The Brothers Karamazov
say this only to you. I am not at all anxious to fall into the clutches
of the secret police and take lessons at the Chain bridge.
Long will you remember
The house at the Chain bridge.
Do you remember? It’s splendid. Why are you laughing? You don’t suppose
I am fibbing, do you?” (“What if he should find out that I’ve only that
one number of _The Bell_ in father’s bookcase, and haven’t read any
more of it?” Kolya thought with a shudder.)
“Oh, no, I am not laughing and don’t suppose for a moment that you are
lying. No, indeed, I can’t suppose so, for all this, alas! is perfectly
true. But tell me, have you read Pushkin—_Onyegin_, for instance?...
You spoke just now of Tatyana.”
“No, I haven’t read it yet, but I want to read it. I have no
prejudices, Karamazov; I want to hear both sides. What makes you ask?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Tell me, Karamazov, have you an awful contempt for me?” Kolya rapped
out suddenly and drew himself up before Alyosha, as though he were on
drill. “Be so kind as to tell me, without beating about the bush.”
“I have a contempt for you?” Alyosha looked at him wondering. “What
for? I am only sad that a charming nature such as yours should be
perverted by all this crude nonsense before you have begun life.”
“Don’t be anxious about my nature,” Kolya interrupted, not without
complacency. “But it’s true that I am stupidly sensitive, crudely
sensitive. You smiled just now, and I fancied you seemed to—”
“Oh, my smile meant something quite different. I’ll tell you why I
smiled. Not long ago I read the criticism made by a German who had
lived in Russia, on our students and schoolboys of to-day. ‘Show a
Russian schoolboy,’ he writes, ‘a map of the stars, which he knows
nothing about, and he will give you back the map next day with
corrections on it.’ No knowledge and unbounded conceit—that’s what the
German meant to say about the Russian schoolboy.”
“Yes, that’s perfectly right,” Kolya laughed suddenly, “exactly so!
Bravo the German! But he did not see the good side, what do you think?
Conceit may be, that comes from youth, that will be corrected if need
be, but, on the other hand, there is an independent spirit almost from
childhood, boldness of thought and conviction, and not the spirit of
these sausage makers, groveling before authority.... But the German was
right all the same. Bravo the German! But Germans want strangling all
the same. Though they are so good at science and learning they must be
strangled.”
“Strangled, what for?” smiled Alyosha.
“Well, perhaps I am talking nonsense, I agree. I am awfully childish
sometimes, and when I am pleased about anything I can’t restrain myself
and am ready to talk any stuff. But, I say, we are chattering away here
about nothing, and that doctor has been a long time in there. But
perhaps he’s examining the mamma and that poor crippled Nina. I liked
that Nina, you know. She whispered to me suddenly as I was coming away,
‘Why didn’t you come before?’ And in such a voice, so reproachfully! I
think she is awfully nice and pathetic.”
“Yes, yes! Well, you’ll be coming often, you will see what she is like.
It would do you a great deal of good to know people like that, to learn
to value a great deal which you will find out from knowing these
people,” Alyosha observed warmly. “That would have more effect on you
than anything.”
“Oh, how I regret and blame myself for not having come sooner!” Kolya
exclaimed, with bitter feeling.
“Yes, it’s a great pity. You saw for yourself how delighted the poor
child was to see you. And how he fretted for you to come!”
“Don’t tell me! You make it worse! But it serves me right. What kept me
from coming was my conceit, my egoistic vanity, and the beastly
wilfullness, which I never can get rid of, though I’ve been struggling
with it all my life. I see that now. I am a beast in lots of ways,
Karamazov!”
“No, you have a charming nature, though it’s been distorted, and I
quite understand why you have had such an influence on this generous,
morbidly sensitive boy,” Alyosha answered warmly.
“And you say that to me!” cried Kolya; “and would you believe it, I
thought—I’ve thought several times since I’ve been here—that you
despised me! If only you knew how I prize your opinion!”
“But are you really so sensitive? At your age! Would you believe it,
just now, when you were telling your story, I thought, as I watched
you, that you must be very sensitive!”
“You thought so? What an eye you’ve got, I say! I bet that was when I
was talking about the goose. That was just when I was fancying you had
a great contempt for me for being in such a hurry to show off, and for
a moment I quite hated you for it, and began talking like a fool. Then
I fancied—just now, here—when I said that if there were no God He would
have to be invented, that I was in too great a hurry to display my
knowledge, especially as I got that phrase out of a book. But I swear I
wasn’t showing off out of vanity, though I really don’t know why.
Because I was so pleased? Yes, I believe it was because I was so
pleased ... though it’s perfectly disgraceful for any one to be gushing
directly they are pleased, I know that. But I am convinced now that you
don’t despise me; it was all my imagination. Oh, Karamazov, I am
profoundly unhappy. I sometimes fancy all sorts of things, that every
one is laughing at me, the whole world, and then I feel ready to
overturn the whole order of things.”
“And you worry every one about you,” smiled Alyosha.
“Yes, I worry every one about me, especially my mother. Karamazov, tell
me, am I very ridiculous now?”
“Don’t think about that, don’t think of it at all!” cried Alyosha. “And
what does ridiculous mean? Isn’t every one constantly being or seeming
ridiculous? Besides, nearly all clever people now are fearfully afraid
of being ridiculous, and that makes them unhappy. All I am surprised at
is that you should be feeling that so early, though I’ve observed it
for some time past, and not only in you. Nowadays the very children
have begun to suffer from it. It’s almost a sort of insanity. The devil
has taken the form of that vanity and entered into the whole
generation; it’s simply the devil,” added Alyosha, without a trace of
the smile that Kolya, staring at him, expected to see. “You are like
every one else,” said Alyosha, in conclusion, “that is, like very many
others. Only you must not be like everybody else, that’s all.”
“Even if every one is like that?”
“Yes, even if every one is like that. You be the only one not like it.
You really are not like every one else, here you are not ashamed to
confess to something bad and even ridiculous. And who will admit so
much in these days? No one. And people have even ceased to feel the
impulse to self-criticism. Don’t be like every one else, even if you
are the only one.”
“Splendid! I was not mistaken in you. You know how to console one. Oh,
how I have longed to know you, Karamazov! I’ve long been eager for this
meeting. Can you really have thought about me, too? You said just now
that you thought of me, too?”
“Yes, I’d heard of you and had thought of you, too ... and if it’s
partly vanity that makes you ask, it doesn’t matter.”
“Do you know, Karamazov, our talk has been like a declaration of love,”
said Kolya, in a bashful and melting voice. “That’s not ridiculous, is
it?”
“Not at all ridiculous, and if it were, it wouldn’t matter, because
it’s been a good thing.” Alyosha smiled brightly.
“But do you know, Karamazov, you must admit that you are a little
ashamed yourself, now.... I see it by your eyes.” Kolya smiled with a
sort of sly happiness.
“Why ashamed?”
“Well, why are you blushing?”
“It was you made me blush,” laughed Alyosha, and he really did blush.
“Oh, well, I am a little, goodness knows why, I don’t know...” he
muttered, almost embarrassed.
“Oh, how I love you and admire you at this moment just because you are
rather ashamed! Because you are just like me,” cried Kolya, in positive
ecstasy. His cheeks glowed, his eyes beamed.
“You know, Kolya, you will be very unhappy in your life,” something
made Alyosha say suddenly.
“I know, I know. How you know it all beforehand!” Kolya agreed at once.
“But you will bless life on the whole, all the same.”
“Just so, hurrah! You are a prophet. Oh, we shall get on together,
Karamazov! Do you know, what delights me most, is that you treat me
quite like an equal. But we are not equals, no, we are not, you are
better! But we shall get on. Do you know, all this last month, I’ve
been saying to myself, ‘Either we shall be friends at once, for ever,
or we shall part enemies to the grave!’”
“And saying that, of course, you loved me,” Alyosha laughed gayly.
“I did. I loved you awfully. I’ve been loving and dreaming of you. And
how do you know it all beforehand? Ah, here’s the doctor. Goodness!
What will he tell us? Look at his face!”
Chapter VII.
Ilusha
The doctor came out of the room again, muffled in his fur coat and with
his cap on his head. His face looked almost angry and disgusted, as
though he were afraid of getting dirty. He cast a cursory glance round
the passage, looking sternly at Alyosha and Kolya as he did so. Alyosha
waved from the door to the coachman, and the carriage that had brought
the doctor drove up. The captain darted out after the doctor, and,
bowing apologetically, stopped him to get the last word. The poor
fellow looked utterly crushed; there was a scared look in his eyes.
“Your Excellency, your Excellency ... is it possible?” he began, but
could not go on and clasped his hands in despair. Yet he still gazed
imploringly at the doctor, as though a word from him might still change
the poor boy’s fate.
“I can’t help it, I am not God!” the doctor answered offhand, though
with the customary impressiveness.
“Doctor ... your Excellency ... and will it be soon, soon?”
“You must be prepared for anything,” said the doctor in emphatic and
incisive tones, and dropping his eyes, he was about to step out to the
coach.
“Your Excellency, for Christ’s sake!” the terror-stricken captain
stopped him again. “Your Excellency! but can nothing, absolutely
nothing save him now?”
“It’s not in my hands now,” said the doctor impatiently, “but h’m!...”
he stopped suddenly. “If you could, for instance ... send ... your
patient ... at once, without delay” (the words “at once, without
delay,” the doctor uttered with an almost wrathful sternness that made
the captain start) “to Syracuse, the change to the new be-ne-ficial
climatic conditions might possibly effect—”
“To Syracuse!” cried the captain, unable to grasp what was said.
“Syracuse is in Sicily,” Kolya jerked out suddenly in explanation. The
doctor looked at him.
“Sicily! your Excellency,” faltered the captain, “but you’ve seen”—he
spread out his hands, indicating his surroundings—“mamma and my
family?”
“N—no, Sicily is not the place for the family, the family should go to
Caucasus in the early spring ... your daughter must go to the Caucasus,
and your wife ... after a course of the waters in the Caucasus for her
rheumatism ... must be sent straight to Paris to the mental specialist
Lepelletier; I could give you a note to him, and then ... there might
be a change—”
“Doctor, doctor! But you see!” The captain flung wide his hands again
despairingly, indicating the bare wooden walls of the passage.
“Well, that’s not my business,” grinned the doctor. “I have only told
you the answer of medical science to your question as to possible
treatment. As for the rest, to my regret—”
“Don’t be afraid, apothecary, my dog won’t bite you,” Kolya rapped out
loudly, noticing the doctor’s rather uneasy glance at Perezvon, who was
standing in the doorway. There was a wrathful note in Kolya’s voice. He