The Brother’s Kara­ma­zov was pub­lished shortly before its authors death. Dos­toyevsky used to col­lect clip­pings of child mur­ders and per­ver­sion he read about in the news­pa­per, pre­sum­ably because he wanted reminders of the deprav­ity a per­son and all peo­ple can sink to. For more long excerpts from The Brother’s Kara­ma­zov look under the Cat­e­gories section.

“I am telling it. If I tell the whole truth just as it hap­pened I shan’t spare myself. My first idea was a—Karamazov one. Once I was bit­ten by a cen­tipede, brother, and laid up a fort­night with fever from it. Well, I felt a cen­tipede bit­ing at my heart then—a nox­ious insect, you under­stand? I looked her up and down. You’ve seen her? She’s a beauty. But she was beau­ti­ful in another way then. At that moment she was beau­ti­ful because she was noble, and I was a scoundrel; she in all the grandeur of her gen­eros­ity and sac­ri­fice for her father, and I—a bug! And, scoundrel as I was, she was alto­gether at my mercy, body and soul. She was hemmed in. I tell you frankly, that thought, that ven­omous thought, so pos­sessed my heart that I almost swooned with sus­pense. It seemed as if there could be no resist­ing it; as though I should act like a bug, like a ven­omous spi­der, with­out a spark of pity.”

…“But, on my oath, I looked at her for three sec­onds, or five per­haps, with fear­ful hatred—that hate which is only a hair’s-breath from love, from the mad­dest love!

I went to the win­dow, put my fore­head against the frozen pane, and I remem­ber the ice burnt my fore­head like fire. I did not keep her long, don’t be afraid. I turned round, went up to the table, opened the drawer and took out a ban­knote for five thou­sand rou­bles (it was lying in a French dic­tio­nary). Then I showed it her in silence, folded it, handed it to her, opened the door into the pas­sage, and, step­ping back, made her a deep bow, a most respect­ful, a most impres­sive bow, believe me! She shud­dered all over, gazed at me for a sec­ond, turned hor­ri­bly pale—white as a sheet, in fact—and all at once, not impetu­ously but softly, gen­tly, bowed down to my feet—not a boarding-house cour­tesy, but a Russ­ian bow, with her fore­head to the floor. She jumped up and ran away. I was wear­ing my sword. I drew it and nearly stabbed myself with it on the spot; why, I don’t know. It would have been fright­fully stu­pid, of course. I sup­pose it was from delight. Can you under­stand that one might kill one­self from delight? But I didn’t stab myself. I only kissed my sword and put it back in the scabbard—which there was no need to have told you, by the way. And I fancy that in telling you about my inner con­flict I have laid it on rather thick to for­tify myself. But let it pass, and to hell with all who pry into the human heart!”

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Part One, Book III, Sec­tion III

“To see the pref­er­ence given…to a mon­ster who, though he is betrothed and all eyes are fixed on him, can’t restrain his debaucheries—and before the very eyes of his betrothed! And a man like me is pre­ferred, while [Ivan] is rejected. And why? Because a girl wants to sac­ri­fice her life and des­tiny out of gratitude.”

Part One, Book III, Sec­tion III

But [Smerdyakov] had sud­denly spo­ken. The sub­ject was a strange one. Grig­ory [his guardian] had gone in the morn­ing to make pur­chases, and had heard from the shop­keeper Lukyanov the story of a Russ­ian sol­dier which ahd appeared in the news­pa­per of that day. This sol­dier had been taken pris­oner in some remote part of Asia, and was threat­ened with an imme­di­ate ago­niz­ing death if he did not renounce Chris­tian­ity and fol­low Islam. He refused to deny his faith, and was tor­tured, flayed alive, and died, prais­ing and glo­ri­fy­ing Christ. Grig­ory had related the story at table. Fyo­dor always liked, over the dessert after din­ner, to laugh and talk, if only with Grig­ory [who was his ser­vant]. This after­noon he was in a par­tic­u­larly good-humoured and expan­sive mood. Sip­ping his brandy and lis­ten­ing to the story, he observed that they ought to make a saint of a sol­dier like that, and to take his skin to some monastery. “That would make the peo­ple flock, and bring the money in.”

Grig­ory frowned, see­ing that Fyo­dor was by no means touched, but, as usual, was begin­ning to scoff. At that moment Smerdyakov, who was stand­ing by the door, smiled. Smerdyakov often waited at table towards the end of din­ner, and since Ivan’s arrival in our town he had done so every day.

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“What are you grin­ning at?” asked Fyo­dor, catch­ing the smile instantly, and know­ing that it referred to Grigory.

“Well, my opin­ion is,” Smerdyakov began sud­denly and unex­pect­edly in a loud voice, “that if that laud­able soldier’s exploit was so very great there would have been, to my think­ing, no sin in it if he had on such an emer­gency renounced, so to speak, the name of Christ and his own chris­ten­ing, to save by that same his life, for good deeds, by which, in the course of years to expi­ate his cowardice.”

“How could it not be a sin? You’re talk­ing non­sense. For that you’ll go straight to hell and be roasted there like mut­ton,” put in Fyodor.

…“As for mut­ton, that’s not so, and there’ll be noth­ing there for this, and there shouldn’t be either, if it’s accord­ing to jus­tice,” Smerdyakov main­tained stoutly.

“How do you mean ‘accord­ing to jus­tice’?” Fyo­dor cried still more gaily, nudg­ing Alyosha with his knee.

“He’s a ras­cal, that’s what he is!” burst from Grig­ory. He looked Smerdyakov wrath­fully in the face.

“As for being a ras­cal, wait a lit­tle, Grig­ory,” answered Smerdyakov with per­fect com­po­sure. “You’d bet­ter con­sider your­self that, once I am taken pris­oner by the ene­mies of the Chris­t­ian race, and they demand from me to curse the name of God and to renounce my holy chris­ten­ing, I am fully enti­tled to act by my own rea­son, since there would be no sin in it.”

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“But you’ve said that before. Don’t waste words. Prove it,” cried Fyodor.

“Soup maker!” mut­tered Grig­ory contemptuously.

“As for being a soup maker, wait a bit, too, and con­sider for your­self, Grig­ory, with­out abus­ing me. For as soon as  I say to those ene­mies, ‘No, I’m not a Chris­t­ian, and I curse my true God,’ then at once, by God’s high judg­ment, I become imme­di­ately and spe­cially anath­ema accursed, and am cut off from the Holy Church, exactly as though I were a hea­then, so that at that very instant, not only when I say it aloud, but when I think of say­ing it, before a quar­ter of a sec­ond has passed, I am cut off. Is that so or not, Grigory?”

He addressed Grig­ory with obvi­ous sat­is­fac­tion, though he was really answer­ing Fyodor’s ques­tions, and was well aware of it, and inten­tion­ally pre­tend­ing that Grig­ory had asked the questions.

…“You’re anath­ema accursed, as it is,” Grig­ory sud­denly burst out, “and how dare you argue, you ras­cal, after that, if…”

“Don’t scold him, Grig­ory, don’t scold him, ” Fyo­dor cut him short.

“You should wait, Grig­ory, if only a short time, and lis­ten, for I haven’t fin­ished all I had to say. For at the very moment I become accursed, at that same high­est moment, I become exactly like a hea­then, and my chris­ten­ing is taken off me and becomes of no avail. Isn’t that so?”

“Make haste and fin­ish my boy,” Fyo­dor urged him, sip­ping from his wine-glass with relish.

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“And if I’ve ceased to be a Chris­t­ian, then I told no lie to the enemy when they asked whether I was a Chris­t­ian or not, see­ing I had already been relieved by God him­self of my Chris­tian­ity by rea­son of the thought alone, before I had time to utter a word to the enemy. And if I have already been dis­charged, in what man­ner and with what sort of jus­tice can I be held respon­si­ble as a Chris­t­ian in the oher world for hav­ing denied Christ, when, through the very thought alone, before deny­ing Him I had been relieved from my chris­ten­ing? If I’m no longer a Chris­t­ian, then I can’t renounce Christ, for I’ve noth­ing then to renounce. Who will hold an unclean Tatar respon­si­ble, Grig­ory, even in heaven, for not hav­ing been born a Chris­t­ian? And who would pun­ish him for that, con­sid­er­ing that you can’t take two skins off one ox? For God Almighty Him­self, even if He did make the Tatar respon­si­ble, when he dies would give him the small­est pos­si­ble pun­ish­ment, I imag­ine (since he must be pun­ished) judg­ing that he is not to blame if he has come into the world an unclean hea­then, from hea­then par­ents. The Lord God can’t surely take a Tatar and say he was a Chris­t­ian? That would mean that the Almighty would tell a real untruth. And can the Lord of Heaven and Earth tell a lie, even in one word?”

Grig­ory was thun­der­struck and looked at the ora­tor, his eyes nearly start­ing out of his head. Though he did not clearly under­stand what was said, he had caught some­thing in this rig­ma­role, and stood, look­ing like a man who has just hit his head a wall. Fyo­dor emp­tied his glass and went off into his shrill laugh.

…“Don’t cry, Grig­ory, we’ll reduce him to smoke and ashes in a moment. Tell me this, oh, ass; you may be right before your ene­mies, but you have renounced your faith all the same in your own heart, and you say your­self that in that very hour you became anath­ema accursed. And if once you’re anath­ema they won’t pat you on the head for it in hell. What do you say to that, my fine Jesuit?”

“There is no doubt that I have renounced it in my own heart, but there was no spe­cial sin in that. Or if there was sin, it was the most ordinary.”

“How’s that the most ordinary?”

“You lie, accursed one!” hissed Grigory.

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“Con­sider your­self, Grig­ory,” Smerdyakov went on, staid and unruf­fled, con­scious of his tri­umph, but, as it were, gen­er­ous to his van­quished foe. “Con­sider your­self, Grig­ory; it is said in the Scrip­ture that if you have faith, even as a mus­tard seed, and bid a moun­tain move into the sea, it will move with­out the least delay at your bid­ding. Well, Grig­ory, if I’m with­out faith and you have so great a faith that you are con­tin­u­ally swear­ing at me, you try your­self telling this moun­tain, not to move into the sea for that’s a long way off, but even to our stink­ing lit­tle river which runs at the bot­tom of the gar­den. You’ll see for your­self that it won’t budge, but will remain just where it is how­ever much you shout at it, and will remain just where it is how­ever much you shout at it, and that shows, Grig­ory, that you haven’t faith in the proper man­ner, and only abuse oth­ers about it. Again, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion that no one in our day, not only you, but actu­ally no one, from the high­est per­son to the low­est peas­ant can shove moun­tains into the sea—except per­haps some one man in the world, or, at most, two, and they most likely are sav­ing their souls in secret some­where in the Egypt­ian desert, so you wouldn’t find them—if so it be, if all the rest have no faith, will God curse all the rest? that is, the pop­u­la­tion of the whole earth, except about two her­mits in the desert, and in His well-known mercy will He not for­give one of them? And so I’m per­suaded that though I may once have doubted I shall be for­given if I shed tears of repentance.”

“Your words are worth a gold piece, oh, ass, and I’ll give it to you to-day. But as to the rest you talk non­sense, non­sense, non­sense. Let me tell you, stu­pid, that we here are all of lit­tle faith, only from care­less­ness, because we haven’t time; things are too much for us, and, in the sec­ond place, the Lord God has given us so lit­tle time, only twenty-four hours in the day, so that one hasn’t even time to get sleep enough, much less to repent of one’s sins. While you have denied your faith to your ene­mies when you’d noth­ing else to think about but to show your faith! So I con­sider, brother, that it con­sti­tutes a sin.”

“Con­sti­tutes a sin it may, but con­sider your­self, Grig­ory, that it only exten­u­ates it, if it does con­sti­tute. If I had believed then in very truth, as I ought to have believed, then it really would have been sin­ful if I had not faced tor­tures for my faith, and had gone over to the pagan Mohammedan faith. But, of course, it wouldn’t have come to tor­ture then, because I should only have had to say at that instant to the moun­tain ‘move and crush the tor­men­tor,’ and it would have moved and at that very instant have crushed him like a black-beetle, and I should have walked away as though noth­ing had hap­pened, prais­ing and glo­ri­fy­ing God. But, sup­pose at that very moment I had tried all that, and cried to that moun­tain, ‘Crush these tor­men­tors,’ and it hadn’t crushed them, how could I have helped doubt­ing, pray, at such a time, and at such a dread hour of mor­tal ter­ror? And apart from that, I should know already that I could not attain to the full­ness of the King­dom of Heaven (for since the moun­tain had no moved at my word, they could not think very much of my faith up aloft, and there could be no very great reward await­ing me in the world to come). So why should I let them flay the skin off me as well, and to no good pur­pose? For, even though they had flayed my skin half off my back, even then the moun­tain would not have moved at my word or at my cry. And at such a moment not only doubt might come over one but one might lose one’s rea­son from fear, so that one would not be able to think at all. And, there­fore, how should I be par­tic­u­larly to blame if not see­ing my advan­tage or reward there or here, I should, at least, save my skin. And so trust­ing fully in the grace of the Lord I should cher­ish the hope that I might be alto­gether forgiven.”

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Part I, Book III, Sec­tion XII

“Love one another, Fathers,” said Father Zos­sima, as far as Alyosha could remem­ber after­wards. “Love God’s peo­ple. Because we have come here [to the monastery] and shut our­selves within these walls, we are no holier than those that are out­side, but on the con­trary, from the very fact of com­ing here, each of us has con­fessed to him­self that he is worse than oth­ers, than all men on earth.…And the longer the monk lives in his seclu­sion, the more keenly he must rec­og­nize that. Else he would have had no rea­son to come here. When he real­izes that he is not only worse than oth­ers, but that he is respon­si­ble to all men for all and every­thing, for all human sins, national and indi­vid­ual, only then the aim of our seclu­sion is attained. For know, dear ones, that every one of us is undoubt­edly respon­si­ble for all men and every­thing on earth, not morally through the gen­eral sin­ful­ness of cre­ation, but each one per­son­ally for all mankind and every indi­vid­ual man. This knowl­edge is the crown of life for the monk and for every man. For monks are not a spe­cial sort of men, but only what all men ought to be. Only through that knowl­edge, our heart grows soft with infi­nite, uni­ver­sal, inex­haustible love. Then every one of you will have the power to win over the whole world by love and to wash away the sins of the world with your tears…”

Part II, Book IV, Sec­tion I

“For even those who have renounced Chris­tian­ity and attack it, in their inmost being still fol­low the Chris­t­ian ideal given by Christ of old. When it has been attempted, the result has been only grotesque. Remem­ber this espe­cially, young man, since you are being sent into the world by your depart­ing elder.”

Part II, Book IV, Sec­tion I

Now Alyosha was impressed by Madame Hohlakov’s blunt and per­sis­tent asser­tion that Kate­rina Ivanovna was in love with Ivan, and only deceived her­self through some sort of pose, from “self-laceration,” and tor­tured her­self by her pre­tended love for Dmitri from some fan­cied duty of grat­i­tude. “Yes,” he thought, “per­haps the whole truth lies in those words.” But in that case what was Ivan’s posi­tion? Alyosha felt instinc­tively that a char­ac­ter like Kate­rina Ivanovna’s must dom­i­nate, and she could only dom­i­nate some one like Dmitri, and never a man like Ivan. For Dmitri might at last sub­mit to her dom­i­na­tion “to his own hap­pi­ness” (which was what Alyosha would have desired), but Ivan—no, Ivan could not sub­mit to her, and such sub­mis­sion would not give him hap­pi­ness. Alyosha could not help believ­ing that of IVan. And now all these doubts and reflec­tions flit­ted through his mind as he entered the drawing-room.

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Part II, Book IV, Sec­tion V

“I’ve already decided, even if he mar­ries that—creature (she began solemnly), whom I never, never can for­give, even then I will not aban­don him. Hence­for­ward I will never, never aban­don him!” she cried, break­ing into a sort of pale, hys­ter­i­cal ecstasy. “Not that I would run after him con­tin­u­ally, get in his way and worry him. Oh, no! I will go away to another town—where you like—but I will watch over him all my life—I will watch over him all my life unceas­ingly. When he becomes unhappy with that woman, and that is bound to hap­pen quite soon, let him come to me and he will find a friend, a sister.…Only a sis­ter, of course, and so for ever; but he will learn at least that that sis­ter is really his sis­ter, who loves him and has sac­ri­ficed all her life to him. I will gain my point.  I will insist on his know­ing me and con­fid­ing entirely in me, with­out reserve,” she cried, in a sort of frenzy. “I will be a god to whom he can pray—and that, at least, he owes me for his treach­ery and for what I suf­fered yes­ter­day through him. And let him see that all my life I will be true to him and the promise I gave him, in spite of his being untrue and betray­ing me. I will—I will become noth­ing but a means for his hap­pi­ness, or—how shall I say?—an instru­ment, a machine for his hap­pi­ness, and that for my whole life…”

Part II, Book IV, Sec­tion V

“He is a man of weak and tim­o­rous char­ac­ter; he has suf­fered so much and is very good-natured. I keep won­der­ing why he took offence so sud­denly, for I assure you, up to the last minute, he did not know that he was going to tram­ple on the notes [of money]. And I think now that there was a great deal to offend him…and it could not have been oth­er­wise in his position…To begin with, he was sore at hav­ing been so glad of the money in my pres­ence and not hav­ing con­cealed it from me. If he had been pleased, but not so much; he if had not shown it: if he had begun affect­ing scru­ples and dif­fi­cul­ties, as other peo­ple do when they take money, he might still endure to take it. But he was too gen­uinely delighted, and that was mor­ti­fy­ing. Ah, Lise, he is a good and truth­ful man—that’s the worst of the whole busi­ness. All the while he talked, his voice was so weak, so bro­ken, he talked so fast, so fast, he kept laugh­ing such a laugh, or per­haps he was crying—yes, I am sure he was cry­ing, he was so delighted—and he talked about his daughters—and about the sit­u­a­tion he could get in another town.…And when he had poured out his heart, he felt ashamed at hav­ing shown me his inmost soul like that. So he began to hate me at once. He is one of those awfully sen­si­tive poor peo­ple. What had made him feel most ashamed was that he had given in too soon and accepted me as a friend, you see. At first he almost flew at me and tried to intim­i­date me, but as soon as he saw the money he had begun embrac­ing me; he kept tuch­ing me with his hands. This must have been how he came to feel it all so humil­i­at­ing, and then I made the blun­der, a very impor­tant one. I sud­denly said to him that if he had not money enough to move to another town, we would give it to him, and indeed, I myself would give him as much as he wanted out of my own money. That struck him all at once. Why, he thought, did I put myself for­ward to help him? You know, Lise, it’s awfully hard for a man who has been injured, when other peo­ple look at him as though they were his benefactors.

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Part II, Book V, Sec­tion I

“Do you know I’ve been sit­ting here think­ing to myself: that if I didn’t believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, wre con­vinced in fact that every­thing is a dis­or­derly, damnable, and per­haps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every hor­ror of man’s disillusionment—still I should want to live and, hav­ing once tasted of the cop, I would not turn away from it till I had drained it! At thirty though, I shall be sure to leave the cup, even if I’ve not emp­tied it, and turn away—where I don’t know. But till I am thirty, I know that my youth will tri­umph over everything—every dis­il­lu­sion­ment, every dis­gust with life. I’ve asked myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that would over­come this fran­tic and per­haps unseemly thirst for life in me, and I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that there isn’t, that is till I am thirty, and then I shall lose it of myself I fancy. Some dri­v­el­ling con­sump­tive moralists—and poets especially—often call that thirst for life base. It’s a fea­ture of the Kara­ma­zovs it’s true, that thirst for life regard­less of every­thing; you have it no doubt too, but why is it base? The cen­tripetal force on our planet is still fear­fully strong, Alyosha. I have a long­ing for life, and I go on liv­ing in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the uni­verse, yet I love the sticky lit­tle leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some peo­ple, whom one loves you know some­times with­out know­ing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I’ve long ceased per­haps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one’s heart prizes them. Here they have brought the soup for you, eat it, it will do you good. It’s first-rate soup, they know how to make it here. I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall set off from here. And yet I know that I am only going to a grave­yard, but it’s a most pre­cious grave­yard, that’s what it is! Pre­cious are the dead that lie there, every stone over them speaks of such burn­ing life in the past, of such pas­sion­ate faith in their work, their truth, their strug­gle and their sci­ence, that I know I shall fall on the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them; though I’m con­vinced in my hear that it’s long been noth­ing but a grave­yard. And I shall not weep from despair, but sim­ply because I shall be happy in my tears, I shall steep my soul in my emo­tion. I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky—that’s all it is. It’s not a mat­ter of intel­lect or logic, it’s lov­ing with one’s inside, with one’s stom­ach. One loves the first strength of one’s youth.”

…“Love life more than the mean­ing of it?”

Part II, Book V, Sec­tion III

“But why, why, asks the pros­e­cu­tor, did not Smerdyakov con­fess in his last let­ter? Why did his con­science prompt him to one step and not to both? But, excuse me, con­science implies pen­i­tence, and the sui­cide may not have felt pen­i­tence, but only despair.Despair and pen­i­tence are two very dif­fer­ent things. Despair may be vin­dic­tive and irrec­on­cil­able, and the sui­cide, lay­ing his hands on him­self, may well have felt redou­bled hatred for those whom he envied all his life.

Gen­tle­men of the jury, beware of a mis­car­riage of jus­tice! What is there unlikely in all I have put before you just now?…if there is but a shade of pos­si­bil­ity, but a shade of prob­a­bil­ity in my propo­si­tions, do not con­demn him. And is there only a shade? I swear by all that is sacred, I fully believe in the expla­na­tion of the mur­der I have just put for­ward. What trou­bles me and makes me indig­nant is that of all the mass of facts heaped up by the pros­e­cu­tion against the pris­oner, there is not a sin­gle one cer­tain and irrefutable. And yet the unhappy man is to be ruined by the accu­mu­la­tion of these facts. Yes, the accu­mu­lated effort is awful: the blood, the blood drip­ping from his fin­gers, the blood-stained shirt, the dark night resound­ing with the shout ‘Par­ri­cide!’ and the old man falling with a bro­ken head. And then the mass of phrases, state­ments, ges­tures, shouts!…this has so much influ­ence, it can so bias the mind; but, gen­tle­men of the jury, can it bias your minds? Remem­ber, you have been given absolute power to bind and to loose, but the greater the power, the more ter­ri­ble its responsibility.”

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Book X. Sec­tion 12

“Gen­tle­men of the jury, peo­ple like my client, who are fierce, unruly, and uncon­trolled on the sur­face, are some­times, most fre­quently indeed, exceed­ingly tender-hearted, only they don’t express it. Don’t laugh, don’t laugh at my idea! The tal­ented pros­e­cu­tor laughed mer­ci­lessly just now at my client lov­ing Schiller—loving the sub­lime and the beau­ti­ful! I should not have laughed at that in his place. Yes, such natures—oh, let me speak in defense of such natures, so often and so cru­elly misunderstood—these natures often thirst for ten­der­ness, good­ness, and jus­tice, as it were, in con­trast to them­selves, their unruli­ness, their ferocity—they thirst for it uncon­sciously. Pas­sion­ate and fierce on the sur­face, they are painfully capa­ble of lov­ing woman, for instant, and with a spir­i­tual and ele­vated love. Again do not laugh at me, this is very often the case in such natures. But they can­not hide their passions—sometimes very coarse—and that is con­spic­u­ous and is noticed, but the inner man is unseen. Their pas­sions are quickly exhausted; but, by the side of a noble and lofty crea­ture that seem­ingly coarse and rough man seeks a new life, seeks to cor­rect him­self, to be bet­ter, to become noble and hon­ourable, ‘sub­lime and beau­ti­ful,’ how­ever much the expres­sion has been ridiculed.

Book X. Sec­tion 13

…Mitya went on, with a sud­den ring in his voice. “If they beat me on the way or out there, I won’t sub­mit to it. I shall kill some one, and shall be shot for it. And this will be going on for twenty years! They speak to me rudely as it is. I’ve been lying here all night, pass­ing judg­ment on myself. I am not ready! I am not able to resign myself. I wanted to sing a ‘hymn’; but if a guard speaks to me, I have not the strength to bear it. For Grusha I would bear anything…anything except blows…But she won’t be allowed to come there.”

Alyosha smiled gently.

“Lis­ten, brother, once for all,” he said. “This is what I think about it. And you know that I would not tell you a lie. Lis­ten: you are not ready, and such a cross is not for you. What’s more, you don’t need such a martyr’s cross when you are not ready for it. If you had mur­dered our father, it would grieve me that you should reject your pun­ish­ment. But you are inno­cent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to make your­self another man by suf­fer­ing. I say, only remem­ber that other man always, all your life and wher­ever you go; and that will be enough for you. Your refusal of that great cross will only serve to make you feel all your life an even greater duty, and that con­stant feel­ing will do more to make you a new man, per­haps, than if you went there [to a Siber­ian labor camp]. For there you would not endure it and would repine, and per­haps at last would say: ‘I am quits.’

Epi­logue, Sec­tion 2

At that instant Katya appeared in the door­way. For a moment she stood still, gaz­ing at Mitya with a dazed expres­sion. He leapt impul­sively to his feet, and a scared look came into his face. He turned pale,  but a timid, plead­ing smile appeared on his lips at once, and with an irre­sistible impulse he held out both hands to Katya. See­ing it, she flew impetu­ously to him. She seized him by the hands, and almost by force made him sit down on the bed. She sat down beside him, and still keep­ing his hands pressed them vio­lently. Sev­eral times they both strove to speak, but stopped short and again gazed speeech­less with a strange smile, their eyes fas­tened on one another. So passed two minutes.

“Have you for­given me?” Mitya fal­tered at last, and at the same moment turn­ing to Alyosha, his face work­ing with joy, he cried, “Do you hear what I am ask­ing, do you hear?”

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“That’s what I loved you for, that you are gen­er­ous at heart!” broke from Katya. “My for­give­ness is no good to you, nor yours to me; whether you for­give me or not, you will always be a sore place in my heart, and I in yours—so it must be…” She stopped to take breathe. “What have I come for?” she began again with ner­vous haste: “to embrace your feet, to press your hands like this, till it hurts—you remem­ber how in Moscow I used to squeeze them—to tell you again that you are my god, my joy, to tell you that I love you madly,” she moaned in anguish, and sud­denly pressed his hand greed­ily to her lips. Tears streamed from her eyes. Alyosha stood speech­less and con­founded; he had never expected what he was seeing.

“Love is over, Mitya!” Katya began again, “but the past is painfully dear to me. Know that will always be so. But now let what might have been come true for one minute,” she fal­tered, with a drawn smile, look­ing into his face joy­fully again. “You love another woman, and I love another man, and yet I shall love you for ever, and you will love; do you know that? Do you hear? Love me, love me all your life!” she cried, with a quiver almost of men­ace, in her voice.

…So they mur­mured to one another fran­tic words, almost mean­ing­less, per­haps not even true, but at that moment it was all true, and they both believed what they said implicitly.

Epi­logue, Sec­tion 2

They had not far to carry the cof­fin to the church, not more than three hun­dred paces. It was a still clear day, with a slight frost. The church bells were still ring­ing. Sne­giryov [the griev­ing father] ran fuss­ing and dis­tracted after the cof­fin, in his short old sum­mer over­coat, with his head bare and his soft, old, wide-brimmed hat in his hand. He seemed in a state of bewil­dered anx­i­ety. At one minute he stretched out his hand to sup­port the head of the cof­fin and only hin­dered the bear­ers, at another he ran along­side and tried to find a place for him­self there. A flower fell on the snow and he rushed to pick it up as though every­thing in the world depeneded on the loss of that flower.

“And the crust of bread, we’ve for­got­ten the crust!” he cried sud­denly in dis­may. But the boys reminded him at once that he had taken the crust of bread already and that it was in his pocket. He instantly pulled it out and was reassured.

“Illusha told me to, Illusha,” he explained at once to Alyosha. “I was sit­ting by him one night and he sud­denly told me: ‘Father, when my grave is filled up crum­ble a piece of bread on it so that the spar­rows may fly down, I shall hear and it will cheer me up not to be lying alone.”

“That’s a good thing,” said Alyosha, “we must often take some.”

“Every day, every day!” said the cap­tain quickly, seem­ing cheered at the thought.

They reached the church at last and set the cof­fin in the mid­dle of it. The boys sur­rounded it and remained rev­er­ently stand­ing so, all through the ser­vice. It was an old and rather poor church. Many of the ikons were with­out set­ting but such churches are the best for pray­ing in. Dur­ing the mass Sne­giryov became some­what calmer, though at times he had out­bursts of the same uncon­scious and, as it were, inco­her­ent anx­i­ety. At one moment he went up to the cof­fin to set straight the cover or the wreath, when a can­dle fell out of the can­dle­stick he rushed to replace it and was a fear­ful time fum­bling over it, then he sub­sided and stood qui­etly by the cof­fin with a look of blank uneasi­ness and per­plex­ity. After the Epis­tle he sud­denly whis­pered to Alyosha, who was stand­ing beside him, that the Epis­tle had not been read prop­erly but did not explain what he meant. Dur­ing the prayer, “Like the Cheru­bim,” he joined in the singing but did not go on to the end. Falling on his knees, he pressed his fore­head to the stone floor and lay so for a long while.

At last came the funeral ser­vice itself and can­dles were dis­trib­uted. The dis­tracted father began fuss­ing about again, but the touch­ing and impres­sive funeral prayers moved and roused his soul. He seemed sud­denly to strink together and broke into rapid, short sobs, which he tried at first to smother, but at last sobbed aloud.…Gradually he seemed to sink into brood­ing and did not resist when the cof­fin was lifted up and car­ried to the grave. It was an expen­sive one in the church­yard close to the church, Kate­rina Ivanovna had paid for it. After the cus­tom­ary rites the grave-diggers low­ered the cof­fin. Sne­giryov with his flow­ers in his hands bent down so low over the open grave that the boys caught hold of his coat in alarm and pulled him back. He did not seem to under­stand fully what was hap­pen­ing. When they began fill­ing up the grave, he sud­denly pointed anx­iously at the falling earth and began try­ing to say some­thing, but no one could make out what he meant, and he stopped sud­denly. Then he was reminded that he must crum­ble the bread and he was awfully excited, snatched up the bread and began pulling it to pieces and fling­ing the morsels on the grave.

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“Come, fly down, birds, fly down, spar­rows!” he mut­tered anxiously.

One of the boys observed that it was awk­ward for him to crum­ble the bread with the flow­ers in his hands and sug­gested he should give them to some one to hold for a time. But he would not do this and seemed indeed sud­denly alarmed for his flow­ers, as though they wanted to take them from him alto­gether. And after look­ing at the grave and, as it were, sat­is­fy­ing him­self that every­thing had been done and the bread had been crum­bled, he sud­denly, to the sur­prise of every one, turned, quite com­pos­edly even, and made his way home­wards. But his steps became more and more hur­ried, he almost ran. The boys and Alyosha kept up with him.

“The flow­ers are for mamma, the flow­ers are for mamma! I was unkind to mamma,” he began exclaim­ing sud­denly. [Because he had refused to let her, a degen­er­ated woman, have any when she asked for them from the hands of her dead son.]

Some one called to him to put on his hat as it was cold. But he flung the hat in the snow as though he were angry and kept repeat­ing, “I won’t have the hat, I won’t have the hat.” Smurov picked it up and car­ried it after him. All the boys were cry­ing, and Kolya and the boy who dis­cov­ered about Troy most of all. Though Smurov, with the captain’s hat in his hand, was cry­ing bit­terly too, he man­aged, as he ran, to snatch up a piece of red brick that lay on the snow of the path, to fling it at the flock of spar­rows that was fly­ing by. He missed them, of course, and went on cry­ing as he ran. Half way, Sne­giryov sud­denly stopped, stood still for half a minute, as though struck by some­thing, and sud­denly turn­ing back to the church, ran towards the deserted grave. But the boys instantly over­took him and caught hold of him on all sides. Then he fell help­less on the snow as though he had been knocked down, and strug­gling, sob­bing, and wail­ing, he began cry­ing out, “Illusha, old man, dear old man!” Alyosha and Kolya tried to make him get up, sooth­ing and per­suad­ing him.

“Cap­tain, give over, a brave man must show for­ti­tude,” mut­tered Kolya.

“You’ll spoil the flow­ers,” said Alyosha, “and mamma is expect­ing them, she is sit­ting cry­ing because you would not give her any before, Illusha’s lit­tle bed is still there…”

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“Yes, yes, mamma!” Sne­giryov sud­denly rec­ol­lected, “they’ll take away the bed, they’ll take it away,” he added as though alarmed that they really would. He jumped up and ran home­wards again. But it was not far off and they all arrived together. Sne­giryov opened the door hur­riedly and called to his wife with whome he had so cru­elly quar­relled just before:

“Mamma, poor crip­pled dar­ling, Illusha has sent you these flow­ers,” he cried, hold­ing out to her a lit­tle bunch of flow­ers that had been frozen and bro­ken while he was strug­gling in the snow. But at that instant he saw in the cor­ner, by the lit­tle bed, Illusha’s lit­tle boots, which the land­lady had put tidily side by side. See­ing the old, patched, rusty-looking, stiff boots he flung up his hands and rushed to them, fell on his knees, snatched up one boot and, press­ing his lips to it, began kiss­ing it greed­ily, crying,“Illusha, old man, dear old man, where are your lit­tle feet?”

“Where have you taken him away? Where have you taken him?” the lunatic cried in a heartrend­ing voice. Nina, too, broke into sobs. Kolya ran out of the room, the boys fol­lowed him. At last Alyosha too went out.

“Let them weep,” he said to Kolya, “it’s no use try­ing to com­fort them just now. Let us wait a minute and then go back.”

“No, it’s no use, it’s awful,” Kolya assented. “Do you know, Kara­ma­zov,” he dropped his voice so that no one could hear them, “I feel dread­fully sad, and if it were only pos­si­ble to bring him back, I’d give any­thing in the world to do it.”

“Ah, so would I,” said Alyosha.

“What do you think, Kara­ma­zov, had we bet­ter come back here tonight? He’ll be drunk, you know.”

“Per­haps he will. Let us come together, you and I, that will be enough, to spend an hour with them, with the mother and Nina. If we all come together we shall remind them of every­thing again,” Alyosha suggested.

“The land­lady is lay­ing the table for them now—there’ll be a funeral din­ner or some­thing, the priest is com­ing; shall we go back to it, Karamazov?”

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“Of course,” said Alyosha.

“It’s all so strange, Kara­ma­zov, such sor­row and then pan­cakes after it, it all seems so unnat­ural in our religion.”

“They are going to have salmon, too,” [Kar­tashov] the boy who had dis­cov­ered about Troy observed in a loud voice.

“I beg you most earnestly, Kar­tashov, not to inter­rupt again with your idi­otic remarks, espe­cially when one is not talk­ing to you and doesn’t care to know wether you exist or not!” Jolya snapped out irri­ta­bly. The boy flushed crim­son but did not dare to reply.

Mean­time they were strolling slowly along the path and sud­denly Smurov exclaimed:

“There’s Illusha’s stone, under which they wanted to bury him.”

They all stood still by the big stone. Alyosha looked and the whole pic­ture of what Sne­giryov had described to him that day, how Illusha weep­ing and hug­ging his father, had cried, “Father, father, how he insulted you,” rose at once before his imag­i­na­tion. A sud­den impulse seemed to come into his soul. With a seri­ous and earnest expres­sion he looked frm one to another of the bright, pleas­ant faces of Illusha’s school-fellows, and sud­denly said to them:

“Boys, I should like to say one word to you, here at this place.”

The boys stood round him and at once bent atten­tive and expec­tant eyes upon him.

“Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two broth­ers, of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at death’s door. But soon I shall leave this town, per­haps for a long time, so we shall part. Let us make a com­pact, here at Illusha’s stone that we will never for­get Illusha and one another. And what­ever hap­pens to us later in life, if we don’t meet for twenty years after­wards, let us always remem­ber how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remem­ber, by the bridge? and after­wards we all grew so fond of him. He was a fine boy, a kind-hearted, brave boy, he felt for his father’s hon­our and resented the cruel insult to him and stood up for him. And so in the first place, we will remem­ber him, boys, all our lives. And even if we are occu­pied with most impor­tant things, if we attain hon­our or fall into great misfortune—still let us remem­ber how good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feel­ing which made us, for the time we were lov­ing that poor boy, bet­ter per­haps than we are. My lit­tle doves—let me call you so, for you are very like them, those pretty blue birds, at this minute as I look at your good dear faces. My dear chil­dren, per­haps you won’t under­stand what I am say­ing to you, because I often speak very unin­tel­li­gi­bly, but you’ll remem­ber it all the same and will agree with my words some­time. You must know that there is noth­ing higher and stronger and more whole­some and good for life in the future than some good mem­ory, espe­cially a mem­ory of child­hood, of home. Peo­ple talk to you a great deal about your edu­ca­tion, but some good, sacred mem­ory, pre­served from child­hood, is per­haps the best edu­ca­tion. If a man car­ries many such mem­o­ries with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good mem­ory left in one’s heart, even that may some­time be the means of sav­ing us. Per­haps we may even grow wicked later on, may be unable to refrain from a bad action, may laugh at men’s tears and at those who say as Kolya did just now, ‘I want to suf­fer for all men,’ and may even jeer spite­fully at such peo­ple. But how­ever bad we become—which God forbit—yet, when we recall how we buried Illusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we have been talk­ing like friends all together, at this stone, the cru­ellest and mostk­ing of us—if we do become so—will not dare to laugh inwardly at hav­ing been kind and good at this moment! What’s more, per­haps, that one mem­ory may keep him from great evil and he will reflect and say, ‘Yes, I was good and brave and hon­est then!’ Let him laugh at him­self, that’s no mat­ter, a man often laughs at what’s good and kind. That’s only from thought­less­ness. But I assure you, boys, that as he laughs he will say at once in his heart, ‘No, I do wrong to laugh, for that’s not a thing to laugh at.’”

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.…“I say this in case we become bad,” Alyosha went on, “but there’s no rea­son why we should become bad, is there, boys? Let us be, first and above all, kind, then hon­est and then let us never for­get each other! I say that again. I give you my word for my part that I’ll never for­get one of you. Every face look­ing at me now I shall remem­ber even for thirty years. Just now Kolya said to Kar­tashov that we did not care to know whether he exists or not. But I can­not for­get that Kar­tashov exists and that he is not blush­ing now as he did when he dis­cov­ered the founders of Troy, but is look­ing at me with his jolly, kind dear lit­tle eyes. Boys, my dear boys, let us all be gen­er­ous like Illusha, clever, brave and gen­er­ous like Kolya (though he will be ever so much clev­erer when he is grown up), and let us all be as mod­est, as clever and sweet as Kar­tashov. But why am I talk­ing about those two! You are all dear to me, boys, from this day forth, I have a place in my heart for you all, and I beg you to keep a place in your hearts for me! Well, and who has united us in this kind, good feel­ing which we shall remem­ber and intend to remem­ber all our lives? Who, if not Illusha, the good boy, the dear boy, pre­cious to us for ever! Let us never for­get him. May his mem­ory live for ever in our hearts from this time forth!”

Epi­logue, Sec­tion 2

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One of my favorite short story writ­ers, Hein­rich Böll was a Ger­man writer awarded the 1972 Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture. The fol­low­ing story is from The Sto­ries of Hein­rich Böll and was trans­lated by Leila Vennewitz:

The Man With the Knives

Jupp held the knife by the tip of the blade, let­ting it jog­gle idly up and down; it was a long, taper­ing bread knife, obvi­ously razor-sharp. With a sud­den flick of the wrist he tossed the knife into the air. Up it went, whirring like a pro­peller; the shin­ing blade glit­tered like a golden fish in a sheaf of lin­ger­ing sun­beams, struck the ceil­ing, lost its spin, and plunged down straight at Jupp’s head. In a flash Jupp had placed a wooden block on his head; the knife scored into the wood and remained embed­ded there, gen­tly sway­ing. Jupp removed the block from his head, with­drew the knife, and flung it with a ges­ture of annoy­ance at the door, where it stuck, quiv­er­ing, in the frame until it grad­u­ally stopped vibrat­ing and fell to the floor….

“It makes me sick,” said Jupp qui­etly. “I’ve been work­ing on the log­i­cal assump­tion that peo­ple who’ve paid for their tick­ets really want to see a show where life and limb are at stake—like at the Roman circuses—they want to be con­vinced of at least the pos­si­bil­ity of blood­shed, know what I mean?”

He picked up the knife and tossed it neatly against the top cross­bar of the win­dow, with such force that the panes rat­tled and threat­ened to fall out of the crum­bling putty. This throw—confident and unerring—took me back to those hours of semi­dark­ness in the past when he had thrown his pock­etknife against the dugout post, from bot­tom to top and down again.

“I’ll do any­thing,” he went on, “to give the cus­tomers a thrill. I’ll even cut off my ears, only it’s hard to find any­one to stick them back on again. Here, I want to show you something.”

He opened the door for me, and we went out into the hall­way. A few shreds of wall­pa­per still clung to the walls where the glue was too stub­born for them to be ripped off and used for light­ing the stove. After pass­ing through a molder­ing bath­room, we emerged onto a kind of ter­race, its con­crete floor cracked and moss-covered.
Jupp pointed upward.

“The higher the knife goes, of course, the greater the effect. But I need some resis­tance up there for the thing to strike against and lose momen­tum so that it can come hurtling down straight at my use­less skull. Look!” He pointed up to where the iron gird­ers of a ruined bal­cony stuck out into the air.

“This is where I used to prac­tice. For a whole year. Watch!” He sent the knife soar­ing upward. It rose with mar­velous sym­me­try and even­ness, seem­ing to climb as smoothly and effort­lessly as a bird; then it struck one of the gird­ers, shot down with breath­tak­ing speed, and crashed into the wooden block. The impact itself must have been ter­rific. Jupp didn’t bat an eye­lid. The knife had buried itself a cou­ple of inches in the wood.

“But that’s fan­tas­tic!” I cried. “It’s absolutely sen­sa­tional, they’ll have to like it—what an act!” Jupp non­cha­lantly with­drew the knife from the wood, grasped it by the han­dle, and made a thrust in the air.

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“Oh, they like it all right. They pay me twelve marks a night, and between the main acts they let me play around a bit with the knife. But the act’s not elab­o­rate enough. A man, a knife, a block of wood, don’t you see? I ought to have a half-naked girl so I can send the knife spin­ning a hair’s breadth past her nose. That’d make the crowd go wild. But try and find that kind of a girl!”

He went ahead as we returned to his room. He placed the knife care­fully on the table, the wooden block beside it, and rubbed his hands. We sat down on the crate beside the stove and were silent. Tak­ing some bread out of my pocket, I said, “Be my guest.”

“Thanks, I will, but let me make some cof­fee. Then you can come along and watch my performance.”

He put some more wood in the stove and set the pot over the open­ing. “It’s infu­ri­at­ing,” he said. “Maybe I look too seri­ous, a bit like a sergeant still, eh?”

“Non­sense, you never were a sergeant. D’you smile when they clap?”

“Of course—and bow too.”

“I couldn’t. I couldn’t smile in a cemetery.”

“That’s a great mis­take: a cemetery’s the very place to smile.”

“I don’t get it.”   “Because they aren’t dead. They’re none of them dead, see?”

“I see, all right, but I don’t believe it.”

“There’s still  a bit of the lieu­tenant about you after all. Well, in that case it just takes longer, of course. The point is, I’m only too glad if they enjoy it. They’re burned out inside; I give them a bit of a thrill and get paid for it. Per­haps one of them, just one, will go home and not for­get me. ‘That man with the knife, for Christ’s sake,’ maybe that’s what he’ll say because they’re all scared, all the time. They trail their fear behind them like a heavy shadow, and it makes me happy if they can for­get abut it and laugh a lit­tle. Isn’t that rea­son enough to smile?”

I said noth­ing, my eyes on the water, wait­ing for it to boil. Jupp poured the boil­ing water onto the cof­fee in the brown enamel pot, and we took turns drink­ing from the pot and shared my bread. Out­side, the mild dusk began to fall, flow­ing into the room like soft gray milk.

“What are you doing these days, by the way?” asked Jupp.

“Nothing…just get­ting by.”

“A hard way to make a living.”

“Right—for this loaf of bread I had to col­lect a hun­dred bricks and clean them. Casual labor.”

“Hm…Want to see another of my tricks?”

In response to my nod he stood up, switched on the light, and went over to the wall, where he pushed aside a kind of rug, dis­clos­ing the rough out­line of a man drawn in char­coal on the red­dish color-wash: a strange lump pro­truded from what was sup­posed to be the head, prob­a­bly sig­ni­fy­ing a hat. On closer inspec­tion I saw that the man had been drawn on a skill­fully cam­ou­flaged door. I watched expec­tantly as Jupp pro­ceeded to pull out a hand­some lit­tle brown leather suit­case from under the mis­er­able affair that served as his bed and put it on the table. Before open­ing it, he came over and placed four cig­a­rette butts in front of me. “Roll those into two thin ones,” he said.

I moved my seat so that I could watch him as well as get a bit more of the gen­tle warmth from the stove. While I was care­fully pulling the butts apart on the bread paper spread over my knees, Jupp had snapped open the lock of the suit­case and pulled out an odd-looking object: one of those flan­nel bags con­sist­ing of a series of pock­ets in which our moth­ers used to keep their table sil­ver. He deftly untied the rib­bon and let the bun­dle unroll across the table to reveal a dozen wood-handled knives, the kind that, in the days when our moth­ers danced the waltz, were known as “hunt­ing cutlery.”   I divided the tobacco shreds scrupu­lously in half onto the two cig­a­rette papers and rolled them. “Here,” I said.

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“Here,” Jupp said too, and “Thanks,” bring­ing over the flan­nel bag for me to look at.

“This is all I man­aged to sal­vage from my parent’s belong­ings. Almost every­thing was burned or lost in the rub­ble, and the rest stolen. When I got back from POW camp I was really on my beam ends, didn’t own a thing in the world—until one day a dig­ni­fied old lady, a friend of my mother’s, tracked me down and brought along this nice suit­case. A few days before my mother was killed in an air raid she had left it with the old lady to be looked after, and it had sur­vived. Funny, isn’t it? But of course we know that when peo­ple panic they try to save the strangest things. Never the essen­tial ones. So then at least I was the owner of the con­tents of this suit­case: the brown enamel pot, twelve forks, twelve knifes and twelve spoons, and the long bread knife. I sold the spoons and forks, liv­ing off the pro­ceeds for a year, and prac­ticed with the knifes, thir­teen of them. Watch….”

I passed him the spill I had used to light my cig­a­rette. Jupp stuck his cig­a­rette to his lower lip, fas­tened the rib­bon of the flan­nel bag to a but­ton on the shoul­der of his jacket, and let the flan­nel unroll along his arm like some exotic panoply of war. Then with incred­i­ble speed he whisked the knives out of their pock­ets, and before I could fol­low his move­ments he had thrown all twelve like light­ning against the dim human out­line, which reminded me of those sin­is­ter, sham­bling fig­ures that came lurch­ing at us toward the end of the war from every bill­board, every cor­ner, har­bin­gers of defeat and destruc­tion. Two knives were stick­ing out of the man’s hat, two over each shoul­der, and the oth­ers, three a side, along the dan­gling arms….

“Fan­tas­tic!” I cried. “Fan­tas­tic! But you’ve got your act right there, with a bit of dramatizing.”

“All I need is a man, bet­ter still a girl. But I know I’ll never find any­one,” he said with a sigh, pluck­ing the knives out of the door and slip­ping them care­fully back into their pock­ets. “The girls are too scared and the men want too much money. Can’t blame them, of course; it’s a risky business.”

Once again he flung the knives back at the door in such a way as to split the entire black fig­ure accu­rately down the mid­dle with daz­zling sym­me­try. The thir­teenth knife, the big one, stuck like a deadly arrow just where the man’s heart should have been.
Jupp took a final puff of the thin, tobacco-filled roll of paper and threw the scant remains behind the stove.

“Let’s go,” he said, “it’s time we were off.” He stuck his head out the win­dow, mut­tered some­thing about “damned rain,” and added: “It’s a few min­utes to eight, I’m on at eight-thirty.”   While he was pack­ing the knives away in the suit­case I stood with my face by the open win­dow. Decay­ing vil­las seemed to be whim­per­ing softly in the rain, and from behind a wall of sway­ing poplars came the screech of the street­car. But nowhere could I see a clock.

“How d’you know what time it is?”

“Instinct—that’s part of my training.”

I gaped at him. First he helped me on with my coat and then put on his wind­breaker. My shoul­der is slightly par­a­lyzed and I can’t move my arms beyond a cer­tain radius, just far enough to clean bricks. We put on our caps and went out into the dingy cor­ri­dor, and I was glad to hear at least some voices in the house, laugh­ter, and a sub­dued murmuring.

“It’s like this,” said Jupp as we went down the stairs. “What I’ve tried to do is trace cer­tain cos­mic laws. Watch.” He put the suit­case down on a stair and spread his arms, an Icarus poised for flight in the way the ancient Greeks used to show him. His matter-of-fact expres­sion assumed a strangely cool and dream­like qual­ity, some­thing between obses­sion and detach­ment, some­thing mag­i­cal, that I found quite spine-chilling. “Like this,” he said softly. “I sim­ply reach out into the atmos­phere, I feel my hands get­ting longer and longer, reach­ing out into a dimen­sion gov­erned by dif­fer­ent laws, snatch them away, part thief, part lover, and carry them off.” He clenched his fists, draw­ing them close to his body. “Let’s go,” he said, and his expres­sion was its usual matter-of-fact self. I fol­lowed him in a daze…

Out­side, a chill rain was falling softly and steadily. We turned up our col­lars and with­drew shiv­er­ing into our­selves. The mist of twi­light was surg­ing through the streets, already tinged with the bluish dark­ness of night. In sev­eral base­ments among the bombed-out vil­las a mea­ger light was burn­ing under the tow­er­ing black weight of a great ruin. The street grad­u­ally became a muddy path where to left and right, in the opaque twi­light, shacks loomed up in the scrawny gar­dens like junks afloat in a shal­low back­wa­ter. We crossed the street­car tracks, plunged into the maze of nar­row streets on the city’s out­skirts, where among piles of rub­ble and garbage a few houses still stand intact in the dirt, until we emerged sud­denly into a busy street. The tide of the crowds car­ried us along for a bit, until we turned a cor­ner into a dark side street where a gar­ish illu­mi­nated sign say­ing “The Seven Mills” was reflected in the glis­ten­ing asphalt.

The foyer of the vaude­ville the­ater was empty. The per­for­mance had already begun, and the buzzing of the audi­ence pen­e­trated the shabby red drapes. With a laugh Jupp pointed to a pho­to­graph in a dis­play case, where he was shown in cow­boy cos­tume between two coyly smil­ing dancers whose breasts were hung with sparkling tin­sel. Beneath was the cap­tion: “The Man with the Knives.”
“Come on,” said Jupp, and before I grasped what was hap­pen­ing I found myself being dragged through a half-hidden door. We climbed a poorly lit stair­case, nar­row and wind­ing, the smell of sweat and grease­paint indi­cat­ing the near­ness of the stage. Jupp was ahead—suddenly he halted in a turn of the stairs, put down the suit­case, and, grip­ping me by the shoul­ders, asked in a hushed voice, “Are you game?”

I had been expect­ing this ques­tion for so long that when it came its sud­den­ness star­tled me. I must have looked non­plussed, for after a pause he said, “Well?”

I still hes­i­tated, and sud­denly we heard a great roar of laugh­ter that seemed to come pour­ing out of the nar­row pas­sage and engulf us like a tidal wave; it was so over­whelm­ing that I jumped and invol­un­tar­ily shuddered.

“I’m scared,” I whispered.

“So am I. Don’t you trust me?”

“Sure I do…but…let’s go,” I said hoarsely, push­ing past him and adding, with the courage born of despair, “I’ve noth­ing to lose.”

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We emerged onto a nar­row cor­ri­dor with a num­ber of rough ply­wood cubi­cles right and left. A few oddly garbed fig­ures were scur­ry­ing about, and through an open­ing in the flimsy wings I could see a clown on the stage, his enor­mous mouth wide open; once again the roar of the crowd’s laugh­ter engulfed us, but Jupp pulled me through a door and shut it behind us. I looked around. The cubi­cle was tiny, prac­ti­cally bare. On the wall was a mir­ror, Jupp’s cow­boy cos­tume hung on the sin­gle nail, and on a rick­ety chair lay an old deck of cards. Jupp moved with ner­vous haste; he took my wet coat from me, flung the cow­boy suit onto the chair, hung up my coat, then his wind­breaker. Over the top of the par­ti­tion I could see an elec­tric clock on a fake red Doric col­umn, show­ing twenty-five after eight.

“Five min­utes,” mut­tered Jupp, slip­ping into his cos­tume. “Shall we rehearse it?”

Just then some­one knocked on the cubi­cle door and called, “You’re on!”

Jupp but­toned up his shirt and stuck a ten-gallon hat on his head. With a forced laugh I cried, “D’you expect a con­demned man to rehearse his own hanging?”   Jupp snatched up the suit­case and dragged me through the door. Out­side stood a bald-headed man watch­ing the clown going through his final motions on the stage. Jupp whis­pered some­thing to the man that I didn’t catch, the man glanced up with a start, looked at me, looked at Jupp, and shook his head vehe­mently. And again Jupp whis­pered some­thing to him.

I couldn’t have cared less. Let them impale me alive. I had a crip­pled shoul­der, I had just fin­ished a thin cig­a­rette, tomor­row I would get three-quarters of a loaf for seventy-five bricks. But tomorrow….The applause almost blew down the wings. The clown, his face tired and con­torted, stag­gered toward us through the open­ing in the wings, stood there for a few sec­onds look­ing morose, and then went back onto the stage, where he smiled gra­ciously and bowed. The orches­tra played a fan­fare. Jupp was still whis­per­ing to the bald-headed man. Three times the clown came back into the wings and three times he went out onto the stage and bowed, smiling.

Then the orches­tra struck up a march and, suit­case in hand, Jupp strode smartly out onto the stage. His appear­ance was greeted with sub­dued clap­ping. Weary-eyed I watched Jupp fas­ten the play­ing cards onto nails that were already in place and then impale each card with a knife, one by one, pre­cisely in the cen­ter. The applause became more ani­mated, but not enthu­si­as­tic. Then, to a muf­fled roll of drums, he per­formed his trick with the bread knife and the block of wood, and under­neath all my indif­fer­ence I was aware that the act really was a bit thin. Across from me, on the other side of the stage, a few scant­ily dressed girls stood watching….And sud­denly the bald-headed man seized me by the shoul­der, dragged me onto the stage, greeted Jupp with a grandiose sweep of the arm and, in the spu­ri­ous voice of a police­man, said, “Good evening, Herr Borgalevsky.”

“Good evening, Herr Erd­menger,” replied Jupp, like­wise in cer­e­mo­ni­ous tones.

“I’ve brought you a horsethief, a proper scoundrel, Herr Bor­galevsky, for you to tickle a bit with your shiny knives before we hang him…a real scoundrel…” I found his voice totally ridicu­lous, pathet­i­cally arti­fi­cial, like paper flow­ers or the cheap­est kind of grease­paint. I glanced at the audi­ence, and fro that moment on, faced by that glim­mer­ing, slaver­ing, hydra-headed mon­ster crouch­ing there in the dark ready to spring, I sim­ply switched off.

I didn’t give a damn, I was daz­zled by the glare of the spot­light, and in my thread­bare suit and shabby shoes I prob­a­bly made a pretty con­vinc­ing horsethief.

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“Oh, leave him here with me, Herr Erd­menger. I know how to deal with him.”

“Splen­did, let him have it, and don’t spare the knives.”

Jupp took hold of me by the col­lar while the grin­ning Erd­menger swag­gered off the stage. Some­one threw a rope onto the stage, and Jupp pro­ceeded to tie me by the feet to a card­board col­umn that had a fake door, painted blue, propped up behind it. I was aware of some­thing like an ecstasy of insen­si­bil­ity. To my right I heard the eerie stir­ring of the tense audi­ence, and I real­ized Jupp had been right in speak­ing of its blood­lust. Its thirst quiv­ered on the sickly, stale air, and the orches­tra, with its facile drum roll, its muf­fled las­civ­i­ous­ness, height­ened the effect of grisly tragi-comedy in which real blood would flow, stage blood that had been paid for….I stared straight ahead, let­ting my body sag, the rope being so firmly tied that it held me upright. The drum roll became softer and softer as Jupp calmly pulled his knives out of the play­ing cards and slipped them back into their pock­ets, from time to time cast­ing melo­dra­matic glances my way as if to size me up. Then, hav­ing packed away all his knives, he turned to the audi­ence and in the same odi­ously stagy voice announced, “Ladies and gen­tle­men, I am now about to out­line this young man with knives, but I wish to demon­strate to you that I do not throw blunt knives.” He pro­duced a piece of string, and with per­fect sangfroid removed one knife after another fro its pocket, touched the string with each, cut­ting it into twelve pieces, and then replaced the knives one by one in their pockets.

While all this was going on I looked far beyond him, far beyond the wings, far beyond the half-naked girls, into another life, it seemed….

The ten­sion in the audi­ence was elec­tri­fy­ing. Jupp came over to me, pre­tended to adjust the rope, and said softly into my ear, “Don’t move a mus­cle, and trust me….”

This added delay nearly broke the ten­sion, it was threat­en­ing to peter out, but he sud­denly stretched out his arms, let­ting his hands flut­ter like hov­er­ing birds, and his face assumed that look of mag­i­cal con­cen­tra­tion that I had mar­veled at on the stairs. He appeared to be cast­ing a spell over the audi­ence too with this sorcerer’s pose. I seemed to hear a strange, unearthly groan and real­ized that this was a warn­ing sig­nal for me.

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With­draw­ing my gaze from lim­it­less hori­zons, I looked at Jupp, now stand­ing oppo­site me so that our eyes were on a level; he raised his hand, mov­ing it slowly toward a pocket, and again I real­ized that this was a sig­nal for me. I stood com­pletely still and closed my eyes….

It was a glo­ri­ous feel­ing, last­ing maybe two sec­onds, I’m not sure.

Lis­ten­ing to the swish of the knives and the short sharp hiss of air as they plunged into the fake blue door, I felt as if I were walk­ing along a very nar­row plank over a bot­tom­less abyss. I walked with per­fect con­fi­dence, yet felt all the thrill of dan­ger. I was afraid, yet absolutely cer­tain that I would not fall; I was not count­ing, yet I opened my eyes at the very moment when the last knife pierced the door beside my right hand….

A storm of applause jerked me bolt upright. I opened my eyes prop­erly to find myself look­ing into Jupp’s white face: he had rushed over to me and was unty­ing the rope with trem­bling hands. Then he pulled me into the cen­ter of the stage, right up to the very edge. He bowed, and I bowed; as the applause swelled he pointed to me and I to him; then he smiled at me, I smiled at him, and we both bowed smil­ing to the audience.

Back in the cubi­cle, not a word was said. Jupp threw the per­fo­rated play­ing cards onto the chair, took my coat off the nail and helped me on with it. Then he hung his cow­boy cos­tume back on the nail, pulled on his wind­breaker, and we put on our caps. As I opened the door the lit­tle bald-headed man rushed up to us shout­ing, “I’m rais­ing you to forty marks!” He handed Jupp some cash. I real­ized then that Jupp was my boss, and I smiled; he looked at me too and smiled.

Jupp took my arm, and side by side we walked down the nar­row, poorly lit stairs that smelled of stale grease­paint. When we reached the foyer Jupp said with a laugh, “Now let’s go and buy some cig­a­rettes and bread….”

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But it was not till an hour later that I real­ized I now had a proper pro­fes­sion, a pro­fes­sion where all I needed to do was stand still and dream a lit­tle. For twelve or twenty sec­onds. I was the man who has knives thrown at him.…

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This short story is by Haruki Murakami. I copied it from this web­site.

On See­ing the 100% Per­fect Girl One Beau­ti­ful April Morning.

One beau­ti­ful April morn­ing, on a nar­row side street in Tokyo’s fash­ion­able Haru­juku neigh­bor­hood, I walked past the 100% per­fect girl.

Tell you the truth, she’s not that good-looking. She doesn’t stand out in any way. Her clothes are noth­ing spe­cial. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn’t young, either — must be near thirty, not even close to a “girl,” prop­erly speak­ing. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She’s the 100% per­fect girl for me. The moment I see her, there’s a rum­bling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert.

Maybe you have your own par­tic­u­lar favorite type of girl — one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or grace­ful fin­gers, or you’re drawn for no good rea­son to girls who take their time with every meal. I have my own pref­er­ences, of course. Some­times in a restau­rant I’ll catch myself star­ing at the girl at the next table to mine because I like the shape of her nose.

But no one can insist that his 100% per­fect girl cor­re­spond to some pre­con­ceived type. Much as I like noses, I can’t recall the shape of hers — or even if she had one. All I can remem­ber for sure is that she was no great beauty. It’s weird.

“Yes­ter­day on the street I passed the 100% girl,” I tell someone.

“Yeah?” he says. “Good-looking?”

“Not really.”

“Your favorite type, then?”

“I don’t know. I can’t seem to remem­ber any­thing about her — the shape of her eyes or the size of her breasts.”

“Strange.”

“Yeah. Strange.”

“So any­how,” he says, already bored, “what did you do? Talk to her? Fol­low her?”

“Nah. Just passed her on the street.”

She’s walk­ing east to west, and I west to east. It’s a really nice April morning.

Wish I could talk to her. Half an hour would be plenty: just ask her about her­self, tell her about myself, and — what I’d really like to do — explain to her the com­plex­i­ties of fate that have led to our pass­ing each other on a side street in Hara­juku on a beau­ti­ful April morn­ing in 1981. This was some­thing sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock build when peace filled the world.

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After talk­ing, we’d have lunch some­where, maybe see a Woody Allen movie, stop by a hotel bar for cock­tails. With any kind of luck, we might end up in bed.

Poten­tial­ity knocks on the door of my heart.

Now the dis­tance between us has nar­rowed to fif­teen yards.

How can I approach her? What should I say?

“Good morn­ing, miss. Do you think you could spare half an hour for a lit­tle conversation?”

Ridicu­lous. I’d sound like an insur­ance salesman.

“Par­don me, but would you hap­pen to know if there is an all-night clean­ers in the neighborhood?”

No, this is just as ridicu­lous. I’m not car­ry­ing any laun­dry, for one thing. Who’s going to buy a line like that?

Maybe the sim­ple truth would do. “Good morn­ing. You are the 100% per­fect girl for me.”

No, she wouldn’t believe it. Or even if she did, she might not want to talk to me. Sorry, she could say, I might be the 100% per­fect girl for you, but you’re not the 100% boy for me. It could hap­pen. And if I found myself in that sit­u­a­tion, I’d prob­a­bly go to pieces. I’d never recover from the shock. I’m thirty-two, and that’s what grow­ing older is all about.

We pass in front of a flower shop. A small, warm air mass touches my skin. The asphalt is damp, and I catch the scent of roses. I can’t bring myself to speak to her. She wears a white sweater, and in her right hand she holds a crisp white enve­lope lack­ing only a stamp. So: She’s writ­ten some­body a let­ter, maybe spent the whole night writ­ing, to judge from the sleepy look in her eyes. The enve­lope could con­tain every secret she’s ever had.

I take a few more strides and turn: She’s lost in the crowd.

Now, of course, I know exactly what I should have said to her. It would have been a long speech, though, far too long for me to have deliv­ered it prop­erly. The ideas I come up with are never very practical.

Oh, well. It would have started “Once upon a time” and ended “A sad story, don’t you think?”

Once upon a time, there lived a boy and a girl. The boy was eigh­teen and the girl six­teen. He was not unusu­ally hand­some, and she was not espe­cially beau­ti­ful. They were just an ordi­nary lonely boy and an ordi­nary lonely girl, like all the oth­ers. But they believed with their whole hearts that some­where in the world there lived the 100% per­fect boy and the 100% per­fect girl for them. Yes, they believed in a mir­a­cle. And that mir­a­cle actu­ally happened.

One day the two came upon each other on the cor­ner of a street.

“This is amaz­ing,” he said. “I’ve been look­ing for you all my life. You may not believe this, but you’re the 100% per­fect girl for me.”

“And you,” she said to him, “are the 100% per­fect boy for me, exactly as I’d pic­tured you in every detail. It’s like a dream.”

They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their sto­ries hour after hour. They were not lonely any­more. They had found and been found by their 100% per­fect other. What a won­der­ful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% per­fect other. It’s a mir­a­cle, a cos­mic miracle.

As they sat and talked, how­ever, a tiny, tiny sliver of doubt took root in their hearts: Was it really all right for one’s dreams to come true so easily?

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And so, when there came a momen­tary lull in their con­ver­sa­tion, the boy said to the girl, “Let’s test our­selves — just once. If we really are each other’s 100% per­fect lovers, then some­time, some­where, we will meet again with­out fail. And when that hap­pens, and we know that we are the 100% per­fect ones, we’ll marry then and there. What do you think?”

“Yes,” she said, “that is exactly what we should do.”

And so they parted, she to the east, and he to the west.

The test they had agreed upon, how­ever, was utterly unnec­es­sary. They should never have under­taken it, because they really and truly were each other’s 100% per­fect lovers, and it was a mir­a­cle that they had ever met. But it was impos­si­ble for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indif­fer­ent waves of fate pro­ceeded to toss them unmercifully.

One win­ter, both the boy and the girl came down with the season’s ter­ri­ble inluenza, and after drift­ing for weeks between life and death they lost all mem­ory of their ear­lier years. When they awoke, their heads were as empty as the young D. H. Lawrence’s piggy bank.

They were two bright, deter­mined young peo­ple, how­ever, and through their unremit­ting efforts they were able to acquire once again the knowl­edge and feel­ing that qual­i­fied them to return as full-fledged mem­bers of soci­ety. Heaven be praised, they became truly upstand­ing cit­i­zens who knew how to trans­fer from one sub­way line to another, who were fully capa­ble of send­ing a special-delivery let­ter at the post office. Indeed, they even expe­ri­enced love again, some­times as much as 75% or even 85% love.

Time passed with shock­ing swift­ness, and soon the boy was thirty-two, the girl thirty.

One beau­ti­ful April morn­ing, in search of a cup of cof­fee to start the day, the boy was walk­ing from west to east, while the girl, intend­ing to send a special-delivery let­ter, was walk­ing from east to west, but along the same nar­row street in the Hara­juku neigh­bor­hood of Tokyo. They passed each other in the very cen­ter of the street. The faintest gleam of their lost mem­o­ries glim­mered for the briefest moment in their hearts. Each felt a rum­bling in their chest. And they knew:

She is the 100% per­fect girl for me.

He is the 100% per­fect boy for me.

But the glow of their mem­o­ries was far too weak, and their thoughts no longer had the clar­ity of four­teen years ear­lier. With­out a word, they passed each other, dis­ap­pear­ing into the crowd. Forever.

A sad story, don’t you think?

Yes, that’s it, that is what I should have said to her.

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