The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Andrew R. MacAndrew Read Free Book Online

and kissing his son. True, the tears that rolled down his cheeks at these times were drunken tears and the outpourings that punctuated his embraces were those of a besotted sentimentality. Yet it was obvious that the old man had come to love his son deeply and sincerely; in fact, his feelings for Alyosha were such as a man like him could never have expected to have for anyone.
    But then, everybody liked the boy, wherever he went, from his early childhood on. When he found himself in the house of Mr. Polenov, his guardian and benefactor, the whole household became attached to him as if he were one of the family. And it must be remembered that when Alyosha was first brought there, he was very young and cannot have set out to gain their affection calculatingly, by trying to please or by cunning flattery. The gift of making people love him was inherent in him; he gained people’s affection directly and effortlessly; it was part of his nature. And it was the same at school, although one would have thought him the kind of boy to provoke distrust in his comrades, to become the target of their jokes and sometimes even of their hatred. For instance, he would often become absorbed in his thoughts and, as it were, withdraw from the world. Even as a very small boy, he would go off into a quiet corner and read a book. And yet his schoolfellows liked him so much that it can be said that he was the most popular boy in the school all the time he was there. He was seldom playful or, for that matter, even merry, but a look at him was sufficient to see that there was nothing sullen about him, that on the contrary he was a bright, good-tempered boy. And he never tried to show off to the other boys, perhaps because he was never afraid of anyone. Yet the boys felt right away that he was in no way proud of his fearlessness, that it never even occurred to him that he was fearless or bold. He also never held a grudge when someone offended him. An hour later, he would answer the offender or speak to him himself, with a trustful, friendly look, as if nothing had happened. And it wasn’t that he had forgotten or, having thought it over, had decided to forgive the insult; it was simply that he no longer felt offended. It was this trait that won all the boys over to him and made them love him. He had, however, one peculiarity that, throughout his school years, incited his comrades to tease him, not because they were mean but just because they found it funny: this was a fierce, frantic modesty and chastity. He could not bear to hear dirty words or a certain type of talk about women. Unfortunately, though, such words and such talk are inevitable at school. Boys pure at heart, mere children, often whisper in class or even say certain things aloud and describe certain scenes that even soldiers would hesitate to mention. For one thing, there is much that soldiers do not know or understand that is quite familiar to very young boys in our intellectual and upper classes. In this there can hardly be moral depravity or perverted inner cynicism as yet, but there is that outward cynicism which they consider truly refined and subtle, something daring and worthy of emulation. When the other boys realized that Alyosha Karamazov stopped up his ears as soon as they started talking about “those things,” they would crowd around him, tear his hands away, and scream obscenities into his ears, while Alyosha tried to break away, throwing himself onto the ground, trying desperately to cover his ears with his hands, struggling without a word, bearing it all in complete silence. In the end, however, they left him in peace and stopped calling him “little girl,” at most feeling a little sorry for him for being so peculiar in that respect.
    I must mention, by the way, that although academically Alyosha was always among the top students, he was never actually the first in his class.
    When Polenov died, Alyosha still had two years to go at the secondary school of our province.