The Brothers Karamazov (140 page)

“It’s hard on you, woman.” The words came quite unexpectedly from Mitya’s lips.

“Let me go now,” she whispered. “I’ll come again; it’s too painful now.”

She stood up. But all of a sudden she let out a piercing cry and reeled back.

Grushenka had entered the room. She had come in with her light, noiseless step and none of them had heard her. They had not expected her then. Katerina took a couple of quick, determined steps toward the door, but when she reached Grushenka, she stopped. Her face was completely bloodless. In a whisper reminiscent of a sigh, she said to her:

“Forgive me . . .”

Grushenka looked straight into her eyes for a few seconds and then, in a voice distorted with fury, answered:

“We are too vicious, my good woman, both of us, and we’re both past the niceties of forgiveness. But all you have to do now is to save him, and if you do, I promise I’ll pray for you as long as I live.”

“You refused to forgive her!” Mitya shouted at Grushenka in a crazily reproachful voice.

“You needn’t worry, I’ll save him for you!” Katerina said in a quick whisper, and hurried out of the room.

“How could you not forgive her after she said to you herself, ‘Forgive me’?” Mitya persisted bitterly.

“You have no right to make such reproaches to Grushenka!” Alyosha told him heatedly.

“It was just that insolent mouth of hers that asked for forgiveness, it wasn’t her heart,” Grushenka said in a strangely disgusted tone. “But if she gets you out of trouble, I’ll forgive her for everything anyway.”

She fell silent, as if suppressing something within her. She still had not quite taken hold of herself. It turned out later that she had just come to see Mitya on the spur of the moment, without any suspicion of whom she might find with him.

“Run after her, Alyosha,” Mitya cried agitatedly. “Tell her . . . I don’t know what you should tell her. Just don’t let her go away like that . . .”

“I’ll come back in the evening,” Alyosha cried as he rushed out to catch Katerina. When he caught up with her, she had already left the hospital grounds. She was walking very fast, but when she saw Alyosha she turned toward him and said:

“No, I cannot prostrate myself before that woman! I asked her to forgive me, because I wanted to punish myself completely. She didn’t forgive me. I like her for that!” Katerina added in an unrecognizable voice, her eyes flashing with a wild hatred.

“Mitya was not expecting her to come. He was sure she wouldn’t come,” Alyosha muttered lamely.

“I’m sure of that, but let’s forget it,” she snapped. “Listen, I can’t go to that funeral with you now. I’ve already had flowers sent. I think they must still have enough money left. And tell them that if they need some later, I’ll never abandon them. And now leave me, please. Besides, you’ll never get there in time—the bells are ringing for late mass . . . Oh, leave me, please . . .”

Chapter 3: Ilyusha’s Funeral. The Speech By The Stone

AS KATERINA had thought, Alyosha did not get there in time. They had waited for him and had finally decided to carry the pretty little coffin, all bedecked with flowers, to the church without him. It was Ilyusha’s coffin. The poor child had died two days after Mitya had been sentenced. When Ilyusha’s young friends saw Alyosha at the gate, they called out to him: they were greatly relieved to see he had come at last. There were twelve schoolboys there and they had all come with their schoolbags slung across their shoulders.

“Papa will cry,” Ilyusha had told them before he died. “Please stay with him.” And now the boys wanted to do as he had asked them. Kolya Krasotkin was at the head of the group.

“I’m so glad to see you!” Kolya exclaimed, shaking Alyosha’s hand. “It’s so awfully depressing here, really painful to watch. We know for certain that Snegirev hasn’t had anything to drink all day, but he’s acting just as if he were drunk . . . I’ve always been able to control my feelings, but what’s happening here today is really horrible! But before you go in, Karamazov, may I ask just one thing, if it’s all right with you?”

“What is it, Kolya?” Alyosha said, stopping.

“Is your brother really guilty or is he innocent? Was it he or the lackey who killed your father? I’ll believe whatever you tell me. I’ve spent four sleepless nights trying to work it out.”

“My brother didn’t do it. It was the lackey.”

“That’s what I said all along!” young Smurov suddenly cried out.

“And so your brother will perish, an innocent victim, for the truth!” Kolya cried. “He is a happy man, although he has been condemned. Indeed, I envy him!”

“What are you talking about? What do you mean by that?” Alyosha said in surprise.

“Oh, if only I knew that one day I would be given the chance to sacrifice myself for truth and justice,” Kolya said enthusiastically.

“But you certainly can’t mean like that, not with the terrible disgrace and horror it involved!” Alyosha cried.

“Of course, what I want is to die in the service of mankind as a whole. As for the disgrace, what difference does it make? Let our names be disgraced if they must! I respect your brother!”

“And so do I!” the boy who had once announced that he knew who had founded Troy cried out quite unexpectedly. And now, as then, having made his announcement, he turned red as a peony.

Alyosha entered the room. Ilyusha, with his hands folded on his chest, lay in a blue coffin edged with a white frill. The emaciated face had hardly changed and, strangely enough, almost no smell came from the boy’s body. His face wore a stern expression, as if he were deep in thought. The crossed hands were particularly beautiful; they looked as if they had been carved out of marble. There were flowers in Ilyusha’s hands, and the whole coffin was covered with flowers. They had been brought in early in the morning, having been ordered by Lise Khokhlakov. There were flowers from Katerina too, and when Alyosha went in, Snegirev had a bunch of flowers in his shaking hands and was scattering them over his dear boy. As Alyosha entered, Snegirev hardly glanced at him. In fact, he hardly paid any attention to anyone, not even to his weeping, crazy wife, who kept trying to get up on her crippled legs to have a closer look at her dead son. The schoolboys had brought Ilyusha’s sister Nina close to the coffin in her chair, and now she was sitting there right next to it, her head pressed against the wood, crying quietly. Snegirev looked agitated and bewildered, and also evidenced a certain frantic exasperation. There was something insane in his gestures and in the words that escaped him now and then. “Old man, ah, dear old man!” he kept exclaiming, looking at Ilyusha, for he used to call him “old man” as a term of affection, when the boy was still alive.

“Papa, I want some flowers too!” crazy Mrs. Snegirev whimpered. “Take that white one out of his hand and give it to me!”

Either because the little white rose fascinated her or because she wanted the flower as a keepsake, since it had been in her boy’s hands, she became very excited and stretched out her hands toward the flower.

“Nobody can have it! They are his flowers, not yours!” Snegirev snapped at her mercilessly.

“Papa, please, give the flower to mamma,” Nina said, raising her tearstained face to her father.

“I won’t give anything to anyone, and to her least of all! She never loved him! That time she took the little cannon away from him—and he let her have it . . .” Snegirev suddenly cried in a sobbing voice, remembering how the boy had yielded the cannon to his mother.

The poor madwoman burst into tears, hiding her face in her hands.

The time came to carry the coffin out, but Snegirev would not budge from it. The schoolboys surrounded it and started to lift it.

“I don’t want him to be buried in the churchyard!” Snegirev screamed; “he must be buried by our big stone. The way Ilyusha wanted it. I won’t let you take him away!”

Long before, he had said that he wanted the boy buried by the stone, but now everybody intervened—Alyosha, Kolya, the old landlady, Nina, and all the boys.

“What are you thinking of—wanting the child buried by that unholy stone?” the landlady said severely. “That’s where they’d bury someone who’d hanged himself or something. He must be buried in the churchyard, which is holy ground, under a cross. They’ll pray for him there. The singing and the deacon’s reading can be heard clearly from the church there, so it’s as if they were reading right over his grave.”

Finally Snegirev waved his arms in helpless despair, as if saying, “All right, do whatever you want.”

The boys picked up the coffin, but as they carried it past Ilyusha’s mother, they lowered it to allow her to say a last good-by to her son. And now that she saw the child’s face so close to her, after having looked at it for three days at a distance, she suddenly started to shake all over and toss her gray head back and forth.

“Mother, make the sign of the cross over him. Give him your blessing, and kiss him,” Nina prompted her.

But Mrs. Snegirev went on jerking her head like an automaton, her face contorted with pain, and, without saying a word, suddenly started pounding her breast with her fist.

The boys picked up the coffin, and when they lowered it beside Nina, she kissed her brother’s lips for the last time.

As he was leaving the house, Alyosha asked the landlady to look after Ilyusha’s mother and his sister who, of course, had to stay behind. But she did not even give him a chance to finish.

“I know, I know, I’m a Christian too. I’ll look after them,” she said. She was weeping too.

It wasn’t far to the church, three hundred yards or so. It was a clear, windless day and the temperature was only slightly below freezing. The bells were still ringing. Snegirev followed the coffin with a worried, forlorn look. He wore his short summer overcoat and his head was bare; he carried his wide-brimmed felt hat in his hand. He seemed to be trying to cope with some insurmountable difficulty: he would suddenly dash up in front of the coffin and hold out his hand to support it, getting in the way of those were carrying it, and then he would come at it from the side and look for a spot there. And when a flower fell into the snow, he hurried to pick it up with an expression so tense that it seemed as if everything depended on his retrieving that flower.

“What about the piece of bread? We forgot the bread!” he suddenly cried out in panic.

The boys reminded him that he had taken a piece of bread and put it in his pocket earlier. He took it out to make sure it was there and then grew calmer.

“Ilyusha wanted it,” he explained. “As I sat by his bed one night, he said to me: ‘Papa, when they fill my grave, I want you to scatter some bread crumbs on top of it, so the sparrows will come and I’ll have company there and it will be fun!’ ”

“That’s a good idea,” Alyosha said. “You should scatter crumbs on his grave often.”

“Every day, every single day!” Snegirev said quickly, visibly cheered.

They reached the church, placing the coffin in the middle of it. The boys stood around it and remained standing reverently throughout the service. The church was old and poor and many of the icons had no settings, but somehow one prays better in such churches. Snegirev seemed to have calmed down somewhat, although, from time to time, that perplexed, worried look would reappear on his face, and then he would approach the coffin to set the cover or a wreath straight, and when a candle fell out of its candlestick, he rushed up and busied himself for a very long time with putting it back. When he had finally done it, he stood still by the head of the coffin with a dumbly worried and bewildered expression. After the epistle, he suddenly whispered into Alyosha’s ear that “they hadn’t read it quite right,” but he did not elaborate further. During the hymn “Like the Cherubim,” he tried to join in the singing but soon gave up, knelt down, put his forehead on the stone floor, and remained in that position for a long time.

Then they distributed candles and started the requiem chant. The poor father was again overwhelmed with misery and started to fidget. But the moving chants brought him back to reality with a shock. He suddenly seemed to have shrunk and started to shake in short sobs, at first silent but soon uncontrolled and noisy. When the time came for him to take leave of his dead son and to close the coffin, he put his arms around the casket, as if trying to prevent them from covering his little Ilyusha, and kissed the dead boy’s lips eagerly and lengthily. They finally succeeded in making him step down, but he suddenly rushed back to the coffin, put his hand inside it, and snatched up a few flowers. As he stared at those flowers, some new idea must have come to him and he seemed to have forgotten for the moment where he was and what was going on around him. He was now as if in a dream and offered no resistance when they picked up the coffin and carried it to the open grave. It was an expensive grave, very close to the church. It had been paid for by Katerina. After the customary rites, the coffin was lowered into the ground. Snegirev went so close to the open grave and bent so far over it, still holding the flowers in his hand, that the boys, afraid that he would fall in, seized him by the skirts of his coat and pulled him back. But he obviously no longer realized what was happening around him. When they started to fill the grave, he pointed anxiously to the falling earth, said something that no one understood, and then gave up and fell silent. Then they reminded him about the bread crumbs, and, becoming very agitated, he took the piece of bread from his pocket and started tearing small bits off it and throwing them on the grave:

“Come down, little birdies, come, little sparrows,” he muttered.

One of the boys pointed out to him that it would be easier for him if he allowed someone to hold the flowers while he scattered the crumbs, but Snegirev refused, even looking frightened, as if they wanted to take the flowers away from him. He looked at the grave to make sure that everything was in order and that the crumbs were in place, and then, to everybody’s surprise, he turned away and slowly started walking home. Gradually his steps became faster and faster and soon he was almost running. Alyosha and the boys followed close behind him.