VI. Early Development

“What do you think the doctor will tell him?” Kolya said in a rapid patter. “What a disgusting mug, though, isn’t it? I can’t stand medicine!”

“Ilyusha is going to die. That, it seems to me, is certain now,” Alyosha answered sadly.

“Rogues! Medicine is a rogue! I’m glad, though, that I’ve got to know you, Karamazov. I’ve wanted to get to know you for a long time. Only it’s a pity we’ve met so sadly…”

Kolya would very much have liked to say something still warmer, still more expansive, but something seemed to be cramping him. Alyosha noticed it, smiled, and pressed his hand.

“I learned long ago to respect a rare being in you,” Kolya muttered again, faltering and getting tangled. “I’ve heard you are a mystic and were in a monastery. I know you’re a mystic, but… that hasn’t stopped me. Contact with reality will cure you… With natures like yours it’s never otherwise.”

“What do you call a mystic? Cure me of what?” Alyosha was a little surprised.

“Well, you know, God and so on.”

“What, don’t you believe in God, then?”

“On the contrary, I’ve got nothing against God. God is only a hypothesis, of course… but… I grant that he’s needed, for order… for the world order and so on… and if he did not exist, he would have to be invented,” Kolya added, beginning to blush. It suddenly occurred to him that Alyosha would now think he wanted to display his knowledge and show what a “grown-up” he was. “And I don’t want to display my knowledge before him at all,” Kolya thought indignantly. And he suddenly felt terribly vexed.

“I confess I can’t stand getting into all these disputes,” he snapped. “After all, one can love mankind without believing in God, don’t you think? Voltaire didn’t believe in God, did he, and yet he loved mankind?” (“Again, again!” he thought to himself.)

“Voltaire believed in God, but not very much, it seems, and, it seems, he did not love mankind very much either,” Alyosha said quietly, with restraint and quite naturally, as though talking with someone his own age or even with someone older than himself. What struck Kolya was precisely this seeming uncertainty of Alyosha’s in his own opinion of Voltaire, and that he seemed to be leaving precisely to him, little Kolya, the decision of the question.

“Have you read Voltaire, then?” Alyosha concluded.

“No, not exactly read… However, I have read Candide, in Russian translation… in an old, hideous translation, a ridiculous one… (Again, again!)”

“And did you understand it?”

“Oh yes, all of it… that is… why do you think I wouldn’t have understood it? Of course, there’s a lot of smut in it… Of course, I am capable of understanding that it is a philosophical novel and written to get an idea across…” Kolya was now completely tangled up. “I am a socialist, Karamazov, I am an incorrigible socialist,” he suddenly broke off, out of the blue.

“A socialist?” Alyosha laughed. “But when did you have time for that? Why, you are only thirteen, I think?”

Kolya cringed.

“In the first place, not thirteen but fourteen, in two weeks I’ll be fourteen,” he simply flared up, “and in the second place, I don’t understand at all what my age has to do with it. The point is what my convictions are, not how old I am, isn’t it?”

“When you are older, you will see for yourself what importance age has for one’s convictions. It also seemed to me that you are not speaking your own words,” Alyosha answered modestly and calmly, but Kolya hotly interrupted him.

“Good heavens, you want obedience and mysticism. You must agree that, for instance, the Christian faith has served only the rich and the noble to keep the lower class in slavery, isn’t that so?”

“Ah, I know where you read that, and someone has certainly been teaching you!” Alyosha exclaimed.

“Good heavens, why must I have read it? And no one taught me at all. I can think for myself… And if you like, I am not against Christ. He was a thoroughly humane personality, and if he lived in our time, he would join the revolutionaries straight off and perhaps would play a prominent role… That’s even certain.”

“But where, where did you pick all this up! What fool have you got mixed up with?” Alyosha exclaimed.

“Good heavens, you can’t hide the truth. Of course, owing to a certain circumstance, I often talk with Mr. Rakitin, but… Old Belinsky said this too, they say.”

“Belinsky? I don’t remember. He never wrote it anywhere.”

“If he didn’t write it, then he said it, they say. I heard it from a certain… however, devil take it…”

“And have you read Belinsky?”

“You see… no… I haven’t exactly read him, but… the passage about Tatyana, why she didn’t go off with Onegin, that I have read.”

“Why she didn’t go off with Onegin? But surely you don’t already… understand that?”

“Good heavens, you seem to take me for the boy Smurov,” Kolya grinned irritably. “However, please don’t think that I’m such a revolutionary. I very often disagree with Mr. Rakitin. If I mention Tatyana, it doesn’t mean I’m at all for the emancipation of women. I acknowledge that woman is a subordinate being and must obey. Les femmes tricottent (women knit), as Napoleon said,” Kolya grinned for some reason, “and in this at least I completely share the conviction of that pseudo-great man. I also consider, for instance, that to run away from one’s fatherland to America is base, worse than base—stupid. Why go to America, when one can be of great use to mankind here too? Precisely now. A whole mass of fruitful activity. That’s what I answered.”

“Answered? Whom? Has someone already invited you to America?”

“I confess, they tried to put me up to it, but I refused. That, of course, is between ourselves, Karamazov, do you hear, not a word to anyone. I’m telling only you. I have no wish at all to fall into the clutches of the Third Section and take lessons at the Chain Bridge,¹

“You’ll remember the building
By the Chain Bridge!

“Do you remember? Magnificent! What are you laughing at? You don’t think, do you, that I’ve been lying to you about all of it?” (“And what if he finds out that in my father’s bookcase there’s only that one issue of The Bell, and I haven’t read anything else of that sort?” Kolya thought fleetingly, but with a shudder.)

“Oh, no, I’m not laughing, and I don’t think at all that you’ve lied to me. That’s just the thing, that I don’t think so, because all this, alas, is the plain truth! Well, tell me, and have you read Pushkin, Onegin… You were talking about Tatyana just now?”

“No, I haven’t read it yet, but I want to. I am without prejudices, Karamazov. I want to hear both one side and the other. Why did you ask?”

“No reason.”

“Tell me, Karamazov, do you despise me terribly?” Kolya suddenly snapped, drawing himself up to his full height before Alyosha, as if taking up a position. “Do me the favor, without beating about the bush.”

“Despise you?” Alyosha looked at him in surprise. “But what for? I am only sad that a charming nature like yours, which has not even begun to live, is already perverted by all this crude nonsense.”

“Don’t worry about my nature,” Kolya interrupted, not without complacency, “but that I’m suspicious, that is true. Stupidly suspicious, crudely suspicious. You smiled just now, and it seemed to me that you were as if…”

“Ah, I was smiling at something quite different. You see what I was smiling at: I recently read a certain opinion of a certain foreign German who had lived in Russia, about our present student youth: ‘Show a Russian schoolboy,’ he writes, ‘a map of the starry heavens, of which until then he has had no notion at all, and the very next day he will return the map to you corrected.’ No knowledge, and boundless conceit—that is what the German meant to say about the Russian schoolboy.”

“Ah, but that is perfectly true!” Kolya suddenly burst out laughing. “Verissimo, exactly so! Bravo, German! Still, the yokel didn’t make out the good side, did he, what do you think? Conceit—let it be, that comes from youth, it will be corrected, if only it needs to be corrected, but on the other hand, there is an independent spirit, from almost the very earliest childhood, on the other hand there is boldness of thought and conviction, and not the spirit of their sausage-maker’s servility before authorities… But all the same the German put it well! Bravo, German! Though all the same the Germans ought to be strangled. Let them be strong in the sciences over there, they ought to be strangled all the same…”

“But why strangle them?” Alyosha smiled.

“Well, I was talking nonsense, maybe, I admit it. At times I am a terrible child, and when I am glad of something, I can’t restrain myself and am ready to talk any nonsense. Listen, though, here we are, chattering about trifles, and that doctor in there has got stuck for a long time. However, maybe he’s examining the ‘mamma’ in there too, and that legless Ninochka. You know, I liked that Ninochka. As I was going out she suddenly whispered to me: ‘Why didn’t you come sooner?’ And in such a voice, with such reproach! It seems to me she’s terribly kind and pitiful.”

“Yes, yes! Now that you’ll be coming, you will see what a being she is. It is very good for you to come to know beings like that, so that you learn to value many other things too, which you will learn precisely from knowing such beings,” Alyosha remarked warmly. “That will remake you better than anything.”

“Oh, how I regret it and scold myself all over for not coming before!” Kolya exclaimed with bitter feeling.

“Yes, it’s a great pity. You saw yourself what a joyful impression you made on the poor little fellow! And how he pined, waiting for you!”

“Don’t tell me! You’re rubbing salt in it. However, it serves me right: I didn’t come out of pride, out of egoistic pride and vile willfulness, which I can’t get rid of all my life, though I break myself all my life. I see it now, I’m a scoundrel in many ways, Karamazov.”

“No, you have a charming nature, though a perverted one, and I understand only too well why you could have such an influence on this noble and morbidly sensitive boy!” Alyosha answered warmly.

“And you say this to me!” Kolya cried. “And I, imagine, I thought—several times already, just now while I’ve been here, I thought that you despised me! If only you knew how I value your opinion!”

“But are you really so suspicious? At your age! Well, just imagine, I was thinking precisely that in there in the room, looking at you while you were telling your story: that you must be very suspicious.”

“So you thought that already? What an eye you have, though, you see, you see! I bet it was at that place when I was telling about the goose. Precisely at that place I imagined that you deeply despised me because I was hurrying to show off as a fine fellow, and I even suddenly hated you for it and began talking drivel. Then I imagined (this was just now, here), at that place when I said: ‘If there were no God, he would have to be invented,’ that I was in too much of a hurry to show off my education, especially since I read that phrase in a book. But I swear to you, I was in a hurry to show off not out of vanity, but just so, I don’t know why, out of joy, by God, as if out of joy… though it is a deeply shameful trait when a man throws himself on everyone’s neck out of joy. I know that. But on the other hand I am convinced now that you don’t despise me, and that I made it all up myself. Oh, Karamazov, I am profoundly unhappy. Sometimes I imagine God knows what, that everyone is laughing at me, the whole world, and then I, then I am simply ready to destroy the whole order of things.”

“And you torment those around you,” Alyosha smiled.

“And I torment those around me, my mother most of all. Tell me, Karamazov, am I very ridiculous right now?”

“But don’t think about that, don’t think about it at all!” Alyosha exclaimed. “And what is ridiculous, anyway? How many times does a man not happen to be, or seem, ridiculous? Besides, nowadays almost all people of ability are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are unhappy because of it. It only surprises me that you have begun to feel this so early, though, for that matter, I have long been noticing it, and not only in you. Nowadays even those who are almost children have begun to suffer from it. It is almost madness. The devil has taken flesh in this pride and crept into the whole generation, precisely the devil,” Alyosha added, without a trace of a grin, as Kolya, who was staring at him point-blank, had been about to think. “You are like everyone,” Alyosha concluded, “that is, like a great many people, only you mustn’t be like everyone, that’s the thing.”

“Even though everyone is like that?”

“Yes, even though everyone is like that. So you alone, then, don’t be like that. And in fact you are not like everyone: you were not ashamed just now to confess to something bad and even ridiculous. And who confesses to that nowadays? No one, and people have even stopped finding any need for self-judgment. So don’t be like everyone; even if you alone were to remain unlike them, all the same don’t be like that.”

“Magnificent! I was not mistaken in you. You are able to console. Oh, how I have been longing to come to you, Karamazov, how long I have been seeking a meeting with you! Is it possible that you too thought about me? You said a while ago that you too thought about me?”

“Yes, I had heard about you and thought about you too… and if it was partly pride that made you ask this just now, that doesn’t matter.”

“You know, Karamazov, our talk is like a declaration of love,” Kolya said in a sort of weakened and bashful voice. “That’s not ridiculous, is it, not ridiculous?”

“Not ridiculous at all, and even if it were ridiculous, it wouldn’t matter, because it’s good,” Alyosha smiled brightly.

“And you know, Karamazov, you must admit that you yourself are a little ashamed with me now too… I can see it in your eyes,” Kolya grinned somehow slyly, but also with something almost like happiness.

“What is there to be ashamed of?”

“Then why did you blush?”

“But it was you who made me blush!” Alyosha laughed, and really did blush all over. “Well, yes, I am a little ashamed, God knows why, I don’t know why…” he muttered, almost embarrassed even.

“Oh, how I love and value you at this minute, precisely because you too are ashamed of something with me! Because you are just like me!” Kolya exclaimed in decided rapture. His cheeks were burning, his eyes shining.

“Listen, Kolya, among other things you will be a very unhappy man in life,” Alyosha suddenly said for some reason.

“I know, I know. How you know all this beforehand!” Kolya at once confirmed.

“But on the whole you will bless life all the same.”

“Precisely! Hurrah! You are a prophet! Oh, we shall become friends, Karamazov. You know, what delights me most of all is that you treat me completely as an equal. But we are not equals, no, not equals, you are higher! But we shall become friends. You know, all this last month I have been saying to myself: ‘Either we shall become friends at once, forever, or at the very first time we shall part enemies to the grave!’”

“And saying that, of course, you already loved me!” Alyosha laughed merrily.

“I did, I loved you terribly, I loved you and dreamed about you! And how do you know everything beforehand? Bah, here’s the doctor. Lord, what will he say, look what a face he has!”

Notes

1. 1. The Third Section of His Majesty’s Own Chancellery was the secret political police of Nicholas I and Alexander II; its headquarters stood by the Chain Bridge over the Fontanka in Petersburg. The Bell (Kolokol) was Alexander Herzen’s émigré journal, printed in London and banned in Russia.