Poor Folk Anthology

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  Chapter 7 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

  "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, SiciIy 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

  "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 used the word apothecary instead of doctor on purpose, and, as he explained afterwards, used it "to insult him."

  "What's that?" The doctor flung up his head, staring with surprise at Kolya. "Who's this?" he addressed Alyosha, as though asking him to explain.

  "It's Perezvon's master, don't worry about me," Kolya said incisively again.

  "Perezvon?" [13] repeated the doctor, perplexed. "He hears the bell, but where it is he cannot tell. Good-bye, we shall meet in Syracuse." "Who's this? Who's this?" The doctor flew into a terrible rage. "He is a schoolboy, doctor, he is a mischievous boy; take no notice of him," said Alyosha, frowning and speaking quickly. "Kolya, hold your tongue!" he cried to Krassotkin. "Take no notice of him, doctor," he repeated, rather impatiently. "He wants a thrashing, a good thrashing!" The doctor stamped in a perfect fury. "And you know, apothecary, my Perezvon might bite!" said Kolya, turning pale, with quivering voice and flashing eyes. "Ici, Perezvon!" "Kolya, if you say another word, I'll have nothing more to do with you," Alyosha cried peremptorily. "There is only one man in the world who can command Nikolay Krassotkin- this is the man," Kolya pointed to Alyosha. "I obey him, good-bye!" He stepped forward, opened the door, and quickly went into the inner room. Perezvon flew after him. The doctor stood still for five seconds in amazement, looking at Alyosha; then, with a curse, he went out quickly to the carriage, repeating aloud, "This is… this is… I don't know what it is!" The captain darted forward to help him into the carriage. Alyosha followed Kolya into the room. He was already by Ilusha's bedside. The sick boy was holding his hand and calling for his father. A minute later the captain, too, came back. "Father, father, come… we… " Ilusha faltered in violent excitement, but apparently unable to go on, he flung his wasted arms, found his father and Kolya, uniting them in one embrace, and hugging them as tightly as he could. The captain suddenly began to shake with dumb sobs, and Kolya's lips and chin twitched. "Father, father! How sorry I am for you!" Ilusha moaned bitterly. "Ilusha… darling… the doctor said… you would be all right… we shall be happy… the doctor… " the captain began. "Ah, father! I know what the new doctor said to you about me… . I saw!" cried Ilusha, and again he hugged them both with all his strength, hiding his face on his father's shoulder. "Father, don't cry, and when I die get a good boy, another one… choose one of them all, a good one, call him Ilusha and love him instead of me… " "Hush, old man, you'll get well," Krassotkin cried suddenly, in a voice that sounded angry. "But don't ever forget me, father," Ilusha went on, "come to my grave… and father, bury me by our big stone, where we used to go for our walk, and come to me there with Krassotkin in the evening… and Perezvon… I shall expect you… . Father, father!" His voice broke. They were all three silent, still embracing. Nina was crying, quietly in her chair, and at last seeing them all crying, "mamma," too, burst into tears. "Ilusha! Ilusha!" she exclaimed. Krassotkin suddenly released himself from Ilusha's embrace. "Good-bye, old man, mother expects me back to dinner," he said quickly. "What a pity I did not tell her! She will be dreadfully anxious… But after dinner I'll come back to you for the whole day, for the whole evening, and I'll tell you all sorts of things, all sorts of things. And I'll bring Perezvon, but now I will take him with me, because he will begin to howl when I am away and bother you. Good-bye! And he ran out into the passage. He didn't want to cry, but in the passage he burst into tears. Alyosha found him crying. "Kolya, you must be sure to keep your word and come, or he will be terribly disappointed," Alyosha said emphatically. "I will! Oh, how I curse myself for not having come before" muttered Kolya, crying, and no longer ashamed of it. At that moment the captain flew out of the room, and at once closed the door behind him. His face looked frenzied, his lips were trembling. He stood before the two and flung up his arms. "I don't want a good boy! I don't want another boy!" he muttered in a wild whisper, clenching his teeth. "If I forget thee, knees before the wooden bench. Pressing his fists against his head, he began sobbing with absurd whimpering cries, doing his utmost that his cries should not be heard in the room. Kolya ran out into the street. "Good-bye, Karamazov? Will you come yourself?" he cried sharply and angrily to Alyosha. "I will certainly come in the evening." "What was that he said about Jerusalem?… What did he mean by that?" "It's from the Bible. 'If I forget thee, Jerusalem,' that is, if I forget all that is most precious to me, if I let anything take its place, then may-" "I understand, that's enough! Mind you come! Ici, Perezvon!" he cried with positive ferocity to the dog, and with rapid strides he went home.

  Part 11

  Ivan

  Chapter 1 — At Grushenka's

  ALYOSHA went towards the cathedral square to the widow Morozov's house to see Grushenka, who had sent Fenya to him early in the morning with an urgent message begging him to come. Questioning Fenya, Alyosha learned that her mistress had been particularly distressed since the previous day. During the two months that had passed since Mitya's arrest, Alyosha had called frequently at the widow Morozov's house, both from his own inclination and to take messages for Mitya. Three days after Mitya's arrest, Grushenka was taken very ill and was ill for nearly five weeks. For one whole week she was unconscious. She was very much changed- thinner and a little sallow, though she had for the past fortnight been well enough to go out. But to Alyosha her face was even more attractive than bef
ore, and he liked to meet her eyes when he went in to her. A look of firmness and intelligent purpose had developed in her face. There were signs of a spiritual transformation in her, and a steadfast, fine and humble determination that nothing could shake could be discerned in her. There was a small vertical line between her brows which gave her charming face a look of concentrated thought, almost austere at the first glance. There was scarcely a trace of her former frivolity.

  It seemed strange to Alyosha, too, that in spite of the calamity that had overtaken the poor girl, betrothed to a man who had been arrested for a terrible crime, almost at the instant of their betrothal, in spite of her illness and the almost inevitable sentence hanging over Mitya, Grushenka had not yet lost her youthful cheerfulness. There was a soft light in the once proud eyes, though at times they gleamed with the old vindictive fire when she was visited by one disturbing thought stronger than ever in her heart. The object of that uneasiness was the same as ever- Katerina Ivanovna, of whom Grushenka had even raved when she lay in delirium. Alyosha knew that she was fearfully jealous of her. Yet Katerina Ivanovna had not once visited Mitya in his prison, though she might have done it whenever she liked. All this made a difficult problem for Alyosha, for he was the only person to whom Grushenka opened her heart and from whom she was continually asking advice. Sometimes he was unable to say anything.

  Full of anxiety he entered her lodging. She was at home. She had returned from seeing Mitya half an hour before, and from the rapid movement with which she leapt up from her chair to meet him he saw that she had been expecting him with great impatience. A pack of cards dealt for a game of "fools" lay on the table. A bed had been made up on the leather sofa on the other side and Maximov lay, half reclining, on it. He wore a dressing-gown and a cotton nightcap, and was evidently ill and weak, though he was smiling blissfully. When the homeless old man returned with Grushenka from Mokroe two months before, he had simply stayed on and was still staying with her. He arrived with her in rain and sleet, sat down on the sofa, drenched and scared, and gazed mutely at her with a timid, appealing smile. Grushenka, who was in terrible grief and in the first stage of fever, almost forgot his existence in all she had to do the first half hour after her arrival. Suddenly she chanced to look at him intently: he laughed a pitiful, helpless little laugh. She called Fenya and told her to give him something to eat. All that day he sat in the same place, almost without stirring. When it got dark and the shutters were closed, Fenya asked her mistress:

  "Is the gentleman going to stay the night, mistress?"

  "Yes; make him a bed on the sofa," answered Grushenka.

  Questioning him more in detail, Grushenka learned from him that he had literally nowhere to go, and that "Mr. Kalganov, my benefactor, told me straight that he wouldn't receive me again and gave me five roubles."

  "Well, God bless you, you'd better stay, then," Grushenka decided in her grief, smiling compassionately at him. Her smile wrung the old man's heart and his lips twitched with grateful tears. And so the destitute wanderer had stayed with her ever since. He did not leave the house even when she was ill. Fenya and her grandmother, the cook, did not turn him out, but went on serving him meals and making up his bed on the sofa. Grushenka had grown used to him, and coming back from seeing Mitya (whom she had begun to visit in prison before she was really well) she would sit down and begin talking to "Maximushka" about trifling matters, to keep her from thinking of her sorrow. The old man turned out to be a good story-teller on occasions, so that at last he became necessary to her. Grushenka saw scarcely anyone else beside Alyosha, who did not come every day and never stayed long. Her old merchant lay seriously ill at this time, "at his last gasp" as they said in the town, and he did, in fact, die a week after Mitya's trial. Three weeks before his death, feeling the end approaching, he made his sons, their wives and children, come upstairs to him at last and bade them not leave him again. From that moment he gave strict orders to his servants not to admit Grushenka and to tell her if she came, "The master wishes you long life and happiness and tells you to forget him." But Grushenka sent almost every day to inquire after him.

  "You've come at last!" she cried, flinging down the cards and joyfully greeting Alyosha, "and Maximushka's been scaring me that perhaps you wouldn't come. Ah, how I need you! Sit down to the table. What will you have coffee?"

  "Yes, please," said Alyosha, sitting down at the table. "I am very hungry."

  "That's right. Fenya, Fenya, coffee," cried Grushenka. "It's been made a long time ready for you. And bring some little pies, and mind they are hot. Do you know, we've had a storm over those pies to-day. I took them to the prison for him, and would you believe it, he threw them back to me: he would not eat them. He flung one of them on the floor and stamped on it. So I said to him: 'I shall leave them with the warder; if you don't eat them before evening, it will be that your venomous spite is enough for you!' With that I went away. We quarrelled again, would you believe it? Whenever I go we quarrel."

  Grushenka said all this in one breath in her agitation. Maximov, feeling nervous, at once smiled and looked on the floor.

  "What did you quarrel about this time?" asked Alyosha.

  "I didn't expect it in the least. Only fancy, he is jealous of the Pole. 'Why are you keeping him?' he said. 'So you've begun keeping him.' He is jealous, jealous of me all the time, jealous eating and sleeping! He even took into his head to be jealous of Kuzma last week."