VI. A Strain in the Cottage

He really did have a serious sorrow, of a kind he had seldom experienced until then. He had rushed in and “done something stupid,” and in what a matter: in feelings of love! “Well, what do I understand about it, what can I make out in such matters?” he repeated to himself for the hundredth time, blushing. “Oh, the shame would be nothing, the shame is only the punishment I deserve; the trouble is that now I will undoubtedly be the cause of new misfortunes… And the elder sent me to reconcile and unite. Is that the way to unite?” Here he suddenly remembered again how he had “joined their hands,” and again he felt terribly ashamed. “Though I did it all sincerely, I must be wiser in the future,” he suddenly concluded, and did not even smile at his conclusion.

Katerina Ivanovna’s errand was to Ozernaya Street, and brother Dmitri lived right on the way, not far from Ozernaya Street, in a lane. Alyosha decided to stop in on him in any case before going to the staff captain, though he had a feeling that he would not find his brother at home. He suspected that his brother would perhaps somehow be hiding from him on purpose now, but he had to find him whatever happened. And time was passing: the thought of the dying elder had not left him for a minute, for a second, since the hour he had left the monastery.

In Katerina Ivanovna’s errand one circumstance had flashed by that had also interested him extremely: when Katerina Ivanovna mentioned the little boy, the schoolboy, the son of that staff captain, who had run alongside his father crying aloud, the thought had suddenly flashed through Alyosha’s mind even then that this boy was very likely the same schoolboy from earlier who had bitten his finger when he, Alyosha, was questioning him about how he had wronged him. Now Alyosha was almost certain of it, without yet knowing why himself. And so, carried away by these other considerations, he was distracted, and decided not to “think” about the “trouble” he had just made, not to torment himself with remorse, but to get on with the business, and whatever would come of it would come. At this thought he took heart completely. By the way, as he turned into the lane where brother Dmitri lived, feeling hungry, he took out of his pocket the roll he had taken from his father’s and ate it on the way. It restored his strength.

Dmitri turned out not to be at home. The owners of the little house, an old carpenter, his son, and his old wife, even looked at Alyosha suspiciously. “It’s the third day he hasn’t slept here, maybe he’s gone off somewhere,” the old man answered Alyosha’s insistent questions. Alyosha understood that he was answering according to instructions he had been given. To his question, “Isn’t he at Grushenka’s, or hiding at Foma’s again?” (Alyosha deliberately brought these frank details into play), all the owners even looked at him in alarm. “So they love him, they’re on his side,” Alyosha thought. “That’s good.”

At last he found, on Ozernaya Street, the house of Kalmykova, a tradesman’s widow: a decrepit, lopsided little house with only three windows on the street and a dirty yard, in the middle of which a cow stood solitary. The entrance was from the yard into the entryway; to the left of the entryway lived the old landlady with her old daughter, and both, it seemed, were deaf. To his question about the staff captain, repeated several times, one of them, understanding at last that he was asking about the lodgers, jabbed her finger across the entryway, pointing to the door into the clean part of the cottage. The staff captain’s lodging did in fact turn out to be only a simple peasant room. Alyosha had taken hold of the iron handle to open the door when suddenly the extraordinary silence behind it struck him. He knew, however, from Katerina Ivanovna’s words, that the retired staff captain was a family man: “Either they’re all asleep, or perhaps they heard me come and are waiting for me to open; I’d better knock again,” and he knocked. An answer came, but not at once, rather some ten seconds later, perhaps.

“Who’s there?” someone shouted in a loud and studiedly angry voice.

Alyosha then opened the door and stepped over the threshold. He found himself in a cottage room which, though fairly spacious, was extremely cluttered with people and with every sort of household belonging. To the left was a big Russian stove. From the stove to the left window a rope had been stretched across the whole room, on which various rags were hung. Against both walls, left and right, stood a bed, each covered with a knitted blanket. On one of them, the left one, a little hill of four calico pillows had been erected, each smaller than the last. On the other bed, on the right, only one very small pillow could be seen. Farther on, in the front corner, there was a small space screened off by a curtain or a sheet, also thrown over a rope stretched across the corner. Behind this curtain, at the side, one could also make out a bed made up on a bench with a chair set against it. A plain wooden four-cornered peasant table had been moved from the front corner to the middle window. All three windows, each of four small, green, moldy panes, were very dim and tightly shut, so that the room was rather stuffy and not very light. On the table stood a frying pan with the remains of fried eggs, a half-eaten slice of bread lay there, and, besides, there was a half bottle with the faint remains of earthly blessings only at the very bottom. By the left bed, on a chair, sat a woman who looked like a lady, dressed in a calico dress. Her face was very thin and yellow; her extremely sunken cheeks testified at first sight to her sickly condition. But what struck Alyosha most of all was the poor lady’s look: an extremely questioning and at the same time terribly haughty look. And until the lady began to speak herself, and while Alyosha was explaining himself to the master of the house, she kept turning her large brown eyes from one speaker to the other in the same haughty and questioning way. Next to this lady, by the left window, stood a young girl with a rather plain face and thin reddish hair, poorly though very neatly dressed. She was looking Alyosha over with distaste as he came in. On the right, also by a bed, sat still another female being. This was a very pitiful creature, also a young girl, about twenty, but hunchbacked and without the use of her legs, which were withered, as Alyosha was told later. Her crutches stood beside her, in the corner between the bed and the wall. The poor girl’s remarkably beautiful and kind eyes looked at Alyosha with a kind of calm meekness. At the table, finishing the fried eggs, sat a gentleman of about forty-five, not tall, lean, of weak build, reddish, with a sparse little reddish beard that looked very like a frayed wisp of bast (this comparison, and especially the words “wisp of bast,” for some reason flashed in Alyosha’s mind at the very first glance; he remembered it afterward). Evidently it was this same gentleman who had shouted “Who’s there?” from behind the door, since there was no other man in the room. But when Alyosha came in, he fairly leaped up from the bench on which he was sitting at the table and, hastily wiping himself with a napkin full of holes, flew up to Alyosha.

“A monk begging for the monastery, he knew where to come!” the girl standing in the left corner said loudly meanwhile. But the gentleman who had run up to Alyosha instantly spun around on his heels toward her and answered her in an agitated, somehow breaking voice:

“No, ma’am, Varvara Nikolavna, it’s not that, ma’am, you haven’t guessed, ma’am! Allow me to ask in my turn,” he suddenly turned to Alyosha again, “what moved you, sir, to visit… these depths, sir?”

Alyosha looked at him attentively; he was seeing this man for the first time. There was something angular in him, hurried and irritable. Though he had evidently just been drinking, he was not drunk. His face expressed a kind of extreme insolence and at the same time, strange as it was, an obvious cowardice. He looked like a man who had long submitted and suffered much, but who had suddenly jumped up and wanted to assert himself. Or, better still, like a man who would terribly like to hit you but is terribly afraid that you will hit him. In his speech and in the intonations of his rather piercing voice there was a kind of crack-brained humor, now spiteful, now timid, unable to keep up its tone and breaking off. He asked the question about the “depths” as though trembling all over, goggling his eyes and springing up so close to Alyosha that Alyosha mechanically stepped back. The gentleman was dressed in a dark, very poor coat of some sort of nankeen, darned and stained. The trousers he had on were extraordinarily light-colored, of a kind no one has worn for a long time, checked, and of some very thin material, crumpled at the bottom and so hitched up, as if he had outgrown them like a little boy.

“I am… Alexei Karamazov…” Alyosha began in reply.

“I am perfectly able to understand, sir,” the gentleman snapped at once, giving him to know that he was aware without being told who he was. “And I, sir, in my turn, am Staff Captain, sir, Snegiryov, sir; but all the same I should like to know what precisely moved…”

“Why, I just stopped in. In fact, I would like to say one word to you on my own behalf… If you will only allow me…”

“In that case here’s a chair, sir, kindly be seated, sir. In the old comedies, that’s how they said it: ‘Kindly be seated’…” and with a quick gesture the staff captain seized an empty chair (a plain peasant one, all wood, without any upholstery) and set it almost in the middle of the room; then, seizing another such chair for himself, he sat down facing Alyosha, as close up to him as before, so that their knees were almost touching.

“Nikolai Ilyich Snegiryov, sir, former staff captain of the Russian infantry, sir, disgraced by his vices, it is true, but a staff captain all the same. Though one ought rather to say Staff Captain Snegiryov-sir, not plain Snegiryov, for it is only since the second half of my life that I have begun saying ‘sir.’ The little ‘sir’ is acquired in humiliation.”

“That’s quite true,” Alyosha grinned, “only is it acquired involuntarily or on purpose?”

“God knows, involuntarily. I never used to say it, all my life I never said ‘sir,’ and suddenly I fell down and got up with ‘sirs.’ It is done by a higher power. I see that you are interested in contemporary questions. How, though, could I have aroused so much curiosity, for I live in surroundings that make hospitality impossible?”

“I have come… about that very matter…”

“About that very matter?” the staff captain interrupted impatiently.

“About that meeting of yours with my brother Dmitri Fyodorovich,” Alyosha blurted out awkwardly.

“What meeting would that be, sir? Not that very one, sir? So it’s about the wisp of bast, the bathhouse wisp of bast?” he suddenly moved so close that this time he positively knocked his knees against Alyosha. His lips were pressed together in a peculiar way, into a thread.

“What wisp of bast?” Alyosha muttered.

“He’s come to complain to you about me, Papa!” cried the little voice, already familiar to Alyosha, of the boy from earlier, from behind the curtain in the corner. “It was me who bit his finger earlier!”

The curtain was pulled aside, and Alyosha saw his enemy of earlier, in the corner, under the icons, on the little bed fitted up on the bench and the chair. The boy lay covered with his little coat and an old little quilted blanket besides. He was evidently unwell and, judging by his burning eyes, in a feverish heat. He was looking at Alyosha fearlessly now, not as he had earlier: “I’m at home now, you can’t get at me here.”

“Bit what finger?” The staff captain half jumped up from his chair. “Was it your finger he bit, sir?”

“Yes, mine. Earlier he was throwing stones in the street with some boys; six of them were throwing at him, and he was alone. I went up to him, and he threw a stone at me too, then another one at my head. I asked what I had done to him. He suddenly rushed at me and bit my finger badly, I don’t know what for.”

“I’ll whip him right away, sir! I’ll whip him this very minute, sir,” and the staff captain jumped clean off his chair.

“But I’m not complaining at all, I was only telling you. I don’t want you to whip him at all. Besides, he seems to be ill now…”

“And you thought I would whip him, sir? That I would take Ilyushechka and whip him right now in front of you for your complete satisfaction? You need it soon, sir?” said the staff captain, suddenly turning to Alyosha with a gesture as if he meant to throw himself at him. “I’m sorry, sir, about your little finger, but wouldn’t you like me, before I whip Ilyushechka, to chop off four fingers of my own, right now, before your eyes, for your just satisfaction, with this very knife? Four fingers, I should think, will be enough for you, sir, to quench your thirst for revenge, sir, you won’t demand the fifth?…” He suddenly stopped and seemed to choke. Every little feature of his face was moving and twitching, and he was looking with extraordinary defiance. He was as if in a frenzy.

“I think I understand everything now,” Alyosha answered quietly and sadly, still sitting. “So your boy is a good boy who loves his father, and he flew at me as the brother of the man who insulted you… Now I understand it,” he repeated, reflecting. “But my brother Dmitri Fyodorovich repents of what he did, I know that, and if only it is possible for him to come to you, or, best of all, to meet you again in that same place, he will ask your forgiveness in front of everyone… if you wish it.”

“That is, he tore out my little beard and then asked to be excused… That finishes it all and gives satisfaction, he’ll say, is that it, sir?”

“Oh no, on the contrary, he will do whatever you wish and however you wish!”

“So that if I asked his lordship to get down on his knees before me in that very tavern, sir, the Metropolis it’s called, or in the square, sir, he would get down?”

“Yes, he will even get down on his knees.”

“You’ve pierced me, sir. You’ve moved me to tears and pierced me, sir. I’m too inclined to feel. Allow me, then, to introduce myself fully: my family, my two daughters and my son, my litter, sir. When I die, who will love them, sir? And while I live, who, besides them, will love me, nasty little man that I am? A great thing the Lord has arranged for every man of my sort, sir. For a man of my sort, too, needs somebody, at least, to be able to love him, sir…”

“Ah, that is perfectly true!” Alyosha exclaimed.

“Oh, do stop playing the clown at last; some fool comes in, and you put us to shame!” the girl at the window suddenly cried, turning to her father with a squeamish and contemptuous grimace.

“Wait a little, Varvara Nikolavna, allow me to keep to my course,” her father shouted to her, though in a commanding tone, yet looking at her very approvingly. “That’s just the kind of character we have, sir,” he turned to Alyosha again.

“And nothing in all of nature
Would he consent to bless.

“That is, it ought to be in the feminine: she would not consent to bless, sir. But allow me to introduce you to my spouse as well: here, sir, is Arina Petrovna, a lady without legs, sir, forty-three years old, her legs do walk, but just a little, sir. Of simple folk, sir. Arina Petrovna, smooth your features: here is Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov. Stand up, Alexei Fyodorovich,” he took him by the hand and, with a strength one could not even have expected of him, suddenly raised him up. “You are being introduced to a lady, you must stand up, sir. Not that Karamazov, Mamma, who… hm, and so on, but his brother, shining with humble virtues. Allow me, Arina Petrovna, allow me, Mamma, allow me first to kiss your hand.”

And he kissed his spouse’s hand respectfully, even tenderly. The girl at the window indignantly turned her back on the scene; the haughty, questioning face of the spouse suddenly expressed an extraordinary affability.

“How do you do, sit down, Mr. Chernomazov,”¹ she said.

“Karamazov, Mamma, Karamazov (we’re of simple folk, sir),” he prompted in a whisper again.

“Well, Karamazov or whatever it is, but to me it’s always Chernomazov… Do sit down, and why did he lift you up? A lady without legs, he says; the legs are there all right, only they’re swollen like buckets, and the rest of me has dried up. Before, how fat I used to be, and now look, it’s as if I’d swallowed a needle…”

“We’re of simple folk, sir, of simple folk,” the captain prompted once more.

“Papa, oh, Papa!” the hunchbacked girl, who had been silent until now on her chair, suddenly said, and suddenly covered her eyes with her handkerchief.

“Buffoon!” blurted the girl at the window.

“You see what news we have here,” the mamma spread out her hands, pointing to her daughters. “It’s just like clouds passing; the clouds will pass, and then our music again. Before, when we were military people, we used to have many such visitors. I don’t compare it to anything, dear man. Let whoever loves whom go on loving them. The deacon’s wife comes along then and says: ‘Alexander Alexandrovich is a man of the most excellent soul, but Nastasya Petrovna,’ she says, ‘is a fiend out of hell.’ ‘Well,’ I answer, ‘that depends on who adores whom, but you’re a little heap, and a smelly one.’ ‘And you,’ she says, ‘ought to be kept in obedience.’ ‘Oh, you black sword, you,’ I say to her, ‘and who have you come to teach?’ ‘I,’ she says, ‘let in clean air, and you let in unclean.’ ‘Then you ask,’ I answer her, ‘all the officers whether the air in me is unclean or some other kind.’ And it’s been sitting on my soul like that ever since that very time, so that the other day I’m sitting here just as I am now, and I see that same general come in who came here at Easter: ‘Tell me, Your Excellency,’ I say to him, ‘may a noble lady let in free air?’ ‘Yes,’ he answers, ‘you ought to open a window or a door here, for the very reason that your air isn’t fresh.’ Well, and they’re all like that! And what is my air to them? The dead smell worse than that. ‘I’m not spoiling your air,’ I say, ‘I’ll order some shoes and go away.’ My dears, my darlings, don’t reproach your own mother! Nikolai Ilyich, my dear, haven’t I pleased you? Only all I have is Ilyushechka coming home from class and loving me. Yesterday he brought me a little apple. Forgive, my dears, forgive, my darlings, your own mother, forgive me, all alone as I am, and why has my air become so loathsome to you!”

And the poor woman suddenly burst into sobs, the tears streamed down. The staff captain impetuously sprang to her.

“Mamma, Mamma, my dear, enough, enough! You’re not alone. Everyone loves you, everyone adores you!” and again he started kissing both her hands and stroking her face tenderly with his palms; and seizing the napkin, he suddenly began wiping the tears from her face. It even seemed to Alyosha that tears were glistening in his own eyes. “Well, sir, did you see, sir? Did you hear, sir?” he suddenly turned to him somehow furiously, pointing with his hand at the poor feeble-minded woman.

“I see and I hear,” Alyosha muttered.

“Papa, Papa! Are you really going to… with him… Drop him, Papa!” the boy suddenly cried, half rising on his little bed and looking at his father with a burning gaze.

“Do stop your clowning at last, showing off your stupid antics, which never lead to anything!” Varvara Nikolaevna shouted from her corner, quite enraged by now, and even stamped her foot.

“This time you are perfectly right, ma’am, to lose your temper, Varvara Nikolavna, and I will satisfy you impetuously. Put on your hat, Alexei Fyodorovich, and I’ll take my cap here, and let us go, sir. I must say one serious little word to you, only outside these walls. This girl sitting here is my daughter, sir, Nina Nikolaevna, sir, I forgot to introduce her to you, an angel of God in the flesh… flown down to mortals… if you can only understand that…”

“He’s shaking all over, you know, as if he had convulsions,” Varvara Nikolaevna went on indignantly.

“And this one, the one who is stamping her little foot at me now and exposed me as a clown just now, is also an angel of God in the flesh, sir, and she called me that justly, sir. Let us go, then, Alexei Fyodorovich, we must have done with it, sir…”

And, seizing Alyosha by the hand, he led him out of the room straight into the street.

Notes

1. 1. The mother garbles the name: Karamazov contains the Turkic kara, “black,” while chernomazy is plain Russian for “black-smeared, swarthy.”