The Brothers Karamazov
would say, but seemed on the point of standing up, like Miüsov. Alyosha
stood, with hanging head, on the verge of tears. What seemed to him
strangest of all was that his brother Ivan, on whom alone he had rested
his hopes, and who alone had such influence on his father that he could
have stopped him, sat now quite unmoved, with downcast eyes, apparently
waiting with interest to see how it would end, as though he had nothing
to do with it. Alyosha did not dare to look at Rakitin, the divinity
student, whom he knew almost intimately. He alone in the monastery knew
Rakitin’s thoughts.
“Forgive me,” began Miüsov, addressing Father Zossima, “for perhaps I
seem to be taking part in this shameful foolery. I made a mistake in
believing that even a man like Fyodor Pavlovitch would understand what
was due on a visit to so honored a personage. I did not suppose I
should have to apologize simply for having come with him....”
Pyotr Alexandrovitch could say no more, and was about to leave the
room, overwhelmed with confusion.
“Don’t distress yourself, I beg.” The elder got on to his feeble legs,
and taking Pyotr Alexandrovitch by both hands, made him sit down again.
“I beg you not to disturb yourself. I particularly beg you to be my
guest.” And with a bow he went back and sat down again on his little
sofa.
“Great elder, speak! Do I annoy you by my vivacity?” Fyodor Pavlovitch
cried suddenly, clutching the arms of his chair in both hands, as
though ready to leap up from it if the answer were unfavorable.
“I earnestly beg you, too, not to disturb yourself, and not to be
uneasy,” the elder said impressively. “Do not trouble. Make yourself
quite at home. And, above all, do not be so ashamed of yourself, for
that is at the root of it all.”
“Quite at home? To be my natural self? Oh, that is much too much, but I
accept it with grateful joy. Do you know, blessed Father, you’d better
not invite me to be my natural self. Don’t risk it.... I will not go so
far as that myself. I warn you for your own sake. Well, the rest is
still plunged in the mists of uncertainty, though there are people
who’d be pleased to describe me for you. I mean that for you, Pyotr
Alexandrovitch. But as for you, holy being, let me tell you, I am
brimming over with ecstasy.”
He got up, and throwing up his hands, declaimed, “Blessed be the womb
that bare thee, and the paps that gave thee suck—the paps especially.
When you said just now, ‘Don’t be so ashamed of yourself, for that is
at the root of it all,’ you pierced right through me by that remark,
and read me to the core. Indeed, I always feel when I meet people that
I am lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon. So I say,
‘Let me really play the buffoon. I am not afraid of your opinion, for
you are every one of you worse than I am.’ That is why I am a buffoon.
It is from shame, great elder, from shame; it’s simply
over-sensitiveness that makes me rowdy. If I had only been sure that
every one would accept me as the kindest and wisest of men, oh, Lord,
what a good man I should have been then! Teacher!” he fell suddenly on
his knees, “what must I do to gain eternal life?”
It was difficult even now to decide whether he was joking or really
moved.
Father Zossima, lifting his eyes, looked at him, and said with a smile:
“You have known for a long time what you must do. You have sense
enough: don’t give way to drunkenness and incontinence of speech; don’t
give way to sensual lust; and, above all, to the love of money. And
close your taverns. If you can’t close all, at least two or three. And,
above all—don’t lie.”
“You mean about Diderot?”
“No, not about Diderot. Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who
lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he
cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses
all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases
to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he
gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in
his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. The
man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than any one. You
know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn’t it? A man may
know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult
for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has
caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill—he knows that
himself, yet he will be the first to take offense, and will revel in
his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to
genuine vindictiveness. But get up, sit down, I beg you. All this, too,
is deceitful posturing....”
“Blessed man! Give me your hand to kiss.”
Fyodor Pavlovitch skipped up, and imprinted a rapid kiss on the elder’s
thin hand. “It is, it is pleasant to take offense. You said that so
well, as I never heard it before. Yes, I have been all my life taking
offense, to please myself, taking offense on esthetic grounds, for it
is not so much pleasant as distinguished sometimes to be insulted—that
you had forgotten, great elder, it is distinguished! I shall make a
note of that. But I have been lying, lying positively my whole life
long, every day and hour of it. Of a truth, I am a lie, and the father
of lies. Though I believe I am not the father of lies. I am getting
mixed in my texts. Say, the son of lies, and that will be enough. Only
... my angel ... I may sometimes talk about Diderot! Diderot will do no
harm, though sometimes a word will do harm. Great elder, by the way, I
was forgetting, though I had been meaning for the last two years to
come here on purpose to ask and to find out something. Only do tell
Pyotr Alexandrovitch not to interrupt me. Here is my question: Is it
true, great Father, that the story is told somewhere in the _Lives of
the Saints_ of a holy saint martyred for his faith who, when his head
was cut off at last, stood up, picked up his head, and, ‘courteously
kissing it,’ walked a long way, carrying it in his hands. Is that true
or not, honored Father?”
“No, it is untrue,” said the elder.
“There is nothing of the kind in all the lives of the saints. What
saint do you say the story is told of?” asked the Father Librarian.
“I do not know what saint. I do not know, and can’t tell. I was
deceived. I was told the story. I had heard it, and do you know who
told it? Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov here, who was so angry just now
about Diderot. He it was who told the story.”
“I have never told it you, I never speak to you at all.”
“It is true you did not tell me, but you told it when I was present. It
was three years ago. I mentioned it because by that ridiculous story
you shook my faith, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. You knew nothing of it, but I
went home with my faith shaken, and I have been getting more and more
shaken ever since. Yes, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, you were the cause of a
great fall. That was not a Diderot!”
Fyodor Pavlovitch got excited and pathetic, though it was perfectly
clear to every one by now that he was playing a part again. Yet Miüsov
was stung by his words.
“What nonsense, and it is all nonsense,” he muttered. “I may really
have told it, some time or other ... but not to you. I was told it
myself. I heard it in Paris from a Frenchman. He told me it was read at
our mass from the _Lives of the Saints_ ... he was a very learned man
who had made a special study of Russian statistics and had lived a long
time in Russia.... I have not read the _Lives of the Saints_ myself,
and I am not going to read them ... all sorts of things are said at
dinner—we were dining then.”
“Yes, you were dining then, and so I lost my faith!” said Fyodor
Pavlovitch, mimicking him.
“What do I care for your faith?” Miüsov was on the point of shouting,
but he suddenly checked himself, and said with contempt, “You defile
everything you touch.”
The elder suddenly rose from his seat. “Excuse me, gentlemen, for
leaving you a few minutes,” he said, addressing all his guests. “I have
visitors awaiting me who arrived before you. But don’t you tell lies
all the same,” he added, turning to Fyodor Pavlovitch with a
good-humored face. He went out of the cell. Alyosha and the novice flew
to escort him down the steps. Alyosha was breathless: he was glad to
get away, but he was glad, too, that the elder was good-humored and not
offended. Father Zossima was going towards the portico to bless the
people waiting for him there. But Fyodor Pavlovitch persisted in
stopping him at the door of the cell.
“Blessed man!” he cried, with feeling. “Allow me to kiss your hand once
more. Yes, with you I could still talk, I could still get on. Do you
think I always lie and play the fool like this? Believe me, I have been
acting like this all the time on purpose to try you. I have been
testing you all the time to see whether I could get on with you. Is
there room for my humility beside your pride? I am ready to give you a
testimonial that one can get on with you! But now, I’ll be quiet; I
will keep quiet all the time. I’ll sit in a chair and hold my tongue.
Now it is for you to speak, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. You are the principal
person left now—for ten minutes.”
Chapter III.
Peasant Women Who Have Faith
Near the wooden portico below, built on to the outer wall of the
precinct, there was a crowd of about twenty peasant women. They had
been told that the elder was at last coming out, and they had gathered
together in anticipation. Two ladies, Madame Hohlakov and her daughter,
had also come out into the portico to wait for the elder, but in a
separate part of it set aside for women of rank.
Madame Hohlakov was a wealthy lady, still young and attractive, and
always dressed with taste. She was rather pale, and had lively black
eyes. She was not more than thirty-three, and had been five years a
widow. Her daughter, a girl of fourteen, was partially paralyzed. The
poor child had not been able to walk for the last six months, and was
wheeled about in a long reclining chair. She had a charming little
face, rather thin from illness, but full of gayety. There was a gleam
of mischief in her big dark eyes with their long lashes. Her mother had
been intending to take her abroad ever since the spring, but they had
been detained all the summer by business connected with their estate.
They had been staying a week in our town, where they had come more for
purposes of business than devotion, but had visited Father Zossima once
already, three days before. Though they knew that the elder scarcely
saw any one, they had now suddenly turned up again, and urgently
entreated “the happiness of looking once again on the great healer.”
The mother was sitting on a chair by the side of her daughter’s invalid
carriage, and two paces from her stood an old monk, not one of our
monastery, but a visitor from an obscure religious house in the far
north. He too sought the elder’s blessing.
But Father Zossima, on entering the portico, went first straight to the
peasants who were crowded at the foot of the three steps that led up
into the portico. Father Zossima stood on the top step, put on his
stole, and began blessing the women who thronged about him. One crazy
woman was led up to him. As soon as she caught sight of the elder she
began shrieking and writhing as though in the pains of childbirth.
Laying the stole on her forehead, he read a short prayer over her, and
she was at once soothed and quieted.
I do not know how it may be now, but in my childhood I often happened
to see and hear these “possessed” women in the villages and
monasteries. They used to be brought to mass; they would squeal and
bark like a dog so that they were heard all over the church. But when