“And did you think I’d whip him, sir? That I’d take Ilyushechka and whip him right now, in front of you, for your full satisfaction? How soon would you like it done, sir?” said the captain, suddenly turning to Alyosha with such a gesture that he seemed as if he were going to leap at him. “I am sorry, my dear sir, about your poor little finger, but before I go whipping Ilyushechka maybe you’d like me to chop off these four fingers, right here, in front of your eyes, for your righteous satisfaction, with this very knife? Four fingers, I think, should be enough for you, sir, to satisfy your thirst for revenge, you won’t demand the fifth one, sir ... ?” he suddenly stopped as if he were suffocating. Every feature of his face was moving and twitching, and he looked extremely defiant. He was as if in a frenzy.
“I think I understand it all now,” Alyosha replied softly and sadly, without getting up. “So your boy is a good boy, he loves his father, and he attacked me as your offender’s brother ... I understand it now,” he repeated, pondering. “But my brother, Dmitri Fyodorovich, repents of his act, I know, and if it were only possible for him to come to you, or, best of all, to meet you again in the same place, he would ask your forgiveness in front of everyone ... if you wish.”
“You mean he pulls my beard out and then asks my forgiveness ... and it’s all over and everyone’s satisfied, is that it, sir?” “Oh, no, on the contrary, he will do whatever you want and however you want!”
“So if I asked his excellency to go down on his knees to me in that very tavern, sir—the ‘Metropolis’ by name—or in the public square, he would do it?”
“Yes, he would even go down on his knees.”
“You’ve pierced me, sir. Pierced me to tears, sir. I’m too inclined to be sensitive . Allow me to make a full introduction: my family, my two daughters and my son—my litter, sir. If I die, who will so love them, sir, and while I live, who will so love me, a little wretch, if not them? This great thing the Lord has provided for every man of my sort, sir. For it’s necessary that at least someone should so love a man of my sort, sir...”
“Ah, that is perfectly true!” exclaimed Alyosha.
“Enough of this clowning! Some fool comes along and you shame us all,” the girl at the window suddenly cried out, addressing her father with a disgusted and contemptuous look.
“Wait a little, Varvara Nikolaevna, allow me to sustain my point,” her father cried to her in a peremptory tone, looking at her, however, quite approvingly. “It’s our character, sir,” he turned again to Alyosha.
“And in all nature there was nothing He would give his blessing to—[119] only it should be in the feminine: that she would give her blessing to, sir. But allow me to introduce you to my wife: this is Arina Petrovna, sir, a crippled lady, about forty-three years old, she can walk, but very little, sir. From simple people. Arina Petrovna, smooth your brow; this is Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov. Stand up, Alexei Fyodorovich,” he took him by the arm and, with a force one would not have suspected in him, suddenly raised him up. “You are being introduced to a lady, you should stand up, sir. Not that Karamazov, mama, the one who ... hm, and so on, but his brother, shining with humble virtues. Allow me, Arina Petrovna, allow me, mama, allow me preliminarily to kiss your hand.”
And he kissed his wife’s hand respectfully and even tenderly. The girl at the window indignantly turned her back on the scene; the haughtily questioning face of the wife suddenly took on a remarkably sweet expression.
“How do you do, sit down, Mr. Chernomazov,”[120] she said.
“Karamazov, mama, Karamazov—we’re from simple people, sir,” he whispered again.
“Well, Karamazov, or whatever it is, but I always say Chernomazov ... But sit down, why did he get you up? A crippled lady, he says, but my legs still work, only they’re swollen like buckets, and the rest of me is dried up. Once I was good and fat, but now it’s as if I swallowed a needle...”
“We’re from simple people, sir, simple people,” the captain prompted once again.
“Papa, oh, papa!” the hunchbacked girl, who until then had been silent on her chair, said suddenly, and suddenly hid her eyes in her handkerchief.
“Buffoon!” the girl at the window flung out.
