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
that’s her way, everything by contraries. I know her through and
through! Won’t you have a drop of brandy? Take some cold coffee and
I’ll pour a quarter of a glass of brandy into it, it’s delicious, my
boy.”
“No, thank you. I’ll take that roll with me if I may,” said
Alyosha, and taking a halfpenny French roll he put it in the pocket of
his cassock. “And you’d better not have brandy, either,” he
suggested apprehensively, looking into the old man’s face.
“You are quite right, it irritates my nerves instead of soothing
them. Only one little glass. I’ll get it out of the cupboard.”
He unlocked the cupboard, poured out a glass, drank it, then
locked the cupboard and put the key back in his pocket.
“That’s enough. One glass won’t kill me.”
“You see you are in a better humour now,” said Alyosha, smiling.
“Um! I love you even without the brandy, but with scoundrels I
am a scoundrel. Ivan is not going to Tchermashnya-why is that? He
wants to spy how much I give Grushenka if she comes. They are all
scoundrels! But I don’t recognise Ivan, I don’t know him at all. Where
does he come from? He is not one of us in soul. As though I’d leave
him anything! I shan’t leave a will at all, you may as well know.
And I’ll crush Mitya like a beetle. I squash black-beetles at night
with my slipper; they squelch when you tread on them. And your Mitya
will squelch too. Your Mitya, for you love him. Yes you love him and I
am not afraid of your loving him. But if Ivan loved him I should be
afraid for myself at his loving him. But Ivan loves nobody. Ivan is
not one of us. People like Ivan are not our sort, my boy. They are
like a cloud of dust. When the wind blows, the dust will be gone…. I
had a silly idea in my head when I told you to come to-day; I wanted
to find out from you about Mitya. If I were to hand him over a
thousand or maybe two now, would the beggarly wretch agree to take
himself off altogether for five years or, better still, thirty-five,
and without Grushenka, and give her up once for all, eh?”
“I-I’ll ask him,” muttered Alyosha. “If you would give him
three thousand, perhaps he-”
“That’s nonsense! You needn’t ask him now, no need! I’ve changed
my mind. It was a nonsensical idea of mine. I won’t give him anything,
not a penny, I want my money myself,” cried the old man, waving his
hand. “I’ll crush him like a beetle without it. Don’t say anything
to him or else he will begin hoping. There’s nothing for you to do
here, you needn’t stay. Is that betrothed of his, Katerina Ivanovna,
whom he has kept so carefully hidden from me all this time, going to
marry him or not? You went to see her yesterday, I believe?”
“Nothing will induce her to abandon him.”
“There you see how dearly these fine young ladies love a rake
and a scoundrel. They are poor creatures I tell you, those pale
young ladies, very different from-Ah, if I had his youth and the
looks I had then (for I was better-looking than he at eight and
twenty) I’d have been a conquering hero just as he is. He is a low
cad! But he shan’t have Grushenka, anyway, he shan’t! I’ll crush him!”
His anger had returned with the last words.
“You can go. There’s nothing for you to do here to-day,” he
snapped harshly.
Alyosha went up to say good-bye to him, and kissed him on the
shoulder.
“What’s that for?” The old man was a little surprised. “We shall
see each other again, or do you think we shan’t?”
“Not at all, I didn’t mean anything.”
“Nor did I, I did not mean anything,” said the old man, looking at
him. “Listen, listen,” he shouted after him, “make haste and come
again and I’ll have a fish soup for you, a fine one, not like
to-day. Be sure to come! Come to-morrow, do you hear, to-morrow!”
And as soon as Alyosha had gone out of the door, he went to the
cupboard again and poured out another half-glass.
“I won’t have more!” he muttered, clearing his throat, and again
he locked the cupboard and put the key in his pocket. Then he went
into his bedroom, lay down on the bed, exhausted, and in one minute he
was asleep.
A Meeting with the Schoolboys
“THANK goodness he did not ask me about Grushenka,” thought
Alyosha, as he left his father’s house and turned towards Madame
Hohlakov’s, “or I might have had to tell him of my meeting with
Grushenka yesterday.”
Alyosha felt painfully that since yesterday both combatants had
renewed their energies, and that their hearts had grown hard again.
“Father is spiteful and angry, he’s made some plan and will stick to
it. And what of Dmitri? He too will be harder than yesterday, he too
must be spiteful and angry, and he too, no doubt, has made some
plan. Oh, I must succeed in finding him to-day, whatever happens.”
But Alyosha had not long to meditate. An incident occurred on
the road, which, though apparently of little consequence, made a great
impression on him. just after he had crossed the square and turned the
corner coming out into Mihailovsky Street, which is divided by a small
ditch from the High Street (our whole town is intersected by ditches),
he saw a group of schoolboys between the ages of nine and twelve, at
the bridge. They were going home from school, some with their bags
on their shoulders, others with leather satchels slung across them,
some in short jackets, others in little overcoats. Some even had those
high boots with creases round the ankles, such as little boys spoilt
by rich fathers love to wear. The whole group was talking eagerly
about something, apparently holding a council. Alyosha had never
from his Moscow days been able to pass children without taking
notice of them, and although he was particularly fond of children of
three or thereabout, he liked schoolboys of ten and eleven too. And
so, anxious as he was to-day, he wanted at once to turn aside to
talk to them. He looked into their excited rosy faces, and noticed
at once that all the boys had stones in their hands. Behind the
ditch some thirty paces away, there was another schoolboy standing
by a fence. He too had a satchel at his side. He was about ten years
old, pale, delicate-looking and with sparkling black eyes. He kept
an attentive and anxious watch on the other six, obviously his
schoolfellows with whom he had just come out of school, but with
whom he had evidently had a feud.
Alyosha went up and, addressing a fair, curly-headed, rosy boy
in a black jacket, observed:
“When I used to wear a satchel like yours, I always used to
carry it on my left side, so as to have my right hand free, but you’ve
got yours on your right side. So it will be awkward for you to get
at it.”
Alyosha had no art or premeditation in beginning with this
practical remark. But it is the only way for a grown-up person to
get at once into confidential relations with a child, or still more
with a group of children. One must begin in a serious, businesslike
way so as to be on a perfectly equal footing. Alyosha understood it by
instinct.
“But he is left-handed,” another, a fine healthy-looking boy of
eleven, answered promptly. All the others stared at Alyosha.
“He even throws stones with his left hand,” observed a third.
At that instant a stone flew into the group, but only just
grazed the left-handed boy, though it was well and vigorously thrown
by the boy standing on the other side of the ditch.
“Give it him, hit him back, Smurov,” they all shouted. But Smurov,
the left-handed boy, needed no telling, and at once revenged
himself; he threw a stone, but it missed the boy and hit the ground.
The boy on the other side of the ditch, the pocket of whose coat was
visibly bulging with stones, flung another stone at the group; this
time it flew straight at Alyosha and hit him painfully on the
shoulder.
“He aimed it at you, he meant it for you. You are Karamazov,
Karamazov!” the boys shouted laughing, “Come, all throw at him at
once!” and six stones flew at the boy. One struck the boy on the
head and he fell down, but at once leapt up and began ferociously
returning their fire. Both sides threw stones incessantly. Many of the
group had their pockets full too.
“What are you about! Aren’t you ashamed? Six against one! Why,
you’ll kill him,” cried Alyosha.
He ran forward and met the flying stones to screen the solitary
boy. Three or four ceased throwing for a minute.
“He began first!” cried a boy in a red shirt in an angry
childish voice. “He is a beast, he stabbed Krassotkin in class the
other day with a penknife. It bled. Krassotkin wouldn’t tell tales,
but he must be thrashed.”
“But what for? I suppose you tease him.”
“There, he sent a stone in your back again, he knows you,” cried
the children. “It’s you he is throwing at now, not us. Come, all of
you, at him again, don’t miss, Smurov!” and again a fire of stones,
and a very vicious one, began. The boy on the other side of the
ditch was hit in the chest; he screamed, began to cry and ran away
uphill towards Mihailovsky Street. They all shouted: “Aha, he is
funking, he is running away. Wisp of tow!”
“You don’t know what a beast he is, Karamazov, killing is too good
for him,” said the boy in the jacket, with flashing eyes. He seemed to
be the eldest.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked Alyosha, “Is he a tell-tale or
what?”
The boys looked at one another as though derisively.
“Are you going that way, to Mihailovsky?” the same boy went on.
“Catch him up…. You see he’s stopped again, he is waiting and
looking at you.”
“He is looking at you,” the other boys chimed in.
“You ask him, does he like a dishevelled wisp of tow. Do you hear,
ask him that!”
There was a general burst of laughter. Alyosha looked at them, and
they at him.
“Don’t go near him, he’ll hurt you,” cried Smurov in a warning
voice.
“I shan’t ask him about the wisp of tow, for I expect you tease
him with that question somehow. But I’ll find out from him why you
hate him so.”
“Find out then, find out,” cried the boys laughing.
Alyosha crossed the bridge and walked uphill by the fence,
straight towards the boy.
“You’d better look out,” the boys called after him; “he won’t be
afraid of you. He will stab you in a minute, on the sly, as he did
Krassotkin.”
The boy waited for him without budging. Coming up to him,
Alyosha saw facing him a child of about nine years old. He was an
undersized weakly boy with a thin pale face, with large dark eyes that
gazed at him vindictively. He was dressed in a rather shabby old
overcoat, which he had monstrously outgrown. His bare arms stuck out
beyond his
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