“Mama, cross him, bless him, kiss him,” Ninochka cried to her. But she kept wagging her head like an automaton, and then, silently, her face twisted with burning grief, she suddenly began beating her breast with her fist. They moved on with the coffin. Ninochka pressed her lips to her dead brother’s mouth for the last time as they carried it past her. Alyosha turned to the landlady as he was leaving the house and tried to ask her to look after those who were staying behind, but she would not even let him finish:
“I know, I know, I’ll stay with them, we’re Christians, too.” The old woman wept as she said it.
It was not a far carry to the church, no more than about three hundred paces. The day had become clear, calm; it was frosty, but not very. The church bells were still ringing. Snegiryov, fussing and bewildered, ran after the coffin in his old, short, almost summer coat, bare-headed, with his old wide-brimmed felt hat in his hand. He was in some sort of insoluble anxiety, now reaching out suddenly to support the head of the coffin, which only interfered with the bearers, then running alongside to see if he could find a place for himself. A flower fell on the snow, and he simply rushed to pick it up, as if God knows what might come from the loss of this flower.
“The crust, we forgot the crust of bread,” he exclaimed suddenly, terribly alarmed. But the boys reminded him at once that he had taken the crust earlier, and that it was in his pocket. He at once snatched it out of his pocket and, having made sure, calmed down.
“Ilyushechka told me, Ilyushechka,” he exclaimed at once to Alyosha, “he was lying there one night, and I was sitting by him, and he suddenly told me: ‘Papa, when they put the dirt on my grave, crumble a crust of bread on it so the sparrows will come, and I’ll hear that they’ve come and be glad that I’m not lying alone.’”
“That’s a very good thing,” said Alyosha, “you must do it more often.”
“Every day, every day!” the captain babbled, brightening all over, as it were.
At last they arrived at the church and set the coffin down in the middle of it. The boys all placed themselves around it and stood solemnly like that through the whole service. It was a very old church and rather poor, many of the icons were without settings, but one somehow prays better in such churches. During the liturgy Snegiryov seemed to calm down somewhat, though at times the same unconscious and, as it were, bewildered anxiety would break out in him: he would go up to the coffin to straighten the covering or the fillet, [362]and when a candle fell from the candle stand, he suddenly rushed to put it back and spent a terribly long time fussing with it. Then he calmed down again and stood quietly at the head of the coffin looking dumbly anxious and, as it were, perplexed. After the Epistle he suddenly whispered to Alyosha, who was standing beside him, that the reading had not been done right,but he did not explain what he meant. During the Cherubic Hymn he began to sing along, but stopped before the end and, kneeling down, touched his forehead to the stone floor of the church and remained lying like that for quite a long time. At last they began the funeral service; candles were distributed. The demented father began fussing about again, but the deeply moving, tremendous singing over the coffin awakened and shook his soul. He suddenly somehow shrank into himself and began weeping in quick, short sobs, stifling his voice at first, but towards the end sobbing loudly. When it came time to take leave of the dead and cover the coffin, he threw his arms around it as if to keep them from covering Ilyushechka, and began quickly, greedily, repeatedly kissing his dead boy on the mouth. They finally talked with him and were about to lead him down the steps when he suddenly reached out swiftly and snatched several flowers from the coffin. He looked at them and it was as if some new idea dawned on him, so that he seemed to forget the main thing for a moment. Gradually he fell into reverie, as it were, and did not resist when they lifted the coffin and carried it to the grave. It was just outside, in the churchyard, right next to the church, an expensive one; Katerina Ivanovna had paid for it. After the usual ritual, the gravediggers lowered the coffin. Snegiryov, with his flowers in his hand, leaned so far over the open grave that the boys caught hold of his coat in alarm and began pulling him back. But he no longer seemed to understand very well what was happening. When they began filling in the grave, he suddenly began pointing anxiously at the falling earth and even tried to say something, but no one could make it out, and he suddenly fell silent himself. Then he was reminded that he had to crumble the crust of bread, and he became terribly excited, pulled out the crust, and began crumbling it, scattering the pieces over the grave: “Fly down, birds, fly down, little sparrows!” he muttered anxiously. One of the boys tried to suggest to him that it must be awkward to crumble the bread with flowers in his hand, and that he should let someone else hold them for a time. But he would not give them up, even suddenly became afraid for his flowers, as if they wanted to take them from him altogether, and, after looking at the grave, as if making sure that everything had now been done and the crust had been crumbled, he suddenly, unexpectedly, and even quite calmly, turned and slowly walked home. Soon, however, his pace quickened, he was hurrying, almost running. The boys and Alyosha did not lag behind.
“Flowers for mama, flowers for mama! Mama has been hurt!” he suddenly started exclaiming. Someone shouted to him to put his hat on because it was cold, but hearing that, he flung his hat on the snow as if in anger and began repeating: “I don’t want any hat, I don’t want any hat!” The boy Smurov picked it up and carried it after him. All the boys were crying, Kolya and the boy who discovered Troy most of all, and though Smurov, with the captain’s hat in his hand, was also crying terribly, he still managed, while almost running, to snatch up a piece of brick lying red on the snow-covered path and fling it at a flock of sparrows flying quickly by. He missed, of course, and went on running, crying. Halfway home, Snegiryov suddenly stopped, stood for half a minute as if struck by something, and suddenly, turning back to the church, started running towards the abandoned little grave. But the boys immediately caught up with him and seized him from all sides. Then, as if strengthless, as if he had been struck down, he fell on the snow, struggling, screaming, sobbing, and began crying out: “Ilyushechka, dear fellow, dear old fellow!” Alyosha and Kolya set about lifting him up, pleading with him, persuading him.
“Enough, captain, a brave man must endure,” Kolya mumbled.
“And you’ll ruin the flowers,” Alyosha added, “and ‘mama’ is waiting for them, she’s sitting there crying because you didn’t give her any flowers from Ilyushechka this morning. Ilyusha’s bed is still there...”
“Yes, yes, to mama!” Snegiryov suddenly remembered again. “They’ll put thebed away, they’ll put it away!” he added, as if fearing that they might indeed put it away, and he jumped up and ran for home again. But it was not far now, and they all came running up together. Snegiryov threw the door open and shouted to his wife, with whom he had quarreled so hardheartedly that morning.
“Mama, dear, Ilyushechka has sent you flowers, oh, poor crippled feet!” he cried, handing her the little bunch of flowers, frozen and broken from when he had just been struggling in the snow. But at that same moment he noticed Ilyusha’s little boots standing side by side in the corner, in front of Ilyusha’s bed, where the landlady had just neatly put them—old, stiff, scuffed, and patched little boots. Seeing them, he threw up his hands and simply rushed to them, fell on his knees, snatched up one boot, and, pressing his lips to it, began greedily kissing it, crying out: “Ilyushechka, dear fellow, dear old fellow, where are your little feet?”
“Where did you take him? Where did you take him?” the mad woman screamed in a rending voice. And then Ninochka also started sobbing. Kolya ran out of the room, the boys started going out after him. Finally Alyosha also went out after them. “Let them cry it through,” he said to Kolya, “of course there’s no use trying to comfort them now. Let’s wait a minute and then go back.”
“No, there’s no use, it’s terrible,” Kolya agreed. “You know, Karamazov,” he suddenly lowered his voice so that no one could hear, “I feel very sad, and if only it were possible to resurrect him, I’d give everything in the world!”
“Ah, so would I,” said Alyosha.
“What do you think, Karamazov, should we come here tonight? He’s sure to get drunk.”
“Yes, he may get drunk. Just you and I will come, and that will be enough, to sit with them for an hour, with his mother and Ninochka; if we all come at once, we’ll remind them of everything again,” Alyosha advised.