The Brothers Karamazov
I’m in desperate need of money. Only let me know it’s serious, and I’ll
run over and fix it up. I’ll snatch the time somehow. But what’s the
good of my galloping over, if it’s all a notion of the priest’s? Come,
will you go?”
“Oh, I can’t spare the time. You must excuse me.”
“Come, you might oblige your father. I shan’t forget it. You’ve no
heart, any of you—that’s what it is? What’s a day or two to you? Where
are you going now—to Venice? Your Venice will keep another two days. I
would have sent Alyosha, but what use is Alyosha in a thing like that?
I send you just because you are a clever fellow. Do you suppose I don’t
see that? You know nothing about timber, but you’ve got an eye. All
that is wanted is to see whether the man is in earnest. I tell you,
watch his beard—if his beard shakes you know he is in earnest.”
“You force me to go to that damned Tchermashnya yourself, then?” cried
Ivan, with a malignant smile.
Fyodor Pavlovitch did not catch, or would not catch, the malignancy,
but he caught the smile.
“Then you’ll go, you’ll go? I’ll scribble the note for you at once.”
“I don’t know whether I shall go. I don’t know. I’ll decide on the
way.”
“Nonsense! Decide at once. My dear fellow, decide! If you settle the
matter, write me a line; give it to the priest and he’ll send it on to
me at once. And I won’t delay you more than that. You can go to Venice.
The priest will give you horses back to Volovya station.”
The old man was quite delighted. He wrote the note, and sent for the
horses. A light lunch was brought in, with brandy. When Fyodor
Pavlovitch was pleased, he usually became expansive, but to-day he
seemed to restrain himself. Of Dmitri, for instance, he did not say a
word. He was quite unmoved by the parting, and seemed, in fact, at a
loss for something to say. Ivan noticed this particularly. “He must be
bored with me,” he thought. Only when accompanying his son out on to
the steps, the old man began to fuss about. He would have kissed him,
but Ivan made haste to hold out his hand, obviously avoiding the kiss.
His father saw it at once, and instantly pulled himself up.
“Well, good luck to you, good luck to you!” he repeated from the steps.
“You’ll come again some time or other? Mind you do come. I shall always
be glad to see you. Well, Christ be with you!”
Ivan got into the carriage.
“Good-by, Ivan! Don’t be too hard on me!” the father called for the
last time.
The whole household came out to take leave—Smerdyakov, Marfa and
Grigory. Ivan gave them ten roubles each. When he had seated himself in
the carriage, Smerdyakov jumped up to arrange the rug.
“You see ... I am going to Tchermashnya,” broke suddenly from Ivan.
Again, as the day before, the words seemed to drop of themselves, and
he laughed, too, a peculiar, nervous laugh. He remembered it long
after.
“It’s a true saying then, that ‘it’s always worth while speaking to a
clever man,’” answered Smerdyakov firmly, looking significantly at
Ivan.
The carriage rolled away. Nothing was clear in Ivan’s soul, but he
looked eagerly around him at the fields, at the hills, at the trees, at
a flock of geese flying high overhead in the bright sky. And all of a
sudden he felt very happy. He tried to talk to the driver, and he felt
intensely interested in an answer the peasant made him; but a minute
later he realized that he was not catching anything, and that he had
not really even taken in the peasant’s answer. He was silent, and it
was pleasant even so. The air was fresh, pure and cool, the sky bright.
The images of Alyosha and Katerina Ivanovna floated into his mind. But
he softly smiled, blew softly on the friendly phantoms, and they flew
away. “There’s plenty of time for them,” he thought. They reached the
station quickly, changed horses, and galloped to Volovya. “Why is it
worth while speaking to a clever man? What did he mean by that?” The
thought seemed suddenly to clutch at his breathing. “And why did I tell
him I was going to Tchermashnya?” They reached Volovya station. Ivan
got out of the carriage, and the drivers stood round him bargaining
over the journey of twelve versts to Tchermashnya. He told them to
harness the horses. He went into the station house, looked round,
glanced at the overseer’s wife, and suddenly went back to the entrance.
“I won’t go to Tchermashnya. Am I too late to reach the railway by
seven, brothers?”
“We shall just do it. Shall we get the carriage out?”
“At once. Will any one of you be going to the town to-morrow?”
“To be sure. Mitri here will.”
“Can you do me a service, Mitri? Go to my father’s, to Fyodor
Pavlovitch Karamazov, and tell him I haven’t gone to Tchermashnya. Can
you?”
“Of course I can. I’ve known Fyodor Pavlovitch a long time.”
“And here’s something for you, for I dare say he won’t give you
anything,” said Ivan, laughing gayly.
“You may depend on it he won’t.” Mitya laughed too. “Thank you, sir.
I’ll be sure to do it.”
At seven o’clock Ivan got into the train and set off to Moscow “Away
with the past. I’ve done with the old world for ever, and may I have no
news, no echo, from it. To a new life, new places and no looking back!”
But instead of delight his soul was filled with such gloom, and his
heart ached with such anguish, as he had never known in his life
before. He was thinking all the night. The train flew on, and only at
daybreak, when he was approaching Moscow, he suddenly roused himself
from his meditation.
“I am a scoundrel,” he whispered to himself.
Fyodor Pavlovitch remained well satisfied at having seen his son off.
For two hours afterwards he felt almost happy, and sat drinking brandy.
But suddenly something happened which was very annoying and unpleasant
for every one in the house, and completely upset Fyodor Pavlovitch’s
equanimity at once. Smerdyakov went to the cellar for something and
fell down from the top of the steps. Fortunately, Marfa Ignatyevna was
in the yard and heard him in time. She did not see the fall, but heard
his scream—the strange, peculiar scream, long familiar to her—the
scream of the epileptic falling in a fit. They could not tell whether
the fit had come on him at the moment he was descending the steps, so
that he must have fallen unconscious, or whether it was the fall and
the shock that had caused the fit in Smerdyakov, who was known to be
liable to them. They found him at the bottom of the cellar steps,
writhing in convulsions and foaming at the mouth. It was thought at
first that he must have broken something—an arm or a leg—and hurt
himself, but “God had preserved him,” as Marfa Ignatyevna expressed
it—nothing of the kind had happened. But it was difficult to get him
out of the cellar. They asked the neighbors to help and managed it
somehow. Fyodor Pavlovitch himself was present at the whole ceremony.
He helped, evidently alarmed and upset. The sick man did not regain
consciousness; the convulsions ceased for a time, but then began again,
and every one concluded that the same thing would happen, as had
happened a year before, when he accidentally fell from the garret. They
remembered that ice had been put on his head then. There was still ice
in the cellar, and Marfa Ignatyevna had some brought up. In the
evening, Fyodor Pavlovitch sent for Doctor Herzenstube, who arrived at
once. He was a most estimable old man, and the most careful and
conscientious doctor in the province. After careful examination, he
concluded that the fit was a very violent one and might have serious
consequences; that meanwhile he, Herzenstube, did not fully understand
it, but that by to-morrow morning, if the present remedies were
unavailing, he would venture to try something else. The invalid was
taken to the lodge, to a room next to Grigory’s and Marfa Ignatyevna’s.
Then Fyodor Pavlovitch had one misfortune after another to put up with
that day. Marfa Ignatyevna cooked the dinner, and the soup, compared
with Smerdyakov’s, was “no better than dish-water,” and the fowl was so
dried up that it was impossible to masticate it. To her master’s
bitter, though deserved, reproaches, Marfa Ignatyevna replied that the
fowl was a very old one to begin with, and that she had never been
trained as a cook. In the evening there was another trouble in store
for Fyodor Pavlovitch; he was informed that Grigory, who had not been
well for the last three days, was completely laid up by his lumbago.
Fyodor Pavlovitch finished his tea as early as possible and locked
himself up alone in the house. He was in terrible excitement and
suspense. That evening he reckoned on Grushenka’s coming almost as a
certainty. He had received from Smerdyakov that morning an assurance
“that she had promised to come without fail.” The incorrigible old
man’s heart throbbed with excitement; he paced up and down his empty
rooms listening. He had to be on the alert. Dmitri might be on the
watch for her somewhere, and when she knocked on the window (Smerdyakov
had informed him two days before that he had told her where and how to
knock) the door must be opened at once. She must not be a second in the
passage, for fear—which God forbid!—that she should be frightened and
run away. Fyodor Pavlovitch had much to think of, but never had his
heart been steeped in such voluptuous hopes. This time he could say
almost certainly that she would come!
Book VI. The Russian Monk
Chapter I.
Father Zossima And His Visitors
When with an anxious and aching heart Alyosha went into his elder’s
cell, he stood still almost astonished. Instead of a sick man at his
last gasp, perhaps unconscious, as he had feared to find him, he saw
him sitting up in his chair and, though weak and exhausted, his face
was bright and cheerful, he was surrounded by visitors and engaged in a
quiet and joyful conversation. But he had only got up from his bed a
quarter of an hour before Alyosha’s arrival; his visitors had gathered
together in his cell earlier, waiting for him to wake, having received
a most confident assurance from Father Païssy that “the teacher would
get up, and as he had himself promised in the morning, converse once
more with those dear to his heart.” This promise and indeed every word
of the dying elder Father Païssy put implicit trust in. If he had seen
him unconscious, if he had seen him breathe his last, and yet had his
promise that he would rise up and say good-by to him, he would not have
believed perhaps even in death, but would still have expected the dead
man to recover and fulfill his promise. In the morning as he lay down
to sleep, Father Zossima had told him positively: “I shall not die
without the delight of another conversation with you, beloved of my
heart. I shall look once more on your dear face and pour out my heart
to you once again.” The monks, who had gathered for this probably last
conversation with Father Zossima, had all been his devoted friends for
many years. There were four of them: Father Iosif and Father Païssy,
Father Mihaïl, the warden of the hermitage, a man not very old and far
from being learned. He was of humble origin, of strong will and
steadfast faith, of austere appearance, but of deep tenderness, though
he obviously concealed it as though he were almost ashamed of it. The
fourth, Father Anfim, was a very old and humble little monk of the
poorest peasant class. He was almost illiterate, and very quiet,
scarcely speaking to any one. He was the humblest of the humble, and
looked as though he had been frightened by something great and awful
beyond the scope of his intelligence. Father Zossima had a great
affection for this timorous man, and always treated him with marked
respect, though perhaps there was no one he had known to whom he had
said less, in spite of the fact that he had spent years wandering about