he himself would die. That was to him something utterly inconceivable and impossible. But he had been told that all men die; he had asked people, indeed, whom he trusted, and they too, had confirmed it; his old nurse, too, said the same, though reluctantly. But Enoch had not died, and so it followed that everyone did not die. “And why cannot anyone else so serve God and be taken alive to heaven?” thought Seryozha. Bad people, that is those Seryozha did not like, they might die, but the good might all be like Enoch.
“Well, what are the names of the patriarchs?”
“Enoch, Enos—”
“But you have said that already. This is bad, Seryozha, very bad. If you don’t try to learn what is more necessary than anything for a Christian,” said his father, getting up, “whatever can interest you? I am displeased with you, and Piotr Ignatitch” (this was the most important of his teachers) “is displeased with you. … I shall have to punish you.”
His father and his teacher were both displeased with Seryozha, and he certainly did learn his lessons very badly. But still it could not be said he was a stupid boy. On the contrary, he was far cleverer than the boys his teacher held up as examples to Seryozha. In his father’s opinion, he did not want to learn what he was taught. In reality he could not learn that. He could not, because the claims of his own soul were more binding on him than those claims his father and his teacher made upon him. Those claims were in opposition, and he was in direct conflict with his education. He was nine years old; he was a child; but he knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it as the eyelid guards the eye, and without the key of love he let no one into his soul. His teachers complained that he would not learn, while his soul was brimming over with thirst for knowledge. And he learned from Kapitonitch, from his nurse, from Nadinka, from Vassily Lukitch, but not from his teachers.