‘You be off too, there’s nothing here for you today,’ he said sharply.
Alyosha went up to him and kissed him on the shoulder in parting.
‘What was that for?’ the old man asked in some surprise. ‘We’re going to see each other again, aren’t we? Or don’t you think so?’
‘Of course we are, don’t take any notice of me, I didn’t mean anything special.’
‘Well, neither did I, I didn’t mean it…’, the old man watched him go. ‘I say, listen,’ he called after him, ‘come again sometime, don’t leave it too long, come and join me for a bowl of fish soup, I’ll have it made specially, a really good one, not like today’s, make sure you come! Yes, tomorrow, do you hear me, come tomorrow!’
And as soon as Alyosha had gone, he went back to the small cupboard and downed another tot of brandy.
‘Shan’t have any more!’ he mumbled with a croak, then he locked the cupboard again, put the key back in his pocket and withdrew to his bedroom, where he slumped exhausted on to his bed and immediately fell asleep.
3
AN ENCOUNTER WITH SOME SCHOOLBOYS
‘THANK God he didn’t ask me about Grushenka,’ Alyosha thought as he was leaving his father to set off for Mrs Khokhlakova’s, ‘otherwise I’d probably have had to tell him about meeting her yesterday.’ Alyosha reflected with sadness that the adversaries had replenished their strength overnight and had steeled their hearts for another day’s confrontation. ‘Father’s upset and angry, he’s got hold of some idea and won’t budge; and what about Dmitry? He too must have become more entrenched overnight, and what’s more is probably angry and upset and will have hatched some plan… Oh, I must definitely find him today, whatever happens…’
But Alyosha had no opportunity to spend much time in thought: an incident happened on the way which, though not very significant in itself, nevertheless left a strong impression on him. As soon as he had crossed the square and turned into a side-alley in order to reach Mikhailovskaya Street, which runs parallel to the High Street and is separated from it only by a ditch (the whole of our town is criss-crossed with ditches), he spotted a small group of schoolboys, all young lads between the ages of nine and twelve, no more, down by the bridge. They were heading for home with their satchels on their backs or with leather bags on straps across their shoulders, some in short jackets, others in little overcoats, and there were some who wore high boots with folded-over tops, such as spoilt children, darlings of well-to-do fathers, are particularly fond of wearing. The whole group was involved in animated discussion, apparently conferring about something or other. Alyosha could never pass children without a sense of curiosity, it had been the same in Moscow, and although he was fond of children of three or thereabouts, he also liked to stop to talk to ten- or eleven-year-olds too. Therefore, although he was preoccupied at that moment, he suddenly felt an urge to approach them and strike up a conversation. On coming closer, he studied their rosy, excited faces, and suddenly noticed that every boy had a stone in his hand, and some even two. On the other side of the small ditch, at a distance of about thirty paces from the group, beside a fence, stood another lad, a schoolboy too, with a small bag over his shoulder, about ten years of age to judge by his height, not more, perhaps even less—pale, sickly-looking, and with brilliant black eyes. He was keenly and attentively watching the six boys in the group, seemingly his friends, with whom he had just left the school building but was now apparently at loggerheads. Alyosha approached and, turning to one fair, curly-haired, rosy-cheeked lad in a black jacket, looked at him closely and said:
‘When I had a bag like yours, we used to carry them over our left shoulder so we could get at them easily with the right hand; but you’ve got it over your right shoulder, which makes it awkward to get at.’
Alyosha began straight away with this matter-of-fact remark, without any premeditated guile, which indeed is the only way for an adult to begin if he wants to win the confidence of a child, more especially of a whole group of children. One should begin in perfect seriousness and come to the point, so as to be entirely on an equal footing; Alyosha understood this intuitively.
‘But he’s left-handed,’ promptly replied another healthy-looking, cocky boy of about eleven. The remaining five turned their eyes on Alyosha and stared hard at him.
‘He throws stones with his left arm, too,’ a third boy remarked. Just at that moment a stone landed among the group, slightly grazing the left-handed boy but missing everybody else, although it had been projected accurately and with force. It had been thrown by the boy on the far side of the ditch.
‘Hit him, get him, Smurov!’ everybody shouted. Smurov (the left-handed boy) did not need prompting, and immediately responded by throwing a stone at the boy across the ditch, but missed; the stone hit the ground. The boy across the ditch threw another stone at the group, this time straight at Alyosha, and hit him rather painfully on the shoulder. The boy had his pockets full of stones in readiness, as was evident at thirty paces by the way his coat pockets bulged.
‘He was trying to get you, you know, he was deliberately aiming at you. You’re Karamazov, aren’t you?’ the boys shouted, roaring with laughter. ‘All together now, take aim, fire!’
And six stones soared into the air from the group. One caught the boy on the head and he fell, but he was up again in a trice and began to retaliate with more stones. A continuous barrage of stones ensued from both sides; it turned out that most of the group had stones in their pockets too.
‘What are you doing, boys! You should be ashamed of yourselves! Six against one, you’ll kill him!’ Alyosha shouted.
He dashed out to face the hail of stones so as to shield the boy across the ditch. Three or four of the boys paused for a moment.
‘He started it!’ shouted a boy in a red shirt in a shrill, childish voice. ‘He’s a rat; in the classroom today he stabbed Krasotkin with a penknife, there was blood all over. Krasotkin didn’t want to report him, but we’re going to beat him up…’
‘Why? You’ve probably been teasing him, haven’t you?’
‘There goes another of his stones, straight at your back. He knows you,’ the boys shouted. ‘Now it’s you he’s aiming at, not us. Well, all together now, let’s get him, don’t miss, Smurov!’
This time the stone-throwing recommenced in all its viciousness. The boy on the far side of the ditch was hit on the chest; he cried out, burst into tears, and ran up the hill towards Mikhailovskaya Street. Some of the boys yelled out: ‘Aha, coward, running away! Loofah, loofah!’
‘You’ve no idea, Karamazov, what a rat he is, it’d serve him right if we killed him,’ repeated the boy in the jacket, his eyes gleaming. He seemed to be the eldest.
‘Why, what’s he done?’ Alyosha asked. ‘Has he been telling tales or something?’
The boys exchanged knowing grins.
‘You’re going his way, to Mikhailovskaya, aren’t you?’ continued the same boy. ‘Well then, why don’t you catch him up… Look, he’s stopped again, he’s waiting and looking at you.’
‘He’s looking at you, he’s looking at you!’ the boys echoed.
‘You want to ask him if he likes a wispy bath-tub loofah. Go on, ask him that.’
There was a general burst of laughter. Alyosha looked at the boys and they looked at him.
‘Don’t!’ Smurov warned. ‘He’ll knock you down.’
‘Boys, I shan’t ask him about the loofah, that’s obviously something you’ve been teasing him about, but I’ll find out from him why it is you hate him so…’
‘Go ahead and find out,’ the boys laughed.
Alyosha crossed the bridge and went up the hill by the side of the fence, straight towards the ostracized boy.
‘Watch out,’ the boys shouted after him, ‘he’s not afraid of you, he’ll stab you without warning when you’re not looking… just like he did Krasotkin.’
The boy was waiting for him, rooted to the spot. As he approached, Alyosha saw before him a child
of not more than nine, slightly built and short of stature, with a pale, thin, elongated little face and large dark eyes that looked at him full of hatred. He was awkwardly dressed in a very old coat which was much too small for him. His bare hands protruded from the sleeves. There was a large patch on the right knee of his trousers, and a large hole in his right boot over his big toe, which was liberally stained with ink. Both his coat pockets were bulging with stones. Alyosha stopped a couple of paces in front of him and regarded him inquiringly. The boy, who guessed at once from the look in Alyosha’s eyes that he was not going to hit him, also lowered his guard and was even the first to speak.
‘There’s only one of me, but six of them…’, he said suddenly, his eyes flashing, ‘I’ll beat them all single-handed.’
‘One stone must have hit you pretty hard,’ observed Alyosha.
‘But I got Smurov in the head!’ the boy exclaimed.
‘They said that you know me. Do you?’ Alyosha asked. ‘And did you throw a stone at me for some reason?’
The boy looked at him darkly.
‘I don’t know you. Do you really know me?’ persisted Alyosha.
‘Leave me alone!’ the boy suddenly burst out irritably, but went on standing there as though waiting for something to happen, and his eyes again flashed angrily.
‘All right, I’ll go,’ said Alyosha, ‘only I don’t know you and I haven’t been teasing you. They told me they’d been teasing you, but I’ve no desire to tease you, goodbye!’
‘Monk in a funny skirt,’ the boy cried out, continuing to look at Alyosha menacingly and defiantly, at the same time adopting a posture which left no doubt that this time he fully expected Alyosha to pounce on him, but Alyosha merely turned, glanced at him, and began to walk away. He had hardly taken three steps when a piece of rock, the biggest that the boy had in his pocket, hit him painfully in the back.
‘From behind, eh? They were right after all when they said that you steal up on people.’ Alyosha turned to face him, and this time the stone that the boy threw at him in evident rage was aimed straight at his head, though Alyosha managed to deflect it and it struck his elbow.
‘Shame on you!’ he cried out. ‘What have I done to you?’
The boy maintained his attitude of sullen defiance, fully expecting that Alyosha was bound to attack him this time; when he realized, however, that Alyosha was still not going to do so, the boy went completely wild with rage: with his head bent low, he hurled himself forward, grabbed Alyosha’s left hand in both his hands, and before the latter had time to react, bit him painfully in his middle finger. He sank his teeth into it and would not let go for about ten seconds. Alyosha yelled with pain, desperately trying to free his finger. At last the boy released it and withdrew to his previous position. The bite had penetrated to the bone, just behind the nail; blood was pouring out of it. Alyosha produced a handkerchief and wound it tightly round the injured finger, taking his time. All the while the boy stood and waited. Finally, Alyosha raised his gentle eyes and looked at the boy.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you see, you’ve hurt me pretty badly, that should be enough, shouldn’t it? Now tell me, what have I done to deserve that?’
The boy looked at him with surprise.
‘Even though I don’t know you’, Alyosha continued in the same quiet tone, ‘and have never seen you before, I can’t imagine that I’ve done nothing, otherwise you wouldn’t have hurt me so much. So, what have I done? Tell me what you’ve got against me.’
Instead of replying, the boy burst out crying and ran off. Alyosha followed him in silence in the direction of Mikhailovskaya Street, and for quite a considerable while he could see the boy running ahead in the distance, without slowing down, without looking around, and, probably, still crying at the top of his voice. Alyosha decided that as soon as he had some spare time he would definitely seek him out and clear up this most puzzling incident. But just now he had other things on his mind.
4
AT THE KHOKHLAKOVAS’
HE soon reached Mrs Khokhlakova’s imposing two-storey stone house, one of the best in our town. Even though Mrs Khokhlakova lived for the most part in another province, where she had a country house, or in her town house in Moscow, she also kept this house in our town, which she had inherited from her family. Her estate in our district was the largest of the three that she owned, yet until now she had very seldom come to stay in our province. She rushed out into the entrance hall to meet Alyosha.
‘Did you… did you get my letter about the new miracle?’ she said quickly, her voice full of agitation.
‘I did.’
‘Have you shown it to everybody, have you spread the news? Thanks to him, a son’s returned to his mother!’
‘He is going to die today,’ said Alyosha.
‘I’ve heard, I know; oh, I want to talk to you so badly! To you or anybody else about all this. No, to you, to you! And what a pity I can’t see him! The whole town’s in a state of excitement, full of expectation. But right now… would you believe it, Katerina Ivanovna’s come to see us!’
‘Ah, how fortunate!’ exclaimed Alyosha. ‘I’ll be able to see her now—yesterday she was very insistent that I should call on her today.’
‘I know all about it, I know. I’ve heard all the details of what happened at her place yesterday… including that dreadful business with that… creature. C’est tragique.* If I’d been in her place—I don’t know what I’d have done, I really don’t! And then there’s that brother of yours—Dmitry Fyodorovich—my God, he’s a fine one! Aleksei Fyodorovich, I’m so confused, imagine: your brother’s here now, no, not the one who was so horrible yesterday, but the other one, Ivan Fyodorovich, he’s in there talking to her; they’re having a very serious conversation… You wouldn’t believe what’s going on between them now—it’s dreadful, it’s a disaster, I tell you, it’s a nightmare, the mind boggles: they’re both aware that they’re ruining each other for no reason at all, and they’re both actually enjoying it. I was so hoping to see you! I simply had to see you! This is really all too much for me. I’ll tell you all about it, but right now there’s something else, which is really the most important thing of all—there, I’ve gone and forgotten what it was. Tell me, why is Lise hysterical? The moment she heard you were coming she became hysterical!’
‘Mama, it’s you who’s hysterical, not me,’ Lise’s voice suddenly chimed in from the next room, through a chink in the door. It was the narrowest of chinks, and her voice was strained with excitement as if she were on the point of bursting into laughter which she was desperately trying to hold back. Alyosha noticed this chink at once and imagined, though he could not see, that Lise was peering at him from her invalid chair.
‘Hardly surprising, Lise, hardly surprising… it’s your capricious behaviour that drives me to hysteria. But she’s so sick, Aleksei Fyodorovich, she was ill all night, groaning and feverish! I could hardly wait for the morning until Herzenstube arrived. He said he can’t make anything out at all, and that we should wait and see. That Herzenstube always comes and says he can’t make anything out at all. As soon as you approached the house she let out a cry and became hysterical, demanding to be taken back to the room where she was before…’
‘Mama, I had no idea he was coming, it wasn’t at all because of him that I wanted to move to this room.’
‘Now that’s not true, Lise; Yulia rushed in to tell you that Aleksei Fyodorovich was coming—you’d asked her to be your lookout.’
‘Mother dear, that’s not very clever of you. But if you want to make up for it and say something very astute, dear mama, why don’t you tell our kind Mr Aleksei Fyodorovich, who’s just come, that his visit here today, after all that happened yesterday and in spite of everybody laughing at him, just goes to show how obtuse he is.’
‘Lise, you’re being impertinent, and I warn you, I shall be obliged to resort to disciplinary measures. Nobody’s laughing at him, I’m so glad he came, I need him, I can’t do without him. Oh,
Aleksei Fyodorovich, I’m so miserable!’
‘What’s wrong with you, mama darling?’
‘Oh, Lise, this capriciousness of yours, this instability, your illness, your nocturnal fever, that awful, everlasting Herzenstube, he’s such a bore, such a crashing bore! It’s just everything… And then, on top of it all—that miracle! I must admit, I was astonished and shaken by that miracle, my dear Aleksei Fyodorovich! And what about the tragedy that’s taking place in my sitting-room now—I might as well tell you, I can’t bear it any more, I just can’t. Perhaps it’s only a comedy, and not a tragedy. Tell me, will Starets Zosima last till the morning, will he? Oh God! What’s happening to me, every time I shut my eyes I realize that everything’s so pointless, so utterly pointless.’
‘I wonder’, Alyosha suddenly interrupted, ‘if I could ask you for something clean to put round my finger. I’ve injured it rather badly, and the pain is getting quite intense now.’
Alyosha unwrapped the finger which the boy had bitten. The handkerchief was covered in blood. Mrs Khokhlakova let out a cry and shut her eyes.
‘My God, it looks dreadful!’
But no sooner had Lise caught sight of Alyosha’s finger through the chink than she flung the door wide open.
‘Come in, come in,’ she cried out urgently and authoritatively, ‘and this time there’ll be no nonsense! Oh God, how could you stand there and not say a word all this time! He could have bled to death, mama! How on earth did you manage to do it, where did it happen? The first thing to do is to get some water! We must wash the wound, just hold it in cold water and keep it there till the pain goes… Quick, quick, mama, get some water in a bowl. Hurry up!’ she finished on a note of distress. She was terribly agitated; Alyosha’s wound had horrified and alarmed her.
‘Shouldn’t we perhaps send for Herzenstube?’ asked Mrs Khokhlakova, and stopped.
‘Mama, you’ll be the end of me. Your Herzenstube will come and say he can’t make anything out at all! Water, water! Mama, for goodness’ sake, go and tell Yulia to hurry up, she’s obviously doing something else as usual, and it’ll be ages before she finishes what she’s doing. Come on mama, hurry up, or I’ll die…’
The Karamazov Brothers Page 29
