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Read books online » Fiction » The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best e book reader for android txt) 📖

Book online «The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best e book reader for android txt) 📖». Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky



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as before. If

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.

Chapter 6

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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