“Alexei Fyodorovich ... I ... you ... ,” the captain muttered and broke off, staring strangely and wildly straight in his face, with the look of a man who has decided to throw himself off a cliff, and at the same time smiling, as it were, with his lips only. “I, sir ... you, sir ... And would you like me to show you a nice little trick, sir?” he suddenly whispered in a quick, firm whisper, his voice no longer faltering.
“What little trick?”
“A little trick, a bit of hocus-pocus,” the captain kept whispering; his mouth became twisted to the left side, his left eye squinted, he went on staring at Alyosha as if his eyes were riveted to him.
“But what’s wrong with you? What trick?” Alyosha cried, now quite alarmed.
“Watch this!” the captain suddenly shrieked.
And holding up both iridescent bills, which all the while, during the whole conversation, he had been holding by the corner between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, he suddenly seized them in some kind of rage, crumpled them, and clutched them tightly in his right fist.
“See that, sir, see that?” he shrieked to Alyosha, pale and frenzied, and suddenly, raising his fist, he threw both crumpled bills with all his might on the sand. “See that, sir?” he shrieked again, pointing at them with his finger. “Well, so, there, sir...!”
And suddenly raising his right foot, he fell to trampling them with his heel, in wild anger, gasping and exclaiming each time his foot struck:
“There’s your money, sir! There’s your money, sir! There’s your money, sir! There’s your money, sir!” Suddenly he leaped back and straightened up before Alyosha. His whole figure presented a picture of inexplicable pride. “Report to those who sent you that the whiskbroom does not sell his honor, sir!” he cried out, raising his arm in the air. Then he quickly turned and broke into a run; but he had not gone even five steps when, turning all the way around, he suddenly made a gesture to Alyosha with his hand. Then, before he had gone even five more steps, he turned around again, this time for the last time, and now there was no twisted laugh on his face, but, on the contrary, it was all shaken with tears. In a weeping, faltering, spluttering patter, he cried out:
“And what would I tell my boy, if I took money from you for our disgrace?” And having said this, he broke into a run, this time without turning around. Alyosha looked after him with inexpressible sadness. Oh, he understood that the captain had not known until the very last moment that he would crumple the bills and fling them down. The running man did not once look back, and Alyosha knew that he would not look back. He did not want to pursue him or call out to him, and he knew why. When the captain was out of sight, Alyosha picked up the two bills. They were just very crumpled, flattened, and pressed into the sand, but were perfectly intact and crisp as new when Alyosha spread them and smoothed them out. Having smoothed them out, he folded them, put them in his pocket, and went to report to Katerina Ivanovna on the success of her errand.
BOOK V: PRO AND CONTRA
Chapter 1:
Madame Khokhlakov was again the first to meet Alyosha. She was in a hurry; something important had happened: Katerina Ivanovna’s hysterics had ended in a fainting spell, then she felt “terrible, horrible weakness, she lay down, rolled up her eyes, and became delirious. Now there’s fever, we sent for Herzenstube, we sent for her aunts. The aunts are already here, but Herzen-stube still isn’t. They’re all sitting in her room and waiting. Who knows what may come of it? And she’s unconscious. What if it’s brain fever?”
Exclaiming this, Madame Khokhlakov looked seriously frightened: “Now this is serious, serious!” she added at every word, as if everything that had happened to her before were not serious. Alyosha listened to her with sorrow; he tried to begin telling her of his own adventures, but she interrupted him at the first words: she had no time, she asked him to sit with Lise and wait for her there.
