«Mitya, don’t dare to blame her; you have no right to!» Alyosha cried hotly.
«Her proud lips spoke, not her heart,» Grushenka brought out in a tone of disgust. «If she saves you I’ll forgive her everything-«
She stopped speaking, as though suppressing something. She could not yet recover herself. She had come in, as appeared afterwards, accidentally, with no suspicion of what she would meet.
«Alyosha, run after her!» Mitya cried to his brother; «tell her… I don’t know… don’t let her go away like this!»
«I’ll come to you again at nightfall,» said Alyosha, and he ran after Katya. He overtook her outside the hospital grounds. She walking fast, but as soon as Alyosha caught her up she said quickly:
«No, before that woman I can’t punish myself! I asked her forgiveness because I wanted to punish myself to the bitter end. She would not forgive me…. I like her for that!» she added, in an unnatural voice, and her eyes flashed with fierce resentment.
«My brother did not expect this in the least,» muttered Alyosha. «He was sure she would not come-«
«No doubt. Let us leave that,» she snapped. «Listen: I can’t go with you to the funeral now. I’ve sent them flowers. I think they still have money. If necessary, tell them I’ll never abandon them…. Now leave me, leave me, please. You are late as it is- the bells are ringing for the service…. Leave me, please!»
681 book page, Chapter 3 — Ilusha’s Funeral. The Speech at the Stone
HE really was late. They had waited for him and had already decided to bear the pretty flower-decked little coffin to the church without him. It was the coffin of poor little Ilusha. He had died two days after Mitya was sentenced. At the gate of the house Alyosha was met by the shouts of the boys, Ilusha’s schoolfellows. They had all been impatiently expecting him and were glad that he had come at last. There were about twelve of them, they all had their school-bags or satchels on their shoulders. «Father will cry, be with father,» Ilusha had told them as he lay dying, and the boys remembered it. Kolya Krassotkin was the foremost of them.
«How glad I am you’ve come, Karamazov!» he cried, holding out his hand to Alyosha. «It’s awful here. It’s really horrible to see it.
Snegiryov is not drunk, we know for a fact he’s had nothing to drink to-day, but he seems as if he were drunk… I am always manly, but this is awful. Karamazov, if I am not keeping you, one question before you go in?»
«What is it, Kolya?» said Alyosha.
«Is your brother innocent or guilty? Was it he killed your father or was it the valet? As you say, so it will be. I haven’t slept for the last four nights for thinking of it.»
«The valet killed him, my brother is innocent,» answered Alyosha. «That’s what I said,» cried Smurov.
«So he will perish an innocent victim!» exclaimed Kolya; «though he is ruined he is happy! I could envy him!»
«What do you mean? How can you? Why?» cried Alyosha surprised.
«Oh, if I, too, could sacrifice myself some day for truth!» said Kolya with enthusiasm. «But not in such a cause, not with such disgrace and such horrer!»
said Alyosha.
«Of course… I should like to die for all humanity, and as for disgrace, I don’t care about that- our names may perish. I respect your brother!»
«And so do I!» the boy, who had once declared that he knew who had founded Troy, cried suddenly and unexpectedly, and he blushed up to his ears like a peony as he had done on that occasion.
Alyosha went into the room. Ilusha lay with his hands folded and his eyes closed in a blue coffin with a white frill round it. His thin face was hardly changed at all, and strange to say there was no smell of decay from the corpse. The expression of his face was serious and, as it were, thoughtful. His hands, crossed over his breast, looked particularly beautiful, as though chiselled in marble. There were flowers in his hands and the coffin, with flowers, which had been sent early in the morning by Lise Hohlakov. But there were flowers too from Katerina Ivanovna, and when Alyosha opened the door, the captain had a bunch in his trembling hands and was strewing them again over his dear boy. He scarcely glanced at Alyosha when he came in, and he would not look at anyone, even at his crazy weeping wife,
682 book page, Chapter 3 — Ilusha’s Funeral. The Speech at the Stone
«mamma,» who kept trying to stand on her crippled legs to get a nearer look at her dead boy. Nina had been pushed in her chair by the boys close up to the coffin. She sat with her head pressed to it and she too was no doubt quietly weeping. Snegiryov’s face looked eager, yet bewildered and exasperated. There was something crazy about his gestures and the words that broke from him. «Old man, dear old man!»
he exclaimed every minute, gazing at Ilusha. It was his habit to call Ilusha «old man,» as a term of affection when he was alive.
«Father, give me a flower, too; take that white one out of his hand and give it me,» the crazy mother begged, whimpering. Either because the little white rose in Ilusha’s hand had caught her fancy or that she wanted one from his hand to keep in memory of him, she moved restlessly, stretching out her hands for the flower.
«I won’t give it to anyone, I won’t give you anything,»
Snegiryov cried callously. «They are his flowers, not yours! Everything is his, nothing is yours!»
«Father, give mother a flower!» said Nina, lifting her face wet with tears.
«I won’t give away anything and to her less than anyone! She didn’t love Ilusha. She took away his little cannon and he gave it to her,» the captain broke into loud sobs at the thought of how Ilusha had given up his cannon to his mother. The poor, crazy creature was bathed in noiseless tears, hiding her face in her hands.
The boys, seeing that the father would not leave the coffin and that it was time to carry it out, stood round it in a close circle and began to lift it up.
«I don’t want him to be buried in the churchyard,» Snegiryov wailed suddenly; «I’ll bury him by the stone, by our stone! Ilusha told me to. I won’t let him be carried out!» He had been saying for the last three days that he would bury him by the stone, but Alyosha, Krassotkin, the landlady, her sister and all the boys interfered.
«What an idea, bury him by an unholy stone, as though he had hanged himself!» the old landlady said sternly. «There in the churchyard the ground has been crossed. He’ll be prayed for there. One can hear the singing in church and the deacon reads so plainly and verbally that it will reach him every time just as though it were read over his grave.»
At last the captain made a gesture of despair as though to say, «Take him where you will.» The boys raised the coffin, but as they passed the mother, they stopped for a moment and lowered it that she might say good-bye to Ilusha. But on seeing that precious little face, which for the last three days she had only looked at from a distance, she trembled all over and her grey head began twitching spasmodically over the coffin.
«Mother, make the sign of the cross over him, give him your blessing, kiss him,» Nina cried to her. But her head still twitched like an automaton and with a face contorted with bitter grief she began, without a word, beating her breast with her fist. They carried the coffin past her. Nina pressed her lips to her brother’s for the last time as they bore the coffin
683 book page, Chapter 3 — Ilusha’s Funeral. The Speech at the Stone
by her. As Alyosha went out of the house he begged the landlady to look after those who were left behind, but she interrupted him before he had finished.
«To be sure, I’ll stay with them, we are Christians, too.» The old woman wept as she said it.
They had not far to carry the coffin to the church, not more than three hundred paces. It was a still, clear day, with a slight frost. The church bells were still ringing. Snegiryov ran fussing and distracted after the coffin, in his short old summer overcoat, with his head bare and his soft, old, wide-brimmed hat in his hand. He seemed in a state of bewildered anxiety. At one minute he stretched out his hand to support the head of the coffin and only hindered the bearers, at another he ran alongside and tried to find a place for himself there. A flower fell on the snow and he rushed to pick it up as though everything in the world depended on the loss of that flower.
«And the crust of bread, we’ve forgotten the crust!» he cried suddenly in dismay. But the boys reminded him at once that he had taken the crust of bread already and that it was in his pocket. He instantly pulled it out and was reassured.
«Ilusha told me to, Ilusha,» he explained at once to Alyosha. «I was sitting by him one night and he suddenly told me: ‘Father, when my grave is filled up crumble a piece of bread on it so that the sparrows may fly down; I shall hear and
