Alyosha looked at him attentively; it was the first time in his life he had seen the man. There was something angular, hurried, and irritable in him. Although he had obviously just been drinking, he was not drunk. His face expressed a sort of extreme insolence, and at the same time—which was strange—an obvious cowardice. He looked like a man who had been submissive for a long time and suffered much, but had suddenly jumped up and tried to assert himself. Or, better still, like a man who wants terribly to hit you, but is terribly afraid that you are going to hit him. In his speech and the intonations of his rather shrill voice could be heard a sort of crack-brained humor, now spiteful, now timid, faltering, and unable to sustain its tone. The question about “depths” he had asked all atremble, as it were, rolling his eyes, and jumping up to Alyosha, so close that Alyosha mechanically took a step back. The gentleman was wearing a coat of some sort of dark, rather shabby nankeen, stained and mended. His trousers were of a sort of extremely light color, such as no one had even been wearing for a long time, checkered, and made of some thin fabric, crumpled at the cuffs and therefore bunched upwards, as if he had outgrown them like a little boy.
“I am ... Alexei Karamazov ... ,” Alyosha said in reply.
“That I am quite able to understand, sir,” the gentleman immediately snapped, letting it be known that he was aware, even without that, of who Alyosha was. “And I am Captain, sir, for my part, Snegiryov, sir; but still it would be desirable to know precisely what has urged you to...”
“Oh, I just stopped by. As a matter of fact, I’d like very much to have a word with you ... if I may...”
“In that case, here is a chair, sir, pray be seated, sir. As they used to say in the old comedies: ‘Pray be seated ...,’” and with a quick gesture the captain seized an empty chair (a simple peasant one, all wood, not upholstered with anything) and placed it almost in the middle of the room; then, seizing another chair, just like the first, for himself, he sat facing Alyosha, as close up to him as before, so that their knees almost touched.
“Nikolai Ilyich Snegiryov, sir, former captain in the Russian infantry, sir, disgraced by his vices, but still a captain. I should have said Captain Yessirov instead of Snegiryov, because it’s only in the second half of my life that I’ve started saying ‘Yessir.’ ‘Yessir’ is acquired in humiliation.”
“That’s very true,” Alyosha smiled, “but is it acquired unwillingly or deliberately?”
“Unwillingly, God knows. I never used to say it, all my life I never used to say ‘sir.’ Suddenly I fell down and got up full of ‘sirs.’ It’s the work of a higher power. I see that you’re interested in contemporary problems. Yet how can I have aroused such curiosity, living as I do in conditions that render the exercise of hospitality impossible?”
“I’ve come ... about that matter...”
“About what matter?” the captain interrupted impatiently.
“Concerning that encounter of yours with my brother, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” Alyosha blurted out awkwardly.
“Which encounter, sir? You mean that one, sir? The one concerning the whiskbroom, the old whiskbroom?” he suddenly moved so close that this time he positively hit Alyosha with his knees. His lips somehow peculiarly compressed themselves into a thread.
“What whiskbroom?” Alyosha mumbled.
“He came to complain to you about me, papa!” a boy’s voice, already familiar to Alyosha, cried from behind the curtain in the corner. “It was his finger I bit today!”
The curtain was pulled aside, and Alyosha saw his recent enemy, in the corner, under the icons, on the little bed made up on a bench and a chair. The boy was lying under his own coat and an old quilted cotton blanket. He was obviously not well, and, judging by his burning eyes, was in a fever. He looked fearlessly at Alyosha now, unlike the first time: “See, I’m at home now, you can’t get me.”
“Bit what finger?” the captain jumped up a little from his chair. “Was it your finger he bit, sir?”
“Yes, mine. Today he was throwing stones with some boys in the street; the six of them were throwing at him, and he was alone. I came up to him, and he threw a stone at me, too, then another one, at my head. I asked him what I had done to him. He suddenly rushed at me and bit my finger badly, I don’t know why.”
“A whipping, right now, sir! A whipping this very minute, sir,” the captain now jumped all the way out of his chair.
“But I’m not complaining at all, I was simply telling you ... I don’t want you to whip him at all. Besides, he seems to be ill now ...”
