The Brothers Karamazov
“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,