The Brothers Karamazov
holy Russia with him. That was very long ago, forty years before, when
Father Zossima first began his life as a monk in a poor and little
monastery at Kostroma, and when, shortly after, he had accompanied
Father Anfim on his pilgrimage to collect alms for their poor
monastery.
The whole party were in the bedroom which, as we mentioned before, was
very small, so that there was scarcely room for the four of them (in
addition to Porfiry, the novice, who stood) to sit round Father Zossima
on chairs brought from the sitting-room. It was already beginning to
get dark, the room was lighted up by the lamps and the candles before
the ikons.
Seeing Alyosha standing embarrassed in the doorway, Father Zossima
smiled at him joyfully and held out his hand.
“Welcome, my quiet one, welcome, my dear, here you are too. I knew you
would come.”
Alyosha went up to him, bowed down before him to the ground and wept.
Something surged up from his heart, his soul was quivering, he wanted
to sob.
“Come, don’t weep over me yet,” Father Zossima smiled, laying his right
hand on his head. “You see I am sitting up talking; maybe I shall live
another twenty years yet, as that dear good woman from Vishegorye, with
her little Lizaveta in her arms, wished me yesterday. God bless the
mother and the little girl Lizaveta,” he crossed himself. “Porfiry, did
you take her offering where I told you?”
He meant the sixty copecks brought him the day before by the
good-humored woman to be given “to some one poorer than me.” Such
offerings, always of money gained by personal toil, are made by way of
penance voluntarily undertaken. The elder had sent Porfiry the evening
before to a widow, whose house had been burnt down lately, and who
after the fire had gone with her children begging alms. Porfiry
hastened to reply that he had given the money, as he had been
instructed, “from an unknown benefactress.”
“Get up, my dear boy,” the elder went on to Alyosha. “Let me look at
you. Have you been home and seen your brother?” It seemed strange to
Alyosha that he asked so confidently and precisely, about one of his
brothers only—but which one? Then perhaps he had sent him out both
yesterday and to-day for the sake of that brother.
“I have seen one of my brothers,” answered Alyosha.
“I mean the elder one, to whom I bowed down.”
“I only saw him yesterday and could not find him to-day,” said Alyosha.
“Make haste to find him, go again to-morrow and make haste, leave
everything and make haste. Perhaps you may still have time to prevent
something terrible. I bowed down yesterday to the great suffering in
store for him.”
He was suddenly silent and seemed to be pondering. The words were
strange. Father Iosif, who had witnessed the scene yesterday, exchanged
glances with Father Païssy. Alyosha could not resist asking:
“Father and teacher,” he began with extreme emotion, “your words are
too obscure.... What is this suffering in store for him?”
“Don’t inquire. I seemed to see something terrible yesterday ... as
though his whole future were expressed in his eyes. A look came into
his eyes—so that I was instantly horror-stricken at what that man is
preparing for himself. Once or twice in my life I’ve seen such a look
in a man’s face ... reflecting as it were his future fate, and that
fate, alas, came to pass. I sent you to him, Alexey, for I thought your
brotherly face would help him. But everything and all our fates are
from the Lord. ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it
abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’ Remember
that. You, Alexey, I’ve many times silently blessed for your face, know
that,” added the elder with a gentle smile. “This is what I think of
you, you will go forth from these walls, but will live like a monk in
the world. You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love
you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your
happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless
it—which is what matters most. Well, that is your character. Fathers
and teachers,” he addressed his friends with a tender smile, “I have
never till to-day told even him why the face of this youth is so dear
to me. Now I will tell you. His face has been as it were a remembrance
and a prophecy for me. At the dawn of my life when I was a child I had
an elder brother who died before my eyes at seventeen. And later on in
the course of my life I gradually became convinced that that brother
had been for a guidance and a sign from on high for me. For had he not
come into my life, I should never perhaps, so I fancy at least, have
become a monk and entered on this precious path. He appeared first to
me in my childhood, and here, at the end of my pilgrimage, he seems to
have come to me over again. It is marvelous, fathers and teachers, that
Alexey, who has some, though not a great, resemblance in face, seems to
me so like him spiritually, that many times I have taken him for that
young man, my brother, mysteriously come back to me at the end of my
pilgrimage, as a reminder and an inspiration. So that I positively
wondered at so strange a dream in myself. Do you hear this, Porfiry?”
he turned to the novice who waited on him. “Many times I’ve seen in
your face as it were a look of mortification that I love Alexey more
than you. Now you know why that was so, but I love you too, know that,
and many times I grieved at your mortification. I should like to tell
you, dear friends, of that youth, my brother, for there has been no
presence in my life more precious, more significant and touching. My
heart is full of tenderness, and I look at my whole life at this moment
as though living through it again.”
Here I must observe that this last conversation of Father Zossima with
the friends who visited him on the last day of his life has been partly
preserved in writing. Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov wrote it down from
memory, some time after his elder’s death. But whether this was only
the conversation that took place then, or whether he added to it his
notes of parts of former conversations with his teacher, I cannot
determine. In his account, Father Zossima’s talk goes on without
interruption, as though he told his life to his friends in the form of
a story, though there is no doubt, from other accounts of it, that the
conversation that evening was general. Though the guests did not
interrupt Father Zossima much, yet they too talked, perhaps even told
something themselves. Besides, Father Zossima could not have carried on
an uninterrupted narrative, for he was sometimes gasping for breath,
his voice failed him, and he even lay down to rest on his bed, though
he did not fall asleep and his visitors did not leave their seats. Once
or twice the conversation was interrupted by Father Païssy’s reading
the Gospel. It is worthy of note, too, that no one of them supposed
that he would die that night, for on that evening of his life after his
deep sleep in the day he seemed suddenly to have found new strength,
which kept him up through this long conversation. It was like a last
effort of love which gave him marvelous energy; only for a little time,
however, for his life was cut short immediately.... But of that later.
I will only add now that I have preferred to confine myself to the
account given by Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov. It will be shorter and
not so fatiguing, though of course, as I must repeat, Alyosha took a
great deal from previous conversations and added them to it.
Notes of the Life of the deceased Priest and Monk, the Elder Zossima,
taken from his own words by Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
_(a)_ _Father Zossima’s Brother_
Beloved fathers and teachers, I was born in a distant province in the
north, in the town of V. My father was a gentleman by birth, but of no
great consequence or position. He died when I was only two years old,
and I don’t remember him at all. He left my mother a small house built
of wood, and a fortune, not large, but sufficient to keep her and her
children in comfort. There were two of us, my elder brother Markel and
I. He was eight years older than I was, of hasty irritable temperament,
but kind-hearted and never ironical. He was remarkably silent,
especially at home with me, his mother, and the servants. He did well
at school, but did not get on with his schoolfellows, though he never
quarreled, at least so my mother has told me. Six months before his
death, when he was seventeen, he made friends with a political exile
who had been banished from Moscow to our town for freethinking, and led
a solitary existence there. He was a good scholar who had gained
distinction in philosophy in the university. Something made him take a
fancy to Markel, and he used to ask him to see him. The young man would
spend whole evenings with him during that winter, till the exile was
summoned to Petersburg to take up his post again at his own request, as
he had powerful friends.
It was the beginning of Lent, and Markel would not fast, he was rude
and laughed at it. “That’s all silly twaddle, and there is no God,” he
said, horrifying my mother, the servants, and me too. For though I was
only nine, I too was aghast at hearing such words. We had four
servants, all serfs. I remember my mother selling one of the four, the
cook Afimya, who was lame and elderly, for sixty paper roubles, and
hiring a free servant to take her place.
In the sixth week in Lent, my brother, who was never strong and had a
tendency to consumption, was taken ill. He was tall but thin and
delicate-looking, and of very pleasing countenance. I suppose he
caught cold, anyway the doctor, who came, soon whispered to my mother
that it was galloping consumption, that he would not live through the
spring. My mother began weeping, and, careful not to alarm my brother,
she entreated him to go to church, to confess and take the sacrament,
as he was still able to move about. This made him angry, and he said
something profane about the church. He grew thoughtful, however; he
guessed at once that he was seriously ill, and that that was why his
mother was begging him to confess and take the sacrament. He had been
aware, indeed, for a long time past, that he was far from well, and had
a year before coolly observed at dinner to our mother and me, “My life
won’t be long among you, I may not live another year,” which seemed now
like a prophecy.
Three days passed and Holy Week had come. And on Tuesday morning my
brother began going to church. “I am doing this simply for your sake,
mother, to please and comfort you,” he said. My mother wept with joy
and grief. “His end must be near,” she thought, “if there’s such a
change in him.” But he was not able to go to church long, he took to
his bed, so he had to confess and take the sacrament at home.
It was a late Easter, and the days were bright, fine, and full of
fragrance. I remember he used to cough all night and sleep badly, but
in the morning he dressed and tried to sit up in an arm-chair. That’s
how I remember him sitting, sweet and gentle, smiling, his face bright
and joyous, in spite of his illness. A marvelous change passed over
him, his spirit seemed transformed. The old nurse would come in and
say, “Let me light the lamp before the holy image, my dear.” And once
he would not have allowed it and would have blown it out.
“Light it, light it, dear, I was a wretch to have prevented you doing
it. You are praying when you light the lamp, and I am praying when I
rejoice seeing you. So we are praying to the same God.”
Those words seemed strange to us, and mother would go to her room and
weep, but when she went in to him she wiped her eyes and looked
cheerful. “Mother, don’t weep, darling,” he would say, “I’ve long to