The Brothers Karamazov

Indeed, a carriage belonging to Madame Khokhlakov drove up to the gates of the house. The captain, who had been expecting the doctor all morning, madly rushed out to meet him. Mama pulled herself together and assumed an important air. Alyosha went over to Ilyusha and began straightening his pillow. Ninochka anxiously watched from her armchair as he straightened the little bed. The boys began saying good-bye hastily, some of them promised to stop by in the evening. Kolya called Perezvon, and he jumped down from the bed.

“I’m not leaving, I’m not,” Kolya said hurriedly to Ilyusha, “I’ll wait in the entryway and come back when the doctor leaves, I’ll bring Perezvon back.”

But the doctor was already coming in—an imposing figure in a bearskin coat, with long, dark side-whiskers and a gleamingly shaven chin. Having stepped across the threshold, he suddenly stopped as if taken aback: he must have thought he had come to the wrong place. “What’s this? Where am I?” he muttered, without doffing his fur coat or his sealskin hat with its sealskin visor. The crowd, the poverty of the room, the laundry hanging on a line in the corner bewildered him. The captain bent double before him.

“It’s here you were coming, sir, it’s here, sir,” he kept muttering servilely, “you’ve come here, sir, to my place, come to my place, sir...”

“Sne-gi-ryov?” the doctor pronounced loudly and importantly. “Mr. Snegiryov—is that you?”

“It’s me, sir.”

“Ah!”

The doctor once again looked squeamishly around the room and threw off his fur coat. An important decoration hanging on his neck flashed in everyone’s eyes. The captain caught the coat in midair, and the doctor took off his hat.

“Where is the patient?” he asked loudly and emphatically.

Chapter 6: Precocity

“What do you think the doctor will say to him? “ Kolya rattled out. “What a disgusting mug, by the way, don’t you agree? I can’t stand medicine!”

“Ilyusha will die. That seems certain to me now,” Alyosha replied sadly.

“Swindlers! Medicine is a swindle! I’m glad, however, to have met you, Karamazov. I’ve long wanted to meet you. Only it’s too bad we’ve met so sadly ...”

Kolya would have liked very much to say something even more ardent, more expansive, but something seemed to cramp him. Alyosha noticed it, smiled, and pressed his hand.

“I’ve long learned to respect the rare person in you,” Kolya muttered again, faltering and becoming confused. “I’ve heard you are a mystic and were in the monastery. I know you are a mystic, but ... that didn’t stop me. The touch of reality will cure you ... With natures like yours, it can’t be otherwise.”

“What do you mean by ‘a mystic’? Cure me of what?” Alyosha was a little surprised.

“Well, God and all that.”

“What, don’t you believe in God?”

“On the contrary, I have nothing against God. Of course God is only a hypothesis ... but ... I admit, he is necessary, for the sake of order ... for the order of the world and so on ... and if there were no God, he would have to be invented,”^[281] Kolya added, beginning to blush. He suddenly fancied that Alyosha might be thinking he wanted to show off his knowledge and prove how “adult” he was. “And I don’t want to show off my knowledge at all,” Kolya thought indignantly. And he suddenly became quite vexed.

“I’ll admit, I can’t stand entering into all these debates,” he snapped. “It’s possible to love mankind even without believing in God, don’t you think? Voltaire did not believe in God, but he loved mankind, didn’t he?” (“Again, again!” he thought to himself.)

“Voltaire believed in God, but very little, it seems, and it seems he also loved mankind very little,” Alyosha said softly, restrainedly, and quite naturally, as if he were talking to someone of the same age or even older than himself. Kolya was struck precisely by Alyosha’s uncertainty, as it were, in his opinion of Voltaire, and that he seemed to leave it precisely up to him, little Kolya, to resolve the question.

“So you’ve read Voltaire?” Alyosha concluded.

“No, I can’t say I’ve read him ... I’ve read Candide,^[282] though, in a Russian translation ... an old, clumsy translation, very funny . . .”(“Again, again!”)

“And did you understand it?”

“Oh, yes, everything ... I mean ... why do you think I wouldn’t understand it? Of course there are lots of salacious things in it ... But of course I’m capable of understanding that it’s a philosophical novel, written in order to put forward an idea ... ,” Kolya was now completely muddled. “I’m a socialist, Karamazov, I am an incorrigible socialist,” he suddenly broke off for no reason at all.

“A socialist?” Alyosha laughed. “But how have you had time? You’re still only thirteen, I think?”

Kolya cringed.

“First of all, I’m fourteen, not thirteen, fourteen in two weeks,” he flushed deeply, “and second, I absolutely do not understand what my age has to do with it. The point is what my convictions are, not how old I am, isn’t it?”