“For me,” he suddenly became all animated, as if sobering up for a moment, once he hit on his favorite subject, “for me ... Ah, you children! My babes, my little piglets, for me ... even in the whole of my life there has never been an ugly woman, that’s my rule! Can you understand that? But how could you understand it? You’ve still got milk in your veins instead of blood, you’re not hatched yet! According to my rule, one can damn well find something extremely interesting in every woman, something that’s not to be found in any other—one just has to know how to find it, that’s the trick! It’s a talent! For me, there’s no such thing as an ugly woman: the fact alone that she’s a woman, that alone is half the whole thing ... but how could you understand that? Even old maids, even in them one sometimes finds such a thing that one can only marvel at all the other fools who let her get old and never noticed it before! The barefoot or ugly ones have to be taken by surprise, first of all— that’s how one must approach them. Didn’t you know that? They must be surprised so that they’re enraptured, smitten, ashamed that such a gentleman should have fallen in love with such a grimy creature. It’s very nice, indeed, that there have always been and always will be boors and gentlemen in the world, and so there will always be such a little floor scrubber, and there will always be a master over her, and that is all one needs for happiness in life! Wait ... listen, Alyoshka, I always used to take your la te mother by surprise, only it worked out differently. I never used to caress her, but suddenly, when the moment came—suddenly I’d lay myself down before her, crawling on my knees, kissing her feet, and I always, always sent her—I remember it as if it were today—into that little laugh, a showery, tinkling, soft, nervous, peculiar little laugh. It was the only kind she had. I knew that that was how her sickness usually began, that the next day she’d start her shrieking again, and that this present little laugh was no sign of delight—well, it may have been false, but still it was delight. That’s what it means to be able to find the right little touch in everything! Once Belyavsky—a handsome man, and a rich one, from these parts; he was chasing after her and had taken to coming for visits—suddenly slapped me in the face, in my own house, right in front of her. And she, sheep though she was, attacked me for that slap so that I thought she was going to give me a thrashing herself: ‘You’ve been beaten now, beaten!’ she said. ‘You’ve had your face slapped by him! You were selling me to him ... ,’ she said. ‘How dare he strike you in front of me! Don’t you dare to come near me again ever, ever! Run right now and challenge him to a duel . . .’ I took her to the monastery then, to humble her, the holy fathers reprimanded her. But honest to God, Alyosha, I never offended my little shrieker! Except once only, still in the first year: she was praying too much then, she especially kept the feasts of the Mother of God, and on those days she would drive me away from her to my study. I’d better knock this mysticism out of her, I thought. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘look, here’s your icon, here it is, I’m taking it down. Now watch. You think it’s a wonder-working icon, and right now, before your eyes, I’m going to spit on it, and nothing will happen to me ... !’Whenshesawthat,Lord,Ithought,nowshe’sgoingtokillme! But she just jumped up, clasped her hands, then suddenly covered her face with them, shook all over, and fell to the floor ... just sank down ... Alyosha! Alyosha! What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”
The old man jumped up in fright. From the time he began talking about his mother, a change had gradually come over Alyosha’s face. He flushed, his eyes burned, his lips trembled ... The drunken old man went on spluttering and noticed nothing until the moment when something very strange suddenly happened to Alyosha—namely, the very same thing he had just told about the “shrieker” repeated itself with him. He suddenly jumped up from the table, just as his mother was said to have done, clasped his hands, then covered his face with them, fell back in his chair as if he’d been cut down, and suddenly began shaking all over in a hysterical attack of sudden trembling and silent tears. The remarkable resemblance to his mother especially struck the old man.
“Ivan! Ivan! Quick, bring him water! It’s like her, it’s just like her, his mother did the same thing! Spray him with water from your mouth, that’s what I used to do with her. It’s on account of his mother, his mother ... ,”he muttered to Ivan.
“But my mother, I think, was also his mother, wouldn’t you agree?” Ivan suddenly burst out with irrepressible, angry contempt. The flashing of his eyes startled the old man. But here something very strange happened, if only for a moment. The notion that Alyosha’s mother was also Ivan’s mother really seemed to have gone clean out of the old man’s mind . . .
