The Brothers Karamazov
‘I won’t go away, I won’t go away,’ Kolya said hastily to
Ilusha. ‘I’ll wait in the passage and come back when the
doctor’s gone, I’ll come back with Perezvon.’
But by now the doctor had entered, an important-look-
ing person with long, dark whiskers and a shiny, shaven
chin, wearing a bearskin coat. As he crossed the threshold
he stopped, taken aback; he probably fancied he had come
to the wrong place. ‘How is this? Where am I?’ he muttered,
not removing his coat nor his peaked sealskin cap. The
crowd, the poverty of the room, the washing hanging on
a line in the corner, puzzled him. The captain, bent double,
was bowing low before him.
‘It’s here, sir, here, sir,’ he muttered cringingly; ‘it’s here,
you’ve come right, you were coming to us..’
‘Sne-gi-ryov?’ the doctor said loudly and pompously. ‘Mr.
Snegiryov — is that you?’
‘That’s me, sir!’
‘Ah!’
The doctor looked round the room with a squeamish air
once more and threw off his coat, displaying to all eyes the
grand decoration at his neck. The captain caught the fur
coat in the air, and the doctor took off his cap.
‘Where is the patient?’ he asked emphatically.