The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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“How do you mean ‘according to justice’?” Fyodor Pavlovitch
cried still more gaily, nudging Alyosha with his knee.
“He’s a rascal, that’s what he is!” burst from Grigory. He
looked Smerdyakov wrathfully in the face.
“As for being a rascal, wait a little, Grigory Vassilyevitch,”
answered Smerdyakov with perfect composure. “You’d better consider
yourself that, once I am taken prisoner by the enemies of the
Christian race, and they demand from me to curse the name of God and
to renounce my holy christening, I am fully entitled to act by my
own reason, since there would be no sin in it.”
“But you’ve said that before. Don’t waste words. Prove it,”
cried Fyodor Pavlovitch.
“Soup-maker!” muttered Grigory contemptuously.
“As for being a soup-maker, wait a bit, too, and consider for
yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch, without abusing me. For as soon as
I say to those enemies, ‘No, I’m not a Christian, and I curse my
true God,’ then at once, by God’s high judgment, I become
immediately and specially anathema accursed, and am cut off from the
Holy Church, exactly as though I were a heathen, so that at that
very instant, not only when I say it aloud, but when I think of saying
it, before a quarter of a second has passed, I am cut off. Is that
so or not, Grigory Vassilyevitch?”
He addressed Grigory with obvious satisfaction, though he was
really answering Fyodor Pavlovitch’s questions, and was well aware
of it, and intentionally pretending that Grigory had asked the
questions.
“Ivan,” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch suddenly, “stoop down for me to
whisper. He’s got this all up for your benefit. He wants you to praise
him. Praise him.”
Ivan listened with perfect seriousness to his father’s excited
whisper.
“Stay, Smerdyakov, be quiet a minute,” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch
once more. “Ivan, your ear again.”
Ivan bent down again with a perfectly grave face.
“I love you as I do Alyosha. Don’t think I don’t love you. Some
brandy?”
“Yes.- But you’re rather drunk yourself,” thought Ivan, looking
steadily at his father.
He was watching Smerdyakov with great curiosity.
“You’re anathema accursed, as it is, Grigory suddenly burst out,
“and how dare you argue, you rascal, after that, if- “
“Don’t scold him, Grigory, don’t scold him,” Fyodor Pavlovitch cut
him short.
“You should wait, Grigory Vassilyevitch, if only a short time, and
listen, for I haven’t finished all I had to say. For at the very
moment I become accursed, at that same highest moment, I become
exactly like a heathen, and my christening is taken off me and becomes
of no avail. Isn’t that so?”
“Make haste and finish, my boy,” Fyodor Pavlovitch urged him,
sipping from his wineglass with relish.
“And if I’ve ceased to be a Christian, then I told no lie to the
enemy when they asked whether I was a Christian or not a Christian,
seeing I had already been relieved by God Himself of my Christianity
by reason of the thought alone, before I had time to utter a word to
the enemy. And if I have already been discharged, in what manner and
with what sort of justice can I be held responsible as a Christian
in the other world for having denied Christ, when, through the very
thought alone, before denying Him I had been relieved from my
christening? If I’m no longer a Christian, then I can’t renounce
Christ, for I’ve nothing then to renounce. Who will hold an unclean
Tatar responsible, Grigory Vassilyevitch, even in heaven, for not
having been born a Christian? And who would punish him for that,
considering that you can’t take two skins off one ox? For God Almighty
Himself, even if He did make the Tatar responsible, when he dies would
give him the smallest possible punishment, I imagine (since he must be
punished), judging that he is not to blame if he has come into the
world an unclean heathen, from heathen parents. The Lord God can’t
surely take a Tatar and say he was a Christian? That would mean that
the Almighty would tell a real untruth. And can the Lord of Heaven and
earth tell a lie, even in one word?”
Grigory was thunderstruck and looked at the orator, his eyes
nearly starting out of his head. Though he did not clearly
understand what was said, he had caught something in this rigmarole,
and stood, looking like a man who has just hit his head against a
wall. Fyodor Pavlovitch emptied his glass and went off into his shrill
laugh.
“Alyosha! Alyosha! What do you say to that! Ah, you casuist! He
must have been with the Jesuits, somewhere, Ivan. Oh, you stinking
Jesuit,who taught you? But you’re talking nonsense, you casuist,
nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Don’t cry, Grigory, we’ll reduce him
to smoke and ashes in a moment. Tell me this, O ass; you may be
right before your enemies, but you have renounced your faith all the
same in your own heart, and you say yourself that in that very hour
you became anathema accursed. And if once you’re anathema they won’t
pat you on the head for it in hell. What do you say to that, my fine
Jesuit?”
“There is no doubt that I have renounced it in my own heart, but
there no special sin in that. Or if there was sin, it was the most
ordinary.”
“How’s that the most ordinary?”
“You lie, accursed one!” hissed Grigory.
“Consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch,” Smerdyakov went on,
staid and unruffled, conscious of his triumph, but, as it were,
generous to the vanquished foe. “Consider yourself, Grigory
Vassilyevitch; it is said in the Scripture that if you have faith,
even as a mustard seed, and bid a mountain move into the sea, it
will move without the least delay at your bidding. Well, Grigory
Vassilyevitch, if I’m without faith and you have so great a faith that
you are continually swearing at me, you try yourself telling this
mountain, not to move into the sea for that’s a long way off, but even
to our stinking little river which runs at the bottom of the garden.
You’ll see for yourself that it won’t budge, but will remain just
where it is however much you shout at it, and that shows, Grigory
Vassilyevitch, that you haven’t faith in the proper manner, and only
abuse others about it. Again, taking into consideration that no one in
our day, not only you, but actually no one, from the highest person to
the lowest peasant, can shove mountains into the sea-except perhaps
some one man in the world, or, at most, two, and they most likely
are saving their souls in secret somewhere in the Egyptian desert,
so you wouldn’t find them-if so it be, if all the rest have no faith,
will God curse all the rest? that is, the population of the whole
earth, except about two hermits in the desert, and in His well-known
mercy will He not forgive one of them? And so I’m persuaded that
though I may once have doubted I shall be forgiven if I shed tears
of repentance.”
“Stay!” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, in a transport of delight. “So
you do suppose there are two who can move mountains? Ivan, make a note
of it, write it down. There you have the Russian all over!”
“You’re quite right in saying it’s characteristic of the
people’s faith,” Ivan assented, with an approving smile.
“You agree. Then it must be so, if you agree. It’s true, isn’t
it Alyosha? That’s the Russian faith all over, isn’t it?”
“No, Smerdyakov has not the Russian faith at all,” said Alyosha
firmly and gravely.
“I’m not talking about his faith. I mean those two in the
desert, only that idea. Surely that’s Russian, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s purely Russian,” said Alyosha smiling.
“Your words are worth a gold piece, O ass, and I’ll give it to you
to-day. But as to the rest you talk nonsense, nonsense, nonsense.
Let me tell you, stupid, that we here are all of little faith, only
from carelessness, because we haven’t time; things are too much for
us, and, in the second place, the Lord God has given us so little
time, only twenty-four hours in the day, so that one hasn’t even
time to get sleep enough, much less to repent of one’s sins. While you
have denied your faith to your enemies when you’d nothing else to
think about but to show your faith! So I consider, brother, that it
constitutes a sin.”
“Constitute a sin it may, but consider yourself, Grigory
Vassilyevitch, that it only extenuates it, if it does constitute. If I
had believed then in very truth, as I ought to have believed, then
it really would have been sinful if I had not faced tortures for my
faith, and had gone over to the pagan Mohammedan faith. But, of
course, it wouldn’t have come to torture then, because I should only
have had to say at that instant to the mountain, ‘Move and crush the
tormentor,’ and it would have moved and at the very instant have
crushed him like a black-beetle, and I should have walked away as
though nothing had happened, praising and glorifying God. But, suppose
at that very moment I had tried all that, and cried to that
mountain, ‘Crush these tormentors,’ and it hadn’t crushed them, how
could I have helped doubting, pray, at such a time, and at such a
dread hour of mortal terror? And apart from that, I should know
already that I could not attain to the fullness of the Kingdom of
Heaven (for since the mountain had not moved at my word, they could
not think very much of my faith up aloft, and there could be no very
great reward awaiting me in the world to come). So why should I let
them flay the skin off me as well, and to no good purpose? For, even
though they had flayed my skin half off my back, even then the
mountain would not have moved at my word or at my cry. And at such a
moment not only doubt might come over one but one might lose one’s
reason from fear, so that one would not be able to think at all.
And, therefore, how should I be particularly to blame if not seeing my
advantage or reward there or here, I should, at least, save my skin.
And so trusting fully in the grace of the Lord I should cherish the
hope that I might be altogether forgiven.”
Over the Brandy
THE controversy was over. But, strange to say, Fyodor
Pavlovitch, who had been so gay, suddenly began frowning. He frowned
and gulped brandy, and it was already a glass too much.
“Get along with you, Jesuits!” he cried to the servants. “Go away,
Smerdyakov. I’ll send you the gold piece I promised you to-day, but be
off! Don’t cry, Grigory. Go to Marfa. She’ll comfort you and put you
to bed. The rascals won’t let us sit in peace after dinner,” he
snapped peevishly, as the servants promptly withdrew at his word.
“Smerdyakov always pokes himself in now, after dinner. It’s you
he’s so interested in. What have you done to fascinate him?” he
added to Ivan.
“Nothing whatever,” answered Ivan. “He’s pleased to have a high
opinion of me; he’s a lackey and a mean soul. Raw material for
revolution, however, when the time comes.”
“There will be others and better ones. But there will be some like
him as well. His kind will come first, and better ones after.”
“And when will the time come?”
“The rocket
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