whole face lighted up
with joy.
Alyosha sat down beside him on the bed in silence. This time Mitya was
waiting for Alyosha in suspense, but he did not dare ask him a
question. He felt it almost unthinkable that Katya would consent to
come, and at the same time he felt that if she did not come, something
inconceivable would happen. Alyosha understood his feelings.
“Trifon Borissovitch,” Mitya began nervously, “has pulled his whole inn
to pieces, I am told. He’s taken up the flooring, pulled apart the
planks, split up all the gallery, I am told. He is seeking treasure all
the time—the fifteen hundred roubles which the prosecutor said I’d
hidden there. He began playing these tricks, they say, as soon as he
got home. Serve him right, the swindler! The guard here told me
yesterday; he comes from there.”
“Listen,” began Alyosha. “She will come, but I don’t know when. Perhaps
to-day, perhaps in a few days, that I can’t tell. But she will come,
she will, that’s certain.”
Mitya started, would have said something, but was silent. The news had
a tremendous effect on him. It was evident that he would have liked
terribly to know what had been said, but he was again afraid to ask.
Something cruel and contemptuous from Katya would have cut him like a
knife at that moment.
“This was what she said among other things; that I must be sure to set
your conscience at rest about escaping. If Ivan is not well by then she
will see to it all herself.”
“You’ve spoken of that already,” Mitya observed musingly.
“And you have repeated it to Grusha,” observed Alyosha.
“Yes,” Mitya admitted. “She won’t come this morning.” He looked timidly
at his brother. “She won’t come till the evening. When I told her
yesterday that Katya was taking measures, she was silent, but she set
her mouth. She only whispered, ‘Let her!’ She understood that it was
important. I did not dare to try her further. She understands now, I
think, that Katya no longer cares for me, but loves Ivan.”
“Does she?” broke from Alyosha.
“Perhaps she does not. Only she is not coming this morning,” Mitya
hastened to explain again; “I asked her to do something for me. You
know, Ivan is superior to all of us. He ought to live, not us. He will
recover.”
“Would you believe it, though Katya is alarmed about him, she scarcely
doubts of his recovery,” said Alyosha.
“That means that she is convinced he will die. It’s because she is
frightened she’s so sure he will get well.”
“Ivan has a strong constitution, and I, too, believe there’s every hope
that he will get well,” Alyosha observed anxiously.
“Yes, he will get well. But she is convinced that he will die. She has
a great deal of sorrow to bear...” A silence followed. A grave anxiety
was fretting Mitya.
“Alyosha, I love Grusha terribly,” he said suddenly in a shaking voice,
full of tears.
“They won’t let her go out there to you,” Alyosha put in at once.
“And there is something else I wanted to tell you,” Mitya went on, with
a sudden ring in his voice. “If they beat me on the way or out there, I
won’t submit to it. I shall kill some one, and shall be shot for it.
And this will be going on for twenty years! They speak to me rudely as
it is. I’ve been lying here all night, passing judgment on myself. I am
not ready! I am not able to resign myself. I wanted to sing a ‘hymn’;
but if a guard speaks rudely to me, I have not the strength to bear it.
For Grusha I would bear anything ... anything except blows.... But she
won’t be allowed to come there.”
Alyosha smiled gently.
“Listen, brother, once for all,” he said. “This is what I think about
it. And you know that I would not tell you a lie. Listen: you are not
ready, and such a cross is not for you. What’s more, you don’t need
such a martyr’s cross when you are not ready for it. If you had
murdered our father, it would grieve me that you should reject your
punishment. But you are innocent, and such a cross is too much for you.
You wanted to make yourself another man by suffering. I say, only
remember that other man always, all your life and wherever you go; and
that will be enough for you. Your refusal of that great cross will only
serve to make you feel all your life an even greater duty, and that
constant feeling will do more to make you a new man, perhaps, than if
you went there. For there you would not endure it and would repine, and
perhaps at last would say: ‘I am quits.’ The lawyer was right about
that. Such heavy burdens are not for all men. For some they are
impossible. These are my thoughts about it, if you want them so much.
If other men would have to answer for your escape, officers or
soldiers, then I would not have ‘allowed’ you,” smiled Alyosha. “But
they declare—the superintendent of that _étape_ told Ivan himself—that
if it’s well managed there will be no great inquiry, and that they can
get off easily. Of course, bribing is dishonest even in such a case,
but I can’t undertake to judge about it, because if Ivan and Katya
commissioned me to act for you, I know I should go and give bribes. I
must tell you the truth. And so I can’t judge of your own action. But
let me assure you that I shall never condemn you. And it would be a
strange thing if I could judge you in this. Now I think I’ve gone into
everything.”
“But I do condemn myself!” cried Mitya. “I shall escape, that was
settled apart from you; could Mitya Karamazov do anything but run away?
But I shall condemn myself, and I will pray for my sin for ever. That’s
how the Jesuits talk, isn’t it? Just as we are doing?”
“Yes.” Alyosha smiled gently.
“I love you for always telling the whole truth and never hiding
anything,” cried Mitya, with a joyful laugh. “So I’ve caught my Alyosha
being Jesuitical. I must kiss you for that. Now listen to the rest;
I’ll open the other side of my heart to you. This is what I planned and
decided. If I run away, even with money and a passport, and even to
America, I should be cheered up by the thought that I am not running
away for pleasure, not for happiness, but to another exile as bad,
perhaps, as Siberia. It is as bad, Alyosha, it is! I hate that America,
damn it, already. Even though Grusha will be with me. Just look at her;
is she an American? She is Russian, Russian to the marrow of her bones;
she will be homesick for the mother country, and I shall see every hour
that she is suffering for my sake, that she has taken up that cross for
me. And what harm has she done? And how shall I, too, put up with the
rabble out there, though they may be better than I, every one of them?
I hate that America already! And though they may be wonderful at
machinery, every one of them, damn them, they are not of my soul. I
love Russia, Alyosha, I love the Russian God, though I am a scoundrel
myself. I shall choke there!” he exclaimed, his eyes suddenly flashing.
His voice was trembling with tears. “So this is what I’ve decided,
Alyosha, listen,” he began again, mastering his emotion. “As soon as I
arrive there with Grusha, we will set to work at once on the land, in
solitude, somewhere very remote, with wild bears. There must be some
remote parts even there. I am told there are still Redskins there,
somewhere, on the edge of the horizon. So to the country of the _Last
of the Mohicans_, and there we’ll tackle the grammar at once, Grusha
and I. Work and grammar—that’s how we’ll spend three years. And by that
time we shall speak English like any Englishman. And as soon as we’ve
learnt it—good-by to America! We’ll run here to Russia as American
citizens. Don’t be uneasy—we would not come to this little town. We’d
hide somewhere, a long way off, in the north or in the south. I shall
be changed by that time, and she will, too, in America. The doctors
shall make me some sort of wart on my face—what’s the use of their
being so mechanical!—or else I’ll put out one eye, let my beard grow a
yard, and I shall turn gray, fretting for Russia. I dare say they won’t
recognize us. And if they do, let them send us to Siberia. I don’t
care. It will show it’s our fate. We’ll work on the land here, too,
somewhere in the wilds, and I’ll make up as an American all my life.
But we shall die on our own soil. That’s my plan, and it shan’t be
altered. Do you approve?”
“Yes,” said Alyosha, not wanting to contradict him. Mitya paused for a
minute and said suddenly:
“And how they worked it up at the trial! Didn’t they work it up!”
“If they had not, you would have been convicted just the same,” said
Alyosha, with a sigh.
“Yes, people are sick of me here! God bless them, but it’s hard,” Mitya
moaned miserably. Again there was silence for a minute.
“Alyosha, put me out of my misery at once!” he exclaimed suddenly.
“Tell me, is she coming now, or not? Tell me? What did she say? How did
she say it?”
“She said she would come, but I don’t know whether she will come
to-day. It’s hard for her, you know,” Alyosha looked timidly at his
brother.
“I should think it is hard for her! Alyosha, it will drive me out of my
mind. Grusha keeps looking at me. She understands. My God, calm my
heart: what is it I want? I want Katya! Do I understand what I want?
It’s the headstrong, evil Karamazov spirit! No, I am not fit for
suffering. I am a scoundrel, that’s all one can say.”
“Here she is!” cried Alyosha.
At that instant Katya appeared in the doorway. For a moment she stood
still, gazing at Mitya with a dazed expression. He leapt impulsively to
his feet, and a scared look came into his face. He turned pale, but a
timid, pleading smile appeared on his lips at once, and with an
irresistible impulse he held out both hands to Katya. Seeing it, she
flew impetuously to him. She seized him by the hands, and almost by
force made him sit down on the bed. She sat down beside him, and still
keeping his hands pressed them violently. Several times they both
strove to speak, but stopped short and again gazed speechless with a
strange smile, their eyes fastened on one another. So passed two
minutes.
“Have you forgiven me?” Mitya faltered at last, and at the same moment
turning to Alyosha, his face working with joy, he cried, “Do you hear
what I am asking, do you hear?”
“That’s what I loved you for, that you are generous at heart!” broke
from Katya. “My forgiveness is no good to you, nor yours to me; whether
you forgive me or not, you will always be a sore place in my heart, and
I in yours—so it must be....” She stopped to take breath. “What have I
come for?” she began again with nervous haste: “to embrace your feet,
to press your hands like this, till it hurts—you remember how in Moscow
I used to squeeze them—to tell you again that you are my god, my joy,
to tell you that I love you madly,” she moaned in anguish, and suddenly
pressed his hand greedily to her lips. Tears streamed from her eyes.
Alyosha stood speechless and confounded; he had never expected what he
was seeing.
“Love is over, Mitya!” Katya began again, “but the past is painfully
dear to me. Know that you will always be so. But now let what might
have been come true for one minute,” she faltered, with a drawn smile,
looking into his face joyfully again. “You love another woman, and I
love another man, and yet I shall love you for ever, and you will love
me; do you know that? Do you hear? Love me, love me all your life!” she
cried, with a quiver almost of menace in her voice.
“I shall love you, and ... do you know, Katya,” Mitya began, drawing a
deep breath at each word, “do you know, five days ago, that same
evening, I loved you.... When you fell down and were carried out ...
All my life! So it will be, so it will always be—”
So they murmured to one another frantic words, almost meaningless,
perhaps not even true, but at that moment it was all true, and they
both believed what they said implicitly.
“Katya,” cried Mitya suddenly, “do you believe I murdered him? I know
you don’t believe it now, but then ... when you gave evidence....
Surely, surely you did not believe it!”
“I did not believe it even then. I’ve never believed it. I hated you,
and for a moment I persuaded myself. While I was giving evidence I
persuaded myself and believed it, but when I’d finished speaking I left
off believing it at once. Don’t doubt that! I have forgotten that I
came here to punish myself,” she said, with a new expression in her
voice, quite unlike the loving tones of a moment before.
“Woman, yours is a heavy burden,” broke, as it were, involuntarily from
Mitya.
“Let me go,” she whispered. “I’ll come again. It’s more than I can bear
now.”
She was getting up from her place, but suddenly uttered a loud scream
and staggered back. Grushenka walked suddenly and noiselessly into the
room. No one had expected her. Katya moved swiftly to the door, but
when she reached Grushenka, she stopped suddenly, turned as white as
chalk and moaned softly, almost in a whisper:
“Forgive me!”
Grushenka stared at her and, pausing for an instant, in a vindictive,
venomous voice, answered:
“We are full of hatred, my girl, you and I! We are both full of hatred!
As though we could forgive one another! Save him, and I’ll worship you
all my life.”
“You won’t forgive her!” cried Mitya, with frantic reproach.
“Don’t be anxious, I’ll save him for you!” Katya whispered rapidly, and
she ran out of the room.
“And you could refuse to forgive her when she begged your forgiveness
herself?” Mitya exclaimed bitterly again.
“Mitya, don’t dare to blame her; you have no right to!” Alyosha cried
hotly.
“Her proud lips spoke, not her heart,” Grushenka brought out in a tone
of disgust. “If she saves you I’ll forgive her everything—”
She stopped speaking, as though suppressing something. She could not
yet recover herself. She had come in, as appeared afterwards,
accidentally, with no suspicion of what she would meet.
“Alyosha, run after her!” Mitya cried to his brother; “tell her ... I
don’t know ... don’t let her go away like this!”
“I’ll come to you again at nightfall,” said Alyosha, and he ran after
Katya. He overtook her outside the hospital grounds. She was walking
fast, but as soon as Alyosha caught her up she said quickly:
“No, before that woman I can’t punish myself! I asked her forgiveness
because I wanted to punish myself to the bitter end. She would not
forgive me.... I like her for that!” she added, in an unnatural voice,
and her eyes flashed with fierce resentment.
“My brother did not expect this in the least,” muttered Alyosha. “He
was sure she would not come—”
“No doubt. Let us leave that,” she snapped. “Listen: I can’t go with
you to the funeral now. I’ve sent them flowers. I think they still have
money. If necessary, tell them I’ll never abandon them.... Now leave
me, leave me, please. You are late as it is—the bells are ringing for
the service.... Leave me, please!”
Chapter III.
Ilusha’s Funeral. The Speech At The Stone
He really was late. They had waited for him and had already decided to
bear the pretty flower-decked little coffin to the church without him.
It was the coffin of poor little Ilusha. He had died two days after
Mitya was sentenced. At the gate of the house Alyosha was met by the
shouts of the boys, Ilusha’s schoolfellows. They had all been
impatiently expecting him and were glad that he had come at last. There
were about twelve of them, they all had their school-bags or satchels
on their shoulders. “Father will cry, be with father,” Ilusha had told
them as he lay dying, and the boys remembered it. Kolya Krassotkin was
the foremost of them.
“How glad I am you’ve come, Karamazov!” he cried, holding out his hand
to Alyosha. “It’s awful here. It’s really horrible to see it. Snegiryov
is not drunk, we know for a fact he’s had nothing to drink to-day, but
he seems as if he were drunk ... I am always manly, but this is awful.
Karamazov, if I am not keeping you, one question before you go in?”
“What is it, Kolya?” said Alyosha.
“Is your brother innocent or guilty? Was it he killed your father or
was it the valet? As you say, so it will be. I haven’t slept for the
last four nights for thinking of it.”
“The valet killed him, my brother is innocent,” answered Alyosha.
“That’s what I said,” cried Smurov.
“So he will perish an innocent victim!” exclaimed Kolya; “though he is
ruined he is happy! I could envy him!”
“What do you mean? How can you? Why?” cried Alyosha surprised.
“Oh, if I, too, could sacrifice myself some day for truth!” said Kolya
with enthusiasm.
“But not in such a cause, not with such disgrace and such horror!” said
Alyosha.
“Of course ... I should like to die for all humanity, and as for
disgrace, I don’t care about that—our names may perish. I respect your
brother!”
“And so do I!” the boy, who had once declared that he knew who had
founded Troy, cried suddenly and unexpectedly, and he blushed up to his
ears like a peony as he had done on that occasion.
Alyosha went into the room. Ilusha lay with his hands folded and his
eyes closed in a blue coffin with a white frill round it. His thin face
was hardly changed at all, and strange to say there was no smell of
decay from the corpse. The expression of his face was serious and, as
it were, thoughtful. His hands, crossed over his breast, looked
particularly beautiful, as though chiseled in marble. There were
flowers in his hands and the coffin, inside and out, was decked with
flowers, which had been sent early in the morning by Lise Hohlakov. But
there were flowers too from Katerina Ivanovna, and when Alyosha opened
the door, the captain had a bunch in his trembling hands and was
strewing them again over his dear boy. He scarcely glanced at Alyosha
when he came in, and he would not look at any one, even at his crazy
weeping wife, “mamma,” who kept trying to stand on her crippled legs to
get a nearer look at her dead boy. Nina had been pushed in her chair by
the boys close up to the coffin. She sat with her head pressed to it
and she too was no doubt quietly weeping. Snegiryov’s face looked
eager, yet bewildered and exasperated. There was something crazy about
his gestures and the words that broke from him. “Old man, dear old
man!” he exclaimed every minute, gazing at Ilusha. It was his habit to
call Ilusha “old man,” as a term of affection when he was alive.
“Father, give me a flower, too; take that white one out of his hand and
give it me,” the crazy mother begged, whimpering. Either because the
little white rose in Ilusha’s hand had caught her fancy or that she
wanted one from his hand to keep in memory of him, she moved
restlessly, stretching out her hands for the flower.
“I won’t give it to any one, I won’t give you anything,” Snegiryov
cried callously. “They are his flowers, not yours! Everything is his,
nothing is yours!”
“Father, give mother a flower!” said Nina, lifting her face wet with
tears.
“I won’t give away anything and to her less than any one! She didn’t
love Ilusha. She took away his little cannon and he gave it to her,”
the captain broke into loud sobs at the thought of how Ilusha had given
up his cannon to his mother. The poor, crazy creature was bathed in
noiseless tears, hiding her face in her hands.
The boys, seeing that the father would not leave the coffin and that it
was time to carry it out, stood round it in a close circle and began to
lift it up.
“I don’t want him to be buried in the churchyard,” Snegiryov wailed
suddenly; “I’ll bury him by the stone, by our stone! Ilusha told me to.
I won’t let him be carried out!”
He had been saying for the last three days that he would bury him by
the stone, but Alyosha, Krassotkin, the landlady, her sister and all
the boys interfered.
“What an idea, bury him by an unholy stone, as though he had hanged
himself!” the old landlady said sternly. “There in the churchyard the
ground has been crossed. He’ll be prayed for there. One can hear the
singing in church and the deacon reads so plainly and verbally that it
will reach him every time just as though it were read over his grave.”
At last the captain made a gesture of despair as though to say, “Take
him where you will.” The boys raised the coffin, but as they passed the
mother, they stopped for a moment and lowered it that she might say
good-by to Ilusha. But on seeing that precious little face, which for
the last three days she had only looked at from a distance, she
trembled all over and her gray head began twitching spasmodically over
the coffin.
“Mother, make the sign of the cross over him, give him your blessing,
kiss him,” Nina cried to her. But her head still twitched like an
automaton and with a face contorted with bitter grief she began,
without a word, beating her breast with her fist. They carried the
coffin past her. Nina pressed her lips to her brother’s for the last
time as they bore the coffin by her. As Alyosha went out of the house
he begged the landlady to look after those who were left behind, but
she interrupted him before he had finished.
“To be sure, I’ll stay with them, we are Christians, too.” The old
woman wept as she said it.
They had not far to carry the coffin to the church, not more than three
hundred paces. It was a still, clear day, with a slight frost. The
church bells were still ringing. Snegiryov ran fussing and distracted
after the coffin, in his short old summer overcoat, with his head bare
and his soft, old, wide-brimmed hat in his hand. He seemed in a state
of bewildered anxiety. At one minute he stretched out his hand to
support the head of the coffin and only hindered the bearers, at
another he ran alongside and tried to find a place for himself there. A
flower fell on the snow and he rushed to pick it up as though
everything in the world depended on the loss of that flower.
“And the crust of bread, we’ve forgotten the crust!” he cried suddenly
in dismay. But the boys reminded him at once that he had taken the
crust of bread already and that it was in his pocket. He instantly
pulled it out and was reassured.
“Ilusha told me to, Ilusha,” he explained at once to Alyosha. “I was
sitting by him one night and he suddenly told me: ‘Father, when my
grave is filled up crumble a piece of bread on it so that the sparrows
may fly down, I shall hear and it will cheer me up not to be lying
alone.’”
“That’s a good thing,” said Alyosha, “we must often take some.”
“Every day, every day!” said the captain quickly, seeming cheered at
the thought.
They reached the church at last and set the coffin in the middle of it.
The boys surrounded it and remained reverently standing so, all through
the service. It was an old and rather poor church; many of the ikons
were without settings; but such churches are the best for praying in.
During the mass Snegiryov became somewhat calmer, though at times he
had outbursts of the same unconscious and, as it were, incoherent
anxiety. At one moment he went up to the coffin to set straight the
cover or the wreath, when a candle fell out of the candlestick he
rushed to replace it and was a fearful time fumbling over it, then he
subsided and stood quietly by the coffin with a look of blank
uneasiness and perplexity. After the Epistle he suddenly whispered to
Alyosha, who was standing beside him, that the Epistle had not been
read properly but did not explain what he meant. During the prayer,
“Like the Cherubim,” he joined in the singing but did not go on to the
end. Falling on his knees, he pressed his forehead to the stone floor
and lay so for a long while.
At last came the funeral service itself and candles were distributed.
The distracted father began fussing about again, but the touching and
impressive funeral prayers moved and roused his soul. He seemed
suddenly to shrink together and broke into rapid, short sobs, which he
tried at first to smother, but at last he sobbed aloud. When they began
taking leave of the dead and closing the coffin, he flung his arms
about, as though he would not allow them to cover Ilusha, and began
greedily and persistently kissing his dead boy on the lips. At last
they succeeded in persuading him to come away from the step, but
suddenly he impulsively stretched out his hand and snatched a few
flowers from the coffin. He looked at them and a new idea seemed to
dawn upon him, so that he apparently forgot his grief for a minute.
Gradually he seemed to sink into brooding and did not resist when the
coffin was lifted up and carried to the grave. It was an expensive one
in the churchyard close to the church, Katerina Ivanovna had paid for
it. After the customary rites the grave-diggers lowered the coffin.
Snegiryov with his flowers in his hands bent down so low over the open
grave that the boys caught hold of his coat in alarm and pulled him
back. He did not seem to understand fully what was happening. When they
began filling up the grave, he suddenly pointed anxiously at the
falling earth and began trying to say something, but no one could make
out what he meant, and he stopped suddenly. Then he was reminded that
he must crumble the bread and he was awfully excited, snatched up the
bread and began pulling it to pieces and flinging the morsels on the
grave.
“Come, fly down, birds, fly down, sparrows!” he muttered anxiously.
One of the boys observed that it was awkward for him to crumble the
bread with the flowers in his hands and suggested he should give them
to some one to hold for a time. But he would not do this and seemed
indeed suddenly alarmed for his flowers, as though they wanted to take
them from him altogether. And after looking at the grave, and as it
were, satisfying himself that everything had been done and the bread
had been crumbled, he suddenly, to the surprise of every one, turned,
quite composedly even, and made his way homewards. But his steps became
more and more hurried, he almost ran. The boys and Alyosha kept up with
him.
“The flowers are for mamma, the flowers are for mamma! I was unkind to
mamma,” he began exclaiming suddenly.
Some one called to him to put on his hat as it was cold. But he flung
the hat in the snow as though he were angry and kept repeating, “I
won’t have the hat, I won’t have the hat.” Smurov picked it up and
carried it after him. All the boys were crying, and Kolya and the boy
who discovered about Troy most of all. Though Smurov, with the
captain’s hat in his hand, was crying bitterly too, he managed, as he
ran, to snatch up a piece of red brick that lay on the snow of the
path, to fling it at the flock of sparrows that was flying by. He
missed them, of course, and went on crying as he ran. Half-way,
Snegiryov suddenly stopped, stood still for half a minute, as though
struck by something, and suddenly turning back to the church, ran
towards the deserted grave. But the boys instantly overtook him and
caught hold of him on all sides. Then he fell helpless on the snow as
though he had been knocked down, and struggling, sobbing, and wailing,
he began crying out, “Ilusha, old man, dear old man!” Alyosha and Kolya
tried to make him get up, soothing and persuading him.
“Captain, give over, a brave man must show fortitude,” muttered Kolya.
“You’ll spoil the flowers,” said Alyosha, “and mamma is expecting them,
she is sitting crying because you would not give her any before.
Ilusha’s little bed is still there—”
“Yes, yes, mamma!” Snegiryov suddenly recollected, “they’ll take away
the bed, they’ll take it away,” he added as though alarmed that they
really would. He jumped up and ran homewards again. But it was not far
off and they all arrived together. Snegiryov opened the door hurriedly
and called to his wife with whom he had so cruelly quarreled just
before:
“Mamma, poor crippled darling, Ilusha has sent you these flowers,” he
cried, holding out to her a little bunch of flowers that had been
frozen and broken while he was struggling in the snow. But at that
instant he saw in the corner, by the little bed, Ilusha’s little boots,
which the landlady had put tidily side by side. Seeing the old,
patched, rusty-looking, stiff boots he flung up his hands and rushed
to them, fell on his knees, snatched up one boot and, pressing his lips
to it, began kissing it greedily, crying, “Ilusha, old man, dear old
man, where are your little feet?”
“Where have you taken him away? Where have you taken him?” the lunatic
cried in a heartrending voice. Nina, too, broke into sobs. Kolya ran
out of the room, the boys followed him. At last Alyosha too went out.
“Let them weep,” he said to Kolya, “it’s no use trying to comfort them
just now. Let us wait a minute and then go back.”
“No, it’s no use, it’s awful,” Kolya assented. “Do you know,
Karamazov,” he dropped his voice so that no one could hear them, “I
feel dreadfully sad, and if it were only possible to bring him back,
I’d give anything in the world to do it.”
“Ah, so would I,” said Alyosha.
“What do you think, Karamazov? Had we better come back here to-night?
He’ll be drunk, you know.”
“Perhaps he will. Let us come together, you and I, that will be enough,
to spend an hour with them, with the mother and Nina. If we all come
together we shall remind them of everything again,” Alyosha suggested.
“The landlady is laying the table for them now—there’ll be a funeral
dinner or something, the priest is coming; shall we go back to it,
Karamazov?”
“Of course,” said Alyosha.
“It’s all so strange, Karamazov, such sorrow and then pancakes after
it, it all seems so unnatural in our religion.”
“They are going to have salmon, too,” the boy who had discovered about
Troy observed in a loud voice.
“I beg you most earnestly, Kartashov, not to interrupt again with your
idiotic remarks, especially when one is not talking to you and doesn’t
care to know whether you exist or not!” Kolya snapped out irritably.
The boy flushed crimson but did not dare to reply.
Meantime they were strolling slowly along the path and suddenly Smurov
exclaimed:
“There’s Ilusha’s stone, under which they wanted to bury him.”
They all stood still by the big stone. Alyosha looked and the whole
picture of what Snegiryov had described to him that day, how Ilusha,
weeping and hugging his father, had cried, “Father, father, how he
insulted you,” rose at once before his imagination.
A sudden impulse seemed to come into his soul. With a serious and
earnest expression he looked from one to another of the bright,
pleasant faces of Ilusha’s schoolfellows, and suddenly said to them:
“Boys, I should like to say one word to you, here at this place.”
The boys stood round him and at once bent attentive and expectant eyes
upon him.
“Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two
brothers, of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at
death’s door. But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a long
time, so we shall part. Let us make a compact here, at Ilusha’s stone,
that we will never forget Ilusha and one another. And whatever happens
to us later in life, if we don’t meet for twenty years afterwards, let
us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw
stones, do you remember, by the bridge? and afterwards we all grew so
fond of him. He was a fine boy, a kind-hearted, brave boy, he felt for
his father’s honor and resented the cruel insult to him and stood up
for him. And so in the first place, we will remember him, boys, all our
lives. And even if we are occupied with most important things, if we
attain to honor or fall into great misfortune—still let us remember how
good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and
kind feeling which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy,
better perhaps than we are. My little doves—let me call you so, for you
are very like them, those pretty blue birds, at this minute as I look
at your good dear faces. My dear children, perhaps you won’t understand
what I am saying to you, because I often speak very unintelligibly, but
you’ll remember it all the same and will agree with my words some time.
You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more
wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory,
especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great
deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from
childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such
memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if
one has only one good memory left in one’s heart, even that may
sometime be the means of saving us. Perhaps we may even grow wicked
later on, may be unable to refrain from a bad action, may laugh at
men’s tears and at those people who say as Kolya did just now, ‘I want
to suffer for all men,’ and may even jeer spitefully at such people.
But however bad we may become—which God forbid—yet, when we recall how
we buried Ilusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we have
been talking like friends all together, at this stone, the cruelest and
most mocking of us—if we do become so—will not dare to laugh inwardly
at having been kind and good at this moment! What’s more, perhaps, that
one memory may keep him from great evil and he will reflect and say,
‘Yes, I was good and brave and honest then!’ Let him laugh to himself,
that’s no matter, a man often laughs at what’s good and kind. That’s
only from thoughtlessness. But I assure you, boys, that as he laughs he
will say at once in his heart, ‘No, I do wrong to laugh, for that’s not
a thing to laugh at.’”
“That will be so, I understand you, Karamazov!” cried Kolya, with
flashing eyes.
The boys were excited and they, too, wanted to say something, but they
restrained themselves, looking with intentness and emotion at the
speaker.
“I say this in case we become bad,” Alyosha went on, “but there’s no
reason why we should become bad, is there, boys? Let us be, first and
above all, kind, then honest and then let us never forget each other! I
say that again. I give you my word for my part that I’ll never forget
one of you. Every face looking at me now I shall remember even for
thirty years. Just now Kolya said to Kartashov that we did not care to
know whether he exists or not. But I cannot forget that Kartashov
exists and that he is not blushing now as he did when he discovered the
founders of Troy, but is looking at me with his jolly, kind, dear
little eyes. Boys, my dear boys, let us all be generous and brave like
Ilusha, clever, brave and generous like Kolya (though he will be ever
so much cleverer when he is grown up), and let us all be as modest, as
clever and sweet as Kartashov. But why am I talking about those two?
You are all dear to me, boys, from this day forth, I have a place in my
heart for you all, and I beg you to keep a place in your hearts for me!
Well, and who has united us in this kind, good feeling which we shall
remember and intend to remember all our lives? Who, if not Ilusha, the
good boy, the dear boy, precious to us for ever! Let us never forget
him. May his memory live for ever in our hearts from this time forth!”
“Yes, yes, for ever, for ever!” the boys cried in their ringing voices,
with softened faces.
“Let us remember his face and his clothes and his poor little boots,
his coffin and his unhappy, sinful father, and how boldly he stood up
for him alone against the whole school.”
“We will remember, we will remember,” cried the boys. “He was brave, he
was good!”
“Ah, how I loved him!” exclaimed Kolya.
“Ah, children, ah, dear friends, don’t be afraid of life! How good life
is when one does something good and just!”
“Yes, yes,” the boys repeated enthusiastically.
“Karamazov, we love you!” a voice, probably Kartashov’s, cried
impulsively.
“We love you, we love you!” they all caught it up. There were tears in
the eyes of many of them.
“Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya shouted ecstatically.
“And may the dead boy’s memory live for ever!” Alyosha added again with
feeling.
“For ever!” the boys chimed in again.
“Karamazov,” cried Kolya, “can it be true what’s taught us in religion,
that we shall all rise again from the dead and shall live and see each
other again, all, Ilusha too?”
“Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other
and shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened!”
Alyosha answered, half laughing, half enthusiastic.
“Ah, how splendid it will be!” broke from Kolya.
“Well, now we will finish talking and go to his funeral dinner. Don’t
be put out at our eating pancakes—it’s a very old custom and there’s
something nice in that!” laughed Alyosha. “Well, let us go! And now we
go hand in hand.”
“And always so, all our lives hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!”
Kolya cried once more rapturously, and once more the boys took up his
exclamation: “Hurrah for Karamazov!”
THE END
FOOTNOTES
[1] In Russian, “silen.”
[2] A proverbial expression in Russia.
[3] Grushenka.
[4] i.e. setter dog.
[5] Probably the public event was the Decabrist plot against the Tsar,
of December 1825, in which the most distinguished men in Russia were
concerned.—TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.
[6] When a monk’s body is carried out from the cell to the church and
from the church to the graveyard, the canticle “What earthly joy...”
is sung. If the deceased was a priest as well as a monk the canticle
“Our Helper and Defender” is sung instead.
[7] i.e. a chime of bells.
[8] Literally: “Did you get off with a long nose made at you?”—a
proverbial expression in Russia for failure.
[9] Gogol is meant.