The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best e book reader for android txt) 📖

Chapter 3

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