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
Alyosha had said a word it would have stopped him, but Alyosha was
silent and “it might be the silence of contempt,” and that finally
irritated Kolya.
“The classical languages, too… they are simply madness,
nothing more. You seem to disagree with me again, Karamazov?”
“I don’t agree,” said Alyosha, with a faint smile.
“The study of the classics, if you ask my opinion, is simply a
police measure, that’s simply why it has been introduced into our
schools.” By degrees Kolya began to get breathless again. “Latin and
Greek were introduced because they are a bore and because they stupefy
the intellect. It was dull before, so what could they do to make
things duller? It was senseless enough before, so what could they do
to make it more senseless? So they thought of Greek and Latin.
That’s my opinion, I hope I shall never change it,” Kolya finished
abruptly. His cheeks were flushed.
“That’s true,” assented Smurov suddenly, in a ringing tone of
conviction. He had listened attentively.
“And yet he is first in Latin himself,” cried one of the group
of boys suddenly.
“Yes, father, he says that and yet he is first in Latin,” echoed
Ilusha.
“What of it?” Kolya thought fit to defend himself, though the
praise was very sweet to him. “I am fagging away at Latin because I
have to, because I promised my mother to pass my examination, and I
think that whatever you do, it’s worth doing it well. But in my soul I
have a profound contempt for the classics and all that fraud…. You
don’t agree, Karamazov?”
“Why ‘fraud’?” Alyosha smiled again.
“Well, all the classical authors have been translated into all
languages, so it was not for the sake of studying the classics they
introduced Latin, but solely as a police measure, to stupefy the
intelligence. So what can one call it but a fraud?”
“Why, who taught you all this?” cried Alyosha, surprised at last.
“In the first place I am capable of thinking for myself without
being taught. Besides, what I said just now about the classics being
translated our teacher Kolbasnikov has said to the whole of the
third class.”
“The doctor has come!” cried Nina, who had been silent till then.
A carriage belonging to Madame Hohlakov drove up to the gate.
The captain, who had been expecting the doctor all the morning, rushed
headlong out to meet him. “Mamma” pulled herself together and
assumed a dignified air. Alyosha went up to Ilusha and began setting
his pillows straight. Nina, from her invalid chair, anxiously
watched him putting the bed tidy. The boys hurriedly took leave.
Some of them promised to come again in the evening. Kolya called
Perezvon and the dog jumped off the bed.
“I won’t go away, I won’t go away,” Kolya said hastily to
Ilusha. “I’ll wait in the passage and come back when the doctor’s
gone, I’ll come back with Perezvon.”
But by now the doctor had entered, an important-looking person
with long, dark whiskers and a shiny, shaven chin, wearing a
bearskin coat. As he crossed the threshold he stopped, taken aback; he
probably fancied he had come to the wrong place. “How is this? Where
am I?” he muttered, not removing his coat nor his peaked sealskin cap.
The crowd, the poverty of the room, the washing hanging on a line in
the corner, puzzled him. The captain, bent double, was bowing low
before him.
“It’s here, sir, here, sir,” he muttered cringingly; “it’s here,
you’ve come right, you were coming to us…”
“Sne-gi-ryov?” the doctor said loudly and pompously. “Mr.
Snegiryov-is that you?”
“That’s me, sir!”
“Ah!”
The doctor looked round the room with a squeamish air once more
and threw off his coat, displaying to all eyes the grand decoration at
his neck. The captain caught the fur coat in the air, and the doctor
took off his cap.
“Where is the patient?” he asked emphatically.
Precocity
“WHAT do you think the doctor will say to him?” Kolya asked
quickly. “What a repulsive mug, though, hasn’t he? I can’t endure
medicine!”
“Ilusha is dying. I think that’s certain,” answered Alyosha,
mournfully.
“They are rogues! Medicine’s a fraud! I am glad to have made
your acquaintance, though, Karamazov. I wanted to know you for a
long time. I am only sorry we meet in such sad circumstances.”
Kolya had a great inclination to say something even warmer and
more demonstrative, but he felt ill at ease. Alyosha noticed this,
smiled, and pressed his hand.
“I’ve long learned to respect you as a rare person,” Kolya
muttered again, faltering and uncertain. “I have heard you are a
mystic and have been in the monastery. I know you are a mystic, but…
that hasn’t put me off. Contact with real life will cure you….
It’s always so with characters like yours.”
“What do you mean by mystic? Cure me of what?” Alyosha was
rather astonished.
“Oh, God and all the rest of it.”
“What, don’t you believe in God?”
“Oh, I’ve nothing against God. Of course, God is only a
hypothesis, but… I admit that He is needed… for the order of the
universe and all that… and that if there were no God He would have
to be invented,” added Kolya, beginning to blush. He suddenly
fancied that Alyosha might think he was trying to show off his
knowledge and to prove that he was “grown up.” “I haven’t the
slightest desire to show off my knowledge to him,” Kolya thought
indignantly. And all of a sudden he felt horribly annoyed.
“I must confess I can’t endure entering on such discussions,” he
said with a final air. “It’s possible for one who doesn’t believe in
God to love mankind, don’t you think so? Voltaire didn’t believe in
God and loved mankind?” (“I am at it again,” he thought to himself.)
“Voltaire believed in God, though not very much, I think, and I
don’t think he loved mankind very much either,” said Alyosha
quietly, gently, and quite naturally, as though he were talking to
someone of his own age, or even older. Kolya was particularly struck
by Alyosha’s apparent diffidence about his opinion of Voltaire. He
seemed to be leaving the question for him, little Kolya, to settle.
“Have you read Voltaire?” Alyosha finished.
“No, not to say read…. But I’ve read Candide in the Russian
translation… in an absurd, grotesque, old translation.. (At it
again! again!)”
“And did you understand it?”
“Oh, yes, everything…. That is… Why do you suppose I shouldn’t
understand it? There’s a lot of nastiness in it, of course…. Of
course I can understand that it’s a philosophical novel and written to
advocate an idea….” Kolya was getting mixed by now. “I am a
Socialist, Karamazov, I am an incurable Socialist,” he announced
suddenly, apropos of nothing.
“A Socialist?” laughed Alyosha. “But when have you had time to
become one? Why, I thought you were only thirteen?”
Kolya winced.
“In the first place I am not thirteen, but fourteen, fourteen in a
fortnight,” he flushed angrily, “and in the second place I am at a
complete loss to understand what my age has to do with it? The
question is what are my convictions, not what is my age, isn’t it?”
“When you are older, you’ll understand for yourself the
influence of age on convictions. I fancied, too, that you were not
expressing your own ideas,” Alyosha answered serenely and modestly,
but Kolya interrupted him hotly:
“Come, you want obedience and mysticism. You must admit that the
Christian religion, for instance, has only been of use to the rich and
the powerful to keep the lower classes in slavery. That’s so, isn’t
it?”
“Ah, I know where you read that, and I am sure someone told you
so!” cried Alyosha.
“I say, what makes you think I read it? And certainly no one
told so. I can think for myself…. I am not opposed to Christ, if you
like. He was a most humane person, and if He were alive to-day, He
would be found in the ranks of the revolutionists, and would perhaps
play a conspicuous part…. There’s no doubt about that.”
“Oh, where, where did you get that from? What fool have you made
friends with?” exclaimed Alyosha.
“Come, the truth will out! It has so chanced that I have often
talked to Mr. Rakitin, of course, but… old Byelinsky said that, too,
so they say.”
“Byelinsky? I don’t remember. He hasn’t written that anywhere.”
“If he didn’t write it, they say he said it. I heard that from
a… but never mind.”
“And have you read Byelinsky?”
“Well, no… I haven’t read all of him, but… I read the
passage about Tatyana, why she didn’t go off with Onyegin.”
“Didn’t go off with Onyegin? Surely you don’t… understand that
already?”
“Why, you seem to take me for little Smurov,” said Kolya, with a
grin of irritation. “But please don’t suppose I am such a
revolutionist. I often disagree with Mr. Rakitin. Though I mention
Tatyana, I am not at all for the emancipation of women. I
acknowledge that women are a subject race and must obey. Les femmes
tricottent,* Napoleon said.” Kolya, for some reason, smiled, “And on
that question at least I am quite of one mind with that pseudo-great
man. I think, too, that to leave one’s own country and fly to
America is mean, worse than mean-silly. Why go to America when one
may be of great service to humanity here? Now especially. There’s a
perfect mass of fruitful activity open to us. That’s what I answered.”
* Let the women knit.
“What do you mean? Answered whom? Has someone suggested your going
to America already?”
“I must own, they’ve been at me to go, but I declined. That’s
between ourselves, of course, Karamazov; do you hear, not a word to
anyone. I say this only to you. I am not at all anxious to fall into
the clutches of the secret police and take lessons at the Chain
bridge.
Long will you remember
The house at the Chain bridge.
Do you remember? It’s splendid. Why are you laughing? You don’t
suppose I am fibbing, do you?” (“What if he should find out that
I’ve only that one number of The Bell in father’s book case, and
haven’t read any more of it?” Kolya thought with a shudder.)
“Oh no, I am not laughing and don’t suppose for a moment that
you are lying. No, indeed, I can’t suppose so, for all this, alas!
is perfectly true. But tell me, have you read Pushkin-Onyegin, for
instance?… You spoke just now of Tatyana.”
“No, I haven’t read it yet, but I want to read it. I have no
prejudices, Karamazov; I want to hear both sides. What makes you ask?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Tell me, Karamazov, have you an awful contempt for me?” Kolya
rapped out suddenly and drew himself up before Alyosha, as though he
were on drill. “Be so kind as to tell me, without beating about the
bush.”
“I have a contempt for you?” Alyosha looked at him wondering.
“What for? I am only sad that a charming nature such as yours should
be perverted by all this crude nonsense before you have begun life.”
“Don’t be anxious about my nature,” Kolya interrupted, not without
complacency. “But it’s true that I am stupidly sensitive, crudely
sensitive. You smiled just now, and I fancied you seemed to-”
“Oh, my smile meant something quite different. I’ll
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