The Brothers Karamazov

“Well, nothing to be done, I’ll have to resort to Perezvon. Ici, Perezvon!” And Kolya began giving orders to the dog, and he began doing all his tricks. He was a shaggy dog, the size of any ordinary mongrel, with a sort of blue gray coat. He was blind in his right eye, and his left ear for some reason had a nick in it. He squealed and jumped, stood and walked on his hind legs, threw himself on his back with all four legs in the air and lay motionless as if dead. During this last trick the door opened and Agafya, Mrs. Krasotkin’s fat maid, a pockmarked woman of about forty, appeared on the threshold, returning from the market with a paper bag full of groceries in her hand. She stood with the bag perched on her left hand and began watching the dog. Kolya, however eagerly he had been waiting for Agafya, did not interrupt the performance, and having kept Perezvon dead for a certain length of time, finally whistled: the dog jumped up and began leaping for joy at having fulfilled his duty.

“Some dog that is!” Agafya said didactically.

“Why are you late, female sex?” Krasotkin asked sternly. “Female sex yourself, pipsqueak.”

“Pipsqueak?”

“Yes, pipsqueak. What’s it to you if I’m late? If I’m late I must have had good reason,” Agafya muttered, as she started bustling about the stove, not at all in a displeased or angry voice, but, on the contrary, sounding very pleased, as if she were glad of the chance to exchange quips with her cheerful young master.

“Listen, you frivolous old woman,” Krasotkin began, rising from the sofa, “will you swear to me by all that’s holy in this world, and something else besides, that you will keep a constant eye on the squirts in my absence? I’m going out.”

“Why should I go swearing to you?” Agafya laughed. “I’ll look after them anyway.”

“No, not unless you swear by the eternal salvation of your soul. Otherwise I won’t go.”

“Don’t go, then. I don’t care. It’s freezing out; stay home.”

“Squirts,” Kolya turned to the children, “this woman will stay with you till I come back, or till your mama comes, because she, too, should have been back long ago. And furthermore she will give you lunch. Will you fix them something, Agafya?”

“Could be.”

“Good-bye, chicks, I’m going with an easy heart. And you, granny,” he said, imposingly and in a low voice, as he passed by Agafya, “spare their young years, don’t go telling them all your old wives’ nonsense about Katerina. Ici, Perezvon!”

“And you know where you can go!” Agafya snarled, this time in earnest. “Funny boy! Ought to be whipped yourself for such talk, that’s what.”

Chapter 3: A Schoolboy

But Kolya was no longer listening. At last he was able to leave. He walked out the gate, looked around, hunched his shoulders, and having said “Freezing!” set off straight down the street and then turned right down a lane to the mar- , ket square. When he reached the next to the last house before the square, he stopped at the gate, pulled a whistle out of his pocket, and whistled with all his might, as if giving a prearranged signal. He did not have to wait more than a minute—a ruddy-cheeked boy of about eleven years old suddenly ran out to him through the gate, also wearing a warm, clean, and even stylish coat. This was the Smurov boy, who was in the preparatory class (whereas Kolya Krasotkin was two years ahead), the son of a well-to-do official, whose parents evidently would not allow him to go around with Krasotkin, a notoriously desperate prankster, so that this time Smurov obviously had escaped on the sly. This Smurov, if the reader has not forgotten, was one of the group of boys who were throwing stones at Ilyusha across the ditch two months before, and had told Alyosha Karamazov then about Ilyusha.

“I’ve been waiting a whole hour for you, Krasotkin,” Smurov said with a determined look, and the boys strode off towards the square.

“I’m late,” Krasotkin replied. “Circumstances arose. They won’t whip you for being with me?”

“Lord, no, they never whip me! So you’ve brought Perezvon?”

“Perezvon, too!”

“He’s going there, too?”

“He’s going, too.”

“Ah, if only it was Zhuchka!”

“Impossible. Zhuchka does not exist. Zhuchka has vanished in the darkness of the unknown.”

“Ah, couldn’t we do it?” Smurov suddenly stopped for a moment. “Ilyusha did say that Zhuchka was shaggy, and gray and smoky, just like Perezvon— couldn’t we tell him it’s really Zhuchka? Maybe he’ll even believe it?”

“Schoolboy, do not stoop to lying, first; and second, not even for a good cause. And above all, I hope you didn’t tell them anything about my coming.”

“God forbid, I know what I’m doing. But you won’t comfort him with Perezvon,” sighed Smurov. “You know, his father, the captain, I mean, the whiskbroom, told us he was going to bring him a puppy today, a real mastiff, with a black nose; he thinks he can comfort Ilyusha with it, only it’s not likely.”

“And Ilyusha himself—how is he?”