The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Performer: 0140449248
Book online «The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗». Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky
in your defence…. As a matter of fact, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, I’ve
always been disposed to regard you as, so to speak, more unfortunate
than guilty. All of us here, if I may make bold to speak for all, we
are all ready to recognise that you are, at bottom, a young man of
honour, but, alas, one who has been carried away by certain passions
to a somewhat excessive degree…”
Nikolay Parfenovitch’s little figure was positively majestic by
the time he had finished speaking. It struck Mitya that in another
minute this “boy” would take his arm, lead him to another corner,
and renew their conversation about “girls.” But many quite
irrelevant and inappropriate thoughts sometimes occur even to a
prisoner when he is being led out to execution.
“Gentlemen, you are good, you are humane, may I see her to say
‘good-bye’ for the last time?” asked Mitya.
“Certainly, but considering… in fact, now it’s impossible except
in the presence of-”
“Oh, well, if it must be so, it must!”
Grushenka was brought in, but the farewell was brief, and of few
words, and did not at all satisfy Nikolay Parfenovitch. Grushenka made
a deep bow to Mitya.
“I have told you I am yours, and I will be yours. I will follow
you for ever, wherever they may send you. Farewell; you are guiltless,
though you’ve been your own undoing.”
Her lips quivered, tears flowed from her eyes.
“Forgive me, Grusha, for my love, for ruining you, too, with my
love.”
Mitya would have said something more, but he broke off and went
out. He was at once surrounded by men who kept a constant watch on
him. At the bottom of the steps to which he had driven up with such
a dash the day before with Andrey’s three horses, two carts stood in
readiness. Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, a sturdy, thick-set man with a
wrinkled face, was annoyed about something, some sudden
irregularity. He was shouting angrily. He asked Mitya to get into
the cart with somewhat excessive surliness.
“When I stood him drinks in the tavern, the man had quite a
different face,” thought Mitya, as he got in. At the gates there was a
crowd of people, peasants, women, and drivers. Trifon Borissovitch
came down the steps too. All stared at Mitya.
“Forgive me at parting, good people!” Mitya shouted suddenly
from the cart.
“Forgive us too!” he heard two or three voices.
“Goodbye to you, too, Trifon Borissovitch!”
But Trifon Borissovitch did not even turn round. He was,
perhaps, too busy. He, too, was shouting and fussing about
something. It appeared that everything was not yet ready in the second
cart, in which two constables were to accompany Mavriky Mavrikyevitch.
The peasant who had been ordered to drive the second cart was
pulling on his smock, stoutly maintaining that it was not his turn
to go, but Akim’s. But Akim was not to be seen. They ran to look for
him. The peasant persisted and besought them to wait.
“You see what our peasants are, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. They’ve
no shame!” exclaimed Trifon Borissovitch. “Akim gave you twenty-five
copecks the day before yesterday. You’ve drunk it all and now you
cry out. I’m simply surprised at your good-nature, with our low
peasants, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, that’s all I can say.”
“But what do we want a second cart for?” Mitya put in. “Let’s
start with the one, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. I won’t be unruly, I
won’t run away from you, old fellow. What do we want an escort for?”
“I’ll trouble you, sir, to learn how to speak to me if you’ve
never been taught. I’m not ‘old fellow’ to you, and you can keep
your advice for another time!” Mavriky Mavrikyevitch snapped out
savagely, as though glad to vent his wrath.
Mitya was reduced to silence. He flushed all over. A moment
later he felt suddenly very cold. The rain had ceased, but the dull
sky was still overcast with clouds, and a keen wind was blowing
straight in his face.
“I’ve taken a chill,” thought Mitya, twitching his shoulders.
At last Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, too, got into the cart, sat down
heavily, and, as though without noticing it, squeezed Mitya into the
corner. It is true that he was out of humour and greatly disliked
the task that had been laid upon him.
“Goodbye, Trifon Borissovitch!” Mitya shouted again, and felt
himself, that he had not called out this time from good-nature, but
involuntarily, from resentment.
But Trifon Borissovitch stood proudly, with both hands behind
his back, and staring straight at Mitya with a stern and angry face,
he made no reply.
“Goodbye, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, good-bye!” he heard all at once
the voice of Kalganov, who had suddenly darted out. Running up to
the cart he held out his hand to Mitya. He had no cap on.
Mitya had time to seize and press his hand.
“Goodbye, dear fellow! I shan’t forget your generosity,” he cried
warmly.
But the cart moved and their hands parted. The bell began
ringing and Mitya was driven off.
Kalganov ran back, sat down in a corner, bent his head, hid his
face in his hands, and burst out crying. For a long while he sat
like that, crying as though he were a little boy instead of a young
man of twenty. Oh, he believed almost without doubt in Mitya’s guilt.
“What are these people? What can men be after this?” he
exclaimed incoherently, in bitter despondency, almost despair. At that
moment he had no desire to live.
“Is it worth it? Is it worth it?” exclaimed the boy in his grief.
The Boys
Kolya Krassotkin
IT was the beginning of November. There had been a hard frost,
eleven degrees Reaumur, without snow, but a little dry snow had fallen
on the frozen ground during the night, and a keen dry wind was lifting
and blowing it along the dreary streets of our town, especially
about the marketplace. It was a dull morning, but the snow had
ceased.
Not far from the marketplace, close to Plotnikov’s shop, there
stood a small house, very clean both without and within. It belonged
to Madame Krassotkin, the widow of a former provincial secretary,
who had been dead for fourteen years. His widow, still a
nice-looking woman of thirty-two, was living in her neat little
house on her private means. She lived in respectable seclusion; she
was of a soft but fairly cheerful disposition. She was about
eighteen at the time of her husband’s death; she had been married only
a year and had just borne him a son. From the day of his death she had
devoted herself heart and soul to the bringing up of her precious
treasure, her boy Kolya. Though she had loved him passionately those
fourteen years, he had caused her far more suffering than happiness.
She had been trembling and fainting with terror almost every day,
afraid he would fall ill, would catch cold, do something naughty,
climb on a chair and fall off it, and so on and so on. When Kolya
began going to school, the mother devoted herself to studying all
the sciences with him so as to help him, and go through his lessons
with him. She hastened to make the acquaintance of the teachers and
their wives, even made up to Kolya’s schoolfellows, and fawned upon
them in the hope of thus saving Kolya from being teased, laughed at,
or beaten by them. She went so far that the boys actually began to
mock at him on her account and taunt him with being a “mother’s
darling.”
But the boy could take his own part. He was a resolute boy,
“tremendously strong,” as was rumoured in his class, and soon proved
to be the fact; he was agile, strong-willed, and of an audacious and
enterprising temper. He was good at lessons, and there was a rumour in
the school that he could beat the teacher, Dardanelov, at arithmetic
and universal history. Though he looked down upon everyone, he was a
good comrade and not supercilious. He accepted his schoolfellows’
respect as his due, but was friendly with them. Above all, he knew
where to draw the line. He could restrain himself on occasion, and
in his relations with the teachers he never overstepped that last
mystic limit beyond which a prank becomes an unpardonable breach of
discipline. But he was as fond of mischief on every possible
occasion as the smallest boy in the school, and not so much for the
sake of mischief as for creating a sensation, inventing something,
something effective and conspicuous. He was extremely vain. He knew
how to make even his mother give way to him; he was almost despotic in
his control of her. She gave way to him, oh, she had given way to
him for years. The one thought unendurable to her was that her boy had
no great love for her. She was always fancying that Kolya was
“unfeeling” to her, and at times, dissolving into hysterical tears,
she used to reproach him with his coldness. The boy disliked this, and
the more demonstrations of feeling were demanded of him, the more he
seemed intentionally to avoid them. Yet it was not intentional on
his part but instinctive-it was his character. His mother was
mistaken; he was very fond of her. He only disliked “sheepish
sentimentality,” as he expressed it in his schoolboy language.
There was a bookcase in the house containing a few books that
had been his father’s. Kolya was fond of reading, and had read several
of them by himself. His mother did not mind that and only wondered
sometimes at seeing the boy stand for hours by the bookcase poring
over a book instead of going to play. And in that way Kolya read
some things unsuitable for his age.
Though the boy, as a rule, knew where to draw the line in his
mischief, he had of late begun to play pranks that caused his mother
serious alarm. It is true there was nothing vicious in what he did,
but a wild mad recklessness.
It happened that July, during the summer holidays, that the mother
and son went to another district, forty-five miles away, to spend a
week with a distant relation, whose husband was an official at the
railway station (the very station, the nearest one to our town, from
which a month later Ivan Fyodorovitch Karamazov set off for Moscow).
There Kolya began by carefully investigating every detail connected
with the railways, knowing that he could impress his schoolfellows
when he got home with his newly acquired knowledge. But there happened
to be some other boys in the place with whom he soon made friends.
Some of them were living at the station, others in the
neighbourhood; there were six or seven of them, all between twelve and
fifteen, and two of them came from our town. The boys played together,
and on the fourth or fifth day of Kolya’s stay at the station, a mad
bet was made by the foolish boys. Kolya, who was almost the youngest
of the party and rather looked down upon by the others in consequence,
was moved by vanity or by reckless bravado to bet them two roubles
that he would lie down between the rails at night when the eleven
o’clock train was due, and would lie there without moving while the
train rolled over him at full speed. It is true they made a
preliminary investigation, from which it appeared that it was possible
to lie so flat between the
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