The Brothers Karamazov

“Ah, but he’s absolutely right!” Krasotkin suddenly burst out laughing. “Verissimo, exactly! Bravo, German! However, the Kraut didn’t look at the good side, what do you think? Conceit—so be it, it comes from youth, it will correct itself, if there’s any need for correction, but, on the other hand, an independent spirit, almost from childhood, a boldness of thought and conviction, and not the spirit of those sausage-makers groveling before the authorities ... But still, the German put it well! Bravo, German! Though the Germans still ought to be strangled. They may be good at science there, but they still ought to be strangled ...”

“Strangled? Why?” Alyosha smiled.

“Well, maybe I was just mouthing off, I agree. Sometimes I’m a terrible child, and when I’m pleased about something, I can’t restrain myself, I’m ready to mouth all kinds of nonsense. Listen, though, here we are chatting about trifles, and that doctor seems to have got stuck in there for a long time. Though maybe he’s examining ‘mama’ too, and that crippled Ninochka. You know, I like that Ninochka. She suddenly whispered to me as I was going out: ‘Why didn’t you come before?’ And in such a voice, so reproachful! I think she’s terribly kind and pathetic.”

“Yes, yes! When you’ve come more often, you’ll see what sort of being she is. It’s very good for you to get to know such beings, in order to learn to value many other things besides, which you will learn precisely from knowing these beings,” Alyosha observed warmly. “That will remake you more than anything.”

“Oh, how sorry I am and how I scold myself for not coming sooner!” Kolya exclaimed with bitter feeling.

“Yes, it’s a great pity. You saw for yourself what a joyful impression you made on the poor child! And how he grieved as he waited for you!”

“Don’t tell me! You’re just rubbing it in! It serves me right, though: it was vanity that kept me from coming, egoistic vanity and base despotism, which I haven’t been able to get rid of all my life, though all my life I’ve been trying to break myself. I’m a scoundrel in many ways, Karamazov, I see it now!”

“No, you have a lovely nature, though it’s been perverted, and I fully understand how you could have such an influence on this noble and morbidly sensitive boy!” Alyosha replied ardently.

“And you say that to me!” Kolya cried, “and just imagine, I thought—several times already since I came here today—I thought you despised me! If only you knew how I value your opinion!”

“But can it be that you really are so insecure? At your age? Well, imagine, I was thinking just that, as I watched you telling stories there in the room, that you must be very insecure.”

“You thought that? What an eye you have, really, you see, you see! I bet it was when I was telling about the goose. Precisely at that moment I imagined you must deeply despise me for being in such a hurry to show what a fine fellow I was, and I even hated you for it and began talking drivel. Then I imagined (it was here, just now) when I was saying: ‘If there were no God, he would have to be invented,’ that I was in too great a hurry to show off my education, especially since I got the phrase out of a book. But I swear to you, I was in a hurry to show off, not out of vanity, but just, I don’t know, for the joy of it, by God, as if for the joy of it ... though it’s an extremely disgraceful quality in a man to go throwing himself on everyone’s neck out of joy. I know that. But now instead I’m convinced that you don’t despise me, that I invented it all myself. Oh, Karamazov, I’m profoundly unhappy. Sometimes I imagine God knows what, that everyone is laughing at me, the whole world, and then I ... then I’m quite ready to destroy the whole order of things.”

“And you torment the people around you,” Alyosha smiled.

“And I torment the people around me, especially my mother. Tell me, Karamazov, am I very ridiculous now?”

“But don’t think about it, don’t think about it at all!” Alyosha exclaimed. “And what does it mean—ridiculous? What does it matter how many times a man is or seems to be ridiculous? Besides, nowadays almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it. I’m only surprised that you’ve begun to feel it so early, though, by the way, I’ve been noticing it for a long time, and not in you alone. Nowadays even children almost are already beginning to suffer from it. It’s almost a madness. The devil has incarnated himself in this vanity and crept into a whole generation—precisely the devil,” Alyosha added, not smiling at all, as Kolya, who was looking at him intently, thought for a moment. “You are like everyone else,” Alyosha concluded, “that is, like a great many others, only you ought not to be like everyone else, that’s what.”