The Brothers Karamazov
debauchery and knew all his secrets, but was ready in his devotion to
overlook all that, not to oppose him, above all, not to reproach him or
threaten him with anything, either in this world or in the next, and,
in case of need, to defend him—from whom? From somebody unknown, but
terrible and dangerous. What he needed was to feel that there was
_another_ man, an old and tried friend, that he might call him in his
sick moments merely to look at his face, or, perhaps, exchange some
quite irrelevant words with him. And if the old servant were not angry,
he felt comforted, and if he were angry, he was more dejected. It
happened even (very rarely however) that Fyodor Pavlovitch went at
night to the lodge to wake Grigory and fetch him for a moment. When the
old man came, Fyodor Pavlovitch would begin talking about the most
trivial matters, and would soon let him go again, sometimes even with a
jest. And after he had gone, Fyodor Pavlovitch would get into bed with
a curse and sleep the sleep of the just. Something of the same sort had
happened to Fyodor Pavlovitch on Alyosha’s arrival. Alyosha “pierced
his heart” by “living with him, seeing everything and blaming nothing.”
Moreover, Alyosha brought with him something his father had never known
before: a complete absence of contempt for him and an invariable
kindness, a perfectly natural unaffected devotion to the old man who
deserved it so little. All this was a complete surprise to the old
profligate, who had dropped all family ties. It was a new and
surprising experience for him, who had till then loved nothing but
“evil.” When Alyosha had left him, he confessed to himself that he had
learnt something he had not till then been willing to learn.
I have mentioned already that Grigory had detested Adelaïda Ivanovna,
the first wife of Fyodor Pavlovitch and the mother of Dmitri, and that
he had, on the contrary, protected Sofya Ivanovna, the poor “crazy
woman,” against his master and any one who chanced to speak ill or
lightly of her. His sympathy for the unhappy wife had become something
sacred to him, so that even now, twenty years after, he could not bear
a slighting allusion to her from any one, and would at once check the
offender. Externally, Grigory was cold, dignified and taciturn, and
spoke, weighing his words, without frivolity. It was impossible to tell
at first sight whether he loved his meek, obedient wife; but he really
did love her, and she knew it.
Marfa Ignatyevna was by no means foolish; she was probably, indeed,
cleverer than her husband, or, at least, more prudent than he in
worldly affairs, and yet she had given in to him in everything without
question or complaint ever since her marriage, and respected him for
his spiritual superiority. It was remarkable how little they spoke to
one another in the course of their lives, and only of the most
necessary daily affairs. The grave and dignified Grigory thought over
all his cares and duties alone, so that Marfa Ignatyevna had long grown
used to knowing that he did not need her advice. She felt that her
husband respected her silence, and took it as a sign of her good sense.
He had never beaten her but once, and then only slightly. Once during
the year after Fyodor Pavlovitch’s marriage with Adelaïda Ivanovna, the
village girls and women—at that time serfs—were called together before
the house to sing and dance. They were beginning “In the Green
Meadows,” when Marfa, at that time a young woman, skipped forward and
danced “the Russian Dance,” not in the village fashion, but as she had
danced it when she was a servant in the service of the rich Miüsov
family, in their private theater, where the actors were taught to dance
by a dancing master from Moscow. Grigory saw how his wife danced, and,
an hour later, at home in their cottage he gave her a lesson, pulling
her hair a little. But there it ended: the beating was never repeated,
and Marfa Ignatyevna gave up dancing.
God had not blessed them with children. One child was born but it died.
Grigory was fond of children, and was not ashamed of showing it. When
Adelaïda Ivanovna had run away, Grigory took Dmitri, then a child of
three years old, combed his hair and washed him in a tub with his own
hands, and looked after him for almost a year. Afterwards he had looked
after Ivan and Alyosha, for which the general’s widow had rewarded him
with a slap in the face; but I have already related all that. The only
happiness his own child had brought him had been in the anticipation of
its birth. When it was born, he was overwhelmed with grief and horror.
The baby had six fingers. Grigory was so crushed by this, that he was
not only silent till the day of the christening, but kept away in the
garden. It was spring, and he spent three days digging the kitchen
garden. The third day was fixed for christening the baby: mean-time
Grigory had reached a conclusion. Going into the cottage where the
clergy were assembled and the visitors had arrived, including Fyodor
Pavlovitch, who was to stand god-father, he suddenly announced that
the baby “ought not to be christened at all.” He announced this
quietly, briefly, forcing out his words, and gazing with dull
intentness at the priest.
“Why not?” asked the priest with good-humored surprise.
“Because it’s a dragon,” muttered Grigory.
“A dragon? What dragon?”
Grigory did not speak for some time. “It’s a confusion of nature,” he
muttered vaguely, but firmly, and obviously unwilling to say more.
They laughed, and of course christened the poor baby. Grigory prayed
earnestly at the font, but his opinion of the new-born child remained
unchanged. Yet he did not interfere in any way. As long as the sickly
infant lived he scarcely looked at it, tried indeed not to notice it,
and for the most part kept out of the cottage. But when, at the end of
a fortnight, the baby died of thrush, he himself laid the child in its
little coffin, looked at it in profound grief, and when they were
filling up the shallow little grave he fell on his knees and bowed down
to the earth. He did not for years afterwards mention his child, nor
did Marfa speak of the baby before him, and, even if Grigory were not
present, she never spoke of it above a whisper. Marfa observed that,
from the day of the burial, he devoted himself to “religion,” and took
to reading the _Lives of the Saints_, for the most part sitting alone
and in silence, and always putting on his big, round, silver-rimmed
spectacles. He rarely read aloud, only perhaps in Lent. He was fond of
the Book of Job, and had somehow got hold of a copy of the sayings and
sermons of “the God-fearing Father Isaac the Syrian,” which he read
persistently for years together, understanding very little of it, but
perhaps prizing and loving it the more for that. Of late he had begun
to listen to the doctrines of the sect of Flagellants settled in the
neighborhood. He was evidently shaken by them, but judged it unfitting
to go over to the new faith. His habit of theological reading gave him
an expression of still greater gravity.
He was perhaps predisposed to mysticism. And the birth of his deformed
child, and its death, had, as though by special design, been
accompanied by another strange and marvelous event, which, as he said
later, had left a “stamp” upon his soul. It happened that, on the very
night after the burial of his child, Marfa was awakened by the wail of
a new-born baby. She was frightened and waked her husband. He listened
and said he thought it was more like some one groaning, “it might be a
woman.” He got up and dressed. It was a rather warm night in May. As he
went down the steps, he distinctly heard groans coming from the garden.
But the gate from the yard into the garden was locked at night, and
there was no other way of entering it, for it was enclosed all round by
a strong, high fence. Going back into the house, Grigory lighted a
lantern, took the garden key, and taking no notice of the hysterical
fears of his wife, who was still persuaded that she heard a child
crying, and that it was her own baby crying and calling for her, went
into the garden in silence. There he heard at once that the groans came
from the bath-house that stood near the garden gate, and that they were
the groans of a woman. Opening the door of the bath-house, he saw a
sight which petrified him. An idiot girl, who wandered about the
streets and was known to the whole town by the nickname of Lizaveta
Smerdyastchaya (Stinking Lizaveta), had got into the bath-house and
had just given birth to a child. She lay dying with the baby beside
her. She said nothing, for she had never been able to speak. But her
story needs a chapter to itself.
Chapter II.
Lizaveta
There was one circumstance which struck Grigory particularly, and
confirmed a very unpleasant and revolting suspicion. This Lizaveta was
a dwarfish creature, “not five foot within a wee bit,” as many of the
pious old women said pathetically about her, after her death. Her
broad, healthy, red face had a look of blank idiocy and the fixed stare
in her eyes was unpleasant, in spite of their meek expression. She
wandered about, summer and winter alike, barefooted, wearing nothing
but a hempen smock. Her coarse, almost black hair curled like lamb’s
wool, and formed a sort of huge cap on her head. It was always crusted
with mud, and had leaves, bits of stick, and shavings clinging to it,
as she always slept on the ground and in the dirt. Her father, a
homeless, sickly drunkard, called Ilya, had lost everything and lived
many years as a workman with some well-to-do tradespeople. Her mother
had long been dead. Spiteful and diseased, Ilya used to beat Lizaveta
inhumanly whenever she returned to him. But she rarely did so, for
every one in the town was ready to look after her as being an idiot,
and so specially dear to God. Ilya’s employers, and many others in the
town, especially of the tradespeople, tried to clothe her better, and
always rigged her out with high boots and sheepskin coat for the
winter. But, although she allowed them to dress her up without
resisting, she usually went away, preferably to the cathedral porch,
and taking off all that had been given her—kerchief, sheepskin, skirt
or boots—she left them there and walked away barefoot in her smock as
before. It happened on one occasion that a new governor of the
province, making a tour of inspection in our town, saw Lizaveta, and
was wounded in his tenderest susceptibilities. And though he was told
she was an idiot, he pronounced that for a young woman of twenty to
wander about in nothing but a smock was a breach of the proprieties,
and must not occur again. But the governor went his way, and Lizaveta
was left as she was. At last her father died, which made her even more
acceptable in the eyes of the religious persons of the town, as an
orphan. In fact, every one seemed to like her; even the boys did not
tease her, and the boys of our town, especially the schoolboys, are a
mischievous set. She would walk into strange houses, and no one drove
her away. Every one was kind to her and gave her something. If she were
given a copper, she would take it, and at once drop it in the alms-jug
of the church or prison. If she were given a roll or bun in the market,
she would hand it to the first child she met. Sometimes she would stop
one of the richest ladies in the town and give it to her, and the lady
would be pleased to take it. She herself never tasted anything but
black bread and water. If she went into an expensive shop, where there
were costly goods or money lying about, no one kept watch on her, for
they knew that if she saw thousands of roubles overlooked by them, she
would not have touched a farthing. She scarcely ever went to church.