The Brothers Karamazov (141 page)

“Flowers for mamma, for mamma! We’ve not been nice to her!” he suddenly cried out, and then repeated it again and again.

Somebody suggested he put on his hat, for it was growing very cold. Somehow that seemed to anger him and he flung his hat into the snow muttering, “I don’t want the hat, I don’t want it . . .” Young Smurov picked it up and carried it after him. All the boys were crying, and the two who cried the hardest were Kolya and the boy who knew who had founded Troy. And although Smurov, who was carrying the hat, was weeping too, he nevertheless managed to snatch up, almost on the run, a piece of brick that looked very red in the snow and to throw it at a flock of sparrows that was flying by. Of course, he missed and continued to trot along, the tears running down his cheeks. Half way home, Snegirev suddenly stopped, stood still for half a minute, then briskly turning back as if he had remembered something, set off toward the grave they had left. The boys quickly caught up with him, surrounding him on all sides. He fell helplessly into the snow, as if someone had pushed him down, and started to wail and sob, writhing on the ground and crying out: “Ilyusha! Old man! Ilyusha!” Alyosha and Kolya tried to reason with him and make him get up.

“Captain, Captain Snegirev, you must bear it—you are a brave man,” Kolya said.

“You’ll spoil the flowers!” Alyosha said. “Mrs. Snegirev is crying. She is waiting for these flowers—you didn’t give her any of Ilyusha’s flowers . . . And Ilyusha’s bed is still there . . .”

“Yes, yes, let’s go back to mamma,” Snegirev said, suddenly remembering her. “Ah, and they will take the bed away! They will, they will take it away!” he cried worriedly, and then got to his feet and started running, toward the house now.

They got there very quickly, all of them together. Snegirev opened the door and shouted to his wife, at whom he had snapped so sharply about the flowers before:

“Here, mamma dear, Ilyusha has sent you some flowers. Ah, you poor dear with your sore legs!”

And he handed her the little bunch of frozen flowers. Many of them had been broken while he was writhing in the snow.

But in that same second he caught sight of Ilyusha’s little boots by the boy’s bed. They had been put neatly together there by the landlady, who had come in and tidied the room. Snegirev looked at Ilyusha’s old, patched, ragged, and discolored boots for a second; then he quickly knelt beside them, picked them up, and kissed them ardently, crying out: “Ah, Ilyusha, old man, my Ilyusha, ah, and where are your poor little feet now? . . .”

“Where did you take him, where?” the crazy woman screamed at him in a bloodcurdling voice.

Now Nina began to sob too. Kolya rushed out of the room and the boys started to file out behind him. Alyosha was the last to come out.

“Let them cry in peace,” Alyosha said. “There’s nothing we can do now to make them feel better. Let’s wait here for a while and then go back in.”

“Yes, indeed, we can do nothing, and that’s the worst of it,” Kolya said. “You know, Karamazov,” he said, lowering his voice so as not to be overheard by the others, “I feel so awful about it. I would give anything in the world to bring him back to life!”

“So would I,” Alyosha said.

“Do you really think we should come back here this evening, Karamazov? Why, he’s sure to have got himself drunk by then.”

“He may very well do precisely that. Let’s just the two of us come back and spend an hour with Mrs. Snegirev and Nina. I think it would be better if the others didn’t come, for all of us together here would bring it all back to them,” Alyosha suggested.

“The landlady is laying the table in there now. They’ll have a funeral repast, I suppose, and the priest is coming back too. Do you think we have to go back there right now?”

“I certainly do think so.”

“Doesn’t it strike you as peculiar, though, when you stop to think of it? There’s such terrible grief there and now they’re supposed to eat those pancakes . . . All these religious things are so unnatural!”

“They’ll have smoked salmon too,” the expert on Troy put in unexpectedly in a loud voice.

“I’d greatly appreciate it, Kartashov, if you’d spare us your asinine remarks when no one has asked for your opinion or, for that matter, is even aware that you exist!” Kolya snapped at the boy, who turned beet-red but did not dare to answer.

In the meantime, they had walked quite a distance down the path and suddenly Smurov cried:

“Here’s Ilyusha’s stone, under which he wanted to be buried!”

They stopped silently by the big stone. Alyosha visualized the whole scene that had taken place there, that Snegirev had described to him. He saw the boy hugging his father and saying: “Papa, papa, it’s terrible what he did to you, the way he insulted you!” Something happened within Alyosha and, looking at all those bright young faces around him, he said:

“Boys, there’s something I’d like to tell you here, by this stone.”

They crowded around him in a semi-circle, looking at him in expectation.

“Boys, you and I will have to part quite soon. I’ll have to stay here for some time, though, with my two brothers. One of them is waiting to be sent off to Siberia. The other is very ill, and his life is in danger. But I’ll leave this town soon enough and may be gone for a very long time. And so we shall part. So let us agree, here by this stone, that we shall never forget, first, Ilyusha and, second, one another. And whatever happens to us later in life, even if we do not meet again for the next twenty years, let us always remember this day when we buried the poor little boy whom we previously pelted with stones—remember, by that bridge?—and to whom, later, we all became so attached. He was a nice, kind, brave boy, very conscious of his father’s dignity and very sensitive to the cruel insults showered on his father. And it was against those insults that he revolted. And so let us, each one of us, remember him as long as we live. And whether you are absorbed in the most important pursuits, reaching out for the highest honors, or struck down by the cruelest griefs, always remember how good it felt when we were all here together, united by a good and decent feeling, which made us, while we all loved this boy, better people, probably, than we would otherwise have been.

“You look to me at this moment like so many little doves, and that’s what I’d like to call you, ‘my little doves,’ for you look like those pretty, gray-blue birds, your faces are so nice and kind. My dear boys, possibly you won’t even understand what I’m saying now, for I often speak very unclearly, but I think you’ll remember it, nevertheless, and some day you may agree with my words.

“I want you to understand, then, that there is nothing nobler, stronger, healthier, and more helpful in life than a good remembrance, particularly a remembrance from our childhood, when we still lived in our parents’ house. You often hear people speak about upbringing and education, but I feel that a beautiful, holy memory preserved from early childhood can be the most important single thing in our development. And if a person succeeds, in the course of his life, in collecting many such memories, he will be saved for the rest of his life. And even if we have only one such memory, it is possible that it will be enough to save us some day. Perhaps some of us will even turn evil one day; perhaps we will be unable to resist wicked temptations, will sneer at other people’s tears, and will laugh spitefully at those who exclaim, as Kolya did today, that they would like to suffer for all men. But bad and wicked though we may become—which God forbid should happen to us—whenever we remember Ilyusha, how he died, how we loved him, how united we all were by this big stone, the cruelest and the most sarcastic of us, if that is what he has become, will still never dare, deep inside, to laugh at the good, kind boy he was at this moment! More than that—perhaps this memory will protect him from succumbing to the temptation to commit a mortal sin and he will think better of it, saying to himself: ‘Yes, there was a moment when I was good and kind and brave!’ Let him grin ironically at himself then, it doesn’t matter, for a man often laughs at what is good and kind—it is only part of his thoughtlessness. But as soon as he grins in that way, he will feel deep down, ‘No, it’s not right for me to laugh at it, because this is a thing at which we must never laugh.’ ”

“I understand very well what you mean, Karamazov, and I’m sure it’s the absolute truth!” Kolya cried with flashing eyes.

The younger boys were moved and wanted to voice their approval too, but restrained themselves, looking at Alyosha with warmth and admiration.

“I say this in case any of us should turn wicked,” Alyosha said, “but there is no need for us to become wicked, don’t you agree, boys? Let us be first of all kind and then honest, and finally let us never forget one another. Let me give you my word that, for my part, I will never forget any of you. Even in thirty years, I will remember each face that is turned toward me at this second. A few minutes ago, for instance, Kolya said to Kartashov that he didn’t care whether Kartashov existed or not. But how could I ever forget that Kartashov exists and that, at this second, he is not blushing as he did after he had founded Troy, but is simply looking at me out of his nice, kind, cheerful eyes? Let us, my dear boys, be as brave and generous as Ilyusha, as intelligent, bold, and generous as Kolya—and he will become still more intelligent when he grows up—and as shy, intelligent, and sweet as Kartashov! But there was no special reason for me to mention Krasotkin and Kartashov rather than anyone else, for, from today on, I shall carry you all in my heart and I beg you, every one of you, to accept me also in yours! And the one who will unite us all in this noble feeling, the one whom we shall and are determined always to remember is our kind, sweet little Ilyusha, the boy whom we shall cherish forever and ever! So let us never forget him, let us always treasure his memory in our hearts, now and always!”

“Yes, yes, now and always! Forever and ever!” the boys cried out in their ringing young voices, all looking at Alyosha with great emotion.

“We shall remember his face and his dress, his poor little boots, and his little coffin; and also, his unhappy, sinful father, in defense of whom Ilyusha so bravely challenged his whole class!”

“Yes, we shall remember him; he was brave and he was kind!” the boys cried again.

“Oh, I loved him so!” Kolya exclaimed.

“You know, boys,” Alyosha said, “you needn’t be afraid of life! Life is so good when you do something that is good and just.”

“Yes, yes, right!” some of the boys cried enthusiastically.

“We like you, Karamazov!” cried a voice that could very well have been Kartashov’s.

“We all like you, love you!” all the boys joined in, and tears glistened in their eyes.

“Three cheers for Karamazov!” Kolya shouted solemnly.

“May the memory of the dead boy live forever!” Alyosha said.

“May it live forever!” the boys echoed.

“Karamazov,” Kolya said suddenly, “can it be true, as our religion claims, that we shall all rise from the dead, come back to life, and meet again, Ilyusha too?”

“We shall certainly rise and we shall certainly all meet again and tell each other happily and joyfully everything that has happened to us,” Alyosha said laughingly but, at the same time, fervently.

“Ah, won’t that be good!” Kolya cried spontaneously.

“But now, enough talking, for it’s time to go to the funeral repast. And don’t feel embarrassed when you eat those pancakes. Since it’s an ancient, eternal custom, there must be something that’s right about it!” Alyosha laughed. “Well, let’s go then, hand in hand!”

“And let’s always go like this, hand in hand, throughout our lives, and three cheers for Karamazov!” Kolya shouted ecstatically, and again the boys cheered Alyosha.

*

FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH DOSTOEVSKY’s life was as dark and dramatic as the great novels he wrote. He was born in Moscow in 1821, the son of a former army surgeon whose drunken brutality led his own serfs to murder him by pouring vodka down his throat until he strangled. A short first novel, 
Poor Folk
 (1846), brought him instant success, but his writing career was cut short by his arrest for alleged subversion against Tsar Nicholas I in 1849. In prison he was given the “silent treatment” for eight months (guards even wore velvet-soled boots) before he was led in front of a firing squad. Dressed in a death shroud, he faced an open grave and awaited his execution when, suddenly, an order arrived commuting his sentence. He then spent four years at hard labor in a Siberian prison, where he began to suffer from epilepsy, and he only returned to St. Petersburg a full ten years after he had left in chains.

His prison experiences coupled with his conversion to a conservative and profoundly religious philosophy formed the basis for his great novels. But it was his fortuitous marriage to Anna Snitkina, following a period of utter destitution brought about by his compulsive gambling, that gave Dostoevsky the emotional stability to complete 
Crime and Punishment
 (1866), 
The Idiot
 (1868–69), 
The Possessed
 (1871–72), and 
The Brothers Karamazov
 (1879–80). When Dostoevsky died in 1881, he left a legacy of masterworks that influenced the great thinkers and writers of the Western world and immortalized him as a giant among writers of world literature.

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV

A Bantam Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY

The Brothers Karamazov
 was first published in 1880

First Bantam edition / August 1970

Bantam Classic edition / March 1981

Bantam Classic reissue / November 2003

Published by Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

All rights reserved

Translation copyright © 1970 by Bantam Books

The copyrighted portions of this book may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Bantam Books, New York, New York.

Visit our website at
www.bantamdell.com

www.randomhouse.com

Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN 0-553-89809-4

Published simultaneously in Canada

v1.0