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

treat him

so. Quite the contrary, they thought they had every right, for Richard

had been given to them as a chattel, and they did not even see the

necessity of feeding him. Richard himself describes how in those

years, like the Prodigal Son in the Gospel, he longed to eat of the

mash given to the pigs, which were fattened for sale. But they

wouldn’t even give that, and beat him when he stole from the pigs. And

that was how he spent all his childhood and his youth, till he grew up

and was strong enough to go away and be a thief. The savage began to

earn his living as a day labourer in Geneva. He drank what he

earned, he lived like a brute, and finished by killing and robbing

an old man. He was caught, tried, and condemned to death. They are not

sentimentalists there. And in prison he was immediately surrounded

by pastors, members of Christian brotherhoods, philanthropic ladies,

and the like. They taught him to read and write in prison, and

expounded the Gospel to him. They exhorted him, worked upon him,

drummed at him incessantly, till at last he solemnly confessed his

crime. He was converted. He wrote to the court himself that he was a

monster, but that in the end God had vouchsafed him light and shown

grace. All Geneva was in excitement about him-all philanthropic and

religious Geneva. All the aristocratic and well-bred society of the

town rushed to the prison, kissed Richard and embraced him; ‘You are

our brother, you have found grace.’ And Richard does nothing but

weep with emotion, ‘Yes, I’ve found grace! All my youth and

childhood I was glad of pigs’ food, but now even I have found grace. I

am dying in the Lord.’ ‘Yes, Richard, die in the Lord; you have shed

blood and must die. Though it’s not your fault that you knew not the

Lord, when you coveted the pigs’ food and were beaten for stealing

it (which was very wrong of you, for stealing is forbidden); but

you’ve shed blood and you must die.‘And on the last day, Richard,

perfectly limp, did nothing but cry and repeat every minute: ‘This

is my happiest day. I am going to the Lord.’ ‘Yes,’ cry the pastors

and the judges and philanthropic ladies. ‘This is the happiest day

of your life, for you are going to the Lord!’ They all walk or drive

to the scaffold in procession behind the prison van. At the scaffold

they call to Richard: ‘Die, brother, die in the Lord, for even thou

hast found grace!’ And so, covered with his brothers’ kisses,

Richard is dragged on to the scaffold, and led to the guillotine.

And they chopped off his head in brotherly fashion, because he had

found grace. Yes, that’s characteristic. That pamphlet is translated

into Russian by some Russian philanthropists of aristocratic rank

and evangelical aspirations, and has been distributed gratis for the

enlightenment of the people. The case of Richard is interesting

because it’s national. Though to us it’s absurd to cut off a man’s

head, because he has become our brother and has found grace, yet we

have our own speciality, which is all but worse. Our historical

pastime is the direct satisfaction of inflicting pain. There are lines

in Nekrassov describing how a peasant lashes a horse on the eyes,

‘on its meek eyes,’ everyone must have seen it. It’s peculiarly

Russian. He describes how a feeble little nag has foundered under

too heavy a load and cannot move. The peasant beats it, beats it

savagely, beats it at last not knowing what he is doing in the

intoxication of cruelty, thrashes it mercilessly over and over

again. ‘However weak you are, you must pull, if you die for it.’ The

nag strains, and then he begins lashing the poor defenceless

creature on its weeping, on its ‘meek eyes.’ The frantic beast tugs

and draws the load, trembling all over, gasping for breath, moving

sideways, with a sort of unnatural spasmodic action-it’s awful in

Nekrassov. But that only a horse, and God has horses to be beaten.

So the Tatars have taught us, and they left us the knout as a

remembrance of it. But men, too, can be beaten. A well-educated,

cultured gentleman and his wife beat their own child with a birch-rod,

a girl of seven. I have an exact account of it. The papa was glad that

the birch was covered with twigs. ‘It stings more,’ said he, and so be

began stinging his daughter. I know for a fact there are people who at

every blow are worked up to sensuality, to literal sensuality, which

increases progressively at every blow they inflict. They beat for a

minute, for five minutes, for ten minutes, more often and more

savagely. The child screams. At last the child cannot scream, it

gasps, ‘Daddy daddy!’ By some diabolical unseemly chance the case

was brought into court. A counsel is engaged. The Russian people

have long called a barrister ‘a conscience for hire.’ The counsel

protests in his client’s defence. ‘It’s such a simple thing,’ he says,

‘an everyday domestic event. A father corrects his child. To our shame

be it said, it is brought into court.’ The jury, convinced by him,

give a favourable verdict. The public roars with delight that the

torturer is acquitted. Ah, pity I wasn’t there! I would have

proposed to raise a subscription in his honour! Charming pictures.

 

“But I’ve still better things about children. I’ve collected a

great, great deal about Russian children, Alyosha. There was a

little girl of five who was hated by her father and mother, ‘most

worthy and respectable people, of good education and breeding.’ You

see, I must repeat again, it is a peculiar characteristic of many

people, this love of torturing children, and children only. To all

other types of humanity these torturers behave mildly and

benevolently, like cultivated and humane Europeans; but they are

very fond of tormenting children, even fond of children themselves

in that sense. it’s just their defencelessness that tempts the

tormentor, just the angelic confidence of the child who has no

refuge and no appeal, that sets his vile blood on fire. In every

man, of course, a demon lies hidden-the demon of rage, the demon of

lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of

lawlessness let off the chain, the demon of diseases that follow on

vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on.

 

“This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture

by those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her

for no reason till her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater

refinements of cruelty-shut her up all night in the cold and frost in

a privy, and because she didn’t ask to be taken up at night (as though

a child of five sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained

to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with

excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this. And that mother

could sleep, hearing the poor child’s groans! Can you understand why a

little creature, who can’t even understand what’s done to her,

should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and

the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to

protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and

humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is

permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth,

for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that

diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world

of knowledge is not worth that child’s prayer to dear, kind God’! I

say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten

the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little

ones! I am making you suffer, Alyosha, you are not yourself. I’ll

leave off if you like.”

 

“Nevermind. I want to suffer too,” muttered Alyosha.

 

“One picture, only one more, because it’s so curious, so

characteristic, and I have only just read it in some collection of

Russian antiquities. I’ve forgotten the name. I must look it up. It

was in the darkest days of serfdom at the beginning of the century,

and long live the Liberator of the People! There was in those days a

general of aristocratic connections, the owner of great estates, one

of those men-somewhat exceptional, I believe, even then-who,

retiring from the service into a life of leisure, are convinced that

they’ve earned absolute power over the lives of their subjects.

There were such men then. So our general, settled on his property of

two thousand souls, lives in pomp, and domineers over his poor

neighbours as though they were dependents and buffoons. He has kennels

of hundreds of hounds and nearly a hundred dog-boys- all mounted,

and in uniform. One day a serf-boy, a little child of eight, threw a

stone in play and hurt the paw of the general’s favourite hound.

‘Why is my favourite dog lame?’ He is told that the boy threw a

stone that hurt the dog’s paw. ‘So you did it.’ The general looked the

child up and down. ‘Take him.’ He was taken-taken from his mother and

kept shut up all night. Early that morning the general comes out on

horseback, with the hounds, his dependents, dog-boys, and huntsmen,

all mounted around him in full hunting parade. The servants are

summoned for their edification, and in front of them all stands the

mother of the child. The child is brought from the lock-up. It’s a

gloomy, cold, foggy, autumn day, a capital day for hunting. The

general orders the child to be undressed; the child is stripped naked.

He shivers, numb with terror, not daring to cry…. ‘Make him run,’

commands the general. ‘Run! run!’ shout the dog-boys. The boy runs….

‘At him!’ yells the general, and he sets the whole pack of hounds on

the child. The hounds catch him, and tear him to pieces before his

mother’s eyes!… I believe the general was afterwards declared

incapable of administering his estates. Well-what did he deserve?

To be shot? To be shot for the satisfaction of our moral feelings?

Speak, Alyosha!

 

“To be shot,” murmured Alyosha, lifting his eyes to Ivan with a

pale, twisted smile.

 

“Bravo!” cried Ivan delighted. “If even you say so… You’re a

pretty monk! So there is a little devil sitting in your heart, Alyosha

Karamazov!”

 

“What I said was absurd, but-”

 

“That’s just the point, that ‘but’!” cried Ivan. “Let me tell you,

novice, that the absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world

stands on absurdities, and perhaps nothing would have come to pass

in it without them. We know what we know!”

 

“What do you know?”

 

“I understand nothing,” Ivan went on, as though in delirium. “I

don’t want to understand anything now. I want to stick to the fact.

I made up my mind long ago not to understand. If I try to understand

anything, I shall be false to the fact, and I have determined to stick

to the fact.”

 

“Why are you trying me?” Alyosha cried, with sudden distress.

“Will you say what you mean at last?”

 

“Of course, I will; that’s what I’ve been leading up to. You are

dear to me, I don’t want to let you go, and I won’t give you up to

your Zossima.”

 

Ivan for a minute was silent, his face became all at once very

sad.

 

“Listen! I took the case of children only to make my case clearer.

Of the other tears of humanity with which the earth is