In other words, what makes us think of Tolstoy as a moral-ethical giant here is a technique (going from mind to mind) coupled with a confidence. Of what is Tolstoy confident? That people are more similar to him than different. That he has an inner Vasili, an inner aged host, an inner Petrushka, an inner Nikita. This confidence serves as a gateway to (what reads as) saintly compassion.

But there is nothing enduring in this world, and that is why even joy is not as keen in the moment that follows the first; and a moment later it grows weaker still and finally merges imperceptibly into one’s usual state of mind, just as a ring on the water, made by the fall of a pebble, merges finally into the smooth surface. Kovalyov began to reflect and realized that the whole business was not yet over: the nose was found but it still had to be affixed, put in its proper place.

These people say all the right things (they express concern and sympathy, they’re cordial and curious, they want to help, or at least be seen as helpful), but they can’t help, because they are not (not yet) living the nightmare he’s living, that nightmare that can take many forms: the loss of one’s nose, sure, but also the loss of an arm or one’s health or livelihood or wife or child or sanity. The world is full of nightmares waiting to happen to us but the people to whom Kovalyov turns don’t believe this, or don’t believe it yet, just as we don’t; they understand this nightmare to be uniquely Kovalyov’s (exceptional, freakish, embarrassing) rather than a preview of the (pending, inevitable) nightmare that will eventually come for all of us.

Also, it’s not their job. Each of them stays strictly within the bounds of what they’re allowed to do and expected to do by the system of which they are part. That system (their society) has been engineered for normal operation; it can’t help someone in such extraordinary need as Kovalyov. (Their reactions are strangely mild, as if Kovalyov has lost not his nose but a suitcase.)

There’s a lovely moment in Henri Troyat’s biography of Chekhov, describing the first time Chekhov and Tolstoy met. Chekhov had put off the meeting, feeling “reticent about bowing before the redoubtable prophet, the Tolstoy who insisted on denying scientific progress to promote progress of a spiritual nature.”

But on August 8, 1895, Chekhov traveled to Tolstoy’s home, Yasnaya Polyana, to meet the great man.

“They met on a beech-lined path leading to the house,” Troyat writes. “Tolstoy was wearing a white smock and had a towel over his shoulder; he was on his way to bathe in the river. He invited Chekhov to join him. The two men undressed and jumped in, and they had their first conversation in a state of nature, paddling neck-deep through the water. Tolstoy’s simplicity won him over to the point that he all but forgot he was face to face with a monument of Russian literature.

In a story, attribute must meet adversity. (Olenka, in “The Darling,” is an extreme one-man woman; then that man dies. Vasili, in “Master and Man,” is arrogant; a blizzard appears, to humble him.) Here, the family’s reception of Alyosha is a minor, introductory adversity. How will Alyosha respond? By doing what he’s always done: cheerfully working hard. He doesn’t talk back, does everything immediately and “willingly,” never rests.