The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

it out and was reassured.

 

“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