III. Ilyushechka’s Funeral. The Speech at the Stone

He was indeed late. They had been waiting for him and had even already decided to carry the pretty little coffin, decked with flowers, to the church without him. It was the coffin of Ilyushechka, the poor boy. He had died two days after Mitya’s sentence. Alyosha, while still at the gate of the house, was met by the shouts of the boys, Ilyusha’s schoolmates. They had all been waiting for him impatiently and were glad that he had come at last. About twelve of them had gathered, all of them had come with their little satchels and bags over their shoulders. “Papa will cry, stay with Papa,” Ilyusha had bidden them as he was dying, and the boys had remembered it. At their head was Kolya Krasotkin.

“How glad I am that you’ve come, Karamazov!” he exclaimed, holding out his hand to Alyosha. “It’s awful here. Really, it’s hard to watch. Snegiryov isn’t drunk, we know for certain that he hasn’t drunk anything today, but it’s as if he were drunk… I’m always firm, but this is awful. Karamazov, if I’m not keeping you, just one more question before you go in?”

“What is it, Kolya?” Alyosha stopped.

“Is your brother innocent or guilty? Did he kill his father, or was it the lackey? Whatever you say, that’s how it will be. I haven’t slept for four nights because of this idea.”

“The lackey killed him, and my brother is innocent,” Alyosha answered.

“That’s what I say too!” the boy Smurov suddenly shouted.

“And so he will perish as an innocent victim for the truth!” Kolya exclaimed. “Though he has perished, he is happy! I’m ready to envy him!”

“What are you saying, how can you, and why?” exclaimed Alyosha in surprise.

“Oh, if only I too could someday sacrifice myself for the truth,” Kolya said with enthusiasm.

“But not in such a case, not with such disgrace, not with such horror!” said Alyosha.

“Of course… I would like to die for all mankind, and as for disgrace, it doesn’t matter: let our names perish. I respect your brother!”

“And so do I!” suddenly, and now quite unexpectedly, shouted out of the crowd that same boy who had once announced that he knew who founded Troy, and, having shouted, he blushed all over up to his ears like a peony, exactly as he had then.

Alyosha went into the room. In a blue coffin trimmed with white ruching lay Ilyusha, his little hands folded and his little eyes closed. The features of his emaciated face had hardly changed at all, and, strangely, there was almost no smell from the body. The expression of the face was serious and as it were thoughtful. Especially beautiful were the hands, folded crosswise, as if carved out of marble. Flowers had been put into his hands, and the whole coffin had already been decked inside and out with flowers sent at daybreak by Liza Khokhlakova. But flowers had also come from Katerina Ivanovna, and when Alyosha opened the door, the staff captain, with a bunch of flowers in his trembling hands, was strewing them again over his dear boy. He barely glanced at Alyosha as he came in, and indeed he did not want to look at anyone, not even at his weeping, deranged wife, his “mamma,” who kept trying to raise herself on her bad legs and look more closely at her dead boy. As for Ninochka, the children had lifted her with her chair and moved her right up to the coffin. She sat with her head pressed against it, and she too, probably, was quietly weeping. Snegiryov’s face looked animated, but as it were bewildered, and at the same time embittered. In his gestures, in the words that broke from him, there was something half-crazed. “Little father, dear little father!” he kept exclaiming every minute, looking at Ilyusha. He had had a habit, while Ilyusha was still alive, of saying to him tenderly: “Little father, dear little father!”

“Papa, give me some little flowers too, take one out of his little hand, this little white one here, and give it to me!” the deranged “mamma” begged, sobbing. Either she had taken such a liking to the little white rose that was in Ilyusha’s hands, or she wanted to take a flower from his hands as a keepsake, but she began tossing about all over, stretching out her hands for the flower.

“I won’t give it to anyone, I won’t give anything!” Snegiryov exclaimed hardheartedly. “They’re his little flowers, not yours. Everything is his, nothing is yours!”

“Papa, give Mama a flower!” Ninochka suddenly raised her face, wet with tears.

“I won’t give anything, and least of all to her! She didn’t love him. She took his little cannon away from him that time, and he gave it to her as a pre-e-esent,” the staff captain suddenly sobbed aloud at the memory of how Ilyusha had given up his little cannon to his mamma that time. The poor deranged woman simply dissolved in quiet weeping, covering her face with her hands. The boys, seeing at last that the father would not let go of the coffin, and meanwhile it was time to carry it out, suddenly crowded around the coffin in a tight little group and began to lift it.

“I don’t want him buried in the churchyard!” Snegiryov suddenly wailed. “I’ll bury him by the stone, by our dear little stone! That’s what Ilyusha told me to do. I won’t let him be carried off!”

Even before, for all three days, he had been saying that he would bury him by the stone; but Alyosha, Krasotkin, the landlady, her sister, and all the boys had intervened.

“Just look what he’s thought up, to bury him by a heathen stone, as if he was some hanged man,” the old landlady said sternly. “There in the churchyard the ground has a cross. There they’ll pray for him. You can hear the singing from the church, and the deacon reads so clear-spoken and wordful that every bit of it reaches him ev’ry time, just as if they was reading over his little grave.”

The staff captain at last waved his hands: “Carry him where you like, then!” The children lifted the coffin, but, carrying it past the mother, they stopped before her for a minute and lowered it so that she could say goodbye to Ilyusha. But suddenly seeing that dear little face up close, which for all three days she had looked at only from some distance, she suddenly began to shake all over and to jerk her gray head hysterically back and forth over the coffin.

“Mama, make the sign of the cross over him, bless him, kiss him,” Ninochka cried out to her. But she, like an automaton, kept jerking her head and, silently, her face twisted with burning grief, suddenly began to beat her breast with her fist. The coffin was carried on. Ninochka pressed her lips for the last time to the lips of her dead brother as they carried him past her. Alyosha, going out of the house, was about to turn to the landlady with a request to look after those who were staying behind, but she did not even let him finish:

“Sure enough, I’ll be with them, we’re Christians too.” The old woman wept as she said it.

It was not far to carry him to the church, some three hundred paces, no more. The day had turned clear and still; it was freezing, but only a little. The bells for the service were still ringing. Snegiryov ran fussily and distractedly after the coffin in his old, short, almost summer coat, bareheaded, with his old, wide-brimmed, soft hat in his hands. He was in a sort of insoluble anxiety, now suddenly stretching out his hand to support the head of the coffin and only getting in the way of the bearers, now running up alongside and looking for some place where he could fit himself in. One flower fell onto the snow, and he simply rushed to pick it up, as though God knows what depended on the loss of this flower.

“And the crust, we forgot the crust,” he suddenly exclaimed in terrible fright. But the boys at once reminded him that he had already taken the crust of bread earlier and that it was in his pocket. He instantly pulled it out of his pocket and, having made sure, calmed down.

“Ilyushechka told me to, Ilyushechka,” he at once explained to Alyosha. “He was lying there at night, and I was sitting beside him, and suddenly he ordered me: ‘Papa, when they fill in my little grave, crumble a crust of bread over it, so that the little sparrows will fly down, I’ll hear that they’ve flown down, and I’ll be glad that I’m not lying alone.’”

“That is very good,” said Alyosha, “you must bring it often.”

“Every day, every day!” the staff captain babbled, as if he had come to life all over.

At last they reached the church and set the coffin down in the middle of it. All the boys surrounded it in a circle and stood decorously like that through the whole service. The church was ancient and rather poor, many of the icons stood without any metal covers at all, but in such churches one somehow prays better. During the liturgy Snegiryov seemed to quiet down somewhat, though at times the same unconscious and as it were bewildered anxiety still broke through in him: now he would go up to the coffin to straighten the pall, the paper band on the brow, now, when a candle fell out of its holder, he suddenly rushed to put it back in and fussed with it a terribly long time. Then he calmed down at last and stood meekly at the head with a dully anxious and as it were perplexed face. After the Epistle he suddenly whispered to Alyosha, who was standing beside him, that the Epistle had been read wrong, but he did not, however, explain his thought. During the Cherubic Hymn he began to sing along, but did not finish and, getting down on his knees, pressed his forehead to the stone floor of the church and lay like that for quite a long time. At last they began the funeral service, the candles were handed out. The father, out of his mind, began to fuss again, but the touching, overwhelming funeral chanting awakened and shook his soul. He somehow suddenly shrank all over and began to sob in short, frequent sobs, at first hiding his voice, and toward the end sobbing aloud. And when they began to take leave and to cover the coffin, he threw his arms around it, as if not letting them cover Ilyushechka, and began kissing his dead boy on the lips, often, greedily, without tearing himself away. At last they persuaded him and had already led him down from the step, but he suddenly stretched out his hand impetuously and seized a few flowers from the little coffin. He looked at them, and some new idea seemed to dawn on him, so that he seemed to forget the main thing for a minute. Little by little he seemed to sink into thoughtfulness and no longer resisted when they lifted the coffin and carried it to the little grave. It was not far, in the churchyard, right by the church, an expensive one; Katerina Ivanovna had paid for it. After the usual rite the gravediggers lowered the coffin. Snegiryov, with his little flowers in his hands, bent so far over the open grave that the boys in fright clutched at his coat and began to pull him back. But he seemed no longer to understand well what was taking place. When they began to fill in the grave, he suddenly began anxiously pointing at the earth falling in and even began to say something, but no one could make anything out, and he himself suddenly fell quiet. Here they reminded him that he had to crumble the crust, and he became terribly agitated, snatched out the crust, and began pinching it and scattering the bits over the little grave: “There, fly down, little birds, there, fly down, little sparrows!” he muttered anxiously. One of the boys remarked to him that it was awkward for him to pinch the bread with flowers in his hands and that he should give them to someone to hold for a while. But he would not, he even suddenly took fright for his flowers, as though they wanted to take them away from him altogether, and, having looked at the little grave and as if made sure that everything was done, the bits crumbled, he suddenly, unexpectedly, and even quite calmly, turned and trudged off home. His pace, however, grew quicker and quicker and more hurried, he was in haste, almost running. The boys and Alyosha kept up with him.

“Little flowers for mamma, little flowers for mamma! Mamma was wronged,” he suddenly began exclaiming. Someone shouted to him to put on his hat, because it was cold now, but, hearing this, he flung the hat down on the snow as if in spite and began to repeat: “I don’t want the hat, I don’t want the hat!” The boy Smurov picked it up and carried it after him. All the boys to the last one were weeping, and Kolya and the boy who had discovered Troy most of all, and though Smurov, with the captain’s hat in his hands, was also weeping terribly, he still managed, almost on the run, to snatch up a fragment of brick that showed red on the snow of the path, to fling it at a flock of little sparrows that flew swiftly by. Of course, he missed, and went on running and weeping. Halfway home Snegiryov suddenly stopped, stood for half a minute as if struck by something, and suddenly, turning back toward the church, set off at a run for the little grave he had left. But the boys instantly caught up with him and clung to him from all sides. Then, as if powerless, as if struck down, he fell on the snow and, struggling, wailing, and sobbing, began crying out: “Little father, Ilyushechka, dear little father!” Alyosha and Kolya began to lift him up, to plead with him and coax him.

“Captain, enough, a manly man is obliged to endure,” Kolya muttered.

“You’ll spoil the flowers,” Alyosha said too, “and ‘mamma’ is waiting for them, she’s sitting there crying because you didn’t give her flowers from Ilyushechka earlier. Ilyusha’s little bed is still there…”

“Yes, yes, to mamma!” Snegiryov suddenly remembered again. “They’ll take away the little bed, they’ll take it away!” he added, as if in fright that they really would take it away, jumped up, and again ran off home. But it was not far now, and they all ran in together. Snegiryov impetuously opened the door and wailed to his wife, with whom he had quarreled so hardheartedly earlier.

“Mamma, darling, Ilyushechka has sent you little flowers, for your poor bad legs!” he shouted, holding out to her a little bunch of flowers, frozen and broken from his struggling in the snow just now. But at that very instant he saw before Ilyusha’s little bed, in the corner, Ilyusha’s little boots, standing side by side, just tidied away by the landlady—old, reddened, stiffened little boots with patches. Seeing them, he raised his hands and simply rushed to them, fell on his knees, seized one little boot and, pressing his lips to it, began kissing it greedily, crying out: “Little father, Ilyushechka, dear little father, where are your little feet?”

“Where have you taken him? Where have you taken him?” the deranged woman wailed in a heartrending voice. Here Ninochka too burst into sobs. Kolya ran out of the room, and the boys began to go out after him. At last Alyosha too went out after them. “Let them cry it out,” he said to Kolya, “here, of course, there’s no comforting them. Let’s wait a minute and go back.”

“Yes, there’s no comforting them, this is awful,” Kolya agreed. “You know, Karamazov,” he suddenly lowered his voice so that no one would hear, “I’m very sad, and if only it were possible to bring him back to life, I would give anything in the world!”

“Ah, so would I,” said Alyosha.

“What do you think, Karamazov, should we come here this evening? He’ll get drunk, you know.”

“Perhaps he will get drunk. Let’s just you and I come, the two of us, that will be enough, to sit with them for an hour, with the mother and with Ninochka, but if we all come at once, we’ll remind them of everything again,” Alyosha advised.

“The landlady is laying the table for them now—it will be the memorial meal or whatever, the priest will come; should we go back there now, Karamazov, or not?”

“Certainly,” said Alyosha.

“It’s all strange, Karamazov, such grief, and suddenly pancakes of some sort, how unnatural all this is in our religion!”

“They’ll have salmon there too,” the boy who had discovered Troy suddenly remarked loudly.

“I seriously ask you, Kartashov, not to interfere anymore with your stupidities, especially when no one is talking to you and no one even wants to know whether you exist in the world,” Kolya snapped irritably in his direction. The boy simply flushed, but did not dare to answer anything. Meanwhile they were all quietly trudging along the path, and suddenly Smurov exclaimed:

“There’s Ilyusha’s stone, the one they wanted to bury him under!”

They all stopped silently by the big stone. Alyosha looked, and the whole picture of what Snegiryov had once told him about Ilyushechka, how he, weeping and embracing his father, had cried out, “Papa dear, dear Papa, how he humiliated you!”—all at once rose up in his memory. Something seemed to shake in his soul. With a serious and grave look he ran his eyes over all these dear, bright faces of the schoolboys, Ilyusha’s schoolmates, and suddenly said to them:

“Friends, I would like to say one word to you here, at this very place.”

The boys surrounded him and at once fixed intent, expectant gazes on him.

“Friends, we shall soon part. For a while now I am with my two brothers, one of whom is going into exile, while the other is lying near death. But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a very long time. And so we shall part, friends. Let us agree here, by Ilyusha’s dear little stone, that we will never forget—first, Ilyushechka, and second, one another. And whatever may happen to us later in life, even if we do not meet for twenty years afterward—all the same let us remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, remember, there by the little bridge?—and how afterward we all came to love him so. He was a fine boy, a kind and brave boy, he felt the honor and the bitter injury of his father, and that is why he rose up. And so, first, let us remember him, friends, all our lives. And even if we are busy with the most important affairs, attain honors or fall into some great misfortune—all the same, never forget how good it was for us here once, all together, united by such a good and kind feeling, which, for the time of our love for the poor boy, made us too perhaps better than we really are. My doves—let me call you that—doves, because you are all very like them, those pretty blue-gray birds, now, at this minute, as I look at your kind, dear faces—my dear children, perhaps you will not understand what I am going to say to you, because I often speak very unclearly, but all the same you will remember it and someday later you will agree with my words. Know, then, that there is nothing higher, and stronger, and healthier, and more useful for life ahead, than some good memory, and especially one carried away from childhood, from your parents’ home. You are told a great deal about your upbringing, but some beautiful, holy memory like this, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the very best upbringing of all. If a man gathers many such memories to take with him into life, then he is saved for the whole of his life. And even if only one good memory remains with us in our hearts, even that may someday serve for our salvation. Perhaps we will even become wicked later on, we will not even have the strength to hold out against a bad deed, we will laugh at human tears and at those people who say, as Kolya exclaimed just now, ‘I want to suffer for all people’—and perhaps we will spitefully jeer at those people. And yet, however wicked we may become, which God forbid, still, when we remember how we buried Ilyusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we have just been talking so like friends and so together by this stone, then the cruelest and most mocking man among us, if we become such, will still not dare to laugh inwardly at how kind and good he was at this present minute! More than that, perhaps it is precisely this one memory that will keep him from great evil, and he will think better of it and say: ‘Yes, I was kind then, and bold, and honest.’ Let him grin to himself, that does not matter, a man often laughs at what is kind and good; that comes only from light-mindedness; but I assure you, friends, that as soon as he grins, he will at once say in his heart: ‘No, I did wrong to grin, because one must not laugh at this!’”

“That’s certainly how it will be, Karamazov, I understand you, Karamazov!” Kolya exclaimed, his eyes flashing. The boys were stirred and also wanted to exclaim something, but restrained themselves, looking at the speaker intently and tenderly.

“I say this in case we become bad,” Alyosha went on, “but why should we become bad, isn’t that so, friends? Let us be, first and above all, kind, then honest, and then—let us never forget one another. I repeat that again. I give you my word, friends, for my part, that I will not forget a single one of you; every face that is looking at me now, at this moment, I will remember, even after thirty years. Just now Kolya said to Kartashov that we supposedly don’t want to know ‘whether he exists in the world or not.’ But how could I forget that Kartashov exists in the world, and that now he is no longer blushing as he did that time when he discovered Troy, but is looking at me with his fine, kind, merry little eyes. Friends, my dear friends, let us all be generous and bold like Ilyushechka, clever, bold, and generous like Kolya (but who will be much cleverer when he grows up), and let us be just as bashful, but clever and dear, as Kartashov. But why am I speaking of those two! All of you, friends, are dear to me from now on, I will hold all of you in my heart, and I ask you to hold me in your hearts too! Well, and who has united us in this kind, good feeling, which we will always remember now, all our lives, and mean to remember, who if not Ilyushechka, the kind boy, the dear boy, the boy precious to us forever and ever! Let us never forget him, then, eternal and good memory to him in our hearts, from now on and forever and ever!”

“Yes, yes, eternal, eternal,” all the boys cried out in their ringing voices, with tender faces.

“Let us remember his face, and his clothes, and his poor little boots, and his little coffin, and his unhappy, sinful father, and how bravely he alone rose up against the whole class for him!”

“We will, we will remember!” the boys cried out again. “He was brave, he was kind!”

“Ah, how I loved him!” Kolya exclaimed.

“Oh, children, oh, dear friends, don’t be afraid of life! How good life is when you do something good and true!”

“Yes, yes,” the boys repeated ecstatically.

“Karamazov, we love you!” one voice, Kartashov’s, it seems, exclaimed irrepressibly.

“We love you, we love you,” they all took up. Many had little tears glistening in their eyes.

“Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya proclaimed ecstatically.

“And eternal memory to the dead boy!” Alyosha added again with feeling.

“Eternal memory!” the boys took up again.

“Karamazov!” cried Kolya. “Can it really be true, what religion says, that we will all rise from the dead, and come to life, and see one another again, and everyone, and Ilyushechka?”

“We will certainly rise, we will certainly see one another and will tell one another gladly, joyfully, everything that has been,” Alyosha answered, half laughing, half in rapture.

“Ah, how good that will be!” broke from Kolya.

“Well, and now let us end our speeches and go to his memorial meal. Don’t be troubled that we will be eating pancakes. It is something old, eternal, after all, and there is good in it,” Alyosha laughed. “Well, let’s go! And here we go now, hand in hand.”

“And forever like this, all our lives, hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya cried once more, ecstatically, and once more all the boys took up his cry.