9 I should like nothing better than to release the poor little girl, but you know how it is – one must stick to one’s duty.
10 The traditional names for a, b, v – the first letters of the Russian alphabet. Tolstoy promoted a more phonetic method of learning, and wrote several reading books.
11 It is extremely nice of her.
12 Have him sent for. He can preach at the cathedral.
13 He grew more and more aggressive.
ALYOSHA GORSHOK
ALYOSHKA was the youngest boy in his family. People started calling him ‘Gorshok’ because his mother once sent him to fetch some water for the deacon’s wife, and he tripped up and smashed the pot [gorshók] he was carrying it in. His mother beat him, and the children took to mocking him by calling him ‘Pot’. So ‘Alyoshka Gorshok’ – Alyoshka the Pot – became his nickname.
Alyoshka was a thin boy with lop-ears (his ears stuck out just like wings) and he had a big nose. The other children would taunt him by saying ‘Alyoshka’s got a nose like a dog on a hillock.’ There was a school in the village, but Alyoshka never managed to learn reading and writing, in fact he had no time to study. His elder brother was living in a merchant’s household in the town, and from his earliest childhood Alyoshka began helping his father. At the age of six he was already minding the sheep and cows on the common pasture with his sister who was not much older, and when he had got a little bigger he started minding the horses, by day and by night. From his twelfth year he was ploughing, and driving the cart. He was not particularly strong, but he had the knack of doing things. And he was always cheerful. The other children made fun of him, but he would just keep quiet, or laugh. If his father cursed at him, he kept quiet and listened. And when the cursing was over he would smile, and get on with the job in hand.
Alyosha was nineteen years old when his brother was taken away to be a soldier. And his father sent Alyosha to take his brother’s place as a yardman at the merchant’s house. Alyosha was given his brother’s old boots, his father’s cap and a coat, and went off on a cart to the town. Alyosha himself was not too delighted with his outfit, but the merchant was quite displeased at the look of him.
‘I reckoned I was going to get something like a man in place of Semyon,’ said the merchant, giving Alyosha the once over, ‘but this is a proper little milksop you’ve brought me. Whatever use is he going to be?’
‘He can do anything you want – he can harness up, and fetch and carry anywhere, and he’s a glutton for work. He may look like a yard of wattle fencing, but in fact he’s a wiry young chap.’
‘Well, I can see what he looks like, but I’ll give him a try.’
‘And the best thing about him is, he doesn’t answer back. He’s really keen to work.’
‘There’s no getting round you. All right, you can leave him with me.’
So Alyosha came to live at the merchant’s house.
The merchant’s family was a small one: the master’s wife, his old mother, an elder son with only a basic education, married, who helped his father in the business, and another son who was a scholar – after leaving the grammar school he had gone to the university, but he had been expelled from there and was now living at home; and there was a daughter, a young schoolgirl.
To begin with Alyosha was not happy there – for he was a real country bumpkin, poorly dressed and without manners, and he called everyone ‘thou’; but they soon got used to him. He worked even harder than his brother had done. He really was meek and didn’t answer back: they sent him on all kinds of errands and he did everything willingly and quickly, and switched over from one task to the next with no break whatever. And as it had been at home, so too in the merchant’s house, all manner of work fell on Alyosha’s shoulders. The master’s wife, the master’s mother, the master’s daughter and the master’s son, the steward, the cook, they all sent him running hither and thither and told him to do this, that and the other. You would never hear anything but ‘Run and fetch this, lad’, or ‘Alyosha, you sort it out’, or ‘You did remember to do that, didn’t you Alyosha?’ or ‘Look here, Alyosha, don’t forget this’. And Alyosha ran, and sorted out, and looked, and didn’t forget, and managed to do it all, and all the time he never stopped smiling.
He soon wore his brother’s boots to pieces and the master told him off for going about with his boots full of holes and his bare toes sticking out, and gave orders for some new boots to be bought for him at the bazaar. The boots were brand new and Alyosha was delighted with them, but his legs were still the same old pair, and towards evening they ached from all this running about, and he would get cross with them. Alyosha was afraid that his father, when he came to get his money, might take offence if the merchant was to deduct part of his wages in payment for the boots.
In winter Alyosha would get up before it was light, chop the firewood, sweep the yard, give the horse and the cow their fodder and water them. Then he would heat up the stoves, clean the master’s boots and brush his clothes, and take out the samovars and clean them; then either the steward would call him to help get out the wares, or the cook would order him to knead the dough and scour the saucepans. Then he would be sent into town, sometimes with a note for somebody, sometimes to take something to the master’s daughter at the grammar school, sometimes to fetch lamp-oil for the old lady.
‘Wherever did you get to, you wretch?’ now one of them, now another would say to him. ‘Why go yourself? Alyosha will run and get it. Alyoshka! Here, Alyoshka!’ And Alyosha would come running.
He ate his breakfast as he went along, and rarely managed to have his dinner with the others. The cook swore at him for not bringing everything that was needed, but then felt sorry for him all the same and left him something hot for his dinner or his supper. There was a particularly large amount of work for him on high days and holidays and on the days leading up to them. And Alyosha took special pleasure in the feastdays, because on feastdays they would give him tips, not much, of course – not above sixty copecks all told – but still, it was his own money. He was able to spend it as he wished. His actual wages he never set eyes on. His father would arrive and receive the money from the merchant, merely reprimanding Alyoshka for getting his boots looking worn so quickly.
When he had collected two roubles’ worth of this ‘tea-money’, he bought, on the cook’s advice, a fine knitted jacket, and when he put it on he was unable to stop grinning from sheer pleasure.
Alyosha spoke little, and when he did speak it was always short and fragmentary. And when he was ordered to do something, or asked whether he could do such and such a thing, he always replied without the slightest hesitation ‘I can do that’, and at once threw himself into the task, and did it.
Of prayers, he knew none at all. Whatever his mother had taught him he had forgotten, but he still prayed morning and evening – he prayed with his hands, by crossing himself.
Alyosha’s life went on in this way for a year and a half, and then in the second half of the second year, something happened to him which was the most remarkable event in his life. This event had to do with his astonishing discovery that apart from the relationships between human beings which arise from their mutual needs, there are other, quite special relationships: not the ones which cause a person to brush the boots, to bring home some shopping, or to harness the horse, but the sort of relationship in which a man, although he is not needed at all by the other person, feels the need to devote himself to that other person, to be nice to them; and he discovered that he, Alyosha, was just such a man. He got to know about all this through the cook, Ustinya. Little Ustinya had been an orphan, and a hardworking child just like Alyosha. She began to feel sorry for Alyosha and Alyosha felt for the first time that he, he himself and not his services, was actually needed by another human being. When his mother had shown him that she was sorry for him, he had not really noticed it; it seemed to him that this was how things must be, that it was all one and the same, just as if he had been feeling sorry for himself. But now all of a sudden he realized that Ustinya was quite separate from him, but she did feel sorry for him and would leave him some buttery porridge at the bottom of the pot, and while he ate it she would rest her chin on her arm, the sleeve rolled up to her elbow, and watch him. And he would glance at her, and she would laugh, and then he would laugh too.