The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  ‘That’s true,’ Smurov, who had been diligently following every word, chimed in with conviction.

  ‘And he comes top in Latin,’ shouted a boy in the group.

  ‘Yes, papa, he says that, but he’s top of our Latin class,’ Ilyusha struck up, too.

  ‘Well, so what?’ Kolya judged it necessary to defend himself, although the compliment pleased him enormously. ‘I swot up Latin because I have to, and because I promised my mother I’d finish the course, and in my opinion once you’ve started something you may as well do it well, but deep down I despise classicism, it’s just a conspiracy… Don’t you agree, Karamazov?’

  ‘Why “conspiracy”?’ Alyosha smiled again.

  ‘Oh, come now, all the classics have been translated into every language, they don’t need to force Latin on us so we can read the classics, they only use them as a repressive measure and to dull the mind. Given that, how can you say it’s not a conspiracy?’

  ‘Whoever told you all that?’ exclaimed Alyosha at last, in astonishment.

  ‘Firstly, I can understand it for myself, without being taught, and secondly, let me tell you, everything I have just said about translations of the classics, our master Kolbasnikov himself said openly to the whole of the third form…’

  ‘The doctor’s here,’ suddenly exclaimed Ninochka, who had not opened her mouth all this time.

  True enough, Mrs Khokhlakova’s carriage was drawing up at the front gates. The Staff Captain, who had been waiting for the doctor all morning, rushed out to the gate to meet him. His wife pulled herself together and assumed an air of importance. Alyosha went across to Ilyusha and started to plump up his pillow. Ninochka, from her invalid chair, watched him anxiously as he straightened up the bed. The boys began hurriedly to take their leave, some of them promising to look in that evening. Kolya called to Perezvon, and he jumped off the bed.

  ‘It’s all right, I’m not going,’ Kolya said quickly to Ilyusha. ‘I’ll wait in the hall and come back when the doctor’s gone. I’ll bring Perezvon back.’

  But the doctor was already entering the room—an imposing figure in a bearskin coat, with long, dark side-whiskers and a clean-shaven chin. He stepped across the threshold and stopped, as if disconcerted; he must have thought that he had come to the wrong address. ‘What’s this? Where am I?’ he muttered, without taking off either his fur coat or his sealskin hat with the sealskin peak. All the people, the poverty of the room, the sheets hanging on a line in the corner, had put him off his stride. The Staff Captain bowed before him, quite overcome with servility.

  ‘You’re here, sir, here, sir,’ he babbled obsequiously, ‘you’re here at my place, you’ve come to see my…’

  ‘Sne-gi-ryov,’ the doctor pronounced loudly and pompously. ‘Are you Mr Snegiryov?’

  ‘Yes, sir, that’s me.’

  ‘Ah!’

  The doctor gave another fastidious look around the room and threw off his fur coat. Round his neck, glinting for all to see, was an important-looking medal. The Staff Captain caught the coat in mid-flight, and the doctor took off his hat.

  ‘Right, where’s the patient?’ he asked loudly and peremptorily.

  6

  PRECOCIOUSNESS

  ‘WHAT do you think the doctor’s going to say to him?’ Kolya said at once. ‘Hasn’t he got a repulsive mug? I can’t stand doctors!’

  ‘Ilyusha’s going to die. I think that’s certain now,’ Alyosha replied sadly.

  ‘Scoundrels! All doctors are scoundrels! Still, I’m glad I’ve met you, Karamazov. I’ve been wanting to get to know you for ages. It’s just a pity we had to meet under such sad circumstances…’

  Kolya very much wanted to say something more friendly, less formal, but he felt somehow inhibited. Alyosha noticed this, smiled, and shook his hand.

  ‘I’ve admired you as a rare being for a long time,’ muttered Kolya, embarrassed and confused. ‘I hear you’re a mystic and that you’ve been in the monastery. I know you’re a mystic, but… that doesn’t bother me. Contact with reality will cure you of that… For people like you, it can’t be otherwise.’

  ‘What do you mean by a mystic? And what will I be cured of?’ Alyosha was a little surprised.

  ‘Well, God and all that.’

  ‘What, you don’t believe in God?’

  ‘On the contrary, I’ve got nothing against God. Of course, God is only a hypothesis… but… I admit that He is necessary to maintain order… for worldwide order and so on… and if He didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent Him,’* Kolya added, beginning to blush. He suddenly imagined that Alyosha would now think that he was trying to show off his erudition and prove how ‘grown-up’ he was. ‘I don’t want to show off how erudite I am in front of him at all,’ thought Kolya indignantly. And he suddenly felt very angry.

  ‘I must admit, I can’t stand getting involved in that kind of argument,’ he said quickly. ‘When all’s said and done, one can love mankind without believing in God, don’t you think? After all, Voltaire didn’t believe in God, but he loved mankind, didn’t he?’ (‘I’m doing it again!’ he thought to himself.)

  ‘Voltaire did believe in God, but not much, and I don’t think he loved mankind that much, either,’ Alyosha spoke softly, in a restrained and totally natural manner, as though he were talking to someone of his own age or even someone much older. What surprised Kolya most of all was Alyosha’s apparent lack of conviction in his own opinion of Voltaire, and it seemed as though Alyosha was leaving it to him, little Kolya, to make up his own mind.

  ‘Have you read Voltaire?’ Alyosha concluded.

  ‘No, not exactly… but I did read Candide* in an old, absolutely dreadfully funny translation…’ (‘There I go again!’)

  ‘And did you understand it?’

  ‘Oh yes, everything… that is… why on earth do you think I wouldn’t understand it? Of course, it has a lot of dirty bits… Of course, I understand that it’s a philosophical novel and that it was written to promote an idea…’, Kolya totally lost his train of thought. ‘I’m an incorrigible socialist, Karamazov,’ he broke off suddenly, for no apparent reason.

  ‘Socialist?’ laughed Alyosha. ‘At your age? You’re only thirteen, aren’t you?’

  Kolya winced.

  ‘Firstly, I’m fourteen, not thirteen, I’ll be fourteen in two weeks,’ he spluttered, ‘and secondly, I don’t see what on earth my age has got to do with it. It’s a question of my convictions, isn’t it, not my age?’

  ‘When you’re older you’ll see for yourself what an influence age has on convictions. Also, I notice you’re not using your own words,’ Alyosha replied discreetly and calmly, but Kolya interrupted him heatedly.

  ‘Forgive me, but you want obedience and mysticism. You must agree, for example, that the Christian faith has only served to allow the rich and powerful to keep the lower classes in serfdom, isn’t that so?’

  ‘Ah! I know where you read that,’ exclaimed Alyosha, ‘and someone must have been indoctrinating you!’

  ‘Excuse me, but why are you so sure I read it? And nobody has been indoctrinating me. I don’t need… And anyway, I’m not against Christ. He was a thoroughly humane person, and if He were alive today he would certainly join the revolutionaries and would perhaps have played an important role… In fact, he certainly would.’

  ‘Well—where on earth did you pick all that up from? What idiot have you been associating with?’ exclaimed Alyosha.

  ‘Forgive me, but you can’t hide the truth. It’s true that I have had occasion to talk to Mr Rakitin quite often, but… they say that old Belinsky* said the same thing.’

  ‘Belinsky? I don’t remember. He didn’t write it anywhere.’

  ‘Even if he didn’t write it, they say he used to say it. I heard it from a… anyway, to hell with it…’

  ‘And have you read Belinsky?’

  ‘Look… no, not exactly, but I read the bit about Tatiana—why she didn’t go with Onegin.’*

  ‘Why she
didn’t go with Onegin? Surely you don’t… understand that?’

  ‘Pardon me, but you seem to take me for that boy Smurov,’ Kolya retorted indignantly. ‘Besides, please don’t think I’m such a revolutionary. I often don’t agree with Mr Rakitin. I may have mentioned Tatiana, but that doesn’t mean I’m at all in favour of the emancipation of women. I admit that a woman is an inferior being and must obey. Les femmes tricottent* as Napoleon said,’ Kolya smiled for some reason, ‘and, at least on that score, I fully share the conviction of that pseudo-great man. I too for example consider that to leave one’s homeland for America is base—worse than base—stupid. Why go to America when here too one can do so much for humanity? Especially now. There’s a tremendous amount of productive activity. That’s what I replied.’

  ‘My word, who asked you? Surely someone hasn’t invited you to America already?’

  ‘I admit it has been suggested, but I refused. Of course, this is just between us, Karamazov, not a word to anyone, you hear me. It’s just between you and me. I have absolutely no desire to fall into the clutches of Section Three and be chastized by the Chain Bridge:*

  Next the Chain Bridge stands a house

  That I never shall forget!

  Do you remember? Magnificent! What are you laughing at? You don’t think I’m having you on, do you?’ (‘What if he finds out that I’ve only got that one copy of The Bell* in my father’s bookcase, and that I haven’t read anything else on the subject?’ Kolya thought momentarily and shuddered.)

  ‘Oh no, I’m not laughing, and I certainly didn’t think you were having me on. I don’t think that, because, alas, all that is the plain truth! Well now, tell me, have you read Pushkin, Evgeny Onegin say?… You know, you were talking about Tatiana just now.’

  ‘No, I haven’t read it yet, but I want to. I have no prejudices, Karamazov. I want to listen to both sides. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, no reason.’

  ‘Tell me, Karamazov, do you think I’m being silly?’ Kolya broke off suddenly, and drew himself up to his full height in front of Alyosha, full of defiance. ‘Do me a favour, don’t beat about the bush.’

  ‘Silly?’ Alyosha looked at him in astonishment. ‘Why should I? I’m just sad that such a fine character as yours, just on the threshold of life, should already be spoilt by all that dreadful rubbish.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about my character,’ Kolya interjected, not without some self-satisfaction, ‘and if I’m sceptical, so be it. I’m downright sceptical, as sceptical as they come. Just now you smiled, and I thought…’

  ‘Ah, I was smiling at something else entirely. Listen, this is what I was smiling about: I read a piece about our modern students by a German emigré who had lived in Russia. “Give a map of the heavens”, he wrote, “to a Russian schoolboy who has never heard of such a map before, and he’ll return it to you the next day full of corrections.” No knowledge and limitless presumptuousness—that’s what the German meant to say about Russian schoolboys.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s exactly it!’ Kolya suddenly exploded with laughter, ‘exactissimo, point for point! Bravo, German! But the teuton didn’t see the good side, did he, what do you think? Presumptuousness—that’s nothing, it’s merely youthful excess, it’ll right itself—if it needs righting, that is—but against that you have to set independence of spirit, practically from infancy, courage in thought and in convictions, instead of their Frankfurter mentality, their slavish obedience to received opinion… But all the same, it was good, what he said, that German! Bravo, German! All the same, I say the Germans should be strangled. They may be good at science, but all the same they should be strangled…’

  ‘Why should they be strangled?’ smiled Alyosha.

  ‘Well, I admit I was talking nonsense, perhaps. Sometimes I’m terribly childish, and when I’m pleased about something I get carried away and start talking all kinds of nonsense. But listen, you and I are chattering away here about nothing at all, and that doctor seems to be taking longer than expected. Maybe he’s examining the “lady of the house” and that crippled Ninochka while he’s about it. You know, I like that Ninochka. When I came in, she whispered to me suddenly, “Why didn’t you come before?” And her voice was so reproachful! She seems terribly kind and I feel sorry for her.’

  ‘Yes, yes! Now that you’ll definitely be coming again, you’ll see what sort of person she really is. You need to get to know such people so that you can learn how to appreciate things, and you’ll find out a whole lot more just by mixing with them,’ Alyosha remarked enthusiastically. ‘That’s the best way for you to change.’

  ‘Oh, how I regret that I didn’t come before, and I curse myself for it!’ Kolya exclaimed bitterly.

  ‘Yes, it’s a great pity. You saw for yourself how delighted the little one was to see you, and he was so upset when you didn’t come!’

  ‘Don’t talk about it! You’re rubbing salt in the wound. Anyway, it serves me right: it was pride that kept me from coming, egoistical pride and a base delight in power, which I’ve been unable to rid myself of all my life, no matter how hard I try. I see now that, in many ways, I’m a scoundrel, Karamazov!’

  ‘No, you’ve got a delightful character,’ Alyosha replied warmly, ‘but it’s been warped, and I understand only too well how you had such an influence on that innocent and terribly impressionable child!’

  ‘Do you really mean that!’ cried Kolya. ‘And I thought, just imagine, I thought several times since I’ve been here that you think I’m silly! If only you knew how much I value your opinion!’

  ‘Are you really such a sceptic? You’re so young! But you know, I thought so just now, back in the room, when you were talking, I thought you must be very sceptical.’

  ‘You thought so then? How perceptive you are, you really do understand! I bet that was when I was telling the story about the goose. That was just the point at which I imagined you thought I was silly for trying to make out what a fine chap I was, and suddenly I even hated you for it and I started to talk rubbish. And then (this was just now, out here) when I was saying, “If God didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent him,” I imagined I was trying too hard to show off my erudition, especially as I’d got the phrase out of a book. But I swear to you that I was showing off not out of vanity, but out of, I don’t know, out of joy, it was from joy, as God is my witness,… although I admit it’s a deeply shameful thing to be forcing one’s joy on others. I know that. But now I’m convinced that you don’t despise me, and that I imagined it all. Oh, Karamazov, I’m so deeply unhappy. Sometimes I imagine God knows what, that everyone, everyone in the world is laughing at me, and then I feel like causing havoc.’

  ‘And you torment those around you,’ smiled Alyosha.

  ‘Yes, I torment those around me, particularly my mother. Tell me, Karamazov, do I seem very ridiculous now?’

  ‘Look, don’t think about that, don’t think about it at all!’ exclaimed Alyosha. ‘And what does it mean, anyway, to be ridiculous? Aren’t there plenty of times when anyone is, or at least seems, ridiculous? What’s more, all gifted people these days are awfully afraid of looking ridiculous, and it makes them unhappy. I’m only surprised that you’ve started to feel it so early, although, incidentally, I’ve noticed it for a long time, and not only in you. These days even those who are hardly more than children have begun to suffer from it. It’s almost a madness. The devil has manifested himself in that pride and has infected a whole generation, and I do mean the devil,’ added Alyosha, without a trace of the smile that Kolya had thought momentarily he detected. ‘You’re like all of them,’ concluded Alyosha, ‘that is, you’re like a lot of people, only you don’t have to be like them, like everyone, that’s all.’

  ‘Even in spite of the fact that everyone’s like that?’

  ‘Yes, despite the fact that everyone’s like that. You alone won’t be like that. In fact, you aren’t like everyone: you didn’t flinch just now from admitting not only to base actions but also to ridicu
lous ones. And who admits to such things these days? No one, and people no longer feel the need to judge themselves. Don’t be like that, like everyone; even if you have to stand alone and are the only one who’s different, nevertheless, don’t be like that.’

  ‘Magnificent! I wasn’t wrong about you. You have the power to console. Oh, Karamazov, how I was drawn to you, how long I’ve been dying to meet you! Were you also thinking about me? You did say just now you’d been thinking about me too, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I’d heard about you, and I too had been thinking about you… and if you ask that partly out of pride, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You know, Karamazov, our conversation is a bit like a declaration of love,’ said Kolya feebly and shamefacedly. ‘Isn’t that ridiculous?’

  ‘Not in the least ridiculous, and even if it were ridiculous, it wouldn’t matter either, because it’s good,’ Alyosha smiled brightly.

  ‘But you know, Karamazov, you have to agree that even you are a bit ashamed in front of me now… I can see it in your eyes,’ Kolya smiled somewhat craftily, but also somehow happily.

  ‘ “Ashamed”, how?’

  ‘Why are you blushing?’

  ‘It was you who made me blush!’ Alyosha laughed, and he really blushed crimson. ‘But yes, I am a little ashamed, God knows why, I don’t know why…’, he muttered, almost overcome by confusion.

  ‘Oh, how I love and esteem you at this moment, precisely because you too admit to being ashamed of something! Because you are just like me!’ Kolya exclaimed in an excess of enthusiasm. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes sparkling.

  ‘Listen, Kolya, you know, by the way, you will be very unhappy in the course of your life,’ Alyosha said suddenly, for some reason.

  ‘I know, I know, you seem to know everything in advance,’ Kolya agreed promptly.