The Brothers Karamazov

“Kolya, you absolutely must keep your word and come, otherwise he’ll grieve terribly,” Alyosha said emphatically.

“Absolutely! Oh, how I curse myself for not coming before,” Kolya muttered, crying and no longer embarrassed to be crying. At that moment the captain all but jumped out of the room and at once closed the door behind him. His face was frenzied, his lips trembled. He stood facing the two young men and threw up his arms.

“I don’t want a nice boy! I don’t want another boy!” he whispered in a wild whisper, clenching his teeth. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my tongue cleave . . .’”^[286]

He broke off as if he were choking, and sank helplessly on his knees in front of the wooden bench. Pressing his head with both fists, he began sobbing, shrieking somehow absurdly, restraining himself as much as he could, however, so that his shrieks would not be heard in the room. Kolya ran out to the street.

“Good-bye, Karamazov! And you, are you coming back?” he cried sharply and angrily to Alyosha.

“I’ll certainly come back in the evening.”

“What was that he said about Jerusalem ... ? What was it?”

“It’s from the Bible: ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,’ meaning if I forget all that’s most precious tome, if I exchange it for anything, may I be struck...”

“Enough, I understand! So, make sure you come! Ici, Perezvon!” he shouted quite fiercely to the dog, and strode home with long, quick strides.

BOOK XI: BROTHER IVAN FYODOROVICH

Chapter 1: At Grushenka’s

Alyosha made his way towards Cathedral Square, to the house of the widow Morozov, to see Grushenka. Early that morning she had sent Fenya to him with an urgent request that he come. Having questioned Fenya, Alyosha found out that her mistress had been in some great and particular alarm ever since the previous day. During the two months following Mitya’s arrest, Alyosha had often visited the widow Morozov’s, both at his own urging and on errands for Mitya. Some three days after Mitya’s arrest, Grushenka had become quite ill and was sick for almost five weeks. For one of those five weeks she lay unconscious. Her face was greatly changed, she had become thin and sallow, though for almost two weeks she had already been able to go out. But in Alyosha’s opinion her face had become even more attractive, as it were, and he loved meeting her eyes when he entered her room. Something firm and aware seemed to have settled in her eyes. Some spiritual turnabout told in her; a certain steadfast, humble, but good and irrevocable resolution appeared. A small vertical wrinkle came to her forehead, between her eyebrows, giving her dear face a look of thoughtfulness concentrated upon itself, which was even almost severe at first glance. There was no trace, for example, of her former frivolity. Alyosha found it strange, too, that despite all the misfortune that had befallen the poor woman, engaged to a fiancé arrested on accusation of a terrible crime almost at the very moment she had become engaged to him, despite her illness afterwards, and the threat of the almost inevitable verdict to come, Grushenka still had not lost her former youthful gaiety. In her once proud eyes there now shone a certain gentleness, although ... although from time to time, nevertheless, those eyes blazed once again with a sort of ominous fire, whenever a certain old anxiety visited her, which not only had not abated, but had even grown stronger in her heart. The object of that anxiety was ever the same: Katerina Ivanovna, whom Grushenka even spoke of in her delirium when she was still lying sick. Alyosha understood that she was terribly jealous of her because of Mitya, the prisoner Mitya, despite the fact that Katerina Ivanovna had not once visited him in prison, though she could have done so whenever she liked. All of this turned into a somewhat difficult problem for Alyosha, because Grushenka opened her heart to him alone and constantly asked his advice; and sometimes he was utterly unable to tell her anything.