The Brothers Karamazov

Then, coming back into the room, he would usually start amusing and comforting his dear boy with something, would tell him stories, funny jokes, or mimic various funny people he had chanced to meet, even imitating animals with their funny howls or cries. But Ilyusha disliked it very much when his father clowned and presented himself as a buffoon. Though the boy tried not to show that he found it unpleasant, it pained his heart to realize that his father was socially humiliated, and he never for a moment forgot the “whiskbroom” and that “terrible day.” Ninochka, llyushechka’s crippled, quiet, and meek sister, also did not like it when their lather started clowning (as for Varvara Nikolaevna, she had long since returned to the university in Petersburg), but the half-witted mama was greatly amused, and laughed heartily when her husband began acting something out or making funny gestures. It was the only thing that could comfort her, and the rest of the time she spent grumbling and complaining constantly that everyone had forgotten her now, that no one respected her, that they offended her, and so on and so forth. But in the very last few days, she, too, had quite changed, as it were. She began looking frequently at Ilyusha in his little corner, and grew thoughtful. She grew much more silent, quiet, and if she began to cry, it was softly, so as not to be heard. With bitter perplexity, the captain noticed this change in her. At first she did not like the boys’ visits, which only made her angry, but later their cheerful voices and stories began to amuse her, too, and in the end she liked it so much that, if the boys had stopped coming, she would sorely have missed them. When the children told something or started playing, she laughed and clapped her hands. She would call some of them over and kiss them. She came especially to love the boy Smurov. As for the captain, the appearance in his lodgings of children who had come to entertain Ilyusha from the very beginning filled his soul with rapturous joy, and even with hope that Ilyusha would stop being sad now, and would perhaps recover sooner because of it. Until very recently, he never doubted, not for a single moment, despite all his fear for Ilyusha, that his boy would suddenly recover. He met the little guests with reverence, hovered around them, waited on them, was ready to give them rides on his back, and indeed even started giving them rides, but Ilyusha did not like these games and they were abandoned. He began buying treats for them, gingerbread, nuts, served tea, made sandwiches. It should be noted that all this time he was never without money. He had accepted the two hundred roubles from Katerina Ivanovna, exactly as Alyosha predicted. And then Katerina Ivanovna, learning in more detail about their situation and about Ilyusha’s illness, visited their home herself, became acquainted with the whole family, and even managed to charm the captain’s half-witted wife. Since then she had been unstinting in her help to them; and the captain, overwhelmed with terror at the thought that his boy might die, forgot his former hauteur and humbly accepted her alms. All this while Dr. Herzenstube, at Katerina Ivanovna’s invitation, kept coming to see the sick boy, but little good came of his visits, and he simply stuffed him full of medications. But, on the other hand, they were expecting at the captain’s that day—that is, that same Sunday morning—a new doctor, visiting from Moscow, who was considered a celebrity there. Katerina Ivanovna had written specially and invited him from Moscow for a large sum—not for Ilyushechka, but for another purpose, of which more will be said below in the proper place, but since he had come anyway, she asked him to see Ilyushechka as well, and the captain had been forewarned. But he did not at all anticipate the arrival of Kolya Krasotkin, though he had long wished for a visit, finally, from this boy who was the cause of such torment to his Ilyushechka. At the moment when Krasotkin opened the door and appeared in the room, everyone, the captain and all the boys, was crowded around the sick boy’s bed, looking at the tiny mastiff pup, just brought in, that had been born just the day before, but had been ordered by the captain a week earlier to amuse and comfort Ilyushechka, who kept grieving over the vanished and, of course, by now dead Zhuchka. But though Ilyusha, who had already heard and knew three days before that he was to be given a little dog, and not simply a dog but a real mastiff (which, of course, was terribly important), had, from fine and delicate feeling, expressed joy at the present, still everyone, both his father and the boys, could see clearly that the new dog stirred perhaps even more strongly in his heart the memory of the unfortunate Zhuchka, whom he had tormented to death. The puppy lay and fumbled about at his side, and he, with a sickly smile, was stroking it with his thin, pale, withered little hand; one could see that he even liked the dog, but still ... it was not Zhuchka, Zhuchka was not there, but if there could be both Zhuchka and the puppy together, then there would be complete happiness!