IV. Жучка

Yes, he had long wanted to meet him.

He had heard a great deal about him from the other boys, but until now he had always put on an outwardly scornful, indifferent look whenever they spoke to him about him, and had even "criticized" Alyosha as he listened to what was reported of him.

But privately he very, very much wanted to make his acquaintance: there was something likable and alluring in all the accounts of Alyosha he had heard.

And so the present moment was an important one; first of all, he must not lose face, must show his independence: "Otherwise he'll think I'm thirteen and take me for the same sort of little boy as these others.

And what are these boys to me?

I'll ask him once we've gotten acquainted.

It's a bad business, though, that I'm of such a small stature.

Tuzikov is younger than I am, yet half a head taller.

My face, however, is clever; I'm not good-looking, I know my face is hideous, but it's a clever face.

I mustn't say too much, either, or he'll be right into embraces and he'll think… Ugh, what a vile thing it would be if he thought that!.."

So Kolya fretted, straining with all his might to assume the most independent air possible.

Above all, it was his small stature that tormented him, not so much his "hideous" face as his height.

At home, in a corner on the wall, there had been a pencil mark made since the year before, with which he had marked his height, and ever since, every two months he would walk up again with a thrill of anxiety to measure himself: how much had he managed to grow?

But alas! he was growing terribly little, and this drove him at times to sheer despair.

As for his face, it was not at all "hideous"; on the contrary, it was rather pleasant, fair, a little pale, sprinkled with freckles.

His small gray eyes were lively; they looked out boldly and often kindled with feeling.

His cheekbones were somewhat broad, his lips small, not very full but very red; his nose was small and decidedly turned up: "Absolutely snub-nosed, absolutely snub-nosed!" Kolya would mutter to himself whenever he looked in the mirror, and he always walked away from it in indignation.

"And is the face even clever, after all?" he sometimes wondered, doubting even that.

We must not suppose, however, that concern over his face and his height swallowed up his whole soul.

On the contrary, however galling those minutes before the mirror were, he quickly forgot about them, and for a long while at that, "giving himself wholly over to ideas and to real life," as he himself defined his activity.

Alyosha appeared soon and came up to Kolya in a hurry; while still several steps off, Kolya could make out that Alyosha's face was somehow utterly joyful.

"Can he really be so glad to see me?" Kolya thought with pleasure.

Here we may note in passing that Alyosha had changed greatly since we left him: he had cast off the cassock and now wore a beautifully tailored frock coat, a soft round hat, and his hair cut short.

All this had improved his looks considerably, and he seemed quite a handsome fellow.

His pleasant face always wore a cheerful look, but it was a cheerfulness of a quiet and calm kind.

To Kolya's surprise, Alyosha had come out to him just as he had been sitting indoors, without a coat — plainly he had been in a hurry.

He held his hand straight out to Kolya.

— So here you are at last; how we have all been waiting for you.

— There were reasons, which you'll learn about presently.

In any case, I'm glad to make your acquaintance.

I've long awaited the chance, and I've heard a great deal, — muttered Kolya, a little out of breath.

— Why, the two of us would have gotten acquainted anyway; I've heard a great deal about you myself, but it's here, in coming to this place, that you've been slow.

— Tell me, how are things here?

— Ilusha is very bad; he is sure to die.

— You don't say! Admit it, medicine is a vile thing, Karamazov, — Kolya exclaimed heatedly.

— Ilusha has spoken of you often, very often, even, you know, in his sleep, in his delirium.

It's plain that you were once very, very dear to him — before… before that business… with the penknife.

There's another reason as well… Tell me, is that your dog?

— Mine. Perezvon.

— And not Zhutchka? — Alyosha looked Kolya ruefully in the eyes. — So she's lost for good?

— I know you'd all of you like it to be Zhutchka; I've heard all about it, sir, — Kolya smirked enigmatically. — Listen, Karamazov, I'll explain the whole affair to you; that's chiefly why I came, that's what I called you out for, to explain the whole episode to you beforehand, before we go in, — he began animatedly. — You see, Karamazov, in the spring Ilusha entered the preparatory class.

Well, you know our preparatory class: little boys, mere children.

They began baiting Ilusha at once.

I'm two classes higher up and, naturally, I watch from a distance, from the sidelines.

I see: a little boy, frail, but he won't submit, he even fights them, proud, his little eyes blazing.

I love that sort.

And they went at him all the harder.

The main thing was that his clothes were wretched then, his little trousers riding up, and his boots begging for gruel.

They went at him for that too. They humiliated him.

No, that I won't have; I took his side at once and gave them a thorough drubbing.

You see, I beat them and yet they adore me — do you know that, Karamazov? — Kolya boasted expansively. — And generally I'm fond of children.

Even now I've two nestlings at home hanging round my neck; this very day they held me up.

And so they stopped beating Ilusha, and I took him under my protection.

I see he's a proud boy — I tell you he's proud — but he ended by giving himself over to me slavishly, carrying out my slightest commands, listening to me as to a god, trying to imitate me.

In the breaks between classes he'd come straight to me, and the two of us would go about together.

On Sundays too.

At our school they laugh when an older boy gets on such a footing with a little one, but that's a prejudice.

Such is my fancy, and there's an end of it — isn't that right?

I teach him, I develop him — why, tell me, should I not develop him, if I like him?

After all, you yourself, Karamazov, have taken up with all these nestlings, which means you want to act upon the rising generation, to develop them, to be of use, don't you?

And I confess, this trait in your character, which I learned of by hearsay, interested me more than anything else.

But to the point: I notice that some sort of sensitivity, some sentimentality, is developing in the boy, and I, you know, have been from my very birth a resolute enemy of all calf-like tendernesses.

And on top of that, the contradictions: proud, yet devoted to me slavishly — devoted slavishly, and then suddenly his little eyes flash and he won't even agree with me, he argues, he climbs the walls.

I would sometimes float various ideas: it isn't that he disagreed with the ideas, but I simply saw that he was personally rebelling against me, because I answered his tenderness with coolness.

And so, in order to toughen him up, the tenderer he was, the cooler I'd grow still — I did it on purpose; such is my conviction.

I had it in mind to drill his character, to even him out, to make a man of him… and so on… you, of course, take my meaning from half a word.

Suddenly I notice he's troubled for a day, two days, three, grieving, but no longer over the tendernesses — over something else, something stronger, higher.

I think to myself: what tragedy is this?

I press him and learn the whole thing: somehow he had fallen in with Smerdyakov, the lackey of your late father (who was still alive then), and that fellow had taught him, the little fool, a stupid trick — or rather a brutal trick, a vile trick — to take a piece of bread, the soft inside, stick a pin in it, and toss it to some stray yard-dog, the kind that, half-starved, gulps down a morsel without chewing, and then to watch what comes of it.

So they fixed up such a piece and threw it to that very shaggy Zhutchka, the one there's all this story about now — a yard-dog from a yard where they simply never fed her, so that she'd be barking at the wind all day long.

(Are you fond of that stupid barking, Karamazov? I can't bear it.)

She just pounced, swallowed it down, and gave a yelp, spun round and bolted, running and yelping the whole way, and vanished — so Ilusha himself described it to me.

He confesses it to me, weeping and weeping all the while, hugging me, shuddering: "She runs and yelps, runs and yelps" — that's all he keeps repeating; the sight had struck him to the core.

Well, I see it's the pangs of conscience. I took it seriously.

Above all, I wanted to school him for his earlier behavior too, so that, I confess, I was a bit cunning here; I pretended to be in such indignation as perhaps I didn't feel at all: "You," I say, "have done a base thing, you're a scoundrel; I won't tell on you, of course, but for the time being I'm breaking off relations with you.