The Brothers Karamazov

“When you’re older, you will see yourself what significance age has upon convictions. It also occurred to me that you were using words that weren’t yours,” Alyosha replied calmly and modestly, but Kolya hotly interrupted him.

“For God’s sake, you want obedience and mysticism. You must agree, for instance, that the Christian faith has only served the rich and noble, so as to keep the lower classes in slavery, isn’t that so?”

“Ah, I know where you read that, and I knew someone must have been teaching you!” Alyosha exclaimed.

“For God’s sake, why must have I read it? And no one has taught me at all. I myself am capable ... And, if you like, I’m not against Christ. He was a very humane person, and if he was living in our time, he would go straight to join the revolutionaries, and perhaps would play a conspicuous part ... It’s even certain he would.”

“But where, where did you get all that? What kind of fool have you been dealing with?” Alyosha exclaimed.

“For God’s sake, the truth can’t be hidden! Of course, I often talk with Mr. Rakitin about a certain matter, but ... Old Belinsky used to say the same thing, they say.”

“Belinsky? I don’t remember. He never wrote it anywhere.” “Maybe he didn’t write it, but they say he said it. I heard it from a certain ... ah, the devil...!”

“And have you read Belinsky?”

“In fact ... no ... I haven’t exactly read him, but ... the part about Tatiana, why she didn’t go with Onegin, I did read.”^[283]

“What? Why she didn’t go with Onegin? Can it be that you already . . understand that?”

“For God’s sake, you seem to take me for the boy Smurov,” Kolya grinned irritably. “By the way, please don’t think I’m such a revolutionary. I quite often disagree with Mr. Rakitin. If I speak about Tatiana, it’s not at all to say that I’m for women’s emancipation. I acknowledge that woman is a subordinate creature and must obey. Les femmes tricottent,^[284] as Napoleon said,” Kolya smirked for some reason, “and at least here I fully share the conviction of that pseudo great man. I also think, for example, that to flee the fatherland for America is a base thing, worse than base—it’s foolish. Why go to America, if one can also be of much use to mankind here? Precisely now. There’s a whole mass of fruitful activity. That was my answer.”

“Answer? Who did you answer? Has someone already invited you to America?”

“I must admit they were urging me, but I declined. Naturally that’s between us, Karamazov, not a word to anyone, do you hear? It’s only for you. I have no desire to fall into the kindly clutches of the Third Department and take lessons at the Chain Bridge.

You will never forget

The house near the Chain Bridge!

Do you remember? Splendid! What are you laughing at? Do you think it’s all lies?” (“And what if he finds out that there’s only that one issue of The Bell in my father’s bookcase, and that I never read any more than that?” Kolya thought fleetingly, but with a shudder.)^[285]

“Oh, no, I’m not laughing, and I don’t at all think you’ve been lying to me. That’s just it, I don’t think so because all of that, alas, is quite true! Well, and Pushkin, tell me, have you read him, have you read Onegin ... ? You just mentioned Tatiana.”

“No, I haven’t read it, but I intend to. I have no prejudices, Karamazov. I want to hear both sides. Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered.”

“Tell me, Karamazov, do you despise me terribly?” Kolya suddenly blurted out, and he drew himself up straight before Alyosha, as if positioning himself. “Kindly tell me, without beating around the bush.”

“I despise you?” Alyosha looked at him with surprise. “But what for? I’m only sad that such a lovely nature as yours, which has not yet begun to live, should already be perverted by all this crude nonsense.”

“Don’t worry about my nature,” Kolya interrupted, not without some smugness, “but it’s true that I’m insecure. Stupidly insecure, crudely insecure. You just smiled, and I thought you seemed to...”

“Ah, I smiled at something quite different. You see, what I smiled at was this: I recently read a comment by a foreigner, a German, who used to live in Russia, about our young students these days. ‘Show a Russian schoolboy a chart of the heavens,’ he writes, ‘of which hitherto he had no idea at all, and the next day he will return the chart to you with corrections.’ No knowledge and boundless conceit—that’s what the German meant to say about the Russian schoolboy.”