Read FICTION books online

Reading books fiction Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself.



Fiction genre suitable for people of all ages. Everyone will find something interesting for themselves. Our electronic library is always at your service. Reading online free books without registration. Nowadays ebooks are convenient and efficient. After all, don’t forget: literature exists and develops largely thanks to readers.
The genre of fiction is interesting to read not only by the process of cognition and the desire to empathize with the fate of the hero, this genre is interesting for the ability to rethink one's own life. Of course the reader may accept the author's point of view or disagree with them, but the reader should understand that the author has done a great job and deserves respect. Take a closer look at genre fiction in all its manifestations in our elibrary.



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



1 ... 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178
Go to page:
envelope, which I

was to open at once, if anything happened to him. Oh, he foresaw his

illness! He told me that the envelope contained the details of the

escape, and that if he died or was taken dangerously ill, I was to

save Mitya alone. Then he left me money, nearly ten thousand-those

notes to which the prosecutor referred in his speech, having learnt

from someone that he had sent them to be changed. I was tremendously

impressed to find that Ivan Fyodorovitch had not given up his idea

of saving his brother, and was confiding this plan of escape to me,

though he was still jealous of me and still convinced that I loved

Mitya. Oh, that was a sacrifice! No, you cannot understand the

greatness of such self-sacrifice, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I wanted to

fall at his feet in reverence, but I thought at once that he would

take it only for my joy at the thought of Mitya’s being saved (and

he certainly would have imagined that!), and I was so exasperated at

the mere possibility of such an unjust thought on his part that I lost

my temper again, and instead of kissing his feet, flew into a fury

again! Oh, I am unhappy! It’s my character, my awful, unhappy

character! Oh, you will see, I shall end by driving him, too, to

abandon me for another with whom he can get on better, like Dmitri.

But… no, I could not bear it, I should kill myself. And when you

came in then, and when I called to you and told him to come back, I

was so enraged by the look of contempt and hatred he turned on me that

do you remember?- I cried out to you that it was he, he alone who

had persuaded me that his brother Dmitri was a murderer! I said that

malicious thing on purpose to wound him again. He had never, never

persuaded me that his brother was a murderer. On the contrary, it

was I who persuaded him! Oh, my vile temper was the cause of

everything! I paved the way to that hideous scene at the trial. He

wanted to show me that he was an honourable man, and that, even if I

loved his brother, he would not ruin him for revenge or jealousy. So

he came to the court… I am the cause of it all, I alone am to

blame!”

 

Katya never had made such confessions to Alyosha before, and he

felt that she was now at that stage of unbearable suffering when

even the proudest heart painfully crushes its pride and falls

vanquished by grief. Oh, Alyosha knew another terrible reason of her

present misery, though she had carefully concealed it from him

during those days since the trial; but it would have been, for some

reason, too painful to him if she had been brought so low as to

speak to him now about that. She was suffering for her “treachery”

at the trial, and Alyosha felt that her conscience was impelling her

to confess it to him, to him, Alyosha, with tears and cries and

hysterical writhings on the floor. But he dreaded that moment and

longed to spare her. It made the commission on which he had come

even more difficult. He spoke of Mitya again.

 

“It’s all right, it’s all right, don’t be anxious about him! she

began again, sharply and stubbornly. “All that is only momentary, I

know him, I know his heart only too well. You may be sure he will

consent to escape. It’s not as though it would be immediately; he will

have time to make up his mind to it. Ivan Fyodorovitch will be well by

that time and will manage it all himself, so that I shall have nothing

to do with it. Don’t be anxious; he will consent to run away. He has

agreed already: do you suppose he would give up that creature? And

they won’t let her go to him, so he is bound to escape. It’s you

he’s most afraid of, he is afraid you won’t approve of his escape on

moral grounds. But you must generously allow it, if your sanction is

so necessary,” Katya added viciously. She paused and smiled.

 

“He talks about some hymn,” she went on again, “some cross he

has to bear, some duty; I remember Ivan Fyodorovitch told me a great

deal about it, and if you knew how he talked! Katya cried suddenly,

with feeling she could not repress, “If you knew how he loved that

wretched man at the moment he told me, and how he hated him,

perhaps, at the same moment. And I heard his story and his tears

with sneering disdain. Brute! Yes, I am a brute. I am responsible

for his fever. But that man in prison is incapable of suffering,”

Katya concluded irritably. “Can such a man suffer? Men like him

never suffer!” There was a note of hatred and contemptuous repulsion

in her words. And yet it was she who had betrayed him. “Perhaps

because she feels how she’s wronged him she hates him at moments,”

Alyosha thought to himself. He hoped that it was only “at moments.” In

Katya’s last words he detected a challenging note, but he did not take

it up.

 

“I sent for you this morning to make you promise to persuade him

yourself. Or do you, too, consider that to escape would be

dishonourable, cowardly, or something… unchristian, perhaps?”

Katya added, even more defiantly.

 

“Oh, no. I’ll tell him everything,” muttered Alyosha. “He asks you

to come and see him to-day,” he blurted out suddenly, looking her

steadily in the face. She started, and drew back a little from him

on the sofa.

 

“Me? Can that be?” She faltered, turning pale.

 

“It can and ought to be!” Alyosha began emphatically, growing more

animated. “He needs you particularly just now. I would not have opened

the subject and worried you, if it were not necessary. He is ill, he

is beside himself, he keeps asking for you. It is not to be reconciled

with you that he wants you, but only that you would go and show

yourself at his door. So much has happened to him since that day. He

realises that he has injured you beyond all reckoning. He does not ask

your forgiveness- ‘It’s impossible to forgive me,’ he says himself-but only that you would show yourself in his doorway.”

 

“It’s so sudden…” faltered Katya. “I’ve had a presentiment all

these days that you would come with that message. I knew he would

ask me to come. It’s impossible!”

 

“Let it be impossible, but do it. Only think, he realises for

the first time how he has wounded you, the first time in his life;

he had never grasped it before so fully. He said, ‘If she refuses to

come I shall be unhappy all my life.’ you hear? though he is condemned

to penal servitude for twenty years, he is still planning to be happy-is not that piteous? Think-you must visit him; though he is ruined,

he is innocent,” broke like a challenge from Alyosha. “His hands are

clean, there is no blood on them! For the sake of his infinite

sufferings in the future visit him now. Go, greet him on his way

into the darkness-stand at his door, that is all…. You ought to

do it, you ought to!” Alyosha concluded, laying immense stress on

the word “ought.”

 

“I ought to… but I cannot…” Katya moaned. “He will look at

me…. I can’t.”

 

“Your eyes ought to meet. How will you live all your life, if

you don’t make up your mind to do it now?”

 

“Better suffer all my life.”

 

“You ought to go, you ought to go,” Alyosha repeated with

merciless emphasis.

 

“But why to-day, why at once?… I can’t leave our patient-”

 

“You can for a moment. It will only be a moment. If you don’t

come, he will be in delirium by to-night. I would not tell you a

lie; have pity on him!”

 

“Have pity on me!” Katya said, with bitter reproach, and she burst

into tears.

 

“Then you will come,” said Alyosha firmly, seeing her tears. “I’ll

go and tell him you will come directly.”

 

“No, don’t tell him so on any account,” cried Katya in alarm. “I

will come, but don’t tell him beforehand, for perhaps I may go, but

not go in… I don’t know yet-”

 

Her voice failed her. She gasped for breath. Alyosha got up to go.

 

“And what if I meet anyone?” she said suddenly, in a low voice,

turning white again.

 

“That’s just why you must go now, to avoid meeting anyone. There

will be no one there, I can tell you that for certain. We will

expect you,” he concluded emphatically, and went out of the room.

Chapter 2

For a Moment the Lie Becomes Truth

 

HE hurried to the hospital where Mitya was lying now. The day

after his fate was determined, Mitya had fallen ill with nervous

fever, and was sent to the prison division of the town hospital. But

at the request of several persons (Alyosha, Madame Hohlakov, Lise,

etc.), Doctor Varvinsky had put Mitya not with other prisoners, but in

a separate little room, the one where Smerdyakov had been. It is

true that there was a sentinel at the other end of the corridor, and

there was a grating over the window, so that Varvinsky could be at

ease about the indulgence he had shown, which was not quite legal,

indeed; but he was a kindhearted and compassionate young man. He knew

how hard it would be for a man like Mitya to pass at once so

suddenly into the society of robbers and murderers, and that he must

get used to it by degrees. The visits of relations and friends were

informally sanctioned by the doctor and overseer, and even by the

police captain. But only Alyosha and Grushenka had visited Mitya.

Rakitin had tried to force his way in twice, but Mitya persistently

begged Varvinsky not to admit him.

 

Alyosha found him sitting on his bed in a hospital dressing

gown, rather feverish, with a towel, soaked in vinegar and water, on

his head. He looked at Alyosha as he came in with an undefined

expression, but there was a shade of something like dread

discernible in it. He had become terribly preoccupied since the trial;

sometimes he would be silent for half an hour together, and seemed

to be pondering something heavily and painfully, oblivious of

everything about him. If he roused himself from his brooding and began

to talk, he always spoke with a kind of abruptness and never of what

he really wanted to say. He looked sometimes with a face of

suffering at his brother. He seemed to be more at ease with

Grushenka than with Alyosha. It is true, he scarcely spoke to her at

all, but as soon as she came in, his whole face lighted up with joy.

 

Alyosha sat down beside him on the bed in silence. This time Mitya

was waiting for Alyosha in suspense, but he did not dare ask him a

question. He felt it almost unthinkable that Katya would consent to

come, and at the same time he felt that if she did not come, something

inconceivable would happen. Alyosha understood his feelings.

 

“Trifon Borissovitch,” Mitya began nervously, “has pulled his

whole inn to pieces, I am told. He’s taken up the flooring, pulled

apart the planks, split up all the gallery, I am told. He is seeking

treasure all the time-the fifteen hundred roubles which the

prosecutor said I’d hidden there. He began playing these tricks,

they say, as soon as he

1 ... 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178
Go to page:

Free ebook «The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best e book reader for android txt) 📖» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment