What foolery is this?
You might just look at me..."
Alyosha raised his head, sat up and leaned his back against the tree.
He was not crying, but there was a look of suffering and irritability in his face.
He did not look at Rakitin, however, but looked away to one side of him.
"Do you know your face is quite changed?
There's none of your famous mildness to be seen in it.
Are you angry with someone?
Have they been ill-treating you?"
"Let me alone," said Alyosha suddenly, with a weary gesture of his hand, still looking away from him.
"Oho! So that's how we are feeling!
So you can shout at people like other mortals.
That is a come-down from the angels.
I say, Alyosha, you have surprised me, do you hear? I mean it.
It's long since I've been surprised at anything here.
I always took you for an educated man.
Alyosha at last looked at him, but vaguely, as though scarcely understanding what he said.
"Can you really be so upset simply because your old man has begun to stink?
You don't mean to say you seriously believed that he was going to work miracles?" exclaimed Rakitin, genuinely surprised again.
"I believed, I believe, I want to believe, and I will believe, what more do you want?" cried Alyosha irritably.
"Nothing at all, my boy.
Damn it all! why, no schoolboy of thirteen believes in that now.
But there... So now you are in a temper with your God, you are rebelling against Him; He hasn't given promotion, He hasn't bestowed the order of merit!
Eh, you are a set!"
Alyosha gazed a long while with his eyes half closed at Rakitin, and there was a sudden gleam in his eyes... but not of anger with Rakitin.
"I am not rebelling against my God; I simply 'don't accept His world.'" Alyosha suddenly smiled a forced smile.
"How do you mean, you don't accept the world?" Rakitin thought a moment over his answer. "What idiocy is this?"
Alyosha did not answer.
"Come, enough nonsense, now to business. Have you had anything to eat to-day?"
"I don't remember.... I think I have."
"You need keeping up, to judge by your face.
It makes one sorry to look at you.
You didn't sleep all night either, I hear; you had a meeting in there.
And then all this bobbery afterwards. Most likely you've had nothing to eat but a mouthful of holy bread.
I've got some sausage in my pocket; I've brought it from the town in case of need, only you won't eat sausage...."
"Give me some."
"I say!
You are going it!
Why, it's a regular mutiny, with barricades!
Well, my boy, we must make the most of it.
Come to my place... shouldn't mind a drop of vodka myself, I am tired to death.
Vodka is going too far for you, I suppose... or would you like some?"
"Give me some vodka too."
"Hullo!
You surprise me, brother!" Rakitin looked at him in amazement. "Well, one way or another, vodka or sausage, this is a jolly fine chance and mustn't be missed. Come along."
Alyosha got up in silence and followed Rakitin.
"If your little brother Ivan could see this wouldn't he be surprised!
By the way, your brother Ivan set off to Moscow this morning, did you know?"
"Yes," answered Alyosha listlessly, and suddenly the image of his brother Dmitri rose before his mind. But only for a minute, and though it reminded him of something that must not be put off for a moment, some duty, some terrible obligation, even that reminder made no impression on him, did not reach his heart and instantly faded out of his mind and was forgotten.
But, a long while afterwards, Alyosha remembered this.