The Brothers Karamazov
hermitage at the special request of Madame Hohlakov. As soon as that
good-hearted but weak-minded woman, who could not herself have been
admitted to the hermitage, waked and heard of the death of Father
Zossima, she was overtaken with such intense curiosity that she
promptly dispatched Rakitin to the hermitage, to keep a careful look
out and report to her by letter every half-hour or so “_everything that
takes place_.” She regarded Rakitin as a most religious and devout
young man. He was particularly clever in getting round people and
assuming whatever part he thought most to their taste, if he detected
the slightest advantage to himself from doing so.
It was a bright, clear day, and many of the visitors were thronging
about the tombs, which were particularly numerous round the church and
scattered here and there about the hermitage. As he walked round the
hermitage, Father Païssy remembered Alyosha and that he had not seen
him for some time, not since the night. And he had no sooner thought of
him than he at once noticed him in the farthest corner of the hermitage
garden, sitting on the tombstone of a monk who had been famous long ago
for his saintliness. He sat with his back to the hermitage and his face
to the wall, and seemed to be hiding behind the tombstone. Going up to
him, Father Païssy saw that he was weeping quietly but bitterly, with
his face hidden in his hands, and that his whole frame was shaking with
sobs. Father Païssy stood over him for a little.
“Enough, dear son, enough, dear,” he pronounced with feeling at last.
“Why do you weep? Rejoice and weep not. Don’t you know that this is the
greatest of his days? Think only where he is now, at this moment!”
Alyosha glanced at him, uncovering his face, which was swollen with
crying like a child’s, but turned away at once without uttering a word
and hid his face in his hands again.
“Maybe it is well,” said Father Païssy thoughtfully; “weep if you must,
Christ has sent you those tears.”
“Your touching tears are but a relief to your spirit and will serve to
gladden your dear heart,” he added to himself, walking away from
Alyosha, and thinking lovingly of him. He moved away quickly, however,
for he felt that he too might weep looking at him.
Meanwhile the time was passing; the monastery services and the requiems
for the dead followed in their due course. Father Païssy again took
Father Iosif’s place by the coffin and began reading the Gospel. But
before three o’clock in the afternoon that something took place to
which I alluded at the end of the last book, something so unexpected by
all of us and so contrary to the general hope, that, I repeat, this
trivial incident has been minutely remembered to this day in our town
and all the surrounding neighborhood. I may add here, for myself
personally, that I feel it almost repulsive to recall that event which
caused such frivolous agitation and was such a stumbling-block to many,
though in reality it was the most natural and trivial matter. I should,
of course, have omitted all mention of it in my story, if it had not
exerted a very strong influence on the heart and soul of the chief,
though future, hero of my story, Alyosha, forming a crisis and
turning-point in his spiritual development, giving a shock to his
intellect, which finally strengthened it for the rest of his life and
gave it a definite aim.
And so, to return to our story. When before dawn they laid Father
Zossima’s body in the coffin and brought it into the front room, the
question of opening the windows was raised among those who were around
the coffin. But this suggestion made casually by some one was
unanswered and almost unnoticed. Some of those present may perhaps have
inwardly noticed it, only to reflect that the anticipation of decay and
corruption from the body of such a saint was an actual absurdity,
calling for compassion (if not a smile) for the lack of faith and the
frivolity it implied. For they expected something quite different.
And, behold, soon after midday there were signs of something, at first
only observed in silence by those who came in and out and were
evidently each afraid to communicate the thought in his mind. But by
three o’clock those signs had become so clear and unmistakable, that
the news swiftly reached all the monks and visitors in the hermitage,
promptly penetrated to the monastery, throwing all the monks into
amazement, and finally, in the shortest possible time, spread to the
town, exciting every one in it, believers and unbelievers alike. The
unbelievers rejoiced, and as for the believers some of them rejoiced
even more than the unbelievers, for “men love the downfall and disgrace
of the righteous,” as the deceased elder had said in one of his
exhortations.
The fact is that a smell of decomposition began to come from the
coffin, growing gradually more marked, and by three o’clock it was
quite unmistakable. In all the past history of our monastery, no such
scandal could be recalled, and in no other circumstances could such a
scandal have been possible, as showed itself in unseemly disorder
immediately after this discovery among the very monks themselves.
Afterwards, even many years afterwards, some sensible monks were amazed
and horrified, when they recalled that day, that the scandal could have
reached such proportions. For in the past, monks of very holy life had
died, God-fearing old men, whose saintliness was acknowledged by all,
yet from their humble coffins, too, the breath of corruption had come,
naturally, as from all dead bodies, but that had caused no scandal nor
even the slightest excitement. Of course there had been, in former
times, saints in the monastery whose memory was carefully preserved and
whose relics, according to tradition, showed no signs of corruption.
This fact was regarded by the monks as touching and mysterious, and the
tradition of it was cherished as something blessed and miraculous, and
as a promise, by God’s grace, of still greater glory from their tombs
in the future.
One such, whose memory was particularly cherished, was an old monk,
Job, who had died seventy years before at the age of a hundred and
five. He had been a celebrated ascetic, rigid in fasting and silence,
and his tomb was pointed out to all visitors on their arrival with
peculiar respect and mysterious hints of great hopes connected with it.
(That was the very tomb on which Father Païssy had found Alyosha
sitting in the morning.) Another memory cherished in the monastery was
that of the famous Father Varsonofy, who was only recently dead and had
preceded Father Zossima in the eldership. He was reverenced during his
lifetime as a crazy saint by all the pilgrims to the monastery. There
was a tradition that both of these had lain in their coffins as though
alive, that they had shown no signs of decomposition when they were
buried and that there had been a holy light in their faces. And some
people even insisted that a sweet fragrance came from their bodies.
Yet, in spite of these edifying memories, it would be difficult to
explain the frivolity, absurdity and malice that were manifested beside
the coffin of Father Zossima. It is my private opinion that several
different causes were simultaneously at work, one of which was the
deeply-rooted hostility to the institution of elders as a pernicious
innovation, an antipathy hidden deep in the hearts of many of the
monks. Even more powerful was jealousy of the dead man’s saintliness,
so firmly established during his lifetime that it was almost a
forbidden thing to question it. For though the late elder had won over
many hearts, more by love than by miracles, and had gathered round him
a mass of loving adherents, none the less, in fact, rather the more on
that account he had awakened jealousy and so had come to have bitter
enemies, secret and open, not only in the monastery but in the world
outside it. He did no one any harm, but “Why do they think him so
saintly?” And that question alone, gradually repeated, gave rise at
last to an intense, insatiable hatred of him. That, I believe, was why
many people were extremely delighted at the smell of decomposition
which came so quickly, for not a day had passed since his death. At the
same time there were some among those who had been hitherto reverently
devoted to the elder, who were almost mortified and personally
affronted by this incident. This was how the thing happened.
As soon as signs of decomposition had begun to appear, the whole aspect
of the monks betrayed their secret motives in entering the cell. They
went in, stayed a little while and hastened out to confirm the news to
the crowd of other monks waiting outside. Some of the latter shook
their heads mournfully, but others did not even care to conceal the
delight which gleamed unmistakably in their malignant eyes. And now no
one reproached them for it, no one raised his voice in protest, which
was strange, for the majority of the monks had been devoted to the dead
elder. But it seemed as though God had in this case let the minority
get the upper hand for a time.
Visitors from outside, particularly of the educated class, soon went
into the cell, too, with the same spying intent. Of the peasantry few
went into the cell, though there were crowds of them at the gates of
the hermitage. After three o’clock the rush of worldly visitors was
greatly increased and this was no doubt owing to the shocking news.
People were attracted who would not otherwise have come on that day and
had not intended to come, and among them were some personages of high
standing. But external decorum was still preserved and Father Païssy,
with a stern face, continued firmly and distinctly reading aloud the
Gospel, apparently not noticing what was taking place around him,
though he had, in fact, observed something unusual long before. But at
last the murmurs, first subdued but gradually louder and more
confident, reached even him. “It shows God’s judgment is not as man’s,”
Father Païssy heard suddenly. The first to give utterance to this
sentiment was a layman, an elderly official from the town, known to be
a man of great piety. But he only repeated aloud what the monks had
long been whispering. They had long before formulated this damning
conclusion, and the worst of it was that a sort of triumphant
satisfaction at that conclusion became more and more apparent every
moment. Soon they began to lay aside even external decorum and almost
seemed to feel they had a sort of right to discard it.
“And for what reason can _this_ have happened,” some of the monks said,
at first with a show of regret; “he had a small frame and his flesh was
dried up on his bones, what was there to decay?”
“It must be a sign from heaven,” others hastened to add, and their
opinion was adopted at once without protest. For it was pointed out,
too, that if the decomposition had been natural, as in the case of
every dead sinner, it would have been apparent later, after a lapse of
at least twenty-four hours, but this premature corruption “was in
excess of nature,” and so the finger of God was evident. It was meant
for a sign. This conclusion seemed irresistible.
Gentle Father Iosif, the librarian, a great favorite of the dead man’s,
tried to reply to some of the evil speakers that “this is not held
everywhere alike,” and that the incorruptibility of the bodies of the
just was not a dogma of the Orthodox Church, but only an opinion, and
that even in the most Orthodox regions, at Athos for instance, they
were not greatly confounded by the smell of corruption, and there the
chief sign of the glorification of the saved was not bodily
incorruptibility, but the color of the bones when the bodies have lain
many years in the earth and have decayed in it. “And if the bones are