1 The Brothers Karamazov
parts even there. I am told there are still Redskins there,
somewhere, on the edge of the horizon. So to the country of
the Last of the Mohicans, and there we’ll tackle the gram-
mar at once, Grusha and I. Work and grammar — that’s
how we’ll spend three years. And by that time we shall
speak English like any Englishman. And as soon as we’ve
learnt it — good-bye to America! We’ll run here to Rus-
sia as American citizens. Don’t be uneasy — we would not
come to this little town. We’d hide somewhere, a long way
off, in the north or in the south. I shall be changed by that
time, and she will, too, in America. The doctors shall make
me some sort of wart on my face — what’s the use of their
being so mechanical! — or else I’ll put out one eye, let my
beard grow a yard, and I shall turn grey, fretting for Russia.
I dare say they won’t recognise us. And if they do, let them
send us to Siberia — I don’t care. It will show it’s our fate.
We’ll work on the land here, too, somewhere in the wilds,
and I’ll make up as an American all my life. But we shall
die on our own soil. That’s my plan, and it shan’t be altered.
Do you approve?’
‘Yes,’ said Alyosha, not wanting to contradict him. Mitya
paused for a minute and said suddenly:
‘And how they worked it up at the trial! Didn’t they work
it up!’
‘If they had not, you would have been convicted just the
same,’ said Alyosha, with a sigh.
‘Yes, people are sick of me here! God bless them, but it’s
hard,’ Mitya moaned miserably. Again there was silence for
a minute.