The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗

Chapter 7

A Young Man Bent on a Career

 

ALYOSHA helped Father Zossima to his bedroom and seated him on his

bed. It was a little room furnished with the bare necessities. There

was a narrow iron bedstead, with a strip of felt for a mattress. In

the corner, under the ikons, was a reading-desk with a cross and the

Gospel lying on it. The elder sank exhausted on the bed. His eyes

glittered and he breathed hard. He looked intently at Alyosha, as

though considering something.

 

“Go, my dear boy, go. Porfiry is enough for me. Make haste, you

are needed there, go and wait at the Father Superior’s table.”

 

“Let me stay here,” Alyosha entreated.

 

“You are more needed there. There is no peace there. You will

wait, and be of service. If evil spirits rise up, repeat a prayer. And

remember, my son”- the elder liked to call him that- “this is not

the place for you in the future. When it is God’s will to call me,

leave the monastery. Go away for good.”

 

Alyosha started.

 

“What is it? This is not your place for the time. I bless you

for great service in the world. Yours will be a long pilgrimage. And

you will have to take a wife, too. You will have to bear all before

you come back. There will be much to do. But I don’t doubt of you, and

so I send you forth. Christ is with you. Do not abandon Him and He

will not abandon you. You will see great sorrow, and in that sorrow

you will be happy. This is my last message to you: in sorrow seek

happiness. Work, work unceasingly. Remember my words, for although I

shall talk with you again, not only my days but my hours are

numbered.”

 

Alyosha’s face again betrayed strong emotion. The corners of his

mouth quivered.

 

“What is it again?” Father Zossima asked, smiling gently. “The

worldly may follow the dead with tears, but here we rejoice over the

father who is departing. We rejoice and pray for him. Leave me, I must

pray. Go, and make haste. Be near your brothers. And not near one

only, but near both.”

 

Father Zossima raised his hand to bless him. Alyosha could make no

protest, though he had a great longing to remain. He longed, moreover,

to ask the significance of his bowing to Dmitri, the question was on

the tip of his tongue, but he dared not ask it. He knew that the elder

would have explained it unasked if he had thought fit. But evidently

it was not his will. That action had made a terrible impression on

Alyosha; he believed blindly in its mysterious significance.

Mysterious, and perhaps awful.

 

As he hastened out of the hermatage precincts to reach the

monastery in time to serve at the Father Superior’s dinner, he felt

a sudden pang at his heart, and stopped short. He seemed to hear again

Father Zossima’s words, foretelling his approaching end. What he had

foretold so exactly must infallibly come to pass. Alyosha believed

that implicitly. But how could he go? He had told him not to weep, and

to leave the monastery. Good God! It was long since Alyosha had

known such anguish. He hurried through the copse that divided the

monastery from the hermitage, and unable to bear the burden of his

thoughts, he gazed at the ancient pines beside the path. He had not

far to go-about five hundred paces. He expected to meet no one at

that hour, but at the first turn of the path he noticed Rakitin. He

was waiting for someone.

 

“Are you waiting for me?” asked Alyosha, overtaking him.

 

“Yes,” grinned Rakitin. “You are hurrying to the Father

Superior, I know; he has a banquet. There’s not been such a banquet

since the Superior entertained the Bishop and General Pahatov, do

you remember? I shan’t be there, but you go and hand the sauces.

Tell me one thing, Alexey, what does that vision mean? That’s what I

want to ask you.”

 

“What vision?”

 

“That bowing to your brother, Dmitri. And didn’t he tap the ground

with his forehead, too!”

 

“You speak of Father Zossima?”

 

“Yes, of Father Zossima,”

 

“Tapped the ground?”

 

“Ah, an irreverent expression! Well, what of it? Anyway, what does

that vision mean?”

 

“I don’t know what it means, Misha.”

 

“I knew he wouldn’t explain it to you There’s nothing wonderful

about it, of course, only the usual holy mummery. But there was an

object in the performance. All the pious people in the town will

talk about it and spread the story through the province, wondering

what it meant. To my thinking the old man really has a keen nose; he

sniffed a crime. Your house stinks of it.”

 

Rakitin evidently had something he was eager to speak of.

 

“It’ll be in your family, this crime. Between your brothers and

your rich old father. So Father Zossima flopped down to be ready for

what may turn up. If something happens later on, it’ll be: ‘Ah, the

holy man foresaw it, prophesied it!’ though it’s a poor sort of

prophecy, flopping like that. ‘Ah, but it was symbolic,’ they’ll

say, ‘an allegory,’ and the devil knows what all! It’ll be

remembered to his glory: ‘He predicted the crime and marked the

criminal!’ That’s always the way with these crazy fanatics; they cross

themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the temple. Like your

elder, he takes a stick to a just man and falls at the feet of a

murderer.”

 

“What crime? What do you mean?”

 

Alyosha stopped dead. Rakitin stopped, too.

 

“What murderer? As though you didn’t know! I’ll bet you’ve thought

of it before. That’s interesting, too, by the way. Listen, Alyosha,

you always speak the truth, though you’re always between two stools.

Have you thought of it or not? Answer.”

 

“I have,” answered Alyosha in a low voice. Even Rakitin was

taken aback.

 

“What? Have you really?” he cried.

 

“I… I’ve not exactly thought it,” muttered Alyosha, “but

directly you began speaking so strangely, I fancied I had thought of

it myself.”

 

“You see? (And how well you expressed it!) Looking at your

father and your brother Mitya to-day you thought of a crime. Then

I’m not mistaken?”

 

“But wait, wait a minute,” Alyosha broke in uneasily, “What has

led you to see all this? Why does it interest you? That’s the first

question.”

 

“Two questions, disconnected, but natural. I’ll deal with them

separately. What led me to see it? I shouldn’t have seen it, if I

hadn’t suddenly understood your brother Dmitri, seen right into the

very heart of him all at once. I caught the whole man from one

trait. These very honest but passionate people have a line which

mustn’t be crossed. If it were, he’d run at your father with a

knife. But your father’s a drunken and abandoned old sinner, who can

never draw the line-if they both themselves go, they’ll both come

to grief.”

 

“No, Misha, no. If that’s all, you’ve reassured me. It won’t

come to that.”

 

“But why are you trembling? Let me tell you; he may be honest, our

Mitya (he is stupid, but honest), but he’s-a sensualist. That’s the

very definition and inner essence of him. It’s your father has

handed him on his low sensuality. Do you know, I simply wonder at you,

Alyosha, how you can have kept your purity. You’re a Karamazov too,

you know! In your family sensuality is carried to a disease. But

now, these three sensualists are watching one another, with their

knives in their belts. The three of them are knocking their heads

together, and you may be the fourth.”

 

“You are mistaken about that woman. Dmitri despises her,” said

Alyosha, with a sort of shudder.

 

“Grushenka? No, brother, he doesn’t despise her. Since he has

openly abandoned his betrothed for her, he doesn’t despise her.

There’s something here, my dear boy, that you don’t understand yet.

A man will fall in love with some beauty, with a woman’s body, or even

with a part of a woman’s body (a sensualist can understand that),

and he’ll abandon his own children for her, sell his father and

mother, and his country, Russia, too. If he’s honest, he’ll steal;

if he’s humane, he’ll murder; if he’s faithful, he’ll deceive.

Pushkin, the poet of women’s feet, sung of their feet in his verse.

Others don’t sing their praises, but they can’t look at their feet

without a thrill-and it’s not only their feet. Contempt’s no help

here, brother, even if he did despise Grushenka. He does, but he can’t

tear himself away.”

 

“I understand that,” Alyosha jerked out suddenly.

 

“Really? Well, I dare say you do understand, since you blurt it

out at the first word,” said Rakitin, malignantly. “That escaped you

unawares, and the confession’s the more precious. So it’s a familiar

subject; you’ve thought about it already, about sensuality, I mean!

Oh, you virgin soul! You’re a quiet one, Alyosha, you’re a saint, I

know, but the devil only knows what you’ve thought about, and what you

know already! You are pure, but you’ve been down into the depths….

I’ve been watching you a long time. You’re a Karamazov yourself;

you’re a thorough Karamazov-no doubt birth and selection have

something to answer for. You’re a sensualist from your father, a crazy

saint from your mother. Why do you tremble? Is it true, then? Do you

know, Grushenka has been begging me to bring you along. ‘I’ll pull off

his cassock,’ she says. You can’t think how she keeps begging me to

bring you. I wondered why she took such an interest in you. Do you

know, she’s an extraordinary woman, too!”

 

“Thank her and say I’m not coming,” said Alyosha, with a

strained smile. “Finish what you were saying, Misha. I’ll tell you. my

idea after.”

 

“There’s nothing to finish. It’s all clear. It’s the same old

tune, brother. If even you are a sensualist at heart, what of your

brother, Ivan? He’s a Karamazov, too. What is at the root of all you

Karamazovs is that you’re all sensual, grasping and crazy! Your

brother Ivan writes theological articles in joke, for some idiotic,

unknown motive of his own, though he’s an atheist, and he admits

it’s a fraud himself-that’s your brother Ivan. He’s trying to get

Mitya’s betrothed for himself, and I fancy he’ll succeed, too. And

what’s more, it’s with Mitya’s consent. For Mitya will surrender his

betrothed to him to be rid of her, and escape to Grushenka. And he’s

ready to do that in spite of all his nobility and disinterestedness.

Observe that. Those are the most fatal people! Who the devil can

make you out? He recognises his vileness and goes on with it! Let me

tell you, too, the old man, your father, is standing in Mitya’s way

now. He has suddenly gone crazy over Grushenka. His mouth waters at

the sight