“Belinsky? I don’t remember. He never wrote it anywhere.” “Maybe he didn’t write it, but they say he said it. I heard it from a certain ... ah, the devil...!”
“And have you read Belinsky?”
“In fact ... no ... I haven’t exactly read him, but ... the part about Tatiana, why she didn’t go with Onegin, I did read.”[283]
“What? Why she didn’t go with Onegin? Can it be that you already . . understand that?”
“For God’s sake, you seem to take me for the boy Smurov,” Kolya grinned irritably. “By the way, please don’t think I’m such a revolutionary. I quite often disagree with Mr. Rakitin. If I speak about Tatiana, it’s not at all to say that I’m for women’s emancipation. I acknowledge that woman is a subordinate creature and must obey. Les femmes tricottent,[284] as Napoleon said,” Kolya smirked for some reason, “and at least here I fully share the conviction of that pseudo great man. I also think, for example, that to flee the fatherland for America is a base thing, worse than base—it’s foolish. Why go to America, if one can also be of much use to mankind here? Precisely now. There’s a whole mass of fruitful activity. That was my answer.”
“Answer? Who did you answer? Has someone already invited you to America?”
“I must admit they were urging me, but I declined. Naturally that’s between us, Karamazov, not a word to anyone, do you hear? It’s only for you. I have no desire to fall into the kindly clutches of the Third Department and take lessons at the Chain Bridge.
You will never forget
The house near the Chain Bridge!
Do you remember? Splendid! What are you laughing at? Do you think it’s all lies?” (“And what if he finds out that there’s only that one issue of The Bell in my father’s bookcase, and that I never read any more than that?” Kolya thought fleetingly, but with a shudder.)[285]
“Oh, no, I’m not laughing, and I don’t at all think you’ve been lying to me. That’s just it, I don’t think so because all of that, alas, is quite true! Well, and Pushkin, tell me, have you read him, have you read Onegin ... ? You just mentioned Tatiana.”
“No, I haven’t read it, but I intend to. I have no prejudices, Karamazov. I want to hear both sides. Why do you ask?”
“I just wondered.”
“Tell me, Karamazov, do you despise me terribly?” Kolya suddenly blurted out, and he drew himself up straight before Alyosha, as if positioning himself. “Kindly tell me, without beating around the bush.”
“I despise you?” Alyosha looked at him with surprise. “But what for? I’m only sad that such a lovely nature as yours, which has not yet begun to live, should already be perverted by all this crude nonsense.”
“Don’t worry about my nature,” Kolya interrupted, not without some smugness, “but it’s true that I’m insecure. Stupidly insecure, crudely insecure. You just smiled, and I thought you seemed to...”
“Ah, I smiled at something quite different. You see, what I smiled at was this: I recently read a comment by a foreigner, a German, who used to live in Russia, about our young students these days. ‘Show a Russian schoolboy a chart of the heavens,’ he writes, ‘of which hitherto he had no idea at all, and the next day he will return the chart to you with corrections.’ No knowledge and boundless conceit—that’s what the German meant to say about the Russian schoolboy.”
“Ah, but he’s absolutely right!” Krasotkin suddenly burst out laughing. “Verissimo, exactly! Bravo, German! However, the Kraut didn’t look at the good side, what do you think? Conceit—so be it, it comes from youth, it will correct itself, if there’s any need for correction, but, on the other hand, an independent spirit, almost from childhood, a boldness of thought and conviction, and not the spirit of those sausage-makers groveling before the authorities ... But still, the German put it well! Bravo, German! Though the Germans still ought to be strangled. They may be good at science there, but they still ought to be strangled ...”
“Strangled? Why?” Alyosha smiled.
“Well, maybe I was just mouthing off, I agree. Sometimes I’m a terrible child, and when I’m pleased about something, I can’t restrain myself, I’m ready to mouth all kinds of nonsense. Listen, though, here we are chatting about trifles, and that doctor seems to have got stuck in there for a long time. Though maybe he’s examining ‘mama’ too, and that crippled Ninochka. You know, I like that Ninochka. She suddenly whispered to me as I was going out: ‘Why didn’t you come before?’ And in such a voice, so reproachful! I think she’s terribly kind and pathetic.”
“Yes, yes! When you’ve come more often, you’ll see what sort of being she is. It’s very good for you to get to know such beings, in order to learn to value many other things besides, which you will learn precisely from knowing these beings,” Alyosha observed warmly. “That will remake you more than anything.”
“Oh, how sorry I am and how I scold myself for not coming sooner!” Kolya exclaimed with bitter feeling.
“Yes, it’s a great pity. You saw for yourself what a joyful impression you made on the poor child! And how he grieved as he waited for you!”
“Don’t tell me! You’re just rubbing it in! It serves me right, though: it was vanity that kept me from coming, egoistic vanity and base despotism, which I haven’t been able to get rid of all my life, though all my life I’ve been trying to break myself. I’m a scoundrel in many ways, Karamazov, I see it now!”
“No, you have a lovely nature, though it’s been perverted, and I fully understand how you could have such an influence on this noble and morbidly sensitive boy!” Alyosha replied ardently.
“And you say that to me!” Kolya cried, “and just imagine, I thought—several times already since I came here today—I thought you despised me! If only you knew how I value your opinion!”
“But can it be that you really are so insecure? At your age? Well, imagine, I was thinking just that, as I watched you telling stories there in the room, that you must be very insecure.”
“You thought that? What an eye you have, really, you see, you see! I bet it was when I was telling about the goose. Precisely at that moment I imagined you must deeply despise me for being in such a hurry to show what a fine fellow I was, and I even hated you for it and began talking drivel. Then I imagined (it was here, just now) when I was saying: ‘If there were no God, he would have to be invented,’ that I was in too great a hurry to show off my education, especially since I got the phrase out of a book. But I swear to you, I was in a hurry to show off, not out of vanity, but just, I don’t know, for the joy of it, by God, as if for the joy of it ... though it’s an extremely disgraceful quality in a man to go throwing himself on everyone’s neck out of joy. I know that. But now instead I’m convinced that you don’t despise me, that I invented it all myself. Oh, Karamazov, I’m profoundly unhappy. Sometimes I imagine God knows what, that everyone is laughing at me, the whole world, and then I ... then I’m quite ready to destroy the whole order of things.”
“And you torment the people around you,” Alyosha smiled.
“And I torment the people around me, especially my mother. Tell me, Karamazov, am I very ridiculous now?”
“But don’t think about it, don’t think about it at all!” Alyosha exclaimed. “And what does it mean—ridiculous? What does it matter how many times a man is or seems to be ridiculous? Besides, nowadays almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it. I’m only surprised that you’ve begun to feel it so early, though, by the way, I’ve been noticing it for a long time, and not in you alone. Nowadays even children almost are already beginning to suffer from it. It’s almost a madness. The devil has incarnated himself in this vanity and crept into a whole generation—precisely the devil,” Alyosha added, not smiling at all, as Kolya, who was looking at him intently, thought for a moment. “You are like everyone else,” Alyosha concluded, “that is, like a great many others, only you ought not to be like everyone else, that’s what.”