The Brothers Karamazov
“Yes. He was throwing stones with other schoolboys. There were six of
them against him alone. I went up to him, and he threw a stone at me
and then another at my head. I asked him what I had done to him. And
then he rushed at me and bit my finger badly, I don’t know why.”
“I’ll thrash him, sir, at once—this minute!” The captain jumped up from
his seat.
“But I am not complaining at all, I am simply telling you ... I don’t
want him to be thrashed. Besides, he seems to be ill.”
“And do you suppose I’d thrash him? That I’d take my Ilusha and thrash
him before you for your satisfaction? Would you like it done at once,
sir?” said the captain, suddenly turning to Alyosha, as though he were
going to attack him. “I am sorry about your finger, sir; but instead of
thrashing Ilusha, would you like me to chop off my four fingers with
this knife here before your eyes to satisfy your just wrath? I should
think four fingers would be enough to satisfy your thirst for
vengeance. You won’t ask for the fifth one too?” He stopped short with
a catch in his throat. Every feature in his face was twitching and
working; he looked extremely defiant. He was in a sort of frenzy.
“I think I understand it all now,” said Alyosha gently and sorrowfully,
still keeping his seat. “So your boy is a good boy, he loves his
father, and he attacked me as the brother of your assailant.... Now I
understand it,” he repeated thoughtfully. “But my brother Dmitri
Fyodorovitch regrets his action, I know that, and if only it is
possible for him to come to you, or better still, to meet you in that
same place, he will ask your forgiveness before every one—if you wish
it.”
“After pulling out my beard, you mean, he will ask my forgiveness? And
he thinks that will be a satisfactory finish, doesn’t he?”
“Oh, no! On the contrary, he will do anything you like and in any way
you like.”
“So if I were to ask his highness to go down on his knees before me in
that very tavern—‘The Metropolis’ it’s called—or in the market-place,
he would do it?”
“Yes, he would even go down on his knees.”
“You’ve pierced me to the heart, sir. Touched me to tears and pierced
me to the heart! I am only too sensible of your brother’s generosity.
Allow me to introduce my family, my two daughters and my son—my litter.
If I die, who will care for them, and while I live who but they will
care for a wretch like me? That’s a great thing the Lord has ordained
for every man of my sort, sir. For there must be some one able to love
even a man like me.”
“Ah, that’s perfectly true!” exclaimed Alyosha.
“Oh, do leave off playing the fool! Some idiot comes in, and you put us
to shame!” cried the girl by the window, suddenly turning to her father
with a disdainful and contemptuous air.
“Wait a little, Varvara!” cried her father, speaking peremptorily but
looking at her quite approvingly. “That’s her character,” he said,
addressing Alyosha again.
“And in all nature there was naught
That could find favor in his eyes—
or rather in the feminine: that could find favor in her eyes. But now
let me present you to my wife, Arina Petrovna. She is crippled, she is
forty-three; she can move, but very little. She is of humble origin.
Arina Petrovna, compose your countenance. This is Alexey Fyodorovitch
Karamazov. Get up, Alexey Fyodorovitch.” He took him by the hand and
with unexpected force pulled him up. “You must stand up to be
introduced to a lady. It’s not the Karamazov, mamma, who ... h’m ...
etcetera, but his brother, radiant with modest virtues. Come, Arina
Petrovna, come, mamma, first your hand to be kissed.”
And he kissed his wife’s hand respectfully and even tenderly. The girl
at the window turned her back indignantly on the scene; an expression
of extraordinary cordiality came over the haughtily inquiring face of
the woman.
“Good morning! Sit down, Mr. Tchernomazov,” she said.
“Karamazov, mamma, Karamazov. We are of humble origin,” he whispered
again.
“Well, Karamazov, or whatever it is, but I always think of
Tchernomazov.... Sit down. Why has he pulled you up? He calls me
crippled, but I am not, only my legs are swollen like barrels, and I am
shriveled up myself. Once I used to be so fat, but now it’s as though I
had swallowed a needle.”
“We are of humble origin,” the captain muttered again.
“Oh, father, father!” the hunchback girl, who had till then been silent
on her chair, said suddenly, and she hid her eyes in her handkerchief.
“Buffoon!” blurted out the girl at the window.
“Have you heard our news?” said the mother, pointing at her daughters.
“It’s like clouds coming over; the clouds pass and we have music again.
When we were with the army, we used to have many such guests. I don’t
mean to make any comparisons; every one to their taste. The deacon’s
wife used to come then and say, ‘Alexandr Alexandrovitch is a man of
the noblest heart, but Nastasya Petrovna,’ she would say, ‘is of the
brood of hell.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s a matter of taste; but you are
a little spitfire.’ ‘And you want keeping in your place,’ says she.
‘You black sword,’ said I, ‘who asked you to teach me?’ ‘But my
breath,’ says she, ‘is clean, and yours is unclean.’ ‘You ask all the
officers whether my breath is unclean.’ And ever since then I had it in
my mind. Not long ago I was sitting here as I am now, when I saw that
very general come in who came here for Easter, and I asked him: ‘Your
Excellency,’ said I, ‘can a lady’s breath be unpleasant?’ ‘Yes,’ he
answered; ‘you ought to open a window-pane or open the door, for the
air is not fresh here.’ And they all go on like that! And what is my
breath to them? The dead smell worse still! ‘I won’t spoil the air,’
said I, ‘I’ll order some slippers and go away.’ My darlings, don’t
blame your own mother! Nikolay Ilyitch, how is it I can’t please you?
There’s only Ilusha who comes home from school and loves me. Yesterday
he brought me an apple. Forgive your own mother—forgive a poor lonely
creature! Why has my breath become unpleasant to you?”
And the poor mad woman broke into sobs, and tears streamed down her
cheeks. The captain rushed up to her.
“Mamma, mamma, my dear, give over! You are not lonely. Every one loves
you, every one adores you.” He began kissing both her hands again and
tenderly stroking her face; taking the dinner-napkin, he began wiping
away her tears. Alyosha fancied that he too had tears in his eyes.
“There, you see, you hear?” he turned with a sort of fury to Alyosha,
pointing to the poor imbecile.
“I see and hear,” muttered Alyosha.
“Father, father, how can you—with him! Let him alone!” cried the boy,
sitting up in his bed and gazing at his father with glowing eyes.
“Do give over fooling, showing off your silly antics which never lead
to anything!” shouted Varvara, stamping her foot with passion.
“Your anger is quite just this time, Varvara, and I’ll make haste to
satisfy you. Come, put on your cap, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and I’ll put
on mine. We will go out. I have a word to say to you in earnest, but
not within these walls. This girl sitting here is my daughter Nina; I
forgot to introduce her to you. She is a heavenly angel incarnate ...
who has flown down to us mortals,... if you can understand.”
“There he is shaking all over, as though he is in convulsions!” Varvara
went on indignantly.
“And she there stamping her foot at me and calling me a fool just now,
she is a heavenly angel incarnate too, and she has good reason to call
me so. Come along, Alexey Fyodorovitch, we must make an end.”
And, snatching Alyosha’s hand, he drew him out of the room into the
street.
Chapter VII.
And In The Open Air
“The air is fresh, but in my apartment it is not so in any sense of the
word. Let us walk slowly, sir. I should be glad of your kind interest.”
“I too have something important to say to you,” observed Alyosha, “only
I don’t know how to begin.”
“To be sure you must have business with me. You would never have looked
in upon me without some object. Unless you come simply to complain of
the boy, and that’s hardly likely. And, by the way, about the boy: I
could not explain to you in there, but here I will describe that scene
to you. My tow was thicker a week ago—I mean my beard. That’s the
nickname they give to my beard, the schoolboys most of all. Well, your
brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch was pulling me by my beard, I’d done
nothing, he was in a towering rage and happened to come upon me. He
dragged me out of the tavern into the market-place; at that moment the
boys were coming out of school, and with them Ilusha. As soon as he saw
me in such a state he rushed up to me. ‘Father,’ he cried, ‘father!’ He
caught hold of me, hugged me, tried to pull me away, crying to my
assailant, ‘Let go, let go, it’s my father, forgive him!’—yes, he
actually cried ‘forgive him.’ He clutched at that hand, that very hand,
in his little hands and kissed it.... I remember his little face at
that moment, I haven’t forgotten it and I never shall!”
“I swear,” cried Alyosha, “that my brother will express his most deep
and sincere regret, even if he has to go down on his knees in that same
market-place.... I’ll make him or he is no brother of mine!”
“Aha, then it’s only a suggestion! And it does not come from him but
simply from the generosity of your own warm heart. You should have said
so. No, in that case allow me to tell you of your brother’s highly
chivalrous soldierly generosity, for he did give expression to it at
the time. He left off dragging me by my beard and released me: ‘You are
an officer,’ he said, ‘and I am an officer, if you can find a decent
man to be your second send me your challenge. I will give satisfaction,
though you are a scoundrel.’ That’s what he said. A chivalrous spirit
indeed! I retired with Ilusha, and that scene is a family record
imprinted for ever on Ilusha’s soul. No, it’s not for us to claim the
privileges of noblemen. Judge for yourself. You’ve just been in our
mansion, what did you see there? Three ladies, one a cripple and
weak-minded, another a cripple and hunchback and the third not crippled
but far too clever. She is a student, dying to get back to Petersburg,
to work for the emancipation of the Russian woman on the banks of the
Neva. I won’t speak of Ilusha, he is only nine. I am alone in the
world, and if I die, what will become of all of them? I simply ask you
that. And if I challenge him and he kills me on the spot, what then?
What will become of them? And worse still, if he doesn’t kill me but
only cripples me: I couldn’t work, but I should still be a mouth to
feed. Who would feed it and who would feed them all? Must I take Ilusha
from school and send him to beg in the streets? That’s what it means
for me to challenge him to a duel. It’s silly talk and nothing else.”
“He will beg your forgiveness, he will bow down at your feet in the
middle of the market-place,” cried Alyosha again, with glowing eyes.
“I did think of prosecuting him,” the captain went on, “but look in our
code, could I get much compensation for a personal injury? And then
Agrafena Alexandrovna[3] sent for me and shouted at me: ‘Don’t dare to
dream of it! If you proceed against him, I’ll publish it to all the
world that he beat you for your dishonesty, and then you will be
prosecuted.’ I call God to witness whose was the dishonesty and by
whose commands I acted, wasn’t it by her own and Fyodor Pavlovitch’s?
‘And what’s more,’ she went on, ‘I’ll dismiss you for good and you’ll
never earn another penny from me. I’ll speak to my merchant too’
(that’s what she calls her old man) ‘and he will dismiss you!’ And if
he dismisses me, what can I earn then from any one? Those two are all I
have to look to, for your Fyodor Pavlovitch has not only given over