The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (easy to read books for adults list .txt) 📕
"Those innocent eyes slit my soul up like a razor," he used to say afterwards, with his loathsome snigger. In a man so depraved this might, of course, mean no more than sensual attraction. As he had received no dowry with his wife, and had, so to speak, taken her "from the halter," he did not stand on ceremony with her. Making her feel that she had "wronged" him, he took advantage of her phenomenal meekness and submissiveness to trample on the elemen
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son-my litter. If I die, who will care for them, and while I live who
but they will care for a wretch like me? That’s a great thing the Lord
has ordained for every man of my sort, sir. For there must be
someone able to love even a man like me.”
“Ah, that’s perfectly true!” exclaimed Alyosha.
“Oh, do leave off playing the fool! Some idiot comes in, and you
put us to shame!” cried the girl by the window, suddenly turning to
her father with a disdainful and contemptuous air.
“Wait a little, Varvara!” cried her father, speaking
peremptorily but looking at them quite approvingly. “That’s her
character,” he said, addressing Alyosha again.
“And in all nature there was naught
That could find favour in his eyes-
or rather in the feminine-that could find favour in her eyes- . But
now let me present you to my wife, Arina Petrovna. She is crippled,
she is forty-three; she can move, but very little. She is of humble
origin. Arina Petrovna, compose your countenance. This is Alexey
Fyodorovitch Karamazov. Get up, Alexey Fyodorovitch.” He took him by
the hand and with unexpected force pulled him up. “You must stand up
to be introduced to a lady. It’s not the Karamazov, mamma, who…
h’m… etcetera, but his brother, radiant with modest virtues. Come,
Arina Petrovna, come, mamma, first your hand to be kissed.”
And he kissed his wife’s hand respectfully and even tenderly.
The girl at the window turned her back indignantly on the scene; an
expression of extraordinary cordiality came over the haughtily
inquiring face of the woman.
“Good morning! Sit down, Mr. Tchernomazov,” she said.
“Karamazov, mamma, Karamazov. We are of humble origin,” he
whispered again.
“Well, Karamazov, or whatever it is, but I always think of
Tchermomazov…. Sit down. Why has he pulled you up? He calls me
crippled, but I am not, only my legs are swollen like barrels, and I
am shrivelled up myself. Once I used to be so fat, but now it’s as
though I had swallowed a needle.”
“We are of humble origin,” the captain muttered again.
“Oh, father, father!” the hunchback girl, who had till then been
silent on her chair, said suddenly, and she hid her eyes in her
handkerchief.
“Buffoon!” blurted out the girl at the window.
“Have you heard our news?” said the mother, pointing at her
daughters. “It’s like clouds coming over; the clouds pass and we
have music again. When we were with the army, we used to have many
such guests. I don’t mean to make any comparisons; everyone to their
taste. The deacon’s wife used to come then and say, ‘Alexandr
Alexandrovitch is a man of the noblest heart, but Nastasya
Petrovna,’ she would say, ‘is of the brood of hell.’ ‘Well,’ I said,
‘that’s a matter of taste; but you are a little spitfire.’ ‘And you
want keeping in your place;’ says she. ‘You black sword,’ said I, ‘who
asked you to teach me?’ ‘But my breath,’ says she, ‘is clean, and
yours is unclean.’ ‘You ask all the officers whether my breath is
unclean.’ And ever since then I had it in my mind. Not long ago I
was sitting here as I am now, when I saw that very general come in who
came here for Easter, and I asked him: ‘Your Excellency,’ said I, ‘can
a lady’s breath be unpleasant?’ ‘Yes,’ he answered; ‘you ought to open
a window-pane or open the door, for the air is not fresh here.’ And
they all go on like that! And what is my breath to them? The dead
smell worse still!. ‘I won’t spoil the air,’ said I, ‘I’ll order
some slippers and go away.’ My darlings, don’t blame your own
mother! Nikolay Ilyitch, how is it I can’t please you? There’s only
Ilusha who comes home from school and loves me. Yesterday he brought
me an apple. Forgive your own mother-forgive a poor lonely
creature! Why has my breath become unpleasant to you?”
And the poor mad woman broke into sobs, and tears streamed down
her cheeks. The captain rushed up to her.
“Mamma, mamma, my dear, give over! You are not lonely. Everyone
loves you, everyone adores you.” He began kissing both her hands again
and tenderly stroking her face; taking the dinner-napkin, he began
wiping away her tears. Alyosha fancied that he too had tears in his
eyes. “There, you see, you hear?” he turned with a sort of fury to
Alyosha, pointing to the poor imbecile.
“I see and hear,” muttered Alyosha.
“Father, father, how can you-with him! Let him alone!” cried
the boy, sitting up in his bed and gazing at his father with glowing
eyes.
“Do give over fooling, showing off your silly antics which never
lead to anything! shouted Varvara, stamping her foot with passion.
“Your anger is quite just this time, Varvara, and I’ll make
haste to satisfy you. Come, put on your cap, Alexey Fyodorovitch,
and I’ll put on mine. We will go out. I have a word to say to you in
earnest, but not within these walls. This girl sitting here is my
daughter Nina; I forgot to introduce her to you. She is a heavenly
angel incarnate… who has flown down to us mortals,… if you can
understand.”
“There he is shaking all over, as though he is in convulsions!”
Varvara went on indignantly.
“And she there stamping her foot at me and calling me a fool
just now, she is a heavenly angel incarnate too, and she has good
reason to call me so. Come along, Alexey Fyodorovitch, we must make an
end.”
And, snatching Alyosha’s hand, he drew him out of the room into
the street.
And in the Open Air
“THE air is fresh, but in my apartment it is not so in any sense
of the word. Let us walk slowly, sir. I should be glad of your kind
interest.”
“I too have something important to say to you,” observed
Alyosha, “only I don’t know how to begin.”
“To be sure you must have business with me. You would never have
looked in upon me without some object. Unless you come simply to
complain of the boy, and that’s hardly likely. And, by the way,
about the boy: I could not explain to you in there, but here I will
describe that scene to you. My tow was thicker a week ago-I mean my
beard. That’s the nickname they give to my beard, the schoolboys
most of all. Well, your brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch was pulling me
by my beard, I’d done nothing, he was in a towering rage and
happened to come upon me. He dragged me out of the tavern into the
market place; at that moment the boys were coming out of school, and
with them Ilusha. As soon as he saw me in such a state he rushed up to
me. ‘Father,’ he cried, ‘father!’ He caught hold of me, hugged me,
tried to pull me away, crying to my assailant, ‘Let go, let go, it’s
my father, forgive him!’- yes, he actually cried ‘forgive him.’ He
clutched at that hand, that very hand, in his little hands and
kissed it…. I remember his little face at that moment, I haven’t
forgotten it and I never shall!”
“I swear,” cried Alyosha, “that my brother will express his most
deep and sincere regret, even if he has to go down on his knees in
that same marketplace…. I’ll make him or he is no brother of mine!
“Aha, then it’s only a suggestion! And it does not come from him
but simply from the generosity of your own warm heart. You should have
said so. No, in that case allow me to tell you of your brother’s
highly chivalrous soldierly generosity, for he did give expression
to it at the time. He left off dragging me by my beard and released
me: ‘You are an officer,’ he said, ‘and I am an officer, if you can
find a decent man to be your second send me your challenge. I will
give satisfaction, though you are a scoundrel.’ That’s what he said. A
chivalrous spirit indeed! I retired with Ilusha, and that scene is a
family record imprinted forever on Ilusha’s soul. No, it’s not for
us to claim the privileges of noblemen. Judge for yourself. You’ve
just been in our mansion, what did you see there? Three ladies, one
a cripple and weak-minded, another a cripple and hunchback and the
third not crippled but far too clever. She is a student, dying to
get back to Petersburg, to work for the emancipation of the Russian
woman on the banks of the Neva. I won’t speak of Ilusha, he is only
nine. I am alone in the world, and if I die, what will become of all
of them? I simply ask you that. And if I challenge him and he kills me
on the spot, what then? What will become of them? And worse still,
if he doesn’t kill me but only cripples me: I couldn’t work, but I
should still be a mouth to feed. Who would feed it and who would
feed them all? Must I take Ilusha from school and send him to beg in
the streets? That’s what it means for me to challenge him to a duel.
It’s silly talk and nothing else.”
“He will beg your forgiveness, he will bow down at your feet in
the middle of the marketplace,” cried Alyosha again, with glowing
eyes.
“I did think of prosecuting him,” the captain went on, “but look
in our code, could I get much compensation for a personal injury?
And then Agrafena Alexandrovna* sent for me and shouted at me:
‘Don’t dare to dream of it! If you proceed against him, I’ll publish
it to all the world that he beat you for your dishonesty, and then you
will be prosecuted.’ I call God to witness whose was the dishonesty
and by whose commands I acted, wasn’t it by her own and Fyodor
Pavlovitch’s? And what’s more,’ she went on, ‘I’ll dismiss you for
good and you’ll never earn another penny from me. I’ll speak to my
merchant too’ (that’s what she calls her old man) ‘and he will dismiss
you!’ And if he dismisses me, what can I earn then from anyone?
Those two are all I have to look to, for your Fyodor Pavlovitch has
not only given over employing me, for another reason, but he means
to make use of papers I’ve signed to go to law against me. And so I
kept quiet, and you have seen our retreat. But now let me ask you: did
Ilusha hurt your finger much? I didn’t like to go into it in our
mansion before him.”
* Grushenka.
“Yes, very much, and he was in a great fury. He was avenging you
on me as a Karamazov, I see that now. But if only you had seen how
he was throwing stones at his schoolfellows! It’s very dangerous. They
might kill him. They are children and stupid. A stone may be thrown
and break somebody’s head.”
“That’s just what has happened. He has been bruised by a stone
to-day. Not on the head but on the chest, just above the heart. He
came home crying and groaning and now he is ill.”
“And you know he attacks them first. He is bitter against them
on your account. They say he stabbed a boy called Krassotkin with a
penknife not long ago.”
“I’ve heard about that too, it’s dangerous. Krassotkin is an
official here, we may
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