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

father’s, he ate it. It

made him feel stronger.

 

Dmitri was not at home. The people of the house, an old

cabinet-maker, his son, and his old wife, looked with positive

suspicion at Alyosha. “He hasn’t slept here for the last three nights.

Maybe he has gone away,” the old man said in answer to Alyosha’s

persistent inquiries. Alyosha saw that he was answering in

accordance with instructions. When he asked whether he were not at

Grushenka’s or in hiding at Foma’s (Alyosha spoke so freely on

purpose), all three looked at him in alarm. “They are fond of him,

they are doing their best for him,” thought Alyosha. “That’s good.”

 

At last he found the house in Lake Street. It was a decrepit

little house, sunk on one side, with three windows looking into the

street, and with a muddy yard, in the middle of which stood a solitary

cow. He crossed the yard and found the door opening into the

passage. On the left of the passage lived the old woman of the house

with her old daughter. Both seemed to be deaf. In answer to his

repeated inquiry for the captain, one of them at last understood

that he was asking for their lodgers, and pointed to a door across the

passage. The captain’s lodging turned out to be a simple cottage room.

Alyosha had his hand on the iron latch to open the door, when he was

struck by the strange hush within. Yet he knew from Katerina

Ivanovna’s words that the man had a family. “Either they are all

asleep or perhaps they have heard me coming and are waiting for me

to open the door. I’d better knock first,” and he knocked. An answer

came, but not at once, after an interval of perhaps ten seconds.

 

“Who’s there?” shouted someone in a loud and very angry voice.

 

Then Alyosha opened the door and crossed the threshold. He found

himself in a regular peasant’s room. Though it was large, it was

cumbered up with domestic belongings of all sorts, and there were

several people in it. On the left was a large Russian stove. From

the stove to the window on the left was a string running across the

room, and on it there were rags hanging. There was a bedstead

against the wall on each side, right and left, covered with knitted

quilts. On the one on the left was a pyramid of four print-covered

pillows, each smaller than the one beneath. On the other there was

only one very small pillow. The opposite corner was screened off by

a curtain or a sheet hung on a string. Behind this curtain could be

seen a bed made up on a bench and a chair. The rough square table of

plain wood had been moved into the middle window. The three windows,

which consisted each of four tiny greenish mildewy panes, gave

little light, and were close shut, so that the room was not very light

and rather stuffy. On the table was a frying pan with the remains of

some fried eggs, a half-eaten piece of bread, and a small bottle

with a few drops of vodka.

 

A woman of genteel appearance, wearing a cotton gown, was

sitting on a chair by the bed on the left. Her face was thin and

yellow, and her sunken cheeks betrayed at the first glance that she

was ill. But what struck Alyosha most was the expression in the poor

woman’s eyes-a look of surprised inquiry and yet of haughty pride.

And while he was talking to her husband, her big brown eyes moved from

one speaker to the other with the same haughty and questioning

expression. Beside her at the window stood a young girl, rather plain,

with scanty reddish hair, poorly but very neatly dressed. She looked

disdainfully at Alyosha as he came in. Beside the other bed was

sitting another female figure. She was a very sad sight, a young

girl of about twenty, but hunchback and crippled “with withered legs,”

as Alyosha was told afterwards. Her crutches stood in the corner close

by. The strikingly beautiful and gentle eyes of this poor girl

looked with mild serenity at Alyosha. A man of forty-five was

sitting at the table, finishing the fried eggs. He was spare, small,

and weakly built. He had reddish hair and a scanty light-coloured

beard, very much like a wisp of tow (this comparison and the phrase “a

wisp of tow” flashed at once into Alyosha’s mind for some reason, he

remembered it afterwards). It was obviously this gentleman who had

shouted to him, as there was no other man in the room. But when

Alyosha went in, he leapt up from the bench on which he was sitting,

and, hastily wiping his mouth with a ragged napkin, darted up to

Alyosha.

 

“It’s a monk come to beg for the monastery. A nice place to come

to!” the girl standing in the left corner said aloud. The man spun

round instantly towards her and answered her in an excited and

breaking voice:

 

“No, Varvara, you are wrong. Allow me to ask,” he turned again

to Alyosha, “what has brought you to our retreat?”

 

Alyosha looked attentively at him. It was the first time he had

seen him. There was something angular, flurried and irritable about

him. Though he had obviously just been drinking, he was not drunk.

There was extraordinary impudence in his expression, and yet,

strange to say, at the same time there was fear. He looked like a

man who had long been kept in subjection and had submitted to it,

and now had suddenly turned and was trying to assert himself. Or,

better still, like a man who wants dreadfully to hit you but is

horribly afraid you will hit him. In his words and in the intonation

of his shrill voice there was a sort of crazy humour, at times

spiteful and at times cringing, and continually shifting from one tone

to another. The question about “our retreat” he had asked, as it were,

quivering all over, rolling his eyes, and skipping up so close to

Alyosha that he instinctively drew back a step. He was dressed in a

very shabby dark cotton coat, patched and spotted. He wore checked

trousers of an extremely light colour, long out of fashion, and of

very thin material. They were so crumpled and so short that he

looked as though he had grown out of them like a boy.

 

“I am Alexey Karamazov,” Alyosha began in reply.

 

“I quite understand that, sir,” the gentleman snapped out at

once to assure him that he knew who he was already. “I am Captain

Snegiryov, sir, but I am still desirous to know precisely what has led

you- “

 

“Oh, I’ve come for nothing special. I wanted to have a word with

you-if only you allow me.”

 

“In that case, here is a chair, sir; kindly be seated. That’s what

they used to say in the old comedies, ‘kindly be seated,’” and with

a rapid gesture he seized an empty chair (it was a rough wooden chair,

not upholstered) and set it for him almost in the middle of the

room; then, taking another similar chair for himself, he sat down

facing Alyosha, so close to him that their knees almost touched.

 

“Nikolay Ilyitch Snegiryov, sir, formerly a captain in the Russian

infantry, put to shame for his vices, but still a captain. Though I

might not be one now for the way I talk; for the last half of my

life I’ve learnt to say ‘sir.’ It’s a word you use when you’ve come

down in the world.”

 

“That’s very true,” smiled Alyosha. “But is it used

involuntarily or on purpose?”

 

“As God’s above, it’s involuntary, and I usen’t to use it! I

didn’t use the word ‘sir’ all my life, but as soon as I sank into

low water I began to say ‘sir.’ It’s the work of a higher power. I see

you are interested in contemporary questions, but how can I have

excited your curiosity, living as I do in surroundings impossible

for the exercise of hospitality?”

 

“I’ve come-about that business.”

 

“About what business?” the captain interrupted impatiently.

 

“About your meeting with my brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch,”

Alyosha blurted out awkwardly.

 

“What meeting, sir? You don’t mean that meeting? About my ‘wisp of

tow,’ then?” He moved closer so that his knees positively knocked

against Alyosha. His lips were strangely compressed like a thread.

 

“What wisp of tow?” muttered Alyosha.

 

“He is come to complain of me, father!” cried a voice familiar

to Alyosha-the voice of the schoolboy-from behind the curtain. “I

bit his finger just now.” The curtain was pulled, and Alyosha saw

his assailant lying on a little bed made up on the bench and the chair

in the corner under the ikons. The boy lay covered by his coat and

an old wadded quilt. He was evidently unwell, and, judging by his

glittering eyes, he was in a fever. He looked at Alyosha without fear,

as though he felt he was at home and could not be touched.

 

“What! Did he bite your finger?” The captain jumped up from his

chair. “Was it your finger he bit?”

 

“Yes. He was throwing stones with other schoolboys. There were six

of them against him alone. I went up to him, and he threw a stone

at me and then another at my head. I asked him what I had done to him.

And then he rushed at me and bit my finger badly, I don’t know why.”

 

“I’ll thrash him, sir, at once-this minute!” The captain jumped

up from his seat.

 

“But I am not complaining at all, I am simply telling you…. I

don’t want him to be thrashed. Besides, he seems to be ill.”

 

“And do you suppose I’d thrash him? That I’d take my Ilusha and

thrash him before you for your satisfaction? Would you like it done at

once, sir?” said the captain, suddenly turning to Alyosha, as though

he were going to attack him. “I am sorry about your finger, sir; but

instead of thrashing Ilusha, would you like me to chop off my four

fingers with this knife here before your eyes to satisfy your just

wrath? I should think four fingers would be enough to satisfy your

thirst for vengeance. You won’t ask for the fifth one too?” He stopped

short with a catch in his throat. Every feature in his face was

twitching and working; he looked extremely defiant. He was in a sort

of frenzy.

 

“I think I understand it all now,” said Alyosha gently and

sorrowfully, still keeping his seat. “So your boy is a good boy, he

loves his father, and he attacked me as the brother of your

assailant…. Now I understand it,” he repeated thoughtfully. “But

my brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch regrets his action, I know that, and if

only it is possible for him to come to you, or better still, to meet

you in that same place, he will ask your forgiveness before

everyone-if you wish it.”

 

“After pulling out my beard, you mean, he will ask my forgiveness?

And he thinks that will be a satisfactory finish, doesn’t he?”

 

“Oh, no! On the contrary, he will do anything you like and in

any way you like.”

 

“So if I were to ask his highness to go down on his knees before

me in that very tavern- ‘The Metropolis’ it’s called-or in the

marketplace, he would do it?”

 

“Yes, he would even go down on his knees.”

 

“You’ve pierced me to the heart, sir. Touched me to tears and

pierced me to the heart! I am only too sensible of your brother’s