The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Performer: 0140449248
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“Ilusha told me to, Ilusha,” he explained at once to Alyosha. “I
was sitting by him one night and he suddenly told me: ‘Father, when my
grave is filled up crumble a piece of bread on it so that the sparrows
may fly down; I shall hear and it will cheer me up not to be lying
alone.’”
“That’s a good thing,” said Alyosha, “we must often take some.”
“Every day, every day!” said the captain quickly, seeming
cheered at the thought.
They reached the church at last and set the coffin in the middle
of it. The boys surrounded it and remained reverently standing so, all
through the service. It was an old and rather poor church; many of the
ikons were without settings; but such churches are the best for
praying in. During the mass Snegiryov became somewhat calmer, though
at times he had outbursts of the same unconscious and, as it were,
incoherent anxiety. At one moment he went up to the coffin to set
straight the cover or the wreath, when a candle fell out of the
candlestick he rushed to replace it and was a fearful time fumbling
over it, then he subsided and stood quietly by the coffin with a
look of blank uneasiness and perplexity. After the Epistle he suddenly
whispered to Alyosha, who was standing beside him, that the Epistle
had not been read properly but did not explain what he meant. During
the prayer, “Like the Cherubim,” he joined in the singing but did
not go on to the end. Falling on his knees, he pressed his forehead to
the stone floor and lay so for a long while.
At last came the funeral service itself and candles were
distributed. The distracted father began fussing about again, but
the touching and impressive funeral prayers moved and roused his soul.
He seemed suddenly to shrink together and broke into rapid, short
sobs, which he tried at first to smother, but at last he sobbed aloud.
When they began taking leave of the dead and closing the coffin, he
flung his arms about, as though he would not allow them to cover
Ilusha, and began greedily and persistently kissing his dead boy on
the lips. At last they succeeded in persuading him to come away from
the step, but suddenly he impulsively stretched out his hand and
snatched a few flowers from the coffin. He looked at them and a new
idea seemed to dawn upon him, so that he apparently forgot his grief
for a minute. Gradually he seemed to sink into brooding and did not
resist when the coffin was lifted up and carried to the grave. It
was an expensive one in the churchyard close to the church, Katerina
Ivanovna had paid for it. After the customary rites the
grave-diggers lowered the coffin. Snegiryov with his flowers in his
hands bent down so low over the open grave that the boys caught hold
of his coat in alarm and pulled him back. He did not seem to
understand fully what was happening. When they began filling up the
grave, he suddenly pointed anxiously at the falling earth and began
trying to say something, but no one could make out what he meant,
and he stopped suddenly. Then he was reminded that he must crumble the
bread and he was awfully excited, snatched up the bread and began
pulling it to pieces-and flinging the morsels on the grave.
“Come, fly down, birds, fly down, sparrows!” he muttered
anxiously.
One of the boys observed that it was awkward for him to crumble
the bread with the flowers in his hands and suggested he should give
them to someone to hold for a time. But he would not do this and
seemed indeed suddenly alarmed for his flowers, as though they
wanted to take them from him altogether. And after looking at the
grave, and as it were, satisfying himself that everything had been
done and the bread had been crumbled, he suddenly, to the surprise
of everyone, turned, quite composedly even, and made his way
homewards. But his steps became more and more hurried, he almost
ran. The boys and Alyosha kept up with him.
“The flowers are for mamma, the flowers are for mamma! I was
unkind to mamma,” he began exclaiming suddenly.
Someone called to him to put on his hat as it was cold. But he
flung the hat in the snow as though he were angry and kept
repeating, “I won’t have the hat, I won’t have the hat.” Smurov picked
it up and carried it after him. All the boys were crying, and Kolya
and the boy who discovered about Troy most of all. Though Smurov, with
the captain’s hat in his hand, was crying bitterly too, he managed, as
he ran, to snatch up a piece of red brick that lay on the snow of
the path, to fling it at the flock of sparrows that was flying by.
He missed them, of course, and went on crying as he ran. Halfway,
Snegiryov suddenly stopped, stood still for half a minute, as though
struck by something, and suddenly turning back to the church, ran
towards the deserted grave. But the boys instantly overtook him and
caught hold of him on all sides. Then he fell helpless on the snow
as though he had been knocked down, and struggling, sobbing, and
wailing, he began crying out, “Ilusha, old man, dear old man!” Alyosha
and Kolya tried to make him get up, soothing and persuading him.
“Captain, give over, a brave man must show fortitude,” muttered
Kolya.
“You’ll spoil the flowers,” said Alyosha, and mamma is expecting
them, she is sitting crying because you would not give her any before.
Ilusha’s little bed is still there-”
“Yes, yes, mamma!” Snegiryov suddenly recollected, “they’ll take
away the bed, they’ll take it away,” he added as though alarmed that
they really would. He jumped up and ran homewards again. But it was
not far off and they all arrived together. Snegiryov opened the door
hurriedly and called to his wife with whom he had so cruelly
quarrelled just before:
“Mamma, poor crippled darling, Ilusha has sent you these flowers,”
he cried, holding out to her a little bunch of flowers that had been
frozen and broken while he was struggling in the snow. But at that
instant he saw in the corner, by the little bed, Ilusha’s little
boots, which the landlady had put tidily side by side. Seeing the old,
patched, rusty-looking, stiff boots he flung up his hands and rushed
to them, fell on his knees, snatched up one boot and, pressing his
lips to it, began kissing it greedily, crying, “Ilusha, old man,
dear old man, where are your little feet?”
“Where have you taken him away? Where have you taken him?” the
lunatic cried in a heart-rending voice. Nina, too, broke into sobs.
Kolya ran out of the room, the boys followed him. At last Alyosha
too went out.
“Let them weep,” he said to Kolya, “it’s no use trying to
comfort them just now. Let wait a minute and then go back.”
“No, it’s no use, it’s awful,” Kolya assented. “Do you know,
Karamazov,” he dropped his voice so that no one could hear them, “I
feel dreadfully sad, and if it were only possible to bring him back,
I’d give anything in the world to do it.”
“Ah, so would I,” said Alyosha.
“What do you think, Karamazov? Had we better come back here
to-night? He’ll be drunk, you know.”
“Perhaps he will. Let us come together, you and I, that will be
enough, to spend an hour with them, with the mother and Nina. If we
all come together we shall remind them of everything again,” Alyosha
suggested.
“The landlady is laying the table for them now-there’ll be a
funeral dinner or something, the priest is coming; shall we go back to
it, Karamazov?”
“Of course,” said Alyosha.
“It’s all so strange, Karamazov, such sorrow and then pancakes
after it, it all seems so unnatural in our religion.”
“They are going to have salmon, too,” the boy who had discovered
about Troy observed in a loud voice.
“I beg you most earnestly, Kartashov, not to interrupt again
with your idiotic remarks, especially when one is not talking to you
and doesn’t care to know whether you exist or not!” Kolya snapped
out irritably. The boy flushed crimson but did not dare to reply.
Meantime they were strolling slowly along the path and suddenly
Smurov exclaimed:
“There’s Ilusha’s stone, under which they wanted to bury him.”
They all stood still by the big stone. Alyosha looked and the
whole picture of what Snegiryov had described to him that day, how
Ilusha, weeping and hugging his father, had cried, “Father, father,
how he insulted you,” rose at once before his imagination. A sudden
impulse seemed to come into his soul. With a serious and earnest
expression he looked from one to another of the bright, pleasant faces
of Ilusha’s schoolfellows, and suddenly said to them:
“Boys, I should like to say one word to you, here at this place.”
The boys stood round him and at once bent attentive and
expectant eyes upon him.
“Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two
brothers, of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at
death’s door. But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a long
time, so we shall part. Let us make a compact here, at Ilusha’s stone,
that we will never forget Ilusha and one another.
And whatever happens to us later in life, if we don’t meet for
twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we buried the poor
boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by the bridge?
and afterwards we all grew so fond of him. He was a fine boy, a
kindhearted, brave boy, he felt for his father’s honour and resented
the cruel insult to him and stood up for him. And so in the first
place, we will remember him, boys, all our lives. And even if we are
occupied with most important things, if we attain to honour or fall
into great misfortune-still let us remember how good it was once
here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feeling
which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy, better
perhaps than we are. My little doves let me call you so, for you are
very like them, those pretty blue birds, at this minute as I look at
your good dear faces. My dear children, perhaps you won’t understand
what I am saying to you, because I often speak very unintelligibly,
but you’ll remember all the same and will agree with my words some
time. You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more
wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory,
especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a
great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory,
preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man
carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end
of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one’s
heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us. Perhaps we
may even grow wicked later on, may be unable to refrain from a bad
action, may laugh at men’s tears and at those people who say as
Kolya did just now, ‘I want to suffer for all men,’ and may even
jeer spitefully at such
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