The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  ‘I will, and… you know, Katya,’ Mitya too began to speak, drawing breath between each word, ‘you know, I loved you five days ago, that evening… when you fainted and they carried you out… Yes, all my life. That’s how it will be, that’s how it will be for ever…’

  They went on like that, babbling ecstatically, mouthing meaningless phrases which were not even true, perhaps, and yet at that moment everything was true, they themselves believed that unreservedly.

  ‘Katya,’ Mitya exclaimed suddenly, ‘do you believe I killed him? I know you don’t believe it now, but then… when you were testifying… Surely you didn’t believe it!’

  ‘I didn’t believe it then either! I never believed it! I hated you, and suddenly I convinced myself… just for that moment… While I was testifying, I convinced myself and I believed what I was saying… but as soon as I finished my testimony I stopped believing. You must know everything. I forgot I’d come to mortify myself!’ she said in an altogether different tone from her murmured endearments of the previous moment.

  ‘You’re making things difficult for yourself, lady!’ Mitya burst out involuntarily.

  ‘Let me go,’ she whispered, ‘I’ll come back again, it’s too much for me now!…’

  She stood up, but suddenly gave a loud cry and stumbled backwards. Suddenly but quite silently Grushenka had entered the room. No one was expecting her. Katya strode quickly to the door and, as she drew level with Grushenka, stopped abruptly, white as a sheet, and softly, almost in a whisper, groaned:

  ‘Forgive me!’

  Grushenka stared at her for a moment and then, her voice poisoned with anger, replied venomously:

  ‘We’re wicked, my girl, both of us! We’re both wicked! Why should we forgive each other? But save him, and I’ll pray for you for the rest of my life.’

  ‘You won’t forgive her!’ Mitya cried out to Grushenka, full of reproach.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll see they release him for you!’ Katya said quickly, and ran from the room.

  ‘Couldn’t you have forgiven her when she’d begged your forgiveness?’ Mitya exclaimed bitterly.

  ‘Mitya, don’t you dare reproach her, you have no right!’ Alyosha shouted angrily.

  ‘That was her proud lips talking, not her heart,’ said Grushenka with a kind of revulsion. ‘Let her get you out of here—then I’ll forgive her…’

  She fell silent, as though stifling something in herself. She was still unable to regain her composure. She had come quite on the spur of the moment, it turned out later, suspecting nothing, and not expecting to find what she did.

  ‘Run after her, Alyosha!’ Mitya implored his brother. ‘Tell her… I don’t know what… but don’t let her go like that!’

  ‘I’ll be back before the evening!’ shouted Alyosha, and ran after Katya. He caught up with her when she was already outside the hospital grounds. She was walking fast, hurrying, but as soon as Alyosha caught up with her, she said:

  ‘No, I can’t humiliate myself in front of that woman! I asked her to forgive me, because I wanted the ultimate humiliation. She didn’t forgive me… I love her for that!’ she added, her voice distorted and with a glint of wild anger in her eyes.

  ‘My brother really wasn’t expecting her,’ muttered Alyosha. ‘He was sure she wouldn’t come…’

  ‘No doubt. Let’s forget it,’ she cut him short. ‘Listen, I can’t come to the funeral with you now. I’ve sent some flowers for the grave. I think they’ve still got some money. Tell them that if they’re ever in need, I’ll see that they’re all right… Now, leave me, let me go, please. You’re already late, there’s the bell for the service… Leave me, please!’

  3

  ILYUSHECHKA’S FUNERAL. THE SPEECH AT THE STONE

  HE really was late. They were waiting for him, and had almost decided to carry the beautiful little coffin, decorated with flowers, to the church without him. It was the coffin of Ilyushechka, the poor child. He had died two days after the trial. Ilyusha’s schoolfriends greeted Alyosha at the gate outside the house with shouts of welcome. They had been waiting impatiently for him, and were delighted that he had arrived at last. In all there were about twelve of them gathered there, each with his satchel or bag over his shoulder. ‘Papa will cry, stay with papa,’ had been Ilyusha’s dying request, and the boys had remembered this. At their head was Kolya Krasotkin.

  ‘I’m so glad you’ve come, Karamazov!’ he exclaimed, extending his hand to Alyosha. ‘The atmosphere here’s unbearable. Honestly, I can hardly stand it. Snegiryov isn’t drunk—we know for a fact that he hasn’t touched a drop today—but you could’ve fooled me… I can usually take anything, but this is awful. Karamazov, if you can spare a moment, could I ask you one more question before you go in?’

  ‘What is it, Kolya?’ Alyosha stopped for a moment.

  ‘Is your brother guilty or innocent? Did he kill him, or was it the servant? Whatever you say I’ll believe you. I haven’t slept for four nights thinking about it.’

  ‘It was the servant; my brother’s innocent,’ Alyosha answered.

  ‘That’s what I think too!’ cried the boy Smurov suddenly.

  ‘So he’s going to end up an innocent victim on the altar of truth!’ exclaimed Kolya. ‘Even though it’s the end for him, still he’s happy! I could envy him!’

  ‘How can you say that, how can you envy him, and what for?’ protested Alyosha, astonished.

  ‘Oh, if only I too could sacrifice myself one day for truth,’ enthused Kolya.

  ‘But not for something like that, not in such disgrace, such horrific circumstances!’ said Alyosha.

  ‘Of course… I would like to die for the whole of humanity, and if that means disgrace, so what; let our names perish!* I respect your brother!’

  ‘Me too!’ came a sudden and unexpected cry from among the group; it was that same boy who, as I have mentioned elsewhere, knew who founded Troy, and as on that occasion, having shouted out he blushed scarlet to the tips of his ears.

  Alyosha went into the room. Ilyusha lay in the pale-blue, white-lined coffin, his hands folded on his breast, and his eyes closed. The features of his emaciated face had hardly changed at all, and, strangely, almost no smell emanated from the corpse. The expression on his face was serious and somewhat thoughtful. His crossed hands were particularly beautiful, as if carved out of marble. Some flowers had been placed in his hands and the whole coffin, inside and out, was already covered in flowers which had been sent by Lise Khokhlakova first thing that morning. But more flowers had arrived from Katerina Ivanovna, and when Alyosha opened the door the Staff Captain, a bunch of flowers in his trembling hands, was strewing them around his darling boy. He hardly glanced at Alyosha as he entered—in fact, he would not look at anyone, not even at his simpleton, weeping wife, his ‘mummikins’, who kept trying to stand up on her painful legs and look closer at her dead son. The children had picked Ninochka up in her chair and placed her right by the coffin. She sat, her head pressed against it, and seemed to be crying quietly. Snegiryov’s expression was at once animated and distraught, but at the same time quarrelsome. There was a kind of madness in his gestures and in his occasional utterances.’ Old chap, my dear old chap!’ he exclaimed from time to time, looking at Ilyusha. He had had a habit, even when Ilyusha was alive, of calling him ‘old chap, my dear old chap’, by way of affection.

  ‘Papa, give me some flowers too, take some from his little hands, give me that white one!’ begged his feeble-minded ‘mummikins’ tearfully. Either because she liked the little white rose in Ilyusha’s hands so much, or because she wanted to have it to remind herself of him, she had become very agitated and was reaching out for the flower.

  ‘I shall not give it to anyone; I shall not give anything to anyone!’ snapped the Staff Captain cruelly. ‘They’re his flowers, not yours. Everything’s his, nothing’s yours!’

  ‘Papa, give mama the flower!’ Ninochka suddenly lifted her tear-soaked face.

  ‘I shan’t give
anything to anyone, least of all to her! She didn’t love him. She took the little cannon away from him that time, and he g-g-ave it to her,’ the Staff Captain suddenly began to sob out loud at the memory of how Ilyusha had handed over his little cannon to his mother. The poor deranged woman promptly burst into tears, weeping quietly, with her hands covering her face. The boys, seeing at last that the father did not want to release the coffin, although it was time to leave, suddenly formed a solid ring around the coffin and began to lift it.

  ‘I don’t want to bury him in the graveyard!’ wailed Snegiryov suddenly. ‘I’ll bury him by the stone, by our stone. That’s what Ilyusha wanted. I won’t let you take him away!’

  He had been saying before, for the whole of the last three days, that he would bury him by the stone, but Alyosha, Krasotkin, his landlady and her sister, and all the boys had protested.

  ‘What an idea, burying him by an unconsecrated stone, like a suicide!’ said the old landlady severely. At least it’s consecrated ground in the graveyard. They’ll pray for him there. He’ll be able to hear the singing from the church, and the deacon reads so well and so clearly that he’ll hear every word, just as if they were spoken over his grave.’

  At last the Staff Captain made a gesture of resignation. ‘Take him wherever you like.’ The boys lifted the coffin, but as they passed the mother they stopped for a moment and lowered it so that she could say goodbye to Ilyusha. But seeing that dear little face close up, which for three whole days she had seen only from a distance, she suddenly began to tremble all over and to rock her grey head hysterically backwards and forwards against the coffin.

  ‘Mama, make the sign of the cross, bless him, kiss him,’ Ninochka called to her. But she kept rocking her head like an automaton, and suddenly, without speaking, her face contorted and riven by grief, she began to beat her breast. They carried the coffin further. When they carried it past Ninochka, she pressed her lips to those of the dead boy for the last time. Alyosha had intended, as he went out, to ask the landlady to keep an eye on those remaining behind, but she fore-stalled him.

  ‘It goes without saying, I’ll stay with them, we’re Christians too.’ Thus saying, the old woman began to cry.

  They did not have far to carry it to the church, about three hundred paces, not more. It was a clear, windless day; a bit frosty, but not excessively so. The church bells were still ringing. Snegiryov, in his old coat, short, more of a summer coat, his head bare and his old, wide-brimmed felt hat in his hands, hurried frantic and distraught behind the coffin. He was consumed by some overriding anxiety, and kept on putting out his hand suddenly to support the head of the coffin, only getting in the way of the bearers, or he would run alongside, trying to find somewhere to join the procession. A flower fell on to the snow and he rushed to pick it up, as if heaven knows what might result from the loss of that one little flower.

  ‘The crust, we’ve forgotten the crust,’ he cried suddenly in a panic. But the boys immediately reminded him that he had already picked up the bread, and that it was now in his pocket. He took it out of his pocket for a moment and, having reassured himself, became calmer.

  ‘Ilyushechka told me to do it, Ilyushechka,’ he explained to Alyosha. ‘I was sitting by his bed during the night, and suddenly he said, “Papa, when they’ve buried my coffin, crumble a crust of bread on to my grave so that the sparrows will come there; I shall hear them, and I’ll be happy that I’m not lying there alone.’”

  ‘That’s a very good idea,’ said Alyosha. ‘It should be done more often.’

  ‘Every day, every day,’ murmured the Staff Captain, seeming to cheer up.

  At last they reached the church, and on entering and placed the coffin in the centre of the nave. All the boys gathered round it and remained standing respectfully throughout the service. The church was an ancient one and was quite poor, many of the icons had no frames, but they say that one prays better in such churches. Snegiryov seemed a little calmer during the liturgy for the dead, although from time to time he showed signs of that same compulsive and somewhat confused anxiety; he kept going up to the coffin to straighten the shroud or Ilyusha’s headband;* when a candle fell from the candlestick he rushed to replace it, and stayed fussing over it interminably. He grew calmer after that, and stood meekly at the head of the coffin, stupefied, his expression preoccupied and uncomprehending. After the Epistle he suddenly whispered to Alyosha, who was standing next to him, that they had not read it properly, but he did not elaborate further. He started to join in when they sang the Song of the Cherubim, but then he stopped, bent down on his knees, pressed his forehead against the cold, stone floor of the church, and remained thus for some time. At last the funeral service proper began, and candles were distributed. The distraught father began to fuss again, but the moving, emotional funeral-chanting shook and reawakened his soul. He suddenly seemed to shrivel up, and began to sob spasmodically, restraining his sobbing at first, but then crying aloud. But when the moment came to bid farewell to Ilyushechka and close the coffin, he threw his arms around the coffin, as though to prevent them from closing it, and began to cover the lips of his dead son with long, hungry kisses. At last they persuaded him to desist, and they had already led him down the steps when suddenly he stretched out his hand and snatched several flowers from the coffin. He looked at them as if a new idea had occurred to him, causing him to forget momentarily why he was there. He seemed to be slipping little by little into a reverie, and now offered no resistance when they lifted the coffin and carried it towards the grave. It was not far; the plot was an expensive one in that part of the churchyard which abutted the church—Katerina Ivanovna had paid for it. After the usual rites, the gravediggers lowered the coffin into the earth. Snegiryov, with his flowers in his hand, leaned so low over the open coffin that the boys feared for him, and grabbed him by his coat and began to pull him back. But he seemed to have lost track already of what was going on. When they began to fill in the grave, he started pointing to the earth they were throwing in, but no one could make out what he wanted, and he suddenly fell silent. At this point someone reminded him that he should crumble the bread, and he became terribly agitated, pulled out the crust, and began to break off pieces and scatter them on the grave. ‘There you are little birds, there you are sparrows, fly on to the grave!’ he murmured anxiously. One of the boys pointed out to him that it was awkward for him to break the bread with the flowers in his hand, and that he should give them to someone to hold for a while. But he would not part with them, he even panicked suddenly about his flowers, as if they wanted to take them away from him, but having surveyed the grave and apparently assured himself that everything had been completed, that the bread had been crumbled, he suddenly to their surprise turned and set off quite calmly homewards. His pace, however, became quicker and more headlong; he was hurrying, almost running. The boys and Alyosha kept up with him.

  ‘Flowers for mummikins, flowers for mummikins! Mummikins was hurt,’ he babbled. Someone called out to him to put on his hat, or he would catch cold, but he threw the hat down on the snow as if in anger, saying repeatedly, ‘I don’t need a hat, I don’t want a hat!’ Smurov picked it up and fell into step behind him. All the boys, without exception, were crying—Kolya and the boy who knew who discovered Troy more than any of them. Smurov, although weeping uncontrollably and still holding the hat, managed nevertheless, practically without pausing, to pick up a piece of brick that appeared as a red object on the snowy path and threw it at a flock of sparrows that was flying past quickly. He missed, of course, and ran on crying. Halfway home Snegiryov suddenly stopped, stood for a moment as though struck by a thought, and then, turning back abruptly towards the church, ran towards the grave they had just left. But the boys caught up with him at once, and grabbed him from all sides. Whereupon, as if his strength had failed him, as if struck down, he collapsed on to the snow and, beating his breast, howling and sobbing, began to scream out: ‘My boy, Ilyushechka, my dear old chap!’ Alyosha and Kolya w
ent to help him up, exhorting and encouraging him.

  ‘Come on now, Captain, a brave man has to pull himself together,’ Kolya muttered.

  ‘You’re spoiling the flowers,’ said Alyosha, ‘and “mummikins” is waiting for them, she’s sitting there crying because you wouldn’t give her some of Ilyushechka’s flowers before. Ilyusha’s little bed is still there…’

  ‘Yes, yes, I must take them to mama!’ Snegiryov remembered suddenly. ‘They’ll take the bed away, they’ll take it away!’ he added, and, apparently suddenly panic-stricken at the thought that they really would take the bed away, he leapt to his feet and ran home. But it was not far, and they all arrived together. Snegiryov threw open the door and shouted to his wife, whom he had treated so cruelly shortly before:

  ‘Mama, my dear, Ilyushechka has sent you some flowers, your poor legs are bad!’ he cried, proffering the bunch of flowers, which had become frozen and dishevelled from his struggle in the snow. But at that very moment he noticed by Ilyusha’s bed in the corner Ilyusha’s little boots, standing side by side where the landlady had just placed them, old boots, faded, scruffy, and repaired. Seeing them, he threw up his arms, rushed to them, and fell on his knees; he seized one boot and, pressing his lips to it, started kissing it frantically, crying, ‘Ilyushechka, my dear old chap, where are your little feet?’

  ‘Where have you taken him? Where have you taken him?’ howled the mad woman in harrowing tones. Ninochka too now began to sob. Kolya rushed from the room, and the boys began to follow him. Alyosha was the last to leave. ‘Let them have a good cry,’ he said to Kolya. ‘It’s no use trying to comfort them now. Let’s wait a bit and then go back.’