The Brothers Karamazov

“Ah, what a pity,” Alyosha exclaimed with feeling, “that I didn’t know about the relations between you before, or I’d have come long ago and asked you to go and see him with me. Would you believe that he talked about you in his fever, in delirium, when he was sick? I didn’t even know how dear you were to him! And can it be, can it be that you never found that Zhuchka? His father and all the boys were searching all over town. Would you believe that three times, since he got sick, I’ve heard him say in tears to his father: ‘I’m sick because I killed Zhuchka, papa, God is punishing me for it’—and he won’t give up the idea! If only we could find that Zhuchka now and show him that she’s not dead, that she’s alive, he might just be resurrected by the joy of it. We’ve all had our hopes on you.”

“Tell me, what reason did you have to hope that I would find Zhuchka— that is, that precisely I would be the one to find her?” Kolya asked with great curiosity. “Why did you count precisely on me and not on someone else?”

“There was some rumor that you were looking for her, and that when you found her, you would bring her. Smurov said something like that. Most of all, we keep trying to assure him that Zhuchka is alive, that she’s been seen somewhere. The boys found a live hare someplace, but he just looked at it, smiled faintly, and asked us to let it go in the fields. And so we did. Just now his father came home and brought him a mastiff pup, he also got it someplace, he wanted to comfort him, but it seems to have made things even worse ...”

“Another thing, Karamazov: what about his father? I know him, but how would you define him: a buffoon, a clown?” “Ah, no, there are people who feel deeply but are somehow beaten down. Their buffoonery is something like a spiteful irony against those to whom they dare not speak the truth directly because of a long-standing, humiliating timidity before them. Believe me, Krasotkin, such buffoonery is sometimes extremely tragic. For him, now, everything on earth has come together in Ilyusha, and if Ilyusha dies, he will either go out of his mind from grief or take his own life. I’m almost convinced of it when I look at him now!”

“I understand you, Karamazov, I see that you know human nature,” Kolya added with feeling.

“And so, when I saw you with a dog, I immediately thought you must be bringing that Zhuchka.”

“Wait, Karamazov, maybe we’ll still find her, but this one—this one is Perezvon. I’ll let him into the room now, and maybe he’ll cheer Ilyusha up more than the mastiff. Wait, Karamazov, you’re going to find something out now. Ah, my God, but I’m keeping you out here!” Kolya suddenly cried. “You’re just wearing a jacket in such cold, and I’m keeping you—see, see what an egoist I am! Oh, we’re all egoists, Karamazov!”

“Don’t worry; it’s cold, true, but I don’t catch cold easily. Let’s go, however. By the way, what is your name? I know it’s Kolya, but the rest?”

“Nikolai, Nikolai Ivanov Krasotkin, or, as they say in official jargon, son of Krasotkin,” Kolya laughed at something, but suddenly added: “Naturally, I hate the name Nikolai.”

“But why?”

“Trivial, official-sounding...”

“You’re going on thirteen?” Alyosha asked.

“No, fourteen, in two weeks I’ll be fourteen, quite soon. I’ll confess one weakness to you beforehand, Karamazov, to you alone, for the sake of our new acquaintance, so that you can see the whole of my character at once: I hate being asked my age, more than hate it ... and finally, another thing, there’s a slanderous rumor going around about me, that I played robbers with the preparatory class last week. That I played with them is actually true, but that I played for myself, for my own pleasure, is decidedly slander. I have reason to think it may have reached your ears, but I played not for myself, but for the kids, because they couldn’t think up anything without me. And people here are always spreading nonsense. This town lives on gossip, I assure you.”

“And even if you did play for your own pleasure, what of it?”

“Well, even if I did ... But you don’t play hobbyhorse, do you?”

“You should reason like this,” Alyosha smiled. “Adults, for instance, go to the theater, and in the theater, too, all sorts of heroic adventures are acted out, sometimes also with robbers and battles—and isn’t that the same thing, in its own way, of course? And a game of war among youngsters during a period of recreation, or a game of robbers—that, too, is a sort of nascent art, an emerging need for art in a young soul, and these games are sometimes even better conceived than theater performances, with the only difference that people go to the theater to look at the actors, and here young people are themselves the actors. But it’s only natural.”