Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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EPILOGUE
Chapter 1: Plans to Save Mitya
On the fifth day after Mitya’s trial, very early in the morning, before nine o’clock, Alyosha came to see Katerina Ivanovna, to make final arrangements in a certain business important for them both, and with an errand to her besides. She sat and talked with him in the same room where she had once received Grushenka; nearby, in the next room, lay Ivan Fyodorovich, in fever and unconscious. Immediately after the scene in court, Katerina Ivanovna had ordered the sick and unconscious Ivan Fyodorovich moved to her house, scorning any future and inevitable talk of society and its condemnation. One of the two relatives who lived with her left for Moscow just after the scene in court, the other remained. But even if both had left, Katerina Ivanovna would not have altered her decision and would have stayed to look after the sick man and sit by him day and night. He was treated by Varvinsky and Herzenstube; the Moscow doctor had gone back to Moscow, refusing to predict his opinion concerning the possible outcome of the illness. Though the remaining doctors encouraged Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha, it was apparent that they were still unable to give any firm hope. Alyosha visited his sick brother twice a day. But this time he came on special, most troublesome business, and sensed how difficult it would be to begin talking about it, and yet he was in a hurry: he had other pressing business that same morning in a different place and had to rush. They had already been talking for about a quarter of an hour. Katerina Ivanovna was pale, very tired, and at the same time in a state of extreme, morbid agitation: she sensed why, among other things, Alyosha had come to her now.
“Don’t worry about his decision,” she told Alyosha with firm insistence. “One way or another, he will still come to this way out: he must escape! That unfortunate man, that hero of honor and conscience—not him, not Dmitri Fyodorovich, but the one lying behind this door, who sacrificed himself for his brother,” Katya added with flashing eyes, “told me the whole plan of escape long ago. You know, he has already made contacts ... I’ve already told you something ... You see, it will probably take place at the third halt, when the party of convicts is taken to Siberia. Oh, it’s still a long way off. Ivan Fyodorovich has been to see the head man at the third halting-place. But it’s not known yet who will head the party, and it’s impossible to find out beforehand. Tomorrow, perhaps, I’ll show you the whole plan in detail; Ivan Fyodorovich left it with me the night before the trial, in case something ... It was that same time, remember, when you found us quarreling that evening: he was just going downstairs, and when I saw you, I made him come back—remember? Do you know what we were quarreling about?”
“No, I don’t,” said Alyosha.
“Of course he concealed it from you then: it was precisely about this plan of escape. He had revealed all the main things to me three days earlier—that was when we began quarreling, and we went on quarreling for three days. We quarreled because, when he announced to me that if Dmitri Fyodorovich was convicted, he would flee abroad with that creature, I suddenly got furious– I won’t tell you why, I don’t know why myself ... Oh, of course, because of that creature, I got furious because of that creature, and precisely because she, too, was going to flee abroad, together with Dmitri!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly exclaimed, her lips trembling with wrath. “As soon as Ivan Fyodorovich saw how furious I was because of that creature, he immediately thought I was jealous of her over Dmitri, and that it meant I still loved Dmitri. And that led to our first quarrel. I did not want to give explanations, I could not ask forgiveness; it was hard for me to think that such a man could suspect me of still loving that ... Even though I myself had already told him directly, long before , that I did not love Dmitri, but loved only him! I got furious with him only because I was so furious with that creature! Three days later, that evening when you came, he brought me a sealed envelope, to be opened at once in case something happened to him. Oh, he foresaw his illness! He revealed to me that the envelope contained details of the escape, and that if he should die or become dangerously ill, I must save Mitya alone. He left me money along with it, nearly ten thousand roubles—the same money the prosecutor mentioned in his speech, having learned somehow that he had sent it to be cashed. I was terribly struck that Ivan Fyodorovich, who was still jealous over me and still convinced that I loved Mitya, nonetheless did not abandon the idea of saving his brother, and entrusted me, me myself, with saving him! Oh, there was a sacrifice! No, you would not understand such self-sacrifice in all its fullness, Alexei Fyodorovich. I almost fell at his feet in reverence, but the thought suddenly occurred to me that he would take it simply as my joy at Mitya’s being saved (and he certainly would have thought that), and I was so annoyed simply at the possibility of such an unjust thought on his part, that I became annoyed again, and instead of kissing his feet, I made another scene! Oh, how wretched I am! It’s my character—a terrible, wretched character! Oh, one day you’ll see: I’ll do it, I’ll bring it to such a point that he, too, will leave me for some other woman, someone easier to live with, as Dmitri did, but then ... no, I couldn’t bear it, I’d kill myself! And when you came then, and I called to you and told him to come back, when he came in with you then, the hateful, contemptuous look he suddenly gave me filled me with such wrath that—remember?—I suddenly cried to you that he, he alonehad convinced me that his brother Dmitri was a murderer! I slandered him on purpose, in order to hurt him once more, but he never, never tried to convince me that his brother was a murderer, on the contrary, it was I, I who kept trying to convince him! Oh, my rage was the cause of everything, everything! It was I, I who brought on that cursed scene in court! He wanted to prove to me that he was noble, and that even though I might love his brother, he still would not destroy him out of revenge and jealousy. And so he stood up in court ... I am the cause of it all, I alone am guilty!”
Never before had Katya made such confessions to Alyosha, and he felt that she had then reached precisely that degree of unbearable suffering when a proud heart painfully shatters its own pride and falls, overcome by grief. Oh, Alyosha knew yet another terrible reason for her present torment, no matter how she had concealed it from him all those days since Mitya had been convicted; but for some reason it would have been too painful for him if she had decided to lower herself so much as to begin talking with him herself, now, at that moment, about that reason. She was suffering over her “betrayal” in court, and Alyosha sensed that her conscience was urging her to confess, precisely to him, to Alyosha, with tears, with shrieks, with hysterics, beating on the floor. But he dreaded that moment and wished to spare the suffering woman. This made the errand on which he had come all the more difficult. He again began talking about Mitya.
“Never mind, never mind, don’t worry about him!” Katya began again, sharply and stubbornly. “It’s all momentary with him, I know him, I know his heart only too well. Rest assured, he’ll agree to escape. And, above all, it’s not right now; he still has time to make up his mind. Ivan Fyodorovich will be well by then, and will handle it all himself, so there will be nothing left for me to do. Don’t worry, he’ll agree to escape. He has already agreed: how can he part with that creature of his? Since they won’t let her go to penal servitude, how can he not escape? He’s afraid of you most of all, afraid you won’t approve of his escape on moral grounds, but you must magnanimously allowhim to do it, since your sanction here is so necessary,” Katya added with venom. She paused briefly and grinned.
“He keeps talking there,” she started again, “about some sort of hymns, about the cross he has to bear, about some sort of duty, I remember Ivan Fyodorovich told me a lot about it then, and if you knew how he spoke!” Katya suddenly exclaimed with irrepressible feeling. “If you knew how he loved the wretched man at that moment, as he was telling about him, and how he hated him, perhaps, at the same moment! And I, oh, I listened to his story and his tears with a scornful smile! Oh, the creature! Me, I’m the creature! I gave birth to this brain fever for him! And that man, that convict, is not prepared to suffer,” Katya concluded with irritation, “how can such a man suffer? Such men never suffer!”
Some feeling of hatred and contemptuous loathing sounded in these words. And yet she had betrayed him. “Oh, well, perhaps it’s because she feels so guilty towards him that she hates him at moments,” Alyosha thought to himself. He hoped it was only “at moments.” He caught the challenge in Katya’s last words, but did not take it up.
“That is why I sent for you today, so that you would promise to convince him yourself. Or do you, too, consider it not honest to escape, not valiant, or whatever you call it ... not Christian, or what?” Katya added with even more challenge.
“No, not at all. I’ll tell him everything ... ,” Alyosha muttered. “He asks you to come and see him today,” he blurted out suddenly, looking steadily in her eyes. She shuddered all over and drew back from him a little on the sofa.
“Me ... is it possible?” she murmured, turning pale.
“It is and must be!” Alyosha began insistently, becoming animated. “He needs you very much, precisely now. I wouldn’t mention the subject and torment you beforehand if it weren’t necessary. He’s ill, he seems mad, he keeps asking for you. He doesn’t ask you to come and make peace, but just to show yourself in the doorway. A lot has happened to him since that day. He understands how incalculably guilty he is before you. He doesn’t want your forgiveness: ‘I cannot be forgiven,’ he says it himself—but only that you show yourself in the doorway ...”
“You suddenly ... ,” Katya stammered, “all these days I had a feeling you would come with that ... I just knew he would ask for me...! It’s impossible!”
“It may be impossible, but do it. Remember, for the first time he’s been struck by how he insulted you, for the first time in his life, he never grasped it so fully before! He says: if she refuses to come, then I ‘will be unhappy for the rest of my life.’ Do you hear? A man sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude still intends to be happy—isn’t that pitiful? Think: you will be visiting a man who has been guiltlessly ruined,” burst from Alyosha with a challenge, “his hands are clean, there is no blood on them! For the sake of his countless future sufferings, visit him now! Go, see him off into the darkness ... stand in the doorway, that’s all ... You really must, mustdo it!” Alyosha concluded, emphasizing the word “must” with incredible force.
“I must, but ... I can’t,” Katya nearly groaned, “he will look at me ... I can’t.”
“Your eyes must meet. How will you live all your life if you don’t bring yourself to do it now?”
“Better to suffer all my life.”
“You must go, you mustgo,” Alyosha again emphasized implacably.
“But why today, why now ... ? I cannot leave a sick man...”
“You can for a moment, it will just be a moment. If you don’t go, he will come down with brain fever by tonight. I wouldn’t lie to you—have pity!”
“Have pity on me,” Katya bitterly reproached him, and she started to cry.
“So you will go!” Alyosha said firmly, seeing her tears. “I’ll go and tell him you’re coming now.”
“No, no, don’t tell him!” Katya cried out in fear. “I will go, but don’t tell him beforehand, because I’ll go there but I may not go in ... I don’t know yet...”
Her voice broke off. She had difficulty breathing. Alyosha rose to leave.
“And what if I meet someone?” she suddenly said softly, turning pale again.
“That’s why it needs to be now, so that you won’t meet anyone. I assure you, no one will be there. We’ll be waiting for you,” he concluded insistently, and walked out of the room.
Chapter 2: For a Moment the Lie Became Truth
He rushed to the hospital where Mitya was now lying. Two days after the decision of the court, he had come down with nervous fever and was sent to our town hospital, to the section for convicts. But at the request of Alyosha and many others (Madame Khokhlakov, Liza, and so on), Dr. Varvinsky placed Mitya apart from the convicts, in the same little room where Smerdyakov had been. True, a sentry stood at the end of the corridor, and the window was barred, so that Varvinsky could rest easy concerning his indulgence, which was not quite legal, but he was a kind and compassionate young man. He understood that it was hard for a man like Mitya suddenly to step straight into the company of murderers and swindlers, and that he would have to get used to it first. Visits from relatives and acquaintances were permitted by the doctor, and by the warden, and even by the police commissioner, all underhandedly. But Mitya had been visited during those days only by Alyosha and Grushenka. Rakitin had tried twice to see him; but Mitya insistently asked Varvinsky not to let him in.
Alyosha found him sitting on a cot, in a hospital robe, a little feverish, his head wrapped in a towel moistened with water and vinegar. He glanced at the entering Alyosha with a vague look, and yet some sort of fear seemed to flash in this look.
Generally, since the day of the trial, he had become terribly pensive. Sometimes he would be silent for half an hour, apparently thinking ponderously and painfully about something, forgetting whoever was there. And if he roused himself from his pensiveness and began to speak, he would always somehow begin suddenly, and inevitably not with what he really ought to be saying. Sometimes he looked at his brother with suffering. It seemed to be easier for him with Grushenka than with Alyosha. True, he hardly said a word to her, but the moment she entered his whole face lit up with joy. Alyosha silently sat down next to him on the cot. This time he had been anxiously awaiting Alyosha, but he did not dare ask him anything. He considered it unthinkable that Katya would agree to come, and at the same time he felt that if she did not come, it would be something altogether impossible. Alyosha understood his feelings.
“This Trifon,” Mitya began speaking nervously, “Borisich, I mean, has destroyed his whole inn, they say: he’s taking up the floorboards, ripping out planks, they say he’s broken his ‘verander’ to bits—looking for treasure all the time, for the money, the fifteen hundred the prosecutor said I’d hidden there. They say he started this lunacy as soon as he got back. Serves the swindler right! The guard here told me yesterday; he comes from there.”
“Listen,” said Alyosha, “she will come, but I don’t know when, maybe today, maybe one of these days, that I don’t know, but she will come, she will, it’s certain.”
Mitya started, was about to say something, but remained silent. The news affected him terribly. One could see that he painfully wanted to know the details of the conversation, but once again he was afraid to ask: anything cruel and contemptuous from Katya at that moment would have been like the stab of a knife.
“She told me this, by the way: that I must absolutely set your conscience at rest concerning the escape. Even if Ivan has not recovered by that time, she will take care of it herself.”
“You already told me that,” Mitya observed pensively. “And you already passed it on to Grusha,” observed Alyosha.
“Yes,” Mitya confessed. “She won’t come this morning,” he looked timidly at his brother. “She will only come in the evening. She didn’t say anything yesterday when I told her Katya was taking charge of it; but her lips twisted. She just whispered: ‘Let her! ‘ She understood the importance of it. I was afraid to dig any deeper. She does seem to understand now that the other one loves Ivan and not me.”
“Does she?” escaped from Alyosha.
“Maybe she doesn’t. Only she won’t come this morning,” Mitya hastened to stress again, “I gave her an errand ... Listen, brother Ivan will surpass us all. It’s for him to live, not us. He will recover.”
“You know, though Katya trembles for him, she has almost no doubt that he will recover,” said Alyosha.
“That means she’s convinced he will die. It’s fear that makes her so sure he’ll recover.”
“Our brother has a strong constitution. And I, too, have every hope that he will recover,” Alyosha observed anxiously.
“Yes, he will recover. But she’s convinced he will die. She has so much grief ...”
There was silence. Something very important was tormenting Mitya.
“Alyosha, I love Grusha terribly,” he said suddenly in a trembling, tear-filled voice.
“They won’t let her go to you there,”Alyosha picked up at once.
“And here’s something else I wanted to tell you,” Mitya continued in a suddenly ringing voice, “if they start beating me on the way, or there,I won’t let them, I’ll kill someone, and they’ll shoot me. And it’s for twenty years! They’ve already started talking down to me here. The guards talk down to me. I was lying here all last night judging myself: I’m not ready! Not strong enough to take it! I wanted to sing a ‘hymn,’ yet I can’t stand the guards’ talking down to me! I’d endure everything for Grusha, everything ... except beatings, that is ... But they won’t let her go there.”
Alyosha smiled quietly.
“Listen, brother, once and for all,” he said, “here are my thoughts about it. And you know very well I won’t lie to you. Listen, then: you’re not ready, and such a cross is not for you. Moreover, unready as you are, you don’t need such a great martyr’s cross. If you had killed father, I would regret that you rejected your cross. But you’re innocent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to regenerate another man in yourself through suffering; I say just remember that other man always, all your life, and wherever you escape to– and that is enough for you. That you did not accept that great cross will only serve to make you feel a still greater duty in yourself, and through this constant feeling from now on, all your life, you will do more for your regeneration, perhaps, than if you went there. Because there you will not endure, you will begin to murmur, and in the end you may really say: ‘I am quits.’ The attorney was right about that. Heavy burdens are not for everyone, for some they are impossible ... These are my thoughts, if you need them so much. If others had to answer for your escape—officers, soldiers—then I ‘would not allow’ you to flee,” Alyosha smiled. “But they tell me and assure me (the head man there told Ivan himself) that if it’s managed well, there won’t be much penalty, and they can get off lightly. Of course, bribery is dishonest even in this case, but I wouldn’t make myself a judge here for anything, since, as a matter of fact, if Ivan and Katya asked me to take charge of it for you, for example, I know I would go and bribe; I must tell you the whole truth here. And therefore I am no judge of you in how you yourself act. But know, too, that I will never condemn you. And it would be strange, wouldn’t it, for me to be your judge in these things? Well, I think I’ve covered everything.”
“But I will condemn myself!” exclaimed Mitya. “I will run away, that’s already been decided without you: how could Mitka Karamazov not run away? But I will condemn myself in return, and sit there praying for my sin forever! This is how the Jesuits talk, right? The way you and I are talking now, eh?”
“Right,” Alyosha smiled quietly.
“I love you for always telling the whole complete truth and never hiding anything!” Mitya exclaimed, laughing joyfully. “So I’ve caught my Alyoshka being a Jesuit! You deserve kissing for that, that’s what! So, now listen to the rest, I’ll unfold the remaining half of my soul to you. This is what I’ve thought up and decided: if I do run away, even with money and a passport, and even to America, I still take heart from the thought that I will not be running to any joy or happiness, but truly to another penal servitude, maybe no better than this one! No better, Alexei, I tell you truly, no better! This America, devil take it, I hate it already! So Grusha will be with me, but look at her: is she an American woman? She’s Russian, every little bone of her is Russian, she’ll pine for her native land, and I’ll see all the time that she’s pining away for my sake, that she has taken up such a cross for my sake, and what has she done wrong? And I, will I be able to stand the local rabble, though every last one of them may be better than I am? I hate this America even now! And maybe every last one of them is some sort of boundless machinist or whatever—but, devil take them, they’re not my people, not of my soul! I love Russia, Alexei, I love the Russian God, though I myself am a scoundrel! But there I’ll just croak!” he exclaimed suddenly, flashing his eyes. His voice was trembling with tears.
“So this is what I’ve decided, Alexei, listen!” he began again, suppressing his excitement. “Grusha and I will arrive there—and there we’ll immediately set to work, digging the land, with the wild bears, in solitude, in some remote place. Surely there must be some remote places there. People say there are still redskins there, somewhere on the edge of the horizon, so we’ll go to that edge, to the last Mohicans. [361]And we’ll immediately start on the grammar, Grusha and I. Work and grammar—about three years like that. In three years we’ll learn Engullish as well as any downright Englishman. And as soon as we’ve learned it—good-bye America! We’ll flee here, to Russia, as American citizens. Don’t worry, we won’t come to this little town. We’ll hide somewhere far away, in the north or the south. I’ll have changed by then, and so will she; a doctor there, in America, will fabricate some kind of wart for me; it’s not for nothing they’re all mechanics. Or else I’ll blind myself in one eye, let my beard grow a yard long, a gray beard (I’ll go gray thinking of Russia), and maybe they won’t recognize me. And if they do, worse luck, let them exile me, I don’t care. Here, too, we’ll dig the land somewhere in the wilderness, and I’ll pretend to be an American all my life. But we will die in our native land. That’s my plan, and it will not be changed. Do you approve?”
“I do,” said Alyosha, not wishing to contradict him.
Mitya fell silent for a moment, and said suddenly:
“And how they set me up in court! They really set me up!”
“Even if they hadn’t set you up, you’d have been convicted anyway,” Alyosha said, sighing.
“Yes, the local public is sick of me! God help them, but it’s a heavy thing!” Mitya groaned with suffering.
Again they fell silent for a moment.
“Put me out of my misery, Alyosha!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Is she coming now or not, tell me! What did she say? How did she say it?”
“She said she would come, but I don’t know about today. It’s really hard for her!” Alyosha looked timidly at his brother.
“Of course it is, of course it’s hard for her! Alyosha, this is driving me crazy. Grusha keeps looking at me. She knows. Lord God, humble me: what am I asking for? I’m asking for Katya! Do I realize what I am asking? This impious Karamazov unrestraint! No, I’m not fit for suffering! A scoundrel, that says it all!”
“Here she is!” exclaimed Alyosha.
At that moment Katya suddenly appeared in the doorway. She stopped for a second, gazing at Mitya with a sort of lost expression. He jumped impetuously to his feet, a frightened look came to his face, he turned pale, but at once a shy, pleading smile flashed on his lips, and suddenly, irrepressibly, he reached out to Katya with both hands. Seeing this, she rushed impetuously to him. She seized his hands and almost by force sat him down on the bed, sat down beside him, and, still holding his hands, kept squeezing them strongly, convulsively. Several times they both tried to say something, but checked themselves and again sat silently, their eyes as if fastened on each other, gazing at each other with a strange smile; thus about two minutes passed.
“Have you forgiven or not?” Mitya murmured at last, and at the same moment, turning to Alyosha, his face distorted with joy, he cried to him:
“Do you hear what I’m asking, do you hear?”
“That’s why I loved you, for your magnanimous heart!” escaped suddenly from Katya. “And you do not need my forgiveness, nor I yours; it’s all the same whether you forgive or not, all my life you will remain a wound in my soul, and I in yours—that’s how it should be ... ,” she stopped to catch her breath.
“Why have I come?” she began again, frenziedly and hastily. “To embrace your feet, to squeeze your hands, like this, till it hurts—remember how I used to squeeze them in Moscow?—to say to you that you are my God, my joy, to tell you that I love you madly,” she nearly groaned from suffering, and suddenly, greedily pressed her lips to his hand. Tears streamed from her eyes.
Alyosha stood speechless and embarrassed; he had never expected to see what he was seeing.
“Love is gone, Mitya!” Katya began again, “but what is gone is painfully dear to me. Know that, for all eternity. But now, for one minute, let it be as it might have been,” she prattled with a twisted smile, again looking joyfully into his eyes. “You now love another, I love another, but still I shall love you eternally, and you me, did you know that? Love me, do you hear, love me all your life!” she exclaimed with some sort of almost threatening tremor in her voice.
“I shall love you, and ... you know, Katya,” Mitya also began to speak, catching his breath at each word, “five days ago, that evening, you know, I loved you ... When you collapsed, and they carried you out ... All my life! It will be so, eternally so...”
Thus they prattled to each other, and their talk was frantic, almost senseless, and perhaps also not even truthful, but at that moment everything was truth, and they both utterly believed what they were saying.
“Katya,” Mitya suddenly exclaimed, “do you believe I killed him? I know you don’t believe it now, but then ... when you were testifying ... Did you, did you really believe it!”
“I did not believe it then either! I never believed it! I hated you, and suddenly I persuaded myself, for that moment ... While I was testifying ... I persuaded myself and believed it. . . and as soon as I finished testifying, I stopped believing it again. You must know all that. I forgot that I came here to punish myself!” she said with some suddenly quite new expression, quite unlike her prattling of love just a moment before.
“It’s hard for you, woman!” suddenly escaped somehow quite unrestrainably from Mitya.
“Let me go,” she whispered, “I’ll come again, it’s hard now...!”
She got up from her place, but suddenly gave a loud cry and drew back. All at once, though very quietly, Grushenka came into the room. No one was expecting her. Katya stepped swiftly towards the door, but, coming up with Grushenka, she suddenly stopped, turned white as chalk, and softly, almost in a whisper, moaned to her:
“Forgive me!”
The other woman stared her in the face and, pausing for a moment, answered in a venomous voice, poisoned with wickedness:
“We are wicked, sister, you and I! We’re both wicked! It’s not for us to forgive! Save him, and I’ll pray to you all my life.”
“You don’t want to forgive!” Mitya cried to Grushenka with wild reproach.
“Don’t worry, I’ll save him for you!” Katya whispered quickly, and she ran out of the room.
“But how could you not forgive her, after she herself said ‘Forgive me’ to you?” Mitya again exclaimed bitterly.
“Mitya, do not dare to reproach her, you have no right!” Alyosha shouted hotly at his brother.
“It was her proud lips speaking, not her heart,” Grushenka said with a sort of loathing. “If she delivers you—I’ll forgive everything...”
She fell silent, as if she had quelled something in her soul. She still could not recover herself. She had come in, as it turned out later, quite by chance, suspecting nothing, and not at all expecting to meet what she met.
“Alyosha, run after her!” Mitya turned swiftly to his brother, “tell her ... I don’t know what ... don’t let her go away like that!”
“I’ll come to you before evening!” cried Alyosha, and he ran after Katya. He caught up with her outside the hospital gate. She was walking briskly, hurrying, but as soon as Alyosha caught up with her, she quickly said to him:
“No, I cannot punish myself before that one! I said ‘forgive me’ to her because I wanted to punish myself to the end. She did not forgive ... I love her for that!” Katya added in a distorted voice, and her eyes flashed with savage wickedness.
“My brother did not expect her at all,” Alyosha began muttering, “he was sure she would not come ...”
“No doubt. Let’s drop it,” she cut him short. “Listen: I can’t go with you to the funeral now. I sent them flowers for the coffin. They still have money, I think. If need be, tell them that in the future I shall never abandon them ... Well, leave me now, please leave me. You’re late going there as it is, they’re already ringing for the late service ... Leave me, please!”
Chapter 3: Ilyushechka’s Funeral. The Speech at the Stone
Indeed, he was late. They had waited for him and even decided finally to carry the pretty little coffin, all decked with flowers, to the church without him. It was the coffin of the poor little boy Ilyushechka. He had died two days after Mitya was sentenced. At the gate of the house Alyosha was met by the shouts of the boys, Ilyusha’s comrades. They had been waiting impatiently for him and were glad that he had come at last. There were about twelve boys altogether, all with their satchels and shoulder bags. “Papa will cry, be with papa,” was Ilyusha’s dying wish, and the boys remembered it. At their head was Kolya Krasotkin.
