III. Похороны Илюшечки. Речь у камня

They had been waiting for him, and had even already resolved to carry the pretty little coffin, decked out with flowers, into the church without him.

It was the coffin of little Ilusha, the poor boy.

He had died two days after Mitya's sentencing.

Even at the gate of the house Alyosha was met by the shouts of the boys, Ilusha's comrades.

They had all been waiting impatiently for him and were glad that he had come at last.

Some dozen of them had gathered in all, every one come with his satchel and his little bag slung over his shoulder.

"Papa will cry, stay with papa," Ilusha had charged them as he was dying, and the boys had kept it in mind.

At their head stood Kolya Krasotkin.

— How glad I am that you've come, Karamazov! — he exclaimed, holding out his hand to Alyosha. — It is dreadful here. Truly, it is hard to watch. Snegiryov is not drunk — we know for certain that he has had nothing to drink today — and yet he seems drunk… I am always firm, but this is dreadful. Karamazov, if I'm not keeping you, might I ask just one more question before you go in?

— What is it, Kolya? — Alyosha paused.

— Is your brother innocent or guilty? Was it he who killed his father, or the lackey? Whatever you say, that is how it will be for me. I have not slept for four nights over this idea.

— The lackey did the killing, and my brother is innocent, — answered Alyosha.

— That's just what I say too! — the boy Smurov suddenly cried out.

— So he will perish, an innocent victim, for the truth! — exclaimed Kolya. — Though he is ruined, still he is fortunate! I am ready to envy him!

— What are you saying, how can that be, and what for? — exclaimed the astonished Alyosha.

— Oh, if only I too could someday offer myself up as a sacrifice for the truth, — Kolya said with enthusiasm.

— But not in such a cause, not with such disgrace, not with such horror! — said Alyosha.

— Of course… I would wish to die for all of humanity, and as for the disgrace, no matter: let our names perish. I respect your brother!

— And so do I! — suddenly, and now quite unexpectedly, there cried out from the crowd that very boy who had once declared that he knew who founded Troy, and, having cried it, just as he had then, flushed crimson up to his ears, like a peony.

Alyosha went into the room.

In a pale-blue coffin trimmed with white ruching lay Ilusha, his hands folded and his eyes closed.

The features of his wasted little face had scarcely changed at all, and, strangely, there was almost no smell from the body.

The expression of his face was serious and, as it were, thoughtful.

His hands were especially beautiful, folded crosswise, as though carved out of marble.

Flowers had been placed in his hands, and the whole coffin was already adorned, within and without, with the blossoms sent at first light by Liza Khokhlakova.

But more flowers had arrived from Katerina Ivanovna as well, and when Alyosha opened the door, the staff-captain, a bunch of blossoms in his trembling hands, was once again strewing them over his beloved boy.

He scarcely glanced at the Alyosha who had come in, nor did he wish to look at anyone, not even at his weeping, deranged wife, his "mamochka," who kept trying to raise herself on her ailing legs and peer closer at her dead boy.

Ninochka, however, the children had lifted up, chair and all, and pushed right up against the coffin.

She sat there, pressing her head close to it, and she too must have been weeping quietly.

Snegiryov's face had a look that was animated, yet somehow bewildered, and at the same time embittered.

There was something half-witted in his gestures, in the words that broke from him.

"Little father, dear little father!" he kept exclaiming every minute as he gazed at Ilusha.

He had had the habit, even while Ilusha was still alive, of saying to him caressingly: "Little father, dear little father!"

— Papa, give me some little flowers too, take them from his hand, this little white one here, and give it to me! — the deranged "mamochka" begged, sobbing.

Whether it was that the little white rose in Ilusha's hands had so taken her fancy, or that she wanted to take a flower from his very hands as a keepsake, she fell to thrashing all over, stretching out her hands for the flower.

— I'll give none to anyone, I'll give nothing! — cried Snegiryov hard-heartedly. — They are his flowers, not yours. Everything is his, nothing is yours!

— Papa, give mama a flower! — Ninochka suddenly lifted her face, wet with tears.

— I'll give nothing, and to her least of all! She did not love him. She took his little cannon from him that time, and he gave it to her as a pre-sent, — the staff-captain suddenly broke into loud sobbing at the memory of how Ilusha had then given up his little cannon to his mama.

The poor madwoman dissolved entirely into quiet weeping, covering her face with her hands.

The boys, seeing at last that the father would not let the coffin go, and that meanwhile it was time to carry it out, suddenly surrounded the coffin in a tight little cluster and began to lift it.

— I don't want to bury him in the churchyard! — Snegiryov suddenly howled. — I'll bury him by the stone, by our little stone! Ilusha asked it so. I won't let you carry him!

He had been saying for all three days before, too, that he would bury him by the stone; but Alyosha, Krasotkin, the landlady, her sister, and all the boys had argued against it.

— Look at what he's thought up, to bury him by an unhallowed stone, as if he were a man who'd hanged himself, — the old landlady said sternly. — There in the churchyard the ground has a cross on it. There they will pray for him. From the church the singing is heard, and the deacon reads so clearly and so eloquently that every word will reach him each time, just as if it were read over his very grave.

The staff-captain at last waved his hands: "Carry him wherever you like, then!"

The children raised the coffin, but, carrying it past the mother, they stopped before her for a moment and set it down, so that she might bid Ilusha farewell.

But catching sight all at once of that dear little face up close, the face she had looked at all three days only from some distance, she suddenly began to tremble all over and started jerking her gray head hysterically back and forth above the coffin.

— Mama, cross him, bless him, kiss him, — Ninochka cried out to her.

But she, like an automaton, kept jerking her head and, wordlessly, her face contorted with burning grief, suddenly began beating her breast with her fist.

The coffin was carried on.

Ninochka pressed her lips for the last time to the lips of her dead brother as they bore him past her.

Alyosha, going out of the house, turned to the landlady to ask her to look after those left behind, but she would not even let him finish:

— Of course, I'll be with them — we are Christians too. — The old woman was weeping as she said it.

It was not far to carry him to the church, some three hundred paces, no more.

The day had turned clear and still; it was freezing, but not hard.

The bell for service was still ringing out.

Snegiryov ran after the coffin in a fluster and bewilderment, in his old, short little overcoat, almost a summer one, his head uncovered, with his old, broad-brimmed, soft hat in his hands.

He was in some sort of insoluble anxiety, now suddenly reaching out a hand to support the head of the coffin and only getting in the bearers' way, now darting along the side and looking for some place where he too might fit himself in.

One flower fell onto the snow, and he flung himself at once to pick it up, as though God knows what depended on the loss of that flower.

— And the little crust, the little crust, we've forgotten it, — he suddenly exclaimed in dreadful alarm.

But the boys reminded him at once that he had already taken the little crust of bread earlier and that it was in his pocket.

He pulled it out of his pocket in an instant and, having made sure, was reassured.

— Ilushechka asked for it, Ilushechka, — he explained at once to Alyosha. — He was lying there at night, and I was sitting beside him, and suddenly he told me: "Papa, when they cover over my little grave, crumble a crust of bread on it, so that the little sparrows will fly down, and I will hear that they have come, and it will gladden me that I am not lying alone."

— That is very good, — said Alyosha, — you must bring it often.

— Every day, every day! — the staff-captain prattled, as if quite coming to life.

At last they reached the church and set the coffin down in the middle of it.

All the boys gathered round it and stood thus, decorously, through the whole service.

The church was ancient and rather poor; many of the icons stood quite without their covers, but in such churches one somehow prays the better.

During the mass Snegiryov grew somewhat quieter, though at times there still broke out in him that same unconscious and, as it were, bewildered fretfulness: now he would go up to the coffin to set straight the pall, the wreath upon the brow, now, when one of the candles fell from its holder, he suddenly threw himself at putting it back and fussed with it a terribly long time.

After that he grew calm and stood meekly at the head of the coffin, with a dully fretful and, as it were, uncomprehending face.

After the Epistle he suddenly whispered to Alyosha, who stood beside him, that the Epistle had not been read properly, but he did not explain his thought.