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

make the sign of the cross over you,

for now. Sit still. Now we’ve a treat for you, in your own line,

too. It’ll make you laugh. Balaam’s ass has begun talking to us

here-and how he talks! How he talks!

 

Balaam’s ass, it appeared, was the valet, Smerdyakov. He was a

young man of about four and twenty, remarkably unsociable and

taciturn. Not that he was shy or bashful. On the contrary, he was

conceited and seemed to despise everybody.

 

But we must pause to say a few words about him now. He was brought

up by Grigory and Marfa, but the boy grew up “with no sense of

gratitude,” as Grigory expressed it; he was an unfriendly boy, and

seemed to look at the world mistrustfully. In his childhood he was

very fond of hanging cats, and burying them with great ceremony. He

used to dress up in a sheet as though it were a surplice, and sang,

and waved some object over the dead cat as though it were a censer.

All this he did on the sly, with the greatest secrecy. Grigory

caught him once at this diversion and gave him a sound beating. He

shrank into a corner and sulked there for a week. “He doesn’t care for

you or me, the monster,” Grigory used to say to Marfa, “and he doesn’t

care for anyone. Are you a human being?” he said, addressing the boy

directly. “You’re not a human being. You grew from the mildew in the

bathhouse. That’s what you are,” Smerdyakov, it appeared

afterwards, could never forgive him those words. Grigory taught him to

read and write, and when he was twelve years old, began teaching him

the Scriptures. But this teaching came to nothing. At the second or

third lesson the boy suddenly grinned.

 

“What’s that for?” asked Grigory, looking at him threateningly

from under his spectacles.

 

“Oh, nothing. God created light on the first day, and the sun,

moon, and stars on the fourth day. Where did the light come from on

the first day?”

 

Grigory was thunderstruck. The boy looked sarcastically at his

teacher. There was something positively condescending in his

expression. Grigory could not restrain himself. “I’ll show you where!”

he cried, and gave the boy a violent slap on the cheek. The boy took

the slap without a word, but withdrew into his corner again for some

days. A week later he had his first attack of the disease to which

he was subject all the rest of his life-epilepsy. When Fyodor

Pavlovitch heard of it, his attitude to the boy seemed changed at

once. Till then he had taken no notice of him, though he never scolded

him, and always gave him a copeck when he met him. Sometimes, when

he was in good humour, he would send the boy something sweet from

his table. But as soon as he heard of his illness, he showed an active

interest in him, sent for a doctor, and tried remedies, but the

disease turned out to be incurable. The fits occurred, on an

average, once a month, but at various intervals. The fits varied

too, in violence: some were light and some were very severe. Fyodor

Pavlovitch strictly forbade Grigory to use corporal punishment to

the boy, and began allowing him to come upstairs to him. He forbade

him to be taught anything whatever for a time, too. One day when the

boy was about fifteen, Fyodor Pavlovitch noticed him lingering by

the bookcase, and reading the titles through the glass. Fyodor

Pavlovitch had a fair number of books-over a hundred-but no one ever

saw him reading. He at once gave Smerdyakov the key of the bookcase.

“Come, read. You shall be my librarian. You’ll be better sitting

reading than hanging about the courtyard. Come, read this,” and Fyodor

Pavlovitch gave him Evenings in a Cottage near Dikanka.

 

He read a little but didn’t like it. He did not once smile, and

ended by frowning.

 

“Why? Isn’t it funny?” asked Fyodor Pavlovitch. Smerdyakov did not

speak.

 

“Answer stupid!”

 

“It’s all untrue,” mumbled the boy, with a grin.

 

“Then go to the devil! You have the soul of a lackey. Stay, here’s

Smaragdov’s Universal History. That’s all true. Read that.”

 

But Smerdyakov did not get through ten pages of Smaragdov. He

thought it dull. So the bookcase was closed again.

 

Shortly afterwards Marfa and Grigory reported to Fyodor Pavlovitch

that Smerdyakov was gradually beginning to show an extraordinary

fastidiousness. He would sit before his soup, take up his spoon and

look into the soup, bend over it, examine it, take a spoonful and hold

it to the light.

 

“What is it? A beetle?” Grigory would ask.

 

“A fly, perhaps,” observed Marfa.

 

The squeamish youth never answered, but he did the same with his

bread, his meat, and everything he ate. He would hold a piece on his

fork to the light, scrutinise it microscopically, and only after

long deliberation decide to put it in his mouth.

 

“Ach! What fine gentlemen’s airs!” Grigory muttered, looking at

him.

 

When Fyodor Pavlovitch heard of this development in Smerdyakov

he determined to make him his cook, and sent him to Moscow to be

trained. He spent some years there and came back remarkably changed in

appearance. He looked extraordinarily old for his age. His face had

grown wrinkled, yellow, and strangely emasculate. In character he

seemed almost exactly the same as before he went away. He was just

as unsociable, and showed not the slightest inclination for any

companionship. In Moscow, too, as we heard afterwards, he had always

been silent. Moscow itself had little interest for him; he saw very

little there, and took scarcely any notice of anything. He went once

to the theatre, but returned silent and displeased with it. On the

other hand, he came back to us from Moscow well dressed, in a clean

coat and clean linen. He brushed his clothes most scrupulously twice a

day invariably, and was very fond of cleaning his smart calf boots

with a special English polish, so that they shone like mirrors. He

turned out a first rate cook. Fyodor Pavlovitch paid him a salary,

almost the whole of which Smerdyakov spent on clothes, pomade,

perfumes, and such things. But he seemed to have as much contempt

for the female sex as for men; he was discreet, almost unapproachable,

with them. Fyodor Pavlovitch began to regard him rather differently.

His fits were becoming more frequent, and on the days he was ill Marfa

cooked, which did not suit Fyodor Pavlovitch at all.

 

“Why are your fits getting worse?” asked Fyodor Pavlovitch,

looking askance at his new cook. “Would you like to get married? Shall

I find you a wife?”

 

But Smerdyakov turned pale with anger, and made no reply. Fyodor

Pavlovitch left him with an impatient gesture. The great thing was

that he had absolute confidence in his honesty. It happened once, when

Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk, that he dropped in the muddy courtyard

three hundred-rouble notes which he had only just received. He only

missed them next day, and was just hastening to search his pockets

when he saw the notes lying on the table. Where had they come from?

Smerdyakov had picked them up and brought them in the day before.

 

“Well, my lad, I’ve never met anyone like you,” Fyodor

Pavlovitch said shortly, and gave him ten roubles. We may add that

he not only believed in his honesty, but had, for some reason, a

liking for him, although the young man looked as morosely at him as at

everyone and was always silent. He rarely spoke. If it had occurred to

anyone to wonder at the time what the young man was interested in, and

what was in his mind, it would have been impossible to tell by looking

at him. Yet he used sometimes to stop suddenly in the house, or even

in the yard or street, and would stand still for ten minutes, lost

in thought. A physiognomist studying his face would have said that

there was no thought in it, no reflection, but only a sort of

contemplation. There is a remarkable picture by the painter

Kramskoy, called “Contemplation.” There is a forest in winter, and

on a roadway through the forest, in absolute solitude, stands a

peasant in a torn kaftan and bark shoes. He stands, as it were, lost

in thought. Yet he is not thinking; he is “contemplating.” If anyone

touched him he would start and look at one as though awakening and

bewildered. It’s true he would come to himself immediately; but if

he were asked what he had been thinking about, he would remember

nothing. Yet probably he has, hidden within himself, the impression

which had dominated him during the period of contemplation. Those

impressions are dear to him and no doubt he hoards them imperceptibly,

and even unconsciously. How and why, of course, he does not know

either. He may suddenly, after hoarding impressions for many years,

abandon everything and go off to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage for his

soul’s salvation, or perhaps he will suddenly set fire to his native

village, and perhaps do both. There are a good many “contemplatives”

among the peasantry. Well, Smerdyakov was probably one of them, and he

probably was greedily hoarding up his impressions, hardly knowing why.