The Brothers Karamazov
the sacrament was carried in and they were led up to it, at once the
“possession” ceased, and the sick women were always soothed for a time.
I was greatly impressed and amazed at this as a child; but then I heard
from country neighbors and from my town teachers that the whole illness
was simulated to avoid work, and that it could always be cured by
suitable severity; various anecdotes were told to confirm this. But
later on I learnt with astonishment from medical specialists that there
is no pretense about it, that it is a terrible illness to which women
are subject, specially prevalent among us in Russia, and that it is due
to the hard lot of the peasant women. It is a disease, I was told,
arising from exhausting toil too soon after hard, abnormal and
unassisted labor in childbirth, and from the hopeless misery, from
beatings, and so on, which some women were not able to endure like
others. The strange and instant healing of the frantic and struggling
woman as soon as she was led up to the holy sacrament, which had been
explained to me as due to malingering and the trickery of the
“clericals,” arose probably in the most natural manner. Both the women
who supported her and the invalid herself fully believed as a truth
beyond question that the evil spirit in possession of her could not
hold out if the sick woman were brought to the sacrament and made to
bow down before it. And so, with a nervous and psychically deranged
woman, a sort of convulsion of the whole organism always took place,
and was bound to take place, at the moment of bowing down to the
sacrament, aroused by the expectation of the miracle of healing and the
implicit belief that it would come to pass; and it did come to pass,
though only for a moment. It was exactly the same now as soon as the
elder touched the sick woman with the stole.
Many of the women in the crowd were moved to tears of ecstasy by the
effect of the moment: some strove to kiss the hem of his garment,
others cried out in sing-song voices.
He blessed them all and talked with some of them. The “possessed” woman
he knew already. She came from a village only six versts from the
monastery, and had been brought to him before.
“But here is one from afar.” He pointed to a woman by no means old but
very thin and wasted, with a face not merely sunburnt but almost
blackened by exposure. She was kneeling and gazing with a fixed stare
at the elder; there was something almost frenzied in her eyes.
“From afar off, Father, from afar off! From two hundred miles from
here. From afar off, Father, from afar off!” the woman began in a
sing-song voice as though she were chanting a dirge, swaying her head
from side to side with her cheek resting in her hand.
There is silent and long-suffering sorrow to be met with among the
peasantry. It withdraws into itself and is still. But there is a grief
that breaks out, and from that minute it bursts into tears and finds
vent in wailing. This is particularly common with women. But it is no
lighter a grief than the silent. Lamentations comfort only by
lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire
consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations
spring only from the constant craving to reopen the wound.
“You are of the tradesman class?” said Father Zossima, looking
curiously at her.
“Townfolk we are, Father, townfolk. Yet we are peasants though we live
in the town. I have come to see you, O Father! We heard of you, Father,
we heard of you. I have buried my little son, and I have come on a
pilgrimage. I have been in three monasteries, but they told me, ‘Go,
Nastasya, go to them’—that is to you. I have come; I was yesterday at
the service, and to-day I have come to you.”
“What are you weeping for?”
“It’s my little son I’m grieving for, Father. He was three years
old—three years all but three months. For my little boy, Father, I’m in
anguish, for my little boy. He was the last one left. We had four, my
Nikita and I, and now we’ve no children, our dear ones have all gone. I
buried the first three without grieving overmuch, and now I have buried
the last I can’t forget him. He seems always standing before me. He
never leaves me. He has withered my heart. I look at his little
clothes, his little shirt, his little boots, and I wail. I lay out all
that is left of him, all his little things. I look at them and wail. I
say to Nikita, my husband, ‘Let me go on a pilgrimage, master.’ He is a
driver. We’re not poor people, Father, not poor; he drives our own
horse. It’s all our own, the horse and the carriage. And what good is
it all to us now? My Nikita has begun drinking while I am away. He’s
sure to. It used to be so before. As soon as I turn my back he gives
way to it. But now I don’t think about him. It’s three months since I
left home. I’ve forgotten him. I’ve forgotten everything. I don’t want
to remember. And what would our life be now together? I’ve done with
him, I’ve done. I’ve done with them all. I don’t care to look upon my
house and my goods. I don’t care to see anything at all!”
“Listen, mother,” said the elder. “Once in olden times a holy saint saw
in the Temple a mother like you weeping for her little one, her only
one, whom God had taken. ‘Knowest thou not,’ said the saint to her,
‘how bold these little ones are before the throne of God? Verily there
are none bolder than they in the Kingdom of Heaven. “Thou didst give us
life, O Lord,” they say, “and scarcely had we looked upon it when Thou
didst take it back again.” And so boldly they ask and ask again that
God gives them at once the rank of angels. Therefore,’ said the saint,
‘thou, too, O mother, rejoice and weep not, for thy little son is with
the Lord in the fellowship of the angels.’ That’s what the saint said
to the weeping mother of old. He was a great saint and he could not
have spoken falsely. Therefore you too, mother, know that your little
one is surely before the throne of God, is rejoicing and happy, and
praying to God for you, and therefore weep not, but rejoice.”
The woman listened to him, looking down with her cheek in her hand. She
sighed deeply.
“My Nikita tried to comfort me with the same words as you. ‘Foolish
one,’ he said, ‘why weep? Our son is no doubt singing with the angels
before God.’ He says that to me, but he weeps himself. I see that he
cries like me. ‘I know, Nikita,’ said I. ‘Where could he be if not with
the Lord God? Only, here with us now he is not as he used to sit beside
us before.’ And if only I could look upon him one little time, if only
I could peep at him one little time, without going up to him, without
speaking, if I could be hidden in a corner and only see him for one
little minute, hear him playing in the yard, calling in his little
voice, ‘Mammy, where are you?’ If only I could hear him pattering with
his little feet about the room just once, only once; for so often, so
often I remember how he used to run to me and shout and laugh, if only
I could hear his little feet I should know him! But he’s gone, Father,
he’s gone, and I shall never hear him again. Here’s his little sash,
but him I shall never see or hear now.”
She drew out of her bosom her boy’s little embroidered sash, and as
soon as she looked at it she began shaking with sobs, hiding her eyes
with her fingers through which the tears flowed in a sudden stream.
“It is Rachel of old,” said the elder, “weeping for her children, and
will not be comforted because they are not. Such is the lot set on
earth for you mothers. Be not comforted. Consolation is not what you
need. Weep and be not consoled, but weep. Only every time that you weep
be sure to remember that your little son is one of the angels of God,
that he looks down from there at you and sees you, and rejoices at your
tears, and points at them to the Lord God; and a long while yet will
you keep that great mother’s grief. But it will turn in the end into
quiet joy, and your bitter tears will be only tears of tender sorrow
that purifies the heart and delivers it from sin. And I shall pray for
the peace of your child’s soul. What was his name?”
“Alexey, Father.”
“A sweet name. After Alexey, the man of God?”
“Yes, Father.”
“What a saint he was! I will remember him, mother, and your grief in my
prayers, and I will pray for your husband’s health. It is a sin for you
to leave him. Your little one will see from heaven that you have
forsaken his father, and will weep over you. Why do you trouble his
happiness? He is living, for the soul lives for ever, and though he is
not in the house he is near you, unseen. How can he go into the house
when you say that the house is hateful to you? To whom is he to go if
he find you not together, his father and mother? He comes to you in
dreams now, and you grieve. But then he will send you gentle dreams. Go
to your husband, mother; go this very day.”
“I will go, Father, at your word. I will go. You’ve gone straight to my
heart. My Nikita, my Nikita, you are waiting for me,” the woman began
in a sing-song voice; but the elder had already turned away to a very
old woman, dressed like a dweller in the town, not like a pilgrim. Her
eyes showed that she had come with an object, and in order to say
something. She said she was the widow of a non-commissioned officer,
and lived close by in the town. Her son Vasenka was in the commissariat
service, and had gone to Irkutsk in Siberia. He had written twice from
there, but now a year had passed since he had written. She did inquire
about him, but she did not know the proper place to inquire.
“Only the other day Stepanida Ilyinishna—she’s a rich merchant’s
wife—said to me, ‘You go, Prohorovna, and put your son’s name down for
prayer in the church, and pray for the peace of his soul as though he
were dead. His soul will be troubled,’ she said, ‘and he will write you
a letter.’ And Stepanida Ilyinishna told me it was a certain thing
which had been many times tried. Only I am in doubt.... Oh, you light
of ours! is it true or false, and would it be right?”
“Don’t think of it. It’s shameful to ask the question. How is it
possible to pray for the peace of a living soul? And his own mother
too! It’s a great sin, akin to sorcery. Only for your ignorance it is
forgiven you. Better pray to the Queen of Heaven, our swift defense and
help, for his good health, and that she may forgive you for your error.
And another thing I will tell you, Prohorovna. Either he will soon come
back to you, your son, or he will be sure to send a letter. Go, and
henceforward be in peace. Your son is alive, I tell you.”
“Dear Father, God reward you, our benefactor, who prays for all of us
and for our sins!”
But the elder had already noticed in the crowd two glowing eyes fixed
upon him. An exhausted, consumptive-looking, though young peasant woman
was gazing at him in silence. Her eyes besought him, but she seemed
afraid to approach.
“What is it, my child?”
“Absolve my soul, Father,” she articulated softly, and slowly sank on
her knees and bowed down at his feet. “I have sinned, Father. I am
afraid of my sin.”
The elder sat down on the lower step. The woman crept closer to him,
still on her knees.
“I am a widow these three years,” she began in a half-whisper, with a
sort of shudder. “I had a hard life with my husband. He was an old man.
He used to beat me cruelly. He lay ill; I thought looking at him, if he
were to get well, if he were to get up again, what then? And then the
thought came to me—”
“Stay!” said the elder, and he put his ear close to her lips.
The woman went on in a low whisper, so that it was almost impossible to
catch anything. She had soon done.
“Three years ago?” asked the elder.
“Three years. At first I didn’t think about it, but now I’ve begun to