The Brothers Karamazov
“Certainly, but considering ... in fact, now it’s impossible except in
the presence of—”
“Oh, well, if it must be so, it must!”
Grushenka was brought in, but the farewell was brief, and of few words,
and did not at all satisfy Nikolay Parfenovitch. Grushenka made a deep
bow to Mitya.
“I have told you I am yours, and I will be yours. I will follow you for
ever, wherever they may send you. Farewell; you are guiltless, though
you’ve been your own undoing.”
Her lips quivered, tears flowed from her eyes.
“Forgive me, Grusha, for my love, for ruining you, too, with my love.”
Mitya would have said something more, but he broke off and went out. He
was at once surrounded by men who kept a constant watch on him. At the
bottom of the steps to which he had driven up with such a dash the day
before with Andrey’s three horses, two carts stood in readiness.
Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, a sturdy, thick-set man with a wrinkled face,
was annoyed about something, some sudden irregularity. He was shouting
angrily. He asked Mitya to get into the cart with somewhat excessive
surliness.
“When I stood him drinks in the tavern, the man had quite a different
face,” thought Mitya, as he got in. At the gates there was a crowd of
people, peasants, women and drivers. Trifon Borissovitch came down the
steps too. All stared at Mitya.
“Forgive me at parting, good people!” Mitya shouted suddenly from the
cart.
“Forgive us too!” he heard two or three voices.
“Good-by to you, too, Trifon Borissovitch!”
But Trifon Borissovitch did not even turn round. He was, perhaps, too
busy. He, too, was shouting and fussing about something. It appeared
that everything was not yet ready in the second cart, in which two
constables were to accompany Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. The peasant who had
been ordered to drive the second cart was pulling on his smock, stoutly
maintaining that it was not his turn to go, but Akim’s. But Akim was
not to be seen. They ran to look for him. The peasant persisted and
besought them to wait.
“You see what our peasants are, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. They’ve no
shame!” exclaimed Trifon Borissovitch. “Akim gave you twenty-five
copecks the day before yesterday. You’ve drunk it all and now you cry
out. I’m simply surprised at your good-nature, with our low peasants,
Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, that’s all I can say.”
“But what do we want a second cart for?” Mitya put in. “Let’s start
with the one, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. I won’t be unruly, I won’t run
away from you, old fellow. What do we want an escort for?”
“I’ll trouble you, sir, to learn how to speak to me if you’ve never
been taught. I’m not ‘old fellow’ to you, and you can keep your advice
for another time!” Mavriky Mavrikyevitch snapped out savagely, as
though glad to vent his wrath.
Mitya was reduced to silence. He flushed all over. A moment later he
felt suddenly very cold. The rain had ceased, but the dull sky was
still overcast with clouds, and a keen wind was blowing straight in his
face.
“I’ve taken a chill,” thought Mitya, twitching his shoulders.
At last Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, too, got into the cart, sat down
heavily, and, as though without noticing it, squeezed Mitya into the
corner. It is true that he was out of humor and greatly disliked the
task that had been laid upon him.
“Good-by, Trifon Borissovitch!” Mitya shouted again, and felt himself,
that he had not called out this time from good-nature, but
involuntarily, from resentment.
But Trifon Borissovitch stood proudly, with both hands behind his back,
and staring straight at Mitya with a stern and angry face, he made no
reply.
“Good-by, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, good-by!” he heard all at once the voice
of Kalganov, who had suddenly darted out. Running up to the cart he
held out his hand to Mitya. He had no cap on.
Mitya had time to seize and press his hand.
“Good-by, dear fellow! I shan’t forget your generosity,” he cried
warmly.
But the cart moved and their hands parted. The bell began ringing and
Mitya was driven off.
Kalganov ran back, sat down in a corner, bent his head, hid his face in
his hands, and burst out crying. For a long while he sat like that,
crying as though he were a little boy instead of a young man of twenty.
Oh, he believed almost without doubt in Mitya’s guilt.
“What are these people? What can men be after this?” he exclaimed
incoherently, in bitter despondency, almost despair. At that moment he
had no desire to live.
“Is it worth it? Is it worth it?” exclaimed the boy in his grief.
PART IV
Book X. The Boys
Chapter I.
Kolya Krassotkin
It was the beginning of November. There had been a hard frost, eleven
degrees Réaumur, without snow, but a little dry snow had fallen on the
frozen ground during the night, and a keen dry wind was lifting and
blowing it along the dreary streets of our town, especially about the
market-place. It was a dull morning, but the snow had ceased.
Not far from the market-place, close to Plotnikov’s shop, there stood a
small house, very clean both without and within. It belonged to Madame
Krassotkin, the widow of a former provincial secretary, who had been
dead for fourteen years. His widow, still a nice-looking woman of
thirty-two, was living in her neat little house on her private means.
She lived in respectable seclusion; she was of a soft but fairly
cheerful disposition. She was about eighteen at the time of her
husband’s death; she had been married only a year and had just borne
him a son. From the day of his death she had devoted herself heart and
soul to the bringing up of her precious treasure, her boy Kolya. Though
she had loved him passionately those fourteen years, he had caused her
far more suffering than happiness. She had been trembling and fainting
with terror almost every day, afraid he would fall ill, would catch
cold, do something naughty, climb on a chair and fall off it, and so on
and so on. When Kolya began going to school, the mother devoted herself
to studying all the sciences with him so as to help him, and go through
his lessons with him. She hastened to make the acquaintance of the
teachers and their wives, even made up to Kolya’s schoolfellows, and
fawned upon them in the hope of thus saving Kolya from being teased,
laughed at, or beaten by them. She went so far that the boys actually
began to mock at him on her account and taunt him with being a
“mother’s darling.”
But the boy could take his own part. He was a resolute boy,
“tremendously strong,” as was rumored in his class, and soon proved to
be the fact; he was agile, strong-willed, and of an audacious and
enterprising temper. He was good at lessons, and there was a rumor in
the school that he could beat the teacher, Dardanelov, at arithmetic
and universal history. Though he looked down upon every one, he was a
good comrade and not supercilious. He accepted his schoolfellows’
respect as his due, but was friendly with them. Above all, he knew
where to draw the line. He could restrain himself on occasion, and in
his relations with the teachers he never overstepped that last mystic
limit beyond which a prank becomes an unpardonable breach of
discipline. But he was as fond of mischief on every possible occasion
as the smallest boy in the school, and not so much for the sake of
mischief as for creating a sensation, inventing something, something
effective and conspicuous. He was extremely vain. He knew how to make
even his mother give way to him; he was almost despotic in his control
of her. She gave way to him, oh, she had given way to him for years.
The one thought unendurable to her was that her boy had no great love
for her. She was always fancying that Kolya was “unfeeling” to her, and
at times, dissolving into hysterical tears, she used to reproach him
with his coldness. The boy disliked this, and the more demonstrations
of feeling were demanded of him the more he seemed intentionally to
avoid them. Yet it was not intentional on his part but instinctive—it
was his character. His mother was mistaken; he was very fond of her. He
only disliked “sheepish sentimentality,” as he expressed it in his
schoolboy language.
There was a bookcase in the house containing a few books that had been
his father’s. Kolya was fond of reading, and had read several of them
by himself. His mother did not mind that and only wondered sometimes at
seeing the boy stand for hours by the bookcase poring over a book
instead of going to play. And in that way Kolya read some things
unsuitable for his age.
Though the boy, as a rule, knew where to draw the line in his mischief,
he had of late begun to play pranks that caused his mother serious
alarm. It is true there was nothing vicious in what he did, but a wild
mad recklessness.
It happened that July, during the summer holidays, that the mother and
son went to another district, forty-five miles away, to spend a week
with a distant relation, whose husband was an official at the railway
station (the very station, the nearest one to our town, from which a
month later Ivan Fyodorovitch Karamazov set off for Moscow). There
Kolya began by carefully investigating every detail connected with the
railways, knowing that he could impress his schoolfellows when he got
home with his newly acquired knowledge. But there happened to be some
other boys in the place with whom he soon made friends. Some of them
were living at the station, others in the neighborhood; there were six
or seven of them, all between twelve and fifteen, and two of them came
from our town. The boys played together, and on the fourth or fifth day
of Kolya’s stay at the station, a mad bet was made by the foolish boys.
Kolya, who was almost the youngest of the party and rather looked down
upon by the others in consequence, was moved by vanity or by reckless
bravado to bet them two roubles that he would lie down between the
rails at night when the eleven o’clock train was due, and would lie
there without moving while the train rolled over him at full speed. It
is true they made a preliminary investigation, from which it appeared
that it was possible to lie so flat between the rails that the train
could pass over without touching, but to lie there was no joke! Kolya
maintained stoutly that he would. At first they laughed at him, called
him a little liar, a braggart, but that only egged him on. What piqued
him most was that these boys of fifteen turned up their noses at him
too superciliously, and were at first disposed to treat him as “a small
boy,” not fit to associate with them, and that was an unendurable
insult.
And so it was resolved to go in the evening, half a mile from the
station, so that the train might have time to get up full speed after
leaving the station. The boys assembled. It was a pitch-dark night
without a moon. At the time fixed, Kolya lay down between the rails.
The five others who had taken the bet waited among the bushes below the
embankment, their hearts beating with suspense, which was followed by
alarm and remorse. At last they heard in the distance the rumble of the
train leaving the station. Two red lights gleamed out of the darkness;
the monster roared as it approached.
“Run, run away from the rails,” the boys cried to Kolya from the
bushes, breathless with terror. But it was too late: the train darted
up and flew past. The boys rushed to Kolya. He lay without moving. They
began pulling at him, lifting him up. He suddenly got up and walked
away without a word. Then he explained that he had lain there as though
he were insensible to frighten them, but the fact was that he really
had lost consciousness, as he confessed long after to his mother. In
this way his reputation as “a desperate character,” was established for
ever. He returned home to the station as white as a sheet. Next day he