“Papa, papa, come here ... we ... ,” Ilyusha prattled in great excitement, but, apparently unable to go on, suddenly thrust both his thin arms out and, as firmly as he could, embraced the two of them, Kolya and his papa, uniting them in one embrace and pressing himself to them. The captain suddenly began shaking all over with silent sobs, and Kolya’s lips and chin started trembling.
“Papa, papa! I’m so sorry for you, papa!” Ilyusha moaned bitterly.
“Ilyushechka ... darling ... the doctor said ... you’ll get well. . we’ll be happy ... the doctor ... ,” the captain started to say.
“Ah, papa! I know what the new doctor told you about me ... I could see!” Ilyusha exclaimed, and again firmly, with all his strength, he pressed them both to himself, hiding his face on his papa’s shoulder.
“Papa, don’t cry ... and when I die, you get some nice boy, another one ... choose from all of them, a nice one, call him Ilyusha, and love him instead of me...”
“Shut up, old man, you’ll get well!” Krasotkin suddenly shouted as if he were angry.
“And don’t ever forget me, papa,”Ilyusha went on,”visit my grave ... and one more thing, papa, you must bury me by the big stone where we used to go for our walks, and visit me there with Krasotkin, in the evenings ... And Perezvon ... And I’ll be waiting for you ... Papa, papa!”
His voice broke off. All three embraced one another and were silent now. Ninochka, too, wept quietly in her chair, and suddenly, seeing everyone crying, the mother also dissolved in tears.
“Ilyushechka! Ilyushechka!” she kept exclaiming.
Krasotkin suddenly freed himself from Ilyusha’s embrace.
“Good-bye, old man, my mother’s expecting me for dinner,” he spoke quickly. “Too bad I didn’t warn her! She’ll be really worried ... But after dinner I’ll come right back, for the whole day, for the whole evening, and I’ll tell you so many things, so many things! And I’ll bring Perezvon—I’ll have to take him with me now, because without me he’ll howl and bother you—goodbye!”
And he ran out to the entryway. He did not want to cry, but in the hall he started crying all the same. Alyosha found him in that state.
“Kolya, you absolutely must keep your word and come, otherwise he’ll grieve terribly,” Alyosha said emphatically.
“Absolutely! Oh, how I curse myself for not coming before,” Kolya muttered, crying and no longer embarrassed to be crying. At that moment the captain all but jumped out of the room and at once closed the door behind him. His face was frenzied, his lips trembled. He stood facing the two young men and threw up his arms.
“I don’t want a nice boy! I don’t want another boy!” he whispered in a wild whisper, clenching his teeth. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my tongue cleave . . .’”[286]
He broke off as if he were choking, and sank helplessly on his knees in front of the wooden bench. Pressing his head with both fists, he began sobbing, shrieking somehow absurdly, restraining himself as much as he could, however, so that his shrieks would not be heard in the room. Kolya ran out to the street.
“Good-bye, Karamazov! And you, are you coming back?” he cried sharply and angrily to Alyosha.
“I’ll certainly come back in the evening.”
“What was that he said about Jerusalem ... ? What was it?”
“It’s from the Bible: ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,’ meaning if I forget all that’s most precious tome, if I exchange it for anything, may I be struck...”
“Enough, I understand! So, make sure you come! Ici, Perezvon!” he shouted quite fiercely to the dog, and strode home with long, quick strides.
BOOK XI: BROTHER IVAN FYODOROVICH
Chapter 1: At Grushenka’s
Alyosha made his way towards Cathedral Square, to the house of the widow Morozov, to see Grushenka. Early that morning she had sent Fenya to him with an urgent request that he come. Having questioned Fenya, Alyosha found out that her mistress had been in some great and particular alarm ever since the previous day. During the two months following Mitya’s arrest, Alyosha had often visited the widow Morozov’s, both at his own urging and on errands for Mitya. Some three days after Mitya’s arrest, Grushenka had become quite ill and was sick for almost five weeks. For one of those five weeks she lay unconscious. Her face was greatly changed, she had become thin and sallow, though for almost two weeks she had already been able to go out. But in Alyosha’s opinion her face had become even more attractive, as it were, and he loved meeting her eyes when he entered her room. Something firm and aware seemed to have settled in her eyes. Some spiritual turnabout told in her; a certain steadfast, humble, but good and irrevocable resolution appeared. A small vertical wrinkle came to her forehead, between her eyebrows, giving her dear face a look of thoughtfulness concentrated upon itself, which was even almost severe at first glance. There was no trace, for example, of her former frivolity. Alyosha found it strange, too, that despite all the misfortune that had befallen the poor woman, engaged to a fiancé arrested on accusation of a terrible crime almost at the very moment she had become engaged to him, despite her illness afterwards, and the threat of the almost inevitable verdict to come, Grushenka still had not lost her former youthful gaiety. In her once proud eyes there now shone a certain gentleness, although ... although from time to time, nevertheless, those eyes blazed once again with a sort of ominous fire, whenever a certain old anxiety visited her, which not only had not abated, but had even grown stronger in her heart. The object of that anxiety was ever the same: Katerina Ivanovna, whom Grushenka even spoke of in her delirium when she was still lying sick. Alyosha understood that she was terribly jealous of her because of Mitya, the prisoner Mitya, despite the fact that Katerina Ivanovna had not once visited him in prison, though she could have done so whenever she liked. All of this turned into a somewhat difficult problem for Alyosha, because Grushenka opened her heart to him alone and constantly asked his advice; and sometimes he was utterly unable to tell her anything.
Preoccupied, he entered her apartment. She was home by then; it was half an hour since she had come back from seeing Mitya, and by the quick movement with which she jumped up from the armchair at the table to greet him, he concluded that she had been waiting for him with great impatience. There were cards on the table, and a game of “fools” had been dealt out. On the leather sofa on the other side of the table a bed had been made up on which Maximov, obviously ill and weak, though smiling sweetly, reclined in a dressing gown and cotton nightcap. Having returned with Grushenka from Mokroye about two months before, the homeless old man had simply stayed on with her and by her and never left. When he arrived with her that day in the rain and slush, drenched and frightened, he sat down on the sofa and stared at her silently with a timid, imploring smile. Grushenka, who was in terrible grief and in the first stages of a fever, and was so taken up with various troubles that she almost forgot about him for the first half hour after her arrival— suddenly looked at him somehow attentively: he giggled at her in a pathetic and lost way. She called Fenya and told her to give him something to eat. All that day he sat in the same place almost without stirring; when it grew dark and the shutters were closed, Fenya asked her mistress: “Well, miss, is he going to stay the night?” “Yes, make up a bed for him on the sofa,” Grushenka replied. Questioning him in more detail, Grushenka learned that he indeed had nowhere at all to go just then, and that “my benefactor, Mr. Kalganov, announced to me straight out that he would no longer receive me, and gave me five roubles.” “Well, stay then, God help you,” Grushenka decided in anguish, giving him a compassionate smile. The old man cringed at her smile, and his lips trembled with grateful weeping. And so the wandering sponger had remained with her ever since. Even during her illness he did not leave. Fenya and her mother, Grushenka’s cook, did not turn him out, but continued to feed him and make up his bed on the sofa. Later, Grushenka even got used to him, and, coming back from seeing Mitya (whom, as soon as she felt a bit better, she at once began visiting, even before she was fully recovered), in order to kill her anguish she would sit down and start talking with “Maximushka” about all sorts of trifles, just so as not to think about her grief. It turned out that the old man could occasionally come up with some story or other, so that finally he even became necessary to her. Apart from Alyosha, who did not come every day, however, and never stayed long, Grushenka received almost no one. By then her old man, the merchant, was terribly ill, “on the way out,” as people said in town, and indeed he died only a week after Mitya’s trial. Three weeks before his death, feeling that the finale was near, he at last summoned his sons upstairs, with their wives and children, and told them not to leave him thereafter. As for Grushenka, from that same moment he gave strict orders not to admit her, and to tell her if she came: “He wishes you a long and happy life, and asks you to forget him completely. “ Grushenka sent almost every day, however, to inquire about his health.