III. He Gets Mixed Up with Schoolboys

“Thank God he didn’t ask me about Grushenka,” Alyosha thought in his turn, as he left his father’s and set off for Mrs. Khokhlakova’s house, “or else I’d have had to tell him, I dare say, about yesterday’s meeting with Grushenka.” Alyosha felt painfully that overnight the combatants had gathered new strength, and with the coming of day their hearts had turned to stone again: “Father is irritated and spiteful, he has thought something up and is standing by it; and what about Dmitri? He too has hardened overnight, he too must be irritated and spiteful, and he too, of course, has thought something up… Oh, I absolutely must manage to find him today, whatever happens…”

But Alyosha was not able to think for long: on the way something suddenly happened to him, an incident not very important to look at, but one that struck him greatly. As soon as he had crossed the square and turned into a lane to come out onto Mikhailovskaya Street, which runs parallel to Bolshaya Street but is separated from it only by a ditch (our whole town is cut through with ditches), he saw below, in front of a little bridge, a small knot of schoolboys, all little children, from nine to twelve years old, no more. They were going home from class with their little satchels on their backs, others with leather bags on straps over their shoulders, some in short jackets, others in little coats, and some even in high boots with creases in the tops, the kind that little children whom well-to-do fathers spoil especially love to show off in. The whole group was eagerly discussing something, apparently holding a council. Alyosha could never pass by children without taking an interest; it had been so with him in Moscow too, and though he loved three-year-olds or thereabouts best of all, schoolboys of ten or eleven also pleased him very much. And so, preoccupied as he was now, he suddenly felt like turning toward them and starting a conversation. As he approached, he looked into their rosy, animated little faces and suddenly saw that all the boys had a stone in their hands, and some even two. Beyond the ditch, about thirty paces from the group, another boy was standing by a fence, also a schoolboy, also with a bag at his side, about ten years old by his height, no more, or even less than that: a pale little thing, sickly, with flashing black little eyes. He was attentively and searchingly watching the group of six schoolboys, evidently his own classmates, who had just come out of school with him, but with whom he was evidently at war. Alyosha went up and, turning to a curly-haired, fair, rosy boy in a black jacket, looked him over and remarked:

“When I carried a bag like yours, we used to wear it on the left side, so as to get at it right away with the right hand; but you have your bag on the right side, it’s awkward for you to get at.”

Alyosha began straight off with this practical remark without any premeditated cunning, and yet a grown-up cannot begin otherwise if he needs to get straight into the confidence of a child, and especially of a whole group of children. One must begin precisely in a serious and practical way, and so as to be entirely on an equal footing; Alyosha understood this by instinct.

“But he’s left-handed,” another boy, a dashing and healthy one of about eleven, answered at once. All the other five boys fixed their eyes on Alyosha.

“He throws stones left-handed too,” remarked a third boy. At that instant a stone flew right into the group, grazed the left-handed boy slightly, but flew past, though it had been thrown deftly and with energy. It had been thrown by the boy beyond the ditch.

“Let him have it, give it to him, Smurov!” they all shouted. But Smurov (the left-handed boy) did not need to be told and at once paid him back: he threw a stone at the boy beyond the ditch, but without success: the stone hit the ground. The boy beyond the ditch at once let fly another stone into the group, this time straight at Alyosha, and hit him rather painfully on the shoulder. The boy beyond the ditch had his whole pocket full of stones he had got ready. One could see it from thirty paces by the bulging pockets of his little coat.

“That was at you, at you, he was aiming at you on purpose. You’re Karamazov, aren’t you, Karamazov?” the boys shouted, laughing loudly. “Well, all together at him, fire!”

And six stones flew out of the group at once. One hit the boy in the head, and he fell, but instantly jumped up and furiously began answering the group with stones. A continuous exchange of fire began on both sides; many in the group, too, turned out to have stones ready in their pockets.

“What are you doing! Aren’t you ashamed, gentlemen! Six against one, why, you’ll kill him!” Alyosha shouted.

He leaped out and stood facing the flying stones, so as to shield the boy beyond the ditch with his own body. Three or four of them stopped for a minute.

“He started it himself!” shouted a boy in a red shirt in an irritated childish little voice. “He’s a scoundrel, earlier in class he stuck Krasotkin with a penknife, there was blood. Only Krasotkin didn’t want to tell tales, but this one has to be beaten up…”

“But what for? You must be teasing him yourselves, surely?”

“There, he’s sent another stone into your back. He knows you,” the children shouted. “It’s you he’s throwing at now, not us. Well, all of you, at him again, don’t miss, Smurov!”

And the exchange of fire began again, a very vicious one this time. The boy beyond the ditch was hit in the chest by a stone; he cried out, burst into tears, and ran up the hill toward Mikhailovskaya Street. In the group there was a hubbub: “Aha, he’s a coward, he ran away, wisp of bast!”

“You don’t know yet, Karamazov, how mean he is, killing would be too good for him,” the boy in the jacket repeated, his little eyes burning; he was apparently the oldest of them all.

“What is he, then?” asked Alyosha. “A telltale, is that it?”

The boys exchanged glances, as though with a grin.

“Are you going the same way, to Mikhailovskaya?” the same boy went on. “Then catch up with him… Look, see, he’s stopped again, he’s waiting and looking at you.”

“He’s looking at you, he’s looking at you!” the boys chimed in.

“So you just ask him whether he likes a bathhouse wisp of bast, a frayed one. Do you hear, ask him just that.”

Everyone burst out laughing. Alyosha looked at them, and they at him.

“Don’t go, he’ll hurt you,” Smurov shouted in warning.

“Gentlemen, I won’t ask him about the wisp of bast, because you must be teasing him with it somehow, but I will find out from him why you hate him so…”

“Go on, find out, find out,” the boys laughed.

Alyosha crossed the little bridge and went up the slope past the fence straight to the boy in disgrace.

“Watch out,” they shouted after him in warning, “he won’t be afraid of you, he’ll suddenly stick you, on the sly… like Krasotkin.”

The boy waited for him without moving from the spot. Coming right up to him, Alyosha saw before him a child of no more than nine years old, one of the weak and undersized ones, with a pale, thin, oval little face and large dark eyes that looked at him spitefully. He was dressed in a rather shabby old little coat, which he had grown out of in an ugly way. His bare arms stuck out of the sleeves. On the right knee of his trousers was a large patch, and on his right boot, at the toe, where the big toe is, a large hole, which had evidently been heavily smeared over with ink. Both bulging little pockets of his coat were stuffed with stones. Alyosha stopped two paces in front of him, looking at him questioningly. The boy, guessing at once from Alyosha’s eyes that he did not want to beat him, also lowered his bravado and even began speaking himself.

“I’m one, and they’re six… I’ll beat them all by myself,” he suddenly said, his eyes flashing.

“One of the stones must have hurt you very badly,” Alyosha remarked.

“And I hit Smurov in the head!” the boy cried.

“They told me there that you know me and threw a stone at me for some reason?” asked Alyosha.

The boy looked at him gloomily.

“I don’t know you. Do you know me, then?” Alyosha questioned him.

“Leave me alone!” the boy suddenly cried irritably, yet not moving from the spot himself, as though waiting for something all the while, and again his little eyes flashed spitefully.

“All right, I’ll go,” said Alyosha, “only I don’t know you and I’m not teasing you. They told me how they tease you, but I don’t want to tease you, goodbye!”

“A monk in cotton pants!” the boy shouted, following Alyosha with the same spiteful and defiant look, and striking a pose into the bargain, reckoning that Alyosha would certainly throw himself at him now; but Alyosha turned, looked at him, and walked away. But he had not taken three steps when the biggest cobblestone the boy had in his pocket, thrown by him, hit him painfully in the back.

“So you do it from behind? Then what they say about you is true, that you attack on the sly?” Alyosha turned around again, but this time the boy furiously let fly another stone at Alyosha, and now straight at his face, but Alyosha managed to shield himself in time, and the stone hit him on the elbow.

“Aren’t you ashamed! What have I done to you?” he cried.

The boy was waiting silently and defiantly for only one thing: that now Alyosha would certainly throw himself at him; but seeing that even now he did not, he became utterly enraged, like a little wild animal: he tore from his place and threw himself at Alyosha, and before Alyosha could stir, the spiteful boy, ducking his head and seizing his left hand with both hands, bit his middle finger painfully. He sank his teeth into it and for about ten seconds would not let go. Alyosha cried out with pain, jerking his finger with all his might. At last the boy let go and leaped back to his former distance. The finger was painfully bitten through, right by the nail, deeply, to the bone; blood poured out. Alyosha took out his handkerchief and wrapped the wounded hand in it tightly. He spent almost a whole minute wrapping it. The boy stood and waited all this time. At last Alyosha raised his quiet gaze to him.

“Well, all right,” he said, “you see how badly you’ve bitten me, well, and that’s enough now, isn’t it? Now tell me, what have I done to you?”

The boy looked at him in surprise.

“Though I don’t know you at all and am seeing you for the first time,” Alyosha went on, just as calmly, “it can’t be that I haven’t done anything to you; you wouldn’t torment me like this for nothing. So what have I done, and how am I guilty before you, tell me?”

Instead of answering, the boy suddenly burst into loud tears, sobbing aloud, and suddenly ran away from Alyosha. Alyosha walked slowly after him toward Mikhailovskaya Street, and for a long time he could still see the boy running in the distance, not slackening his pace, not looking back, and, no doubt, still sobbing aloud. He resolved that, as soon as he found the time, he would without fail look him up and clear up this riddle that had struck him so extraordinarily. But just now he had no time.