Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"

The elder looked up at him and said with a smile:

“You’ve known for a long time what you should do; you have sense enough: do not give yourself up to drunkenness and verbal incontinence, do not give yourself up to sensuality, and especially to the adoration of money, and close your taverns; if you cannot close all of them then at least two or three. And above all, above everything else—do not lie.”

“About Diderot, you mean?”

“No, not exactly about Diderot. Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea—he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility ... Do get up from your knees and sit down, I beg you, these posturings are false, too...”

“Blessed man! Let me kiss your hand,” Fyodor Pavlovich rushed up to the elder and quickly gave him a smack on his thin hand. “Precisely, precisely, it feels good to be offended. You put it so well, I’ve never heard it before. Precisely, precisely, all my life I’ve been getting offended for the pleasure of it, for the aesthetics of it, because it’s not only a pleasure, sometimes it’s beautiful to be offended—you forgot that, great elder: beautiful! I’ll make a note of that! And I’ve lied, I’ve lied decidedly all my life, every day and every hour. Verily, I am a lie and the father of a lie! Or maybe not the father of a lie, I always get my texts mixed up; let’s say the son of a lie, ^[36]that will do just as well! Only ... my angel ... sometimes Diderot is all right! Diderot won’t do any harm, it’s some little word that does the harm. Great elder, by the way, I almost forgot, though I did intend, as long as two years ago, to inquire here, to stop by on purpose and insistently make inquiries and to ask—only please tell Pyotr Alexandrovich not to interrupt. This I ask you: is it true, great father, that somewhere in the Lives of the Saints there is a story about some holy wonder-worker who was martyred for his faith, and when they finally cut his head off, he got up, took his head, ‘kissed it belovingly,’ and walked on for a long time carrying it in his hands and ‘kissing it belovingly’? ^[37]Is this true or not, honored fathers?”

“No, it is not true,” said the elder.

“There is nothing like that anywhere in the Lives of the Saints. Which saint did you say the story was about?” asked the Father Librarian.

“I don’t know which. I don’t know, I have no idea. I was led to believe, I was told. I heard it, and do you know who I heard it from? This same Pyotr Alexandrovich Miusov who just got so angry about Diderot, he told me.”

“I never told you that, I never even speak to you at all.”

“True, you didn’t tell it to me; but you told it in company when I was present; it was three years ago. I mention it because you, Pyotr Alexandrovich, shook my faith with this funny story. You didn’t know it, you had no idea, but I went home with my faith shaken, and since then I’ve been shaking more and more. Yes, Pyotr Alexandrovich, you were the cause of a great fall! Diderot nothing, sir!”

Fyodor Pavlovich was flushed with pathos, though by now it was quite clear to everyone that he was acting again. Even so, Miusov was painfully hurt.

“What nonsense, it’s all nonsense,” he muttered. “I may actually have told it once ... but not to you. It was told to me. I heard it in Paris, from a Frenchman. That it is supposedly read from the Lives of the Saints in our liturgy. ^[38]He was a very learned man, he made a special study of statistics about Russia . . lived in Russia for a long time ... I myself have not read the Lives of the Saints ... and do not intend to read them ... It was just table talk . . .! We were having dinner then ...”

“So you were having dinner then, and I just lost my faith!” Fyodor Pavlovich went on teasing him.

“What do I care about your faith!” Miusov almost shouted, but suddenly checked himself and said with contempt: “You literally befoul everything you touch.”

The elder suddenly rose from his seat:

“Excuse me, gentlemen, if I leave you now for just a few minutes,” he said, addressing all of his visitors, “but there are people awaiting me who came belore you. And you, all the same, do not lie,” he added, turning to Fyodor Pavlovich with a cheerful face.

He started to leave the cell. Alyosha and the novice rushed after him to help him down the stairs. Alyosha was breathless, he was glad to get away, but he was also glad that the elder was cheerful and not offended. The elder turned towards the porch in order to bless those who were awaiting him. But Fyodor Pavlovich managed to stop him at the door of the cell.

“Most blessed man!” he cried out with feeling, “let me kiss your dear hand once more. No, still you’re a man one can talk to, a man one can get along with. Do you think I always lie like this and play the buffoon? I want you to know that all the while I’ve been acting on purpose in order to test you. I’ve been getting the feel of you, seeing whether one can get along with you. Whether there’s room for my humility next to your pride. I present you with a certificate of honor: one can get along with you! And now, I am silent, from here on I’ll be silent. I’ll sit on my chair and be silent. Now it’s your turn to speak, Pyotr Alexandrovich, you are the most important man left—for the next ten minutes.”

Chapter 3: Women of Faith

Below, crowding near the wooden porch built onto the outside wall, there were only women this time, about twenty of them. They had been informed that the elder would come out at last, and had gathered in anticipation. The Khokhlakov ladies, who were also waiting for the elder, but in quarters set aside for gentlewomen, had come out to the porch as well. There were two of them, mother and daughter. Madame Khokhlakov, the mother, a wealthy woman, always tastefully dressed, was still fairly young and quite attractive, slightly pale, with very lively and almost completely black eyes. She was not more than thirty-three years old and had been a widow for about five years. Her fourteen-year-old daughter suffered from paralysis of the legs. The poor girl had been unable to walk for about half a year already, and was wheeled around in a long, comfortable chair. Hers was a lovely little face, a bit thin from illness, but cheerful. Something mischievous shone in her big, dark eyes with their long lashes. Her mother had been intending to take her abroad since spring, but was detained through the summer by the management of her estate. They had already spent about a week in our town, more for business than on pilgrimage, but had already visited the elder once, three days before. Now they suddenly came again, though they knew that the elder was almost unable to receive anyone at all, and, pleading insistently, begged once again for “the happiness of beholding the great healer.” While awaiting the elder’s appearance, the mama sat on a seat next to her daughter’s chair, and two steps away from her stood an old monk, not from our monastery, but a visitor from a little-known cloister in the far north. He, too, wanted to receive the elder’s blessing. But when the elder appeared on the porch, he first went directly to the people. The crowd started pressing towards the three steps that connected the low porch with the field. The elder stood on the top step, put on his stole, and began to bless the women who crowded towards him. A “shrieker” was pulled up to him by both hands. She no sooner saw the elder than she suddenly began somehow absurdly screeching, hiccuping, and shaking all over as if in convulsions. The elder, having covered her head with the stole, read a short prayer over her, and she at once became quiet and calmed down. I do not know how it is now, but in my childhood I often used to see and hear these “shriekers” in villages and monasteries. Taken to the Sunday liturgy, they would screech or bark like dogs so that the whole church could hear, but when the chalice was brought out, and they were led up to the chalice, the “demonic possession” would immediately cease and the sick ones would always calm down for a time. As a child, I was greatly struck and astonished by this. And it was then that I heard from some landowners and especially from my town teachers, in answer to my questions, that it was all a pretense in order to avoid work, and that it could always be eradicated by the proper severity, which they confirmed by telling various stories. But later on I was surprised to learn from medical experts that there is no pretense in it, that it is a terrible woman’s disease that seems to occur predominantly in our Russia, that it is a testimony to the hard lot of our peasant women, caused by exhausting work too soon after difficult, improper birth-giving without any medical help, and, besides that, by desperate grief, beatings, and so on, which the nature of many women, after all, as the general examples show, cannot endure. This strange and instant healing of the frenzied and struggling woman the moment she was brought to the chalice, which used to be explained to me as shamming and, moreover, almost as a trick arranged by the “clericals” themselves—this healing occurred, probably, also in a very natural way: both the women who brought her to the chalice and, above all, the sick woman herself, fully believed, as an unquestionable truth, that the unclean spirit that possessed the sick woman could not possibly endure if she, the sick woman, were brought to the chalice and made to bow before it. And therefore, in a nervous and certainly also mentally ill woman, there always occurred (and had to occur), at the moment of her bowing before the chalice, an inevitable shock, as it were, to her whole body, a shock provoked by expectation of the inevitable miracle of healing and by the most complete faith that it would occur. And it would occur, even if only for a moment. That is just what happened now, as soon as the elder covered the woman with his stole.

Many of the women who pressed towards him were shedding tears of tenderness and rapture, called up by the effect of the moment; others strained to kiss at least the hem of his clothes, and some were murmuring to themselves. He gave blessings to everyone and spoke with several. The “shrieker” he knew already; she came not from far away but from a village only four miles from the monastery, and had been brought to him before.

“But she comes from far away!” He pointed to a woman who was not at all old yet but very thin and haggard, with a face not tanned but, as it were, blackened. She was kneeling and stared at the elder with a fixed gaze. There was something frenzied, as it were, in her eyes.

“From far away, dear father, far away, two hundred miles from here. Far away, father, far away,” the woman spoke in a singsong voice, rocking her head gently from side to side with her cheek resting in her hand. She spoke as though she were lamenting. There is among the people a silent, long-suffering grief; it withdraws into itself and is silent. But there is also a grief that is strained; a moment comes when it breaks through with tears, and from that moment on it pours itself out in lamentations. Especially with women. But it is no easier to bear than the silent grief. Lamentations ease the heart only by straining and exacerbating it more and more. Such grief does not even want consolation; it is nourished by the sense of its unquenchableness. Lamentations are simply the need to constantly irritate the wound.

“You must be tradespeople,” the elder continued, studying her with curiosity.

“We’re townspeople, father, townspeople, we’re peasants but we live in town. I’ve come to see you, father. We heard about you, dear father, we heard about you. I buried my baby son, and went on a pilgrimage. I’ve been in three monasteries, and then they told me: ‘Go to them, too, Nastasia’—meaning to you, my dear, to you. So I came; yesterday I was at vespers, and today I’ve come to you.”

“What are you weeping for?”

“I pity my little son, dear father, he was three years old, just three months short of three years old. ^{[39] I grieve for my little son, father, for my little son. He was the last little son left to us, we had four, Nikitushka and I, but our children didn’t stay with us, they didn’t stay. When I buried the first three, I wasn’t too sorry about them, but this last one I buried and I can’t forget him. As if he’s just standing right in front of me and won’t go away. My soul is wasted over him. I look at his clothes, at his little shirt or his little boots, and start howling. I lay out all that he left behind, all his things, and look at them and howl. Then I say to Nikitushka, that’s my husband, let me go on a pilgrimage, master. He’s a coachman, we’re not poor, father, not poor, we run our own business, everything belongs to us, the horses and the carriages. But who needs all that now? Without me, he’s taken to drinking, my Nikitushka, I’m sure he has, even before I left he’d give in to it, the minute I turned my back. And now I don’t even think about him. It’s three months since I left home. I’ve forgotten, I’ve forgotten everything, and I don’t want to remember, what can I do with him now? I’m through with him, through, I’m through with everybody. And I don’t even want to see my house now, and my things, I don’t want to see anything at all!”}

“Listen, mother,” said the elder. “Once, long ago, a great saint saw a mother in church, weeping just as you are over her child, her only child, whom the Lord had also called to him. ‘Do you not know,’ the saint said to her, ‘how bold these infants are before the throne of God? No one is bolder in the Kingdom of Heaven: Lord, you granted us life, they say to God, and just as we beheld it, you took it back from us. And they beg and plead so boldly that the Lord immediately puts them in the ranks of the angels. And therefore,’ said the saint, you, too, woman, rejoice and do not weep. Your infant, too, now abides with the Lord in the host of his angels.’ That is what a saint said to a weeping woman in ancient times. He was a great saint and would not have told her a lie. Therefore you, too, mother, know that your infant, too, surely now stands before the throne of the Lord, rejoicing and being glad, and praying to God for you. Weep, then, but also rejoice.”

The woman listened to him, resting her cheek in her hand, her eyes cast down. She sighed deeply.

“The same way my Nikitushka was comforting me, word for word, like you, he’d say: ‘Foolish woman,’ he’d say, ‘why do you cry so? Our little son is surely with the Lord God now, singing with the angels.’ He’d say it to me, and he’d be crying himself, I could see, he’d be crying just like me. ‘I know, Nikitushka,’ I’d say, ‘where else can he be if not with the Lord God, only he isn’t here, with us, Nikitushka, he isn’t sitting here with us like before! ‘ If only I could just have one more look at him, if I could see him one more time, I wouldn’t even go up to him, I wouldn’t speak, I’d hide in a corner, only to see him for one little minute, to hear him the way he used to play in the backyard and come in and shout in his little voice: ‘Mama, where are you?’ Only to hear how he walks across the room, just once, just one time, pat-pat-pat with his little feet, so quick, so quick, the way I remember he used to run up to me, shouting and laughing, if only I could hear his little feet pattering and know it was him! But he’s gone, dear father, he’s gone and I’ll never hear him again! His little belt is here, but he’s gone, and I’ll never see him, I’ll never hear him again...!”

She took her boy’s little gold-braided belt from her bosom and, at the sight of it, began shaking with sobs, covering her eyes with her hands, through which streamed the tears that suddenly gushed from her eyes.

“This,” said the elder, “is Rachel of old ‘weeping for her children, and she would not be comforted, because they are not.’ ^[40]This is the lot that befalls you, mothers, on earth. And do not be comforted, you should not be comforted, do not be comforted, but weep. Only each time you weep, do not fail to remember that your little son is one of God’s angels, that he looks down at you from there and sees you, and rejoices in your tears and points them out to the Lord God. And you will be filled with this great mother’s weeping for a long time, but in the end it will turn into quiet joy for you, and your bitter tears will become tears of quiet tenderness and the heart’s purification, which saves from sin. And I will remember your little child in my prayers for the repose of the dead. What was his name?”

“Alexei, dear father.”

“A lovely name! After Alexei, the man of God?” ^[41]

“Of God, dear father, of God. Alexei, the man of God.”

“A great saint! I’ll remember, mother, I’ll remember, and I’ll remember your sorrow in my prayers, and I’ll remember your husband, too. Only it is a sin for you to desert him. Go to your husband and take care of him. Your little boy will look down and see that you’ve abandoned his father, and will weep for both of you: why, then, do you trouble his blessedness? He’s alive, surely he’s alive, for the soul lives forever, and though he’s not at home, he is invisibly near you. How, then, can he come to his home if you say you now hate your home? To whom will he go if he does not find you, his father and mother, together? You see him now in your dreams and are tormented, but at home he will send you quiet dreams. Go to your husband, mother, go this very day.”

“I will go, my dear, according to your word, I will go. You’ve touched my heart. Nikitushka, my Nikitushka, you are waiting for me, my dear, waiting for me!” The woman began to murmur, but the elder had already turned to a very old little old lady, dressed not as a pilgrim but in town fashion. One could see by her eyes that she had come for some purpose and had something on her mind. She introduced herself as the widow of a noncommissioned officer, not from far away but from our own town. Her dear son Vasenka had served somewhere in the army commissariat and then gone to Siberia, to Irkutsk. He wrote twice from there, but it had already been a year now since he stopped writing. She made inquiries about him, but to tell the truth she did not even know where to inquire.

“Just the other day, Stepanida Ilyinishna Bedryagin, she’s a merchant’s wife, a wealthy woman, said to me: ‘I tell you what, Prokhorovna, go to church and put your son on a list to be remembered among the dead. His soul,’ she says, ‘will get troubled, and he’ll write to you. It’s just the thing to do,’ Stepanida Ilyinishna says, ‘it’s been tested many times.’ Only I’m not so sure ... Dear father, is it right or wrong? Would it be a good thing to do?”

“Do not even think of it. It is shameful even to ask. How is it possible to commemorate a living soul as one of the dead, and his own mother at that! It is a great sin, it is like sorcery, it can be forgiven only because of your ignorance. You had better pray to the Queen of Heaven, our swift intercessor and helper, for his health, and that you be forgiven for your wrong thoughts. And I will tell you something else, Prokhorovna: either he himself, your boy, will soon come back to you, or he will surely send you a letter. I promise you that. Go, and from now on be at peace. Your boy is alive, I tell you.”

“Dear father, may God reward you, our benefactor, pray for all of us and for oursins...”

But the elder had already noticed in the crowd two burning eyes seeking his, the eyes of a wasted, consumptive-looking, though still young, peasant woman. She stared silently, her eyes pleaded for something, but she seemed afraid to approach.

“What is it, my dear?”

“Absolve my soul, dear father,” the woman said softly and unhurriedly, and she knelt and prostrated at his feet.

“I have sinned, dear father, I am afraid of my sin.”

The elder sat on the bottom step, and the woman approached him, still on her knees.

“I’m three years a widow,” she began in a half-whisper, with a sort of shudder. “My married life was hard, he was old, he beat me badly. Once he was sick in bed; I was looking at him and I thought: what if he recovers, gets up on his feet again, what then? And then the thought came to me...”

“Wait,” said the elder, and he put his ear right to her lips. The woman continued in a soft whisper, almost inaudibly. She soon finished.

“It’s the third year?” the elder asked.

“The third year. At first I didn’t think about it, and now I’ve begun to be ill, grief has caught hold of me.”

“Have you come from far away?”

“Over three hundred miles from here.” “Did you tell it at confession?”

“I did. Twice I confessed it.”

“Were you allowed to receive communion?”

“I was. I’m afraid, afraid to die.”

“Do not be afraid of anything, never be afraid, and do not grieve. Just let repentance not slacken in you, and God will forgive everything. There is not and cannot be in the whole world such a sin that the Lord will not forgive one who truly repents of it. A man even cannot commit so great a sin as would exhaust God’s boundless love. How could there be a sin that exceeds God’s love? Only take care that you repent without ceasing, and chase away fear altogether. Believe that God loves you so as you cannot conceive of it; even with your sin and in your sin he loves you. And there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ten righteous men ^[42]—that was said long ago. Go, then, and do not be afraid. Do not be upset with people, do not take offense at their wrongs. Forgive the dead man in your heart for all the harm he did you; be reconciled with him truly. If you are repentant, it means that you love. And if you love, you already belong to God ... With love everything is bought, everything is saved. If even I, a sinful man, just like you, was moved to tenderness and felt pity for you, how much more will God be. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can buy the whole world with it, and redeem not only your own but other people’s sins. Go, and do not be afraid.”

He blessed her three times, took a little icon from around his neck, and put it on her. She bowed deeply to him without speaking. He stood up and looked cheerfully at a healthy woman with a little baby in her arms.

“I’m from Vyshegorye, dear father.”

“Why, you’ve worn yourself out walking four miles with a baby! What do you want?”

“I came to have a look at you. I was here before, don’t you remember? Your memory isn’t so good if you’ve forgotten me! Our people said you were sick, and I thought, well, I’ll go and see him myself. So, now I see you, and you don’t look sick at all! God be with you, really, you’ll live another twenty years! With all the people you’ve got praying for you, how could you be sick!”

“Thank you for everything, my dear.” ‘

“By the way, I have a little favor to ask you; here’s sixty kopecks; give them, dear father, to some woman who’s poorer than I am. As I was coming here, I thought: better give them through him, he’ll know who to give them to.”

“Thank you, my dear, thank you, kind woman. I love you. I’ll be sure to do it. Is that a little girl in your arms?”

“A little girl, father. Lizaveta.” “The Lord bless you both, you and your baby Lizaveta. You’ve gladdened my heart, mother. Farewell, my dears, farewell, my dearest ones.” He blessed them all and bowed deeply to them.

Chapter 4: A Lady of Little Faith

The visiting lady landowner, looking upon the whole scene of the conversation with the people and their blessing, shed quiet tears and wiped them away with her handkerchief. She was a sentimental society lady whose inclinations were in many respects genuinely good. When the elder finally came up to her, she met him in raptures.

“I experienced so much, so much, looking on at this moving scene ... ,” she was too excited to finish. “Oh, I understand that the people love you, I myself love the people, I want to love them, and how can one not love them, our beautiful Russian people, so simple in their majesty!”

“How is your daughter’s health? Did you want to talk with me again?” “Oh, I begged insistently, I pleaded, I was ready to go down on my knees and stay kneeling even for three days under your window until you let me in. We have come to you, great healer, to express all our rapturous gratitude. You have surely healed my Liza, healed her completely. And how? By praying over her on Thursday, by laying your hands on her. We have hastened here to kiss those hands, to pour out our feelings and our reverence!”

“What do you mean—healed? Isn’t she still lying in her chair?” “But her night fevers have completely disappeared, for two days now, since Thursday,” the lady nervously hurried on. “Besides, her legs have grown stronger. This morning she woke up healthy, she slept through the night, look at her color, at her bright eyes. She used to cry all the time, and now she’s laughing, gay, joyful. Today she insisted on being helped to her feet, and she stood for a whole minute by herself, without any support. She wants to make a wager with me that in two weeks she’ll be dancing the quadrille. I summoned the local doctor, Herzenstube, and he shrugged and said: amazing, baffling. And you want us not to trouble you, not to fly here and thank you? Thank him, Lise, ^[43]thank him!” Lise’s pretty, laughing little face suddenly became serious for a moment. She rose from her chair as much as she could, and, looking at the elder, clasped her hands before him, but she couldn’t help herself and suddenly burst out laughing . . .

“It’s at him, at him!” she pointed to Alyosha, childishly annoyed with herself because she could not keep from laughing. If anyone had looked at Alyosha, who was standing a step behind the elder, he would have noticed a quick blush momentarily coloring his cheeks. His eyes flashed and he looked down.

“She has a message for you, Alexei Fyodorovich ... How are you?” the mama continued, suddenly addressing Alyosha and holding out to him an exquisitely gloved hand. The elder turned and suddenly looked at Alyosha attentively. The latter approached Liza and, grinning somehow strangely and awkwardly, held out his hand. Lise put on an important face.

“Katerina Ivanovna sends you this by me.” She handed him a small letter. “She especially asks that you come to her soon, soon, and not to disappoint her but to be sure to come.”