The Brothers Karamazov (102 page)

“Oh, I like you so much right now, this minute, maybe just because you feel ashamed to be with me, because I can see that you feel just the same way I do!” Kolya was in a state of great elation. His cheeks were afire, his eyes were sparkling.

“Listen, Kolya, there will be times in your life when you’ll be very unhappy,” Alyosha said quite unexpectedly.

“I know, I know. But it’s so strange the way you can tell things in advance . . .”

“But, on the whole, you’ll be pleased with your life.”

“Good! Hurray! You’re a prophet! Oh, Karamazov, we’ll become very close friends. And shall I tell you what I like most about you? It’s that you treat me just like an equal. But we are not equals—you are by very far my superior! But we will become friends. You know, during the past month I kept saying to myself: ‘Either we will at once become friends for the rest of our lives or we will turn our backs on each other and be enemies till the grave!’ ”

“And while you were saying that, you, of course, already liked me.” Alyosha laughed gaily.

“Yes, I did, I did, an awful lot, and I was thinking and imagining all kinds of things about you . . . But how could you know that in advance? But look, here’s the doctor . . . I wonder what he’ll say? Look at his face, oh . . .”

Chapter 7: Ilyusha

THE DOCTOR had on his bearskin coat again, with his sealskin cap on his head. His wore an almost angry, disgusted expression, as if he were afraid of dirtying himself in this house. He glanced quickly across the passage and sternly measured Alyosha and Kolya with his eyes. Alyosha stepped outside and signaled to the coachman to drive up to the steps. Then Snegirev came rushing out into the passage. Bent almost in two and looking apologetic, he stopped the doctor to hear his final verdict. The poor man’s face looked miserable and frightened.

“Doctor, doctor, sir, is it possible? . . .” His hands dropped in despair, although his eyes were still fixed beseechingly on the doctor’s face, as if what the doctor said now could alter Ilyusha’s fate.

“What can I do? I’m not God,” the doctor said casually, although out of habit in a lecturing tone.

“Doctor . . . sir . . . But how soon, how soon?”

“You had better be prepared for anything,” the doctor said, pronouncing each syllable distinctly. He was about to step out of the house, to the carriage waiting for him.

“But, doctor, in the name of Christ, tell me,” Snegirev muttered in terror, “please, tell me—isn’t there anything, anything at all that could save him?”

“It does not depend on me, you understand,” the doctor said impatiently. “However . . . hm . . .” he stopped suddenly, “if you could, for instance, send your son . . . er, but then it must be done at once, right away, without delay!” The doctor said the words “at once” and “without delay” so severely, even angrily, that Snegirev started. “Send him then . . . er . . . to Sy-ra-cuse . . . and, as a result of the change and the favorable conditions, he might perhaps . . .”

“Syracuse?” Snegirev cried in bewilderment, as if unable to grasp what the doctor was saying.

“Syracuse is in Sicily,” Kolya said in a loud voice. The doctor glanced at him.

“Sicily! Oh, but, sir, you saw yourself . . .” Snegirev made a helpless sweeping gesture, as if to show the doctor the surrounding poverty. “What will I do with my wife and my family?”

“N-no, your family needn’t go with you to Sicily. Your family should go to the Caucasus in early spring . . . The Caucasus would be good for your daughter. As to your wife, after she has taken a cure of the waters, for her rheumatism, in the Caucasus, you will have to send her at once to Paris to the psychiatric hospital of Dr. Lepelletier. If you wish, I can give you a letter for him . . . And then there might be a . . . er . . .”

“But, doctor, doctor, you can see for yourself . . .” Snegirev again pointed in despair at the bare wooden walls in the passage.

“Well, that’s something I can do nothing about,” the doctor said with a grin. “I’ve only told you what science could do as a last resort . . . For the rest, I’m sorry to say it isn’t up to me.”

“Don’t worry, doc, my dog won’t bite you,” Kolya said loudly and angrily, noticing the worried way the doctor kept glancing at Perezvon. He had, as he explained later, called him “doc” to “insult him.”

“What’s that?” The doctor glared at Kolya in surprise. “Who’s he?” the doctor somehow asked Alyosha, as if he considered him responsible.

“I am Perezvon’s master, doc, and beyond that you needn’t worry about my identity,” Kolya said loudly again.

“Perez—what?” the doctor repeated, not realizing that was the dog’s name.

“Perez yourself! Good-by, doc, see you in Syracuse!”

“But who is he? Who?” the doctor inquired angrily.

“He’s just a schoolboy, a bit cocky. Don’t pay any attention to him,” Alyosha said quickly, frowning. “Keep quiet, Kolya! You needn’t pay any attention, doctor,” Alyosha added, an impatient note creeping into his voice.

“That brat should get a good hiding, a good hiding!” the doctor said, stamping his foot and becoming really angry.

“You know, doc, perhaps Perezvon does bite, after all!” Kolya said in a quivering voice. He had turned pale and his eyes were glowing. “Here, Perezvon!”

“Kolya, if you say one more word, I will never have anything to do with you again!” Alyosha cried peremptorily.

“You know, doc, there’s only one person in the world who can tell Kolya Krasotkin what to do, and it happens to be him.” He pointed to Alyosha. “So, all right, I’m leaving. Good-by!”

Kolya walked quickly to the door leading inside and opened it. Perezvon rushed after him and they both disappeared. The doctor stood there for five seconds more, staring at Alyosha as if in a stupor. Then he made a spitting sound and went toward his carriage, repeating, “Well, I’ll be—I’ll be—I’ll be . . .” Snegirev hurried to help him into the carriage and Alyosha followed Kolya into the room. Kolya was standing by Ilyusha’s bed. Ilyusha held his hand and was calling for his father. Within a minute Snegirev returned.

“Papa, papa, come here,” Ilyusha muttered in great excitement, but he was too weak to go on. He suddenly threw his emaciated arms forward, one around his father’s neck, the other around Kolya’s, and hugged them as hard as he could. Snegirev shook all over in soundless sobs and Kolya’s chin and lips began to quiver.

“Papa, papa, I’m so, so sorry for you,” Ilyusha moaned.

“Ilyusha, darling . . . Why, the new doctor said you’d get better . . . We’ll all be so happy then . . . The doctor said . . .”

“Ah, papa, I know what the new doctor said about me . . . I could see it,” Ilyusha said, and again hugged both his father and Kolya as hard as he could.

“Don’t cry, papa . . . When I die, get another boy, a good one . . . Choose the best one of them all, call him Ilyusha too, and love him instead of me . . .”

“Stop talking nonsense, old man. You’ll get better soon,” Kolya said angrily.

“But you must never forget me, papa,” Ilyusha said. “I want you to come to my grave . . . And you know what—you can bury me by our big stone, where we used to go for our walks. Come and visit me there in the evening with Krasotkin . . . And I want Perezvon to come too. I’ll be waiting for you in the evenings . . . Papa, papa . . .”

His voice failed him and the three of them remained for a while in their silent embrace. Nina was crying quietly in her chair too. And seeing them all weeping, Mrs. Snegirev also burst into tears.

“Ilyusha, Ilyusha!” she called out.

Kolya suddenly freed himself from Ilyusha’s embrace.

“I must go now, old man. My mother is waiting for me for lunch,” he said very quickly. “I wish I’d warned her I’d be late. She must be terribly worried by now . . . But I’ll be back later in the afternoon and I’ll stay with you all evening, for I have thousands of things to tell you about. I’ll bring Perezvon with me too, but for now I think I’ll take him along, because he’d be howling all the time I was away and that would disturb you. So good-by for now.”

And he rushed out into the passage. He was trying hard not to cry, but once out in the passage he could not hold back his tears. And it was in that state that Alyosha found him.

“Kolya, you absolutely must do as you promised and come back here, or he’ll be terribly miserable.”

“Oh, I’ll be here without fail. I hate myself so for not having come much sooner,” Kolya said, no longer ashamed of his tears.

Snegirev suddenly appeared in the passage, quickly closing the door behind him. His face was painfully contorted and his lips were trembling. He stopped in front of Alyosha and Kolya and flung up his arms in despair.

“I don’t want a good boy! I don’t need any other boy!” he whispered, wildly gnashing his teeth. “‘If I forget thee, Jerusalem, may my tongue . . .’ ”

The words died on his lips and he sank helplessly to his knees beside the wooden bench. Clutching his head between his fists, he sobbed, now and then incongruously whimpering in his attempts to suppress the sounds, so that they wouldn’t hear him inside. Kolya rushed out into the street.

“See you, Karamazov. By the way, will you be here tonight?” he asked abruptly, almost angrily.

“Yes, I’ll be here in the evening without fail.”

“What was it he said about Jerusalem?”

“It’s from the Bible. ‘If I forget thee, Jerusalem’—meaning if I forget what is most precious to me, if I exchange it for something else, then . . .”

“I understand! No need to go on. So don’t forget to come too. Here, Perezvon!” he called the dog with real fierceness now and set out for home at a very fast pace.

Book XI: Ivan

Chapter 1: At Grushenka’s

ALYOSHA WAS walking toward Cathedral Square. He was on his way to Mrs. Morozov’s house, where Grushenka lived. Early that morning she had sent Fenya to him with an urgent message, asking him to come and see her. From Fenya, Alyosha had found out that her mistress had been in particular distress since the day before.

Since Mitya’s arrest, two months earlier, Alyosha had often been to see Grushenka, either of his own accord or to transmit messages to and from Mitya. On the third day after the arrest, Grushenka had been taken ill, and she was very ill for almost five weeks. For a whole week she had been unconscious. She was much changed now: she was thinner and paler, although for the past couple of weeks she had been well enough to leave the house. To Alyosha, however, her face seemed even more attractive than before and it was a joy to him to look at her when he went to see her. She had a new air of firmness and intelligent purpose about her. There were signs of a spiritual transformation in her: an unshakable determination filled her with both resignation and peace of mind. A little vertical line had appeared between her eyebrows, which gave her beautiful face a look of thoughtful concentration and, at first glance, made it appear almost austere. In any case there was nothing left now of her former frivolity. Alyosha found it somewhat strange, though, that, despite the terrible blow she had suffered when the man she had promised to marry was arrested for a heinous crime almost at the very moment of their betrothal, despite her ensuing sickness, and the almost inevitable guilty verdict at the forthcoming trial, Grushenka had never lost her youthful gaiety. Her eyes, once so proud, now shone with a quiet glow, although, at times, the old hard and hostile fire still flickered in them. This was when an old anxiety stole into her heart, something she had never forgotten, something, indeed, that tormented her more than ever now. The object of this anxiety was Katerina, who had haunted Grushenka even in the feverish nightmares of her sickness. Alyosha understood that she was terribly jealous of her, although Katerina never once went to visit Mitya in prison, which she could have done easily enough had she chosen to. This had become a very difficult problem for Alyosha because he was the only person in whom Grushenka confided and whom she constantly asked for advice, and very often he was quite unable to tell her anything.

So he was full of misgivings as he entered her house now. She had been to visit Mitya and had been back home for half an hour. From the way she jumped up from the armchair by the table to come and meet him, Alyosha realized how impatiently she had been waiting for him. There were cards on the table and they seemed to have been dealt out for a game of Fools. On the other side of the table, a bed had been made up on the leather sofa, and in it Maximov, in a dressing gown and a cotton nightcap, lay propped up on pillows. He was obviously not feeling well and was very weak, but he was smiling happily. This homeless old man had stayed at Grushenka’s ever since he had returned with her from Mokroye two months earlier. When they had arrived in rain and sleet, he had sat down on the sofa, wet through to the bone and frightened, and had looked at her with a beseeching smile. Grushenka, who was feeling miserable and was already in the first stages of a fever, almost completely forgot about his existence as she fussed about the house in the first half hour after their arrival. Then she suddenly noticed him and gave him a strange look, at which he gave a helpless little chuckle. She called Fenya and told her to give him something to eat. After that, he continued to sit in the same spot, hardly stirring. When it got dark and the shutters were closed, Fenya asked Grushenka:

“Why, madam, is the gentleman staying here for the night?”

“Yes, make up a bed for him on the sofa,” Grushenka said.

When Grushenka had asked Maximov about his further plans, he had told her that he really had none for the moment and that, in fact, he had nowhere to go since “Mr. Kalganov, who has been putting me up until now, told me he couldn’t have me anymore and gave me five rubles.” Filled as she was with her own grief, Grushenka felt sorry for poor old Maximov.

“Well, I guess you’d better stay here then,” she said with a smile. That smile made Maximov’s chin jerk and his lips tremble as he dissolved into tears of gratitude.

And so this nomadic sponger had remained with her ever since. Even when Grushenka became ill, he did not leave, and Fenya and her mother did not throw him out but continued to feed him and make up the bed on the sofa for him. Later, when Grushenka started visiting Mitya in prison (which she did as soon as she could go out, even before she had completely recovered), she would sit down upon her return with “Maximushka” and talk all kinds of nonsense to him, just to try and take her mind off her grief; and she became quite accustomed to him. Then she discovered that, on occasion, Maximov was quite good at telling stories, and gradually he became almost indispensable to her.

Otherwise, except for Alyosha, who did not come to see her every day and never stayed very long when he did come, Grushenka saw no one. Samsonov, Grushenka’s old protector, was seriously ill at the time, “at his last gasp,” they said in town, and, indeed, he was to die only a week after Mitya’s trial. Three weeks before his death, he summoned his sons with their wives and children to his bedside and, feeling that his end was near, ordered them not to leave him. At the same time he ordered his servants not to admit Grushenka to the house and, if she came, to tell her that he wished her a long and happy life and many good times, and that he wanted her to forget him. Grushenka, however, sent someone every day to inquire about his health.

“Here you are at last,” Grushenka cried, throwing down the cards and happily greeting Alyosha. “Maximushka kept frightening me by saying he didn’t expect you’d come today. I wanted to see you so badly! Sit down here, at the table. Would you like some coffee?”

“That would be nice,” Alyosha said, sitting down. “I’m rather hungry.”

“Good. Fenya, Fenya! Bring us some coffee please! I’ve been keeping it hot for you, Alyosha. Fenya, bring some pies, too, and see that they’re hot. I had a real row about those pies, Alyosha: I took them to Mitya in prison and, believe it or not, he wouldn’t eat them. He even threw one pie on the floor and stepped on it. I said to him: ‘I’ll leave them with the guard and if you don’t eat them before evening that’ll show that it’s your malicious spite that feeds you.’ And I left. So we’ve quarreled again. You wouldn’t believe it, Alyosha—every time I go to see him, we quarrel.”

Grushenka fired all this off in one breath, in great excitement. Maximov seemed embarrassed. He lowered his eyes, still grinning.

“What did you two quarrel about this time?” Alyosha asked her.

“I never expected we could quarrel about this! Just imagine—now he’s jealous of the Pole. ‘Why are you keeping him?’ he asks me, ‘for I understand you’re supporting him now!’ He never stops being jealous. He’s jealous while he eats, while he sleeps, all the time. Last week he even made a scene about Kuzma.”

“But he knew about you and the Pole before, didn’t he?”

“Go and try to understand him, though. He’s known about it all the time, but today he suddenly jumped up and started reproaching me. I’m even ashamed to repeat the things he said. What a fool! Rakitin came to see him as I was leaving. Perhaps he’s putting all these ideas into Mitya’s head—do you think so?” she asked absentmindedly.

“He loves you so much—that’s why he’s like that. Besides, he’s very much on edge just now.”

“Well, it’s quite natural that he should be on edge with the trial coming up tomorrow. In fact, I wanted to talk to him about it when I went there, for I’m afraid even to think of what will happen. Besides, do you think I’m not on edge too? And he finds nothing better to do than to worry about that Pole! Ah, the idiot! I hope he’s not jealous of Maximushka, at least.”

“My wife used to be very jealous too,” Maximov said, putting in his word.

“That’s really pretty hard to imagine.” Grushenka laughed despite herself. “Who could she be possibly have been jealous of?”

“She was jealous of the young maids.”

“Ah, keep quiet, Maximushka. I don’t feel like laughing now. I’m too furious . . . And don’t you look at the pies like that—you can’t have any. And you can’t have any liqueur either. As if I had nothing better to do now than look after you. This place has become a kind of alms house, really,” she added with a laugh.

“I know I’m unworthy of your generosity,” Maximov said in a tearful voice; “perhaps you’d do better to be generous with people whom you need more than you need me . . .”

“Ah, Maximushka, every person is needed, and who can tell who is needed more and who less. Oh, Alyosha, I wish that Pole had never existed, for he, too, suddenly decided to fall ill today and I had to go and see him as well. Well, I’ll send him some pies too. I hadn’t sent him any before, but since Mitya has accused me of sending them to him, I’ll send them now! Ah, here’s Fenya with a letter . . . Yes, that’s it, it’s from the Poles again, and again they’re asking me for money!”

Pan Musijalowicz had indeed sent Grushenka one of his long, florid letters, the gist of which was that he wanted her to send him three rubles. Enclosed in the letter was a signed IOU for that sum, payable within three months and counter-signed by Pan Wrublewski. Grushenka had already received many such letters and IOU’s. They had started arriving two weeks before, when she had first recovered from her sickness. She also knew that, while she was still sick, the two Poles had come to inquire about her health. The first letter she had received was extremely long, filling a whole large sheet of notepaper. It had a huge family crest on the seal and was written in such a complicated, involved style that she gave up reading it when she got half way through because she could not follow. Besides, she had other things to worry about. The next day, she had received a second letter, in which Musijalowicz asked her to lend him two thousand rubles for a very short period. Grushenka had not answered that letter either. Then followed a whole series of letters, one a day, all just as pompous and florid as before and differing from each other only in the rapidly decreasing figure of the loan requested, until it became a mere one hundred rubles, then twenty-five, then ten, and then a letter came in which each Polish gentleman asked her for a loan of one ruble; it was accompanied by a receipt signed jointly by both.

Grushenka then felt sorry for her first love and in the evening went to pay the Poles a visit. She found them living in dire poverty, almost indigent, without food, heat, or tobacco, and owing money to their landlady. The two hundred rubles they had won from Mitya in Mokroye had mysteriously disappeared. Grushenka was rather taken aback when the Poles met her with their usual pompous and aggressive airs of independence, when they insisted on maintaining a pretense of the same knightly etiquette and drowned her in their florid speeches. Grushenka just burst out laughing and gave ten rubles to her former seducer. The next day she laughingly recounted the incident to Mitya and, at that time, it had not made him feel jealous in the least. Since then, however, the Poles had never ceased bombarding Grushenka with letters asking her for money, and she had kept sending them small sums. And now, all of a sudden, Mitya had become jealous.

“Stupid as I am, I stopped over at the Pole’s on my way to see Mitya. He had been taken ill, the Pole,” Grushenka began again, speaking hurriedly and nervously. “Then, when I saw Mitya, I told him laughingly that the Pole had picked up his guitar and tried to sing me those old songs of his, hoping that I’d lose my head and go back to him. And as I was telling him, he all of a sudden jumped up and started swearing like a madman. Well, if that’s the way it is, I’ll just send those pies to the Poles. Fenya, did they send that girl again with the letter? All right, then, give her these three rubles and wrap up, say, ten pies, and tell her to take the package to them. And you, Alyosha, don’t you forget to tell Mitya that I sent them those pies.”

“I certainly won’t tell him anything of the sort,” Alyosha said, smiling.

“Why, do you think he’s really suffering? No, he’s just making himself jealous deliberately. He doesn’t really care . . .” Grushenka said bitterly.

“What do you mean—deliberately?”

“You’re very silly, Alyosha. You don’t understand the first thing about it, although in other ways you’re an intelligent man. What offends me is not that he’s jealous of a woman like me—in fact, I would have been offended if he hadn’t been jealous at all. The way I am, I don’t mind jealousy. I myself can be pretty cruel when it comes down to it, and pretty jealous too. But what hurts me is that he doesn’t really love me now, that he has deliberately worked himself up into that state. Why, you don’t really think I’m so blind? He’s suddenly started telling me about that Katya woman: she’s so great and so marvelous and this and that, and she’s sent for a doctor from Moscow and engaged the most eminent and learned lawyer, the very best there is, to save him, Mitya . . . Shows he must love her, if he praises her so unashamedly right to my face, looking at me with those shameless eyes of his! So he feels he’s in the wrong and is just trying to put the blame on me instead, so he can say to me later: ‘Well it was you who started by taking up with that Pole again, so it’s all right for me to feel the way I do about Katya.’ You see, that’s the way it really is. He’s trying to make himself believe that it’s all my fault, so he’s deliberately picking on the Pole now. I tell you, Alyosha! But I’ll . . .”

Grushenka could not finish saying what she would do; she covered her face with a handkerchief and burst into sobs.

“He is not in love with Katerina,” Alyosha said with assurance.

“I’ll soon find out for myself whether he is or not,” Grushenka said, a threatening note creeping into her voice as she removed the handkerchief from her face. Her face was contorted. Alyosha saw sadly that the face, which had so recently impressed him with its gentle serenity, had now become sullen and cruel.