The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗

imploring face,

as though he were afraid he might be offended at his giving his

present to someone else.

 

“Of course you may,” Krassotkin assented heartily, and, taking the

cannon from Ilusha, he handed it himself to mamma with a polite bow.

She was so touched that she cried.

 

“Ilusha, darling, he’s the one who loves his mammal” she said

tenderly, and at once began wheeling the cannon to and fro on her

lap again.

 

“Mamma, let me kiss your hand.” The captain darted up to her at

once and did so.

 

“And I never saw such a charming fellow as this nice boy,” said

the grateful lady, pointing to Krassotkin.

 

“And I’ll bring you as much powder as you like, Ilusha. We make

the powder ourselves now. Borovikov found out how it’s made-twenty-four parts of saltpetre, ten of sulphur and six of birchwood

charcoal. It’s all pounded together, mixed into a paste with water and

rubbed through a tammy sieve-that’s how it’s done.”

 

“Smurov told me about your powder, only father says it’s not

real gunpowder,” responded Ilusha.

 

“Not real?” Kolya flushed. “It burns. I don’t know, of course.”

 

“No, I didn’t mean that,” put in the captain with a guilty face.

“I only said that real powder is not made like that, but that’s

nothing, it can be made so.”

 

“I don’t know, you know best. We lighted some in a pomatum pot, it

burned splendidly, it all burnt away leaving only a tiny ash. But that

was only the paste, and if you rub it through… but of course you

know best, I don’t know… And Bulkin’s father thrashed him on account

of our powder, did you hear?” he turned to Ilusha.

 

“We had prepared a whole bottle of it and he used to keep it under

his bed. His father saw it. He said it might explode, and thrashed him

on the spot. He was going to make a complaint against me to the

masters. He is not allowed to go about with me now, no one is

allowed to go about with me now. Smurov is not allowed to either; I’ve

got a bad name with everyone. They say I’m a ‘desperate character,’”

Kolya smiled scornfully. “It all began from what happened on the

railway.”

 

“Ah, we’ve heard of that exploit of yours, too,” cried the

captain. “How could you lie still on the line? Is it possible you

weren’t the least afraid, lying there under the train? Weren’t you

frightened?”

 

The captain was abject in his flattery of Kolya.

 

“N-not particularly,” answered Kolya carelessly. “What’s

blasted my reputation more than anything here was that cursed

goose,” he said, turning again to Ilusha-but though he assumed an

unconcerned air as he talked, he still could not control himself and

was continually missing the note he tried to keep up.

 

“Ah! I heard about the goose!” Ilusha laughed, beaming all over.

“They told me, but I didn’t understand. Did they really take you to

the court?”

 

“The most stupid, trivial affair, they made a mountain of a

molehill as they always do,” Kolya began carelessly. “I was walking

through the marketplace here one day, just when they’d driven in

the geese. I stopped and looked at them. All at once a fellow, who

is an errand-boy at Plotnikov’s now, looked at me and said, ‘What

are you looking at the geese for?’ I looked at him; he was a stupid,

moon-faced fellow of twenty. I am always on the side of the peasantry,

you know. I like talking to the peasants…. We’ve dropped behind

the peasants that’s an axiom. I believe you are laughing, Karamazov?”

 

“No, Heaven forbid, I am listening,” said Alyosha with a most

good-natured air, and the sensitive Kolya was immediately reassured.”

 

“My theory, Karamazov, is clear and simple,” he hurried on

again, looking pleased. “I believe in the people and am always glad to

give them their due, but I am not for spoiling them, that is a sine

qua non… But I was telling you about the goose. So I turned to the

fool and answered, ‘I am wondering what the goose thinks about.’ He

looked at me quite stupidly, ‘And what does the goose think about?’ he

asked. ‘Do you see that cart full of oats?‘I said. ‘The oats are

dropping out of the sack, and the goose has put its neck right under

the wheel to gobble them up-do you see?’ ‘I see that quite well,’

he said. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘if that cart were to move on a little, would

it break the goose’s neck or not?’ ‘It’d be sure to break it,’ and

he grinned all over his face, highly delighted. ‘Come on, then,’

said I, ‘let’s try.’ ‘Let’s,’ he said. And it did not take us long

to arrange: he stood at the bridle without being noticed, and I

stood on one side to direct the goose. And the owner wasn’t looking,

he was talking to someone, so I had nothing to do, the goose thrust

its head in after the oats of itself, under the cart, just under the

wheel. I winked at the lad, he tugged at the bridle, and crack. The

goose’s neck was broken in half. And, as luck would have it, all the

peasants saw us at that moment and they kicked up a shindy at once.

‘You did that on purpose!’ ‘No, not on purpose.’ ‘Yes, you did, on

purpose!’ Well, they shouted, ‘Take him to the justice of the

peace!’ They took me, too. ‘You were there, too,’ they said, ‘you

helped, you’re known all over the market!’ And, for some reason, I

really am known all over the market,” Kolya added conceitedly. “We all

went off to the justice’s, they brought the goose, too. The fellow was

crying in a great funk, simply blubbering like a woman. And the farmer

kept shouting that you could kill any number of geese like that. Well,

of course, there were witnesses.

The justice of the peace settled it in a minute, that the farmer was

to be paid a rouble for the goose, and the fellow to have the goose.

And he was warned not to play such pranks again. And the fellow kept

blubbering like a woman. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said, ‘it was he egged

me on,’ and he pointed to me. I answered with the utmost composure

that I hadn’t egged him on, that I simply stated the general

proposition, had spoken hypothetically. The justice of the peace

smiled and was vexed with himself once for having smiled. ‘I’ll

complain to your masters of you, so that for the future you mayn’t

waste your time on such general propositions, instead of sitting at

your books and learning your lessons.’ He didn’t complain to the

masters, that was a joke, but the matter noised abroad and came to the

ears of the masters. Their ears are long, you know! The classical

master, Kolbasnikov, was particularly shocked about it, but Dardanelov

got me off again. But Kolbasnikov is savage with everyone now like a

green ass. Did you know, Ilusha, he is just married, got a dowry of

a thousand roubles, and his bride’s a regular fright of the first rank

and the last degree. The third-class fellows wrote an epigram on it:

 

Astounding news has reached the class,

 

Kolbasnikov has been an ass.

 

And so on, awfully funny, I’ll bring it to you later on. I say

nothing against Dardanelov, he is a learned man, there’s no doubt

about it. I respect men like that and it’s not because he stood up for

me.”

 

“But you took him down about the founders of Troy!” Smurov put

in suddenly, proud of Krassotkin at such a moment. He was particularly

pleased with the story of the goose.

 

“Did you really take him down?” the captain inquired, in a

flattering way. “On the question who founded Troy? We heard of it,

Ilusha told me about it at the time.”

 

“He knows everything, father, he knows more than any of us!” put

in Ilusha; “he only pretends to be like that, but really he is top

in every subject…”

 

Ilusha looked at Kolya with infinite happiness.

 

“Oh, that’s all nonsense about Troy, a trivial matter. I

consider this an unimportant question,” said Kolya with haughty

humility. He had by now completely recovered his dignity, though he

was still a little uneasy. He felt that he was greatly excited and

that he had talked about the goose, for instance, with too little

reserve, while Alyosha had looked serious and had not said a word

all the time. And the vain boy began by degrees to have a rankling

fear that Alyosha was silent because he despised him, and thought he

was showing off before him. If he dared to think anything like that,

Kolya would-

 

“I regard the question as quite a trivial one,” he rapped out

again, proudly.

 

“And I know who founded Troy,” a boy, who had not spoken before,

said suddenly, to the surprise of everyone. He was silent and seemed

to be shy. He was a pretty boy of about eleven, called Kartashov. He

was sitting near the door. Kolya looked at him with dignified

amazement.

 

The fact was that the identity of the founders of Troy had

become a secret for the whole school, a secret which could only be

discovered by reading Smaragdov, and no one had Smaragdov but Kolya.

One day, when Kolya’s back was turned, Kartashov hastily opened

Smaragdov, which lay among Kolya’s books, and immediately lighted on

the passage relating to the foundation of Troy. This was a good time

ago, but he felt uneasy and could not bring himself to announce

publicly that he too knew who had founded Troy, afraid of what might

happen and of Krassotkin’s somehow putting him to shame over it. But

now he couldn’t resist saying it. For weeks he had been longing to.

 

“Well, who did found it?” Kolya, turning to him with haughty

superciliousness. He saw from his face that he really did know and

at once made up his mind how to take it. There was so to speak, a

discordant note in the general harmony.

 

“Troy was founded by Teucer, Dardanus, Ilius and Tros,” the boy

rapped out at once, and in the same instant he blushed, blushed so,

that it was painful to look at him. But the boys stared at him, stared

at him for a whole minute, and then all the staring eyes turned at

once and were fastened upon Kolya, who was still scanning the

audacious boy with disdainful composure.

 

“In what sense did they found it?” he deigned to comment at

last. “And what is meant by founding a city or a state? What do they

do? Did they go and each lay a brick, do you suppose?”

 

There was laughter. The offending boy turned from pink to crimson.

He was silent and on the point of tears. Kolya held him so for a

minute.

 

“Before you talk of a historical event like the foundation of a

nationality, you must first understand what you mean by it,” he

admonished him in stern, incisive tones. “But I attach no

consequence to these old wives’ tales and I don’t think much of

universal history in general,” he added carelessly, addressing the

company generally.

 

“Universal history?” the captain inquired, looking almost scared.

 

“Yes, universal history! It’s the study of the successive

follies of mankind and nothing more. The only subjects I respect are

mathematics and natural science,” said Kolya. He was showing off and

he stole a glance at Alyosha; his was the only opinion he was afraid

of there. But Alyosha was still silent and still serious