I Don't Want Another Boy

"Father, don't cry, and when I die get a good boy, another one ... choose one of them all, a good one, call him Ilusha and love him instead of me."

Ilusha says this from pure love. He wants his father to not be alone. He is nine or ten years old and dying and thinking about what will happen to his father after.

Then the father runs into the passage, and the door closes, and he stands before Alyosha and Kolya with his face frenzied and his lips trembling, and he says:

"I don't want a good boy! I don't want another boy!"

And then, clenching his teeth: "If I forget thee, Jerusalem, may my tongue—"

He can't finish the verse. He sinks to his knees and presses his fists against his head.

The Psalm citation is from 137, written by Israelites in Babylonian captivity: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy." It's a vow of memory. A promise not to substitute, not to let exile become comfortable, not to let the new place replace what was lost.

The captain is making this vow about Ilusha. He is saying: this child cannot be replaced. Not by a good boy. Not by another boy named Ilusha. The irreversibility is the point. He is swearing an oath of grief.

What makes this terrible and not merely sad is that it comes directly after Ilusha's request. Ilusha asked him to find a replacement. Ilusha was being generous—trying to give his father permission to continue living. And the father's response is: I refuse that permission. I will not be consoled.

This is not pathology. Or not only pathology. It's fidelity. The captain has been a buffoon, a drunk, a comic figure—Dostoevsky has been careful to let us see his absurdity. But here he is absolutely clear: the thing that cannot be replaced is irreplaceable, and to pretend otherwise would be a kind of spiritual murder. "If I forget thee, Jerusalem"—if I allow myself to be comforted, if I let the wound close before it should, if I substitute—may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. May I lose the capacity to speak.

There's a genre of grief advice that counsels acceptance, replacement, moving on. A new puppy (the mastiff pup is literally in the room, delivered that morning). New routines. Another child, when you're ready. The captain is refusing all of that. He's swearing not to.

And Kolya, standing in the passage, asks Alyosha: "What was that he said about Jerusalem? What did he mean by that?"

Alyosha explains: it means if I forget what is most precious to me, if I let anything take its place, then may—

Kolya says: "I understand, that's enough!"

He runs into the street.

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