The Brothers Karamazov

PART III

BOOK VII: ALYOSHA

Chapter 1: The Odor of Corruption

The body of the deceased schemahieromonk Father Zosima was prepared for burial according to the established rite.^[224]As is known, the bodies of monks and schemamonks are not washed. “When any monk departs to the Lord,” says the Great Prayer Book, “the uchinnenyi [that is, the monk appointed to the task] shall wipe his body with warm water, first making the sign of the cross with a guba [that is, a Greek sponge] on the forehead of the deceased, on his chest, hands, feet, and knees, and no more than that.” Father Paissy himself performed all of this over the deceased. After wiping him, he clothed him in monastic garb and wrapped him in his cloak; to do this, he slit the cloak somewhat, according to the rule, so as to wrap it crosswise. On his head he put a cowl with an eight-pointed cross.^[225] The cowl was left open, and the face of the deceased was covered with a black aer.^[226] In his hands was placed an icon of the Savior. Arrayed thus, towards morning he was transferred to the coffin (which had been prepared long since). They intended to leave the coffin in the cell (in the large front room, the same room in which the deceased elder received the brothers and lay visitors) for the whole day. As the deceased was a hieromonk of the highest rank, not the Psalter but the Gospel had to be read over him by hieromonks and hierodeacons. The reading was begun, immediately after the service for the dead, by Father Iosif; Father Paissy, who wished to read himself later in the day and all night, was meanwhile very busy and preoccupied, together with the superior of the hermitage, for something extraordinary, some unheard-of and “unseemly” excitement and impatient expectation, suddenly began to appear more and more among the monastery brothers and the lay visitors who came in crowds from the monastery guest houses and from town. Both the Father Superior and Father Paissy made every possible effort to calm this vain excitement. Well into daylight people began arriving from town, some even bringing their sick, children especially—just as if they had been waiting purposely for this moment, apparently in hopes of an immediate healing power, which, according to their faith, should not be slow to appear. Only now did it appear how accustomed people had become in our parts to considering the deceased elder, while he was still alive, an unquestionable and great saint. And those who came were far from being all peasants. This great expectation among the faithful, so hastily and nakedly displayed, even impatiently and all but demandingly, seemed to Father Paissy an unquestionable temptation, and though he had long anticipated it, still it in fact went beyond his expectations. Meeting the excited ones among the monks, he even began to reprimand them: “Such and so instant an expectation of something great,” he would tell them, “is levity, possible only among worldly people; it is not fitting for us.” But he was little heeded, and Father Paissy noticed it uneasily, notwithstanding that he himself (were one to recall the whole truth), though he was indignant at these too-impatient expectations and saw levity and vanity in them, still secretly, within himself, in the depths of his soul, shared almost the same expectations as the excited ones, which fact he could not but admit to himself. Nevertheless certain encounters were particularly unpleasant for him, awakening great doubts in him by some sort of foreboding. In the crowd pressing into the cell of the deceased, he noticed with disgust in his soul (for which he at once reproached himself) the presence, for example, of Rakitin, or the distant visitor, the Ob-dorsk monk, who was still staying at the monastery, both of whom Father Paissy suddenly considered for some reason suspicious—though they were not the only ones who could be pointed to in that sense. Among all the excited ones, the Obdorsk monk stood out as the busiest; he could be seen everywhere, in all places: he asked questions everywhere, listened everywhere, whispered everywhere with a sort of specially mysterious look. The expression on his face was most impatient, and as if already annoyed that the expected thing should be so long in coming. As for Rakitin, it was discovered later that he had turned up so early at the monastery on a special errand from Madame Khokhlakov. The moment she awoke and learned about the deceased, this kind but weak-willed woman, who could not be admitted to the hermitage herself, was suddenly filled with such impetuous curiosity that she at once dispatched Rakitin to the hermitage in her stead, to observe everything and report to her immediately in writing, about every half-hour, on everything that happens. She considered Rakitin a most devout and religious young man—so skillful was he in manipulating everyone and presenting himself to everyone according to the wishes of each, whenever he saw the least advantage for himself. The day was clear and bright, and there were many pilgrims crowded among the hermitage graves, which were scattered all over the grounds, though mainly clustered near the church. Going about the hermitage, Father Paissy suddenly remembered Alyosha, and that he had not seen him for a long time, perhaps not since the night before. And as soon as he remembered him, he noticed him at once, in the furthest corner of the hermitage, near the wall, sitting on the grave of a monk long since departed who was famous for his deeds. He sat with his back to the hermitage, facing the wall, as if hiding behind the tombstone. Coming close to him, Father Paissy saw that he had covered his face with both hands and was weeping, silently but bitterly, his whole body shaking with sobs. Father Paissy stood over him for a while.

“Enough, dear son, enough, my friend,” he said at last with deep feeling. “What is it? You should rejoice and not weep. Don’t you know that this is the greatest of his days? Where is he now, at this moment—only think of that!”

Alyosha glanced up at him, uncovering his face, which was swollen with tears like a little child’s, but turned away at once without saying a word and again hid his face in his hands.

“Ah, perhaps it’s just as well,” Father Paissy said thoughtfully, “perhaps you should weep, Christ has sent you these tears.” And he added, to himself now, “Your tender tears are a relief for your soul and will serve to gladden your dear heart.” And he moved away from Alyosha, thinking of him with love. He hastened to go, incidentally, because he felt that, looking at him, he might start weeping himself. Meanwhile time went on, the monastic services and services for the dead continued in due order. Father Paissy again replaced Father Iosif by the coffin, and again took over the reading of the Gospel from him. But it was not yet three o’clock in the afternoon when something occurred that I have already mentioned at the end of the previous book, something so little expected by any of us, and so contrary to the general hope, that, I repeat, a detailed and frivolous account of this occurrence has been remembered with great vividness in our town and all the neighborhood even to the present day. Here again I will add, speaking for myself personally, that I find it almost loathsome to recall this frivolous and tempting occurrence, essentially quite insignificant and natural, and I would, of course, omit all mention of it from my story, if it had not influenced in the strongest and most definite way the soul and heart of the main, though future, hero of my story, Alyosha, causing, as it were, a crisis and upheaval in his soul, which shook his mind but also ultimately strengthened it for the whole of his life, and towards a definite purpose.

And so, back to the story. When, still before dawn, the body of the elder, prepared for burial, was placed in the coffin and carried out to the front room, the former reception room, a question arose among those attending the coffin: should they open the windows in the room? But this question, uttered cursorily and casually by someone, went unanswered and almost unnoticed—unless it was noticed, and even then privately, by some of those present, only in the sense that to expect corruption and the odor of corruption from the body of such a deceased was a perfect absurdity, even deserving of pity (if not laughter) with regard to the thoughtlessness and little faith of the one who had uttered the question. For quite the opposite was expected. Then, shortly after noon, something began that was first noticed by those coming in and going out only silently and within themselves, and even with an apparent fear of communicating the thought that was beginning to form in them, but which by three o’clock in the afternoon had manifested itself so clearly and undeniably that news of it spread instantly all over the hermitage and among all the pilgrims visiting the hermitage, at once penetrated the monastery as well and threw all the monks into consternation, and, finally, in a very short time, reached town and stirred up everyone there, both believers and unbelievers. The unbelievers rejoiced; as for the believers, some of them rejoiced even more than the unbelievers, for “people love the fall of the righteous man and his disgrace,” as the deceased elder himself had pronounced in one of his homilies. The thing was that little by little, but more and more noticeably, an odor of corruption had begun to issue from the coffin, which by three o’clock in the afternoon was all too clearly evident and kept gradually increasing. Not for a long time had there been, nor was it possible to recall in the entire past life of our monastery, such temptation, so coarsely unbridled, and even impossible under any other circumstances, as was displayed immediately after this occurrence even among the monks themselves. Recalling that whole day in detail later on, and even after many years, some of our sensible monks were still amazed and horrified at how this temptation could then have reached such proportions. For before then it had also happened that monks of very righteous life, whose righteousness was in all men’s eyes, God-fearing elders, had died, and even so, from their humble coffins, too, there had come an odor of corruption, appearing quite naturally as in all dead men, yet this did not produce any temptation, or even the least excitement. Of course there were some among the deceased of old whose memory was still kept alive in our monastery, and whose remains, according to tradition, had shown no corruption, which fact influenced the brothers movingly and mysteriously, and remained in their memory as a gracious and wondrous thing, and the promise of a still greater future glory from their tombs, if only, by God’s will, the time for that were to come. Among these was especially preserved the memory of the elder Job, who lived to be a hundred and five, a famous ascetic, a great faster and keeper of silence, who had departed long ago, in the second decade of this century, and whose grave was pointed out with special and extreme respect to all pilgrims on their first visit, with the mysterious mention of some great expectations. (It was on this same grave that Father Paissy had found Alyosha sitting that morning.) Besides this long-since-departed elder, a similar memory was kept alive of the great schemahieromonk, the elder Father Varsonofy, who had departed comparatively recently—the one whom Father Zosima had succeeded as elder, and who, in his lifetime, was considered definitely a holy fool by all the pilgrims who visited the monastery. Tradition maintained that these two both lay in their coffins as if alive and were buried without any corruption in them, and that their faces even brightened, as it were, in the coffin. And some even recalled insistently that one could sense an unmistakable fragrance coming from their bodies. Yet, even with such impressive memories, it would still be difficult to explain the direct cause of such a frivolous, absurd, and malicious phenomenon as occurred at the coffin of the elder Zosima. For my part, personally I suppose that in this case a number of things came together simultaneously, that a number of different causes combined their influence. One of these, for instance, was the inveterate hostility to the institution of elders, as a pernicious innovation, that was deeply hidden in the minds of many monks in the monastery. Then, of course, and above all, there was envy of the dead man’s holiness, so firmly established while he lived that it was even forbidden, as it were, to question it. For, though the late elder had attracted many to himself, not so much by miracles as by love, and had built up around himself, as it were, a whole world of those who loved him, nevertheless, and still more so, by the same means he generated many who envied him, and hence became his bitter enemies, both open and secret, and not only among the monastics, but even among laymen. He never harmed anyone, for example, but then, “Why is he considered so holy?” And the gradual repetition of that one question finally generated a whole abyss of the most insatiable spite. Which is why I think that many, having noticed the odor of corruption coming from his body, and that so soon—for not even a day had passed since his death—were immensely pleased; just as among those devoted to the elder, who until then had honored him, there were at once found some who were all but insulted and personally offended by this occurrence. The gradual development of the matter went as follows.

No sooner had the corruption begun to reveal itself than one had only to look at the faces of the monks entering the cell of the deceased to see why they were coming. They would go in, stand for a while, and then leave, hastening to confirm the news to the others waiting in a crowd outside. Some of those waiting would sorrowfully nod their heads, but others did not even wish to conceal their joy, so obviously shining in their spiteful eyes. And no one reproached them any longer, no one raised a good voice, which is even a wonder, for those devoted to the deceased elder were still a majority in the monastery; yet, apparently, the Lord himself this time allowed the minority to prevail temporarily. Lay visitors, more particularly the educated sort, soon began coming to the cell to spy in the same way. Few of the simple people went in, though there were many of them crowding at the gates of the hermitage. There is no denying that precisely after three o’clock the influx of lay visitors grew considerably, and precisely as the result of the tempting news. Those who would not, perhaps, have come that day at all, and had no thought of coming, now deliberately put in an appearance, some high-ranking people among them. However, there was as yet no outward breach of good order, and Father Paissy, with a stern face, continued reading the Gospel aloud, firmly and distinctly, as if he did not notice what was happening, though he had long since noticed something unusual. But then he, too, began hearing voices, subdued at first, but gradually growing firm and confident. “Clearly God’s judgment is not as man’s,” Father Paissy suddenly heard. The first to utter it was a layman, a town functionary, an elderly man, and, as far as anyone knew, quite a pious one; but, in uttering this aloud, he merely repeated what the monks had long been repeating in one another’s ears. They had long ago uttered this despairing word, and the worst of it was that with almost every minute a certain triumph appeared and grew around this word. Soon, however, good order itself began to be violated, and it was as if everyone felt somehow entitled to violate it. “Why should this have happened?” some of the monks began to say, at first as if with regret. “He had a small, dry body, just skin and bones—where can the smell be coming from?” “Then it’s a deliberate sign from God,” others added hastily, and their opinion was accepted without argument and at once, for they indicated further that even though it was only natural for there to be a smell, as with any deceased sinner, still it should have come forth later, after a day at least, not with such obvious haste, but “this one has forestalled nature,” and so there was nothing else in it but God and his deliberate finger. A sign. This argument struck irrefutably. The meek father hieromonk Iosif, the librarian, a favorite of the deceased, tried to object to some of the maligners, saying that “it is not so everywhere,” and that there was no Orthodox dogma that the bodies of righteous men are necessarily incorruptible, it was only an opinion, and even in the most Orthodox countries, on Mount Athos for example, they are not so embarrassed by the odor of corruption, and it is not bodily incorruptibility that is regarded as the main sign of the glorification of the saved, but the color of their bones after their bodies have lain in the ground many years and even decayed in it, and “if the bones are found to be yellow like wax, that is the first sign that the Lord has glorified the righteous deceased; and if they are found to be not yellow but black, it means that the Lord has not deemed him worthy of his glory—that is how it is on Athos, a great place, where Orthodoxy from of old has been preserved inviolate and in shining purity,” Father Iosif concluded. But the words of the humble father flew by without leaving any impression, and even evoked a mocking rebuff: “That’s all learning and innovation, nothing worth listening to,” the monks decided among themselves. “We stick to the old ways; who cares what innovations they come up with; should we copy them all?” added others. “We’ve had as many holy fathers as they have. They sit there under the Turks and have forgotten everything. Their Orthodoxy has long been clouded, and they don’t have any bells,” the greatest scoffers put in. Father Iosif walked away sorrowfully, the more so as he had not expressed his opinion very firmly, but as if he himself had little faith. But he foresaw with perplexity that something very unseemly was beginning and that disobedience itself was rearing its head. Little by little, after Father Iosif, all other reasonable voices fell silent. And it somehow happened that everyone who loved the deceased elder and accepted the institution of elders with loving obedience suddenly became terribly frightened of something, and when they met they only glanced timidly into each other’s faces. The enemies of the institution of elders as a novelty proudly raised their heads: “Not only was there no odor from the late elder Varsonofy, but he even exuded a fragrance,” they recalled maliciously, “but of that he was deemed worthy not as an elder, but as a righteous man.” And after that, denunciations and even accusations poured down upon the newly departed elder: “He taught unrighteousness; he taught that life is great joy and not tearful humility,” some of the more muddleheaded said. “He held fashionable beliefs, he did not accept the material fire of hell,” added others, even more muddleheaded than the first. “He was not strict in fasting, allowed himself sweets, had cherry preserve with his tea, and liked it very much, ladies used to send it to him. What is a monk doing giving tea parties?” came from some of the envious. “He sat in pride,” the most malicious cruelly recalled, “he considered himself a saint; when people knelt before him, he took it as his due.” “He abused the sacrament of confession,” the most ardent opponents of the institution of elders added in a malicious whisper, and among these were some of the oldest and most strictly pious of the monks, true adepts of fasting and silence, who had kept silent while the deceased was alive but now suddenly opened their mouths, which in itself was terrible, because their words had a strong influence on the young and as yet unfirm monks. The Obdorsk visitor, the little monk from St. Sylvester’s, also listened to them attentively, sighing deeply and nodding his head: “Yes, apparently Father Ferapont judged rightly yesterday,” he kept thinking to himself, and just then Father Ferapont appeared; he emerged as if precisely to aggravate the shock.

*

I have already mentioned that he rarely left his little wooden cell in the apiary, did not even go to church for long stretches of time, and that this was blinked at because he was supposedly a holy fool, not to be bound by the general rule. But to tell the whole truth, all this was blinked at even from a sort of necessity. For it was somehow even shameful to insist on burdening with the general rule so great an ascetic, who fasted and kept silence and prayed night and day (he even fell asleep on his knees), if he himself did not want to submit to it. “He is holier than any of us, and what he does is more difficult than following the rule,” the monks would have said in that case, “and if he does not go to church, it means he knows himself when to go, he has his own rule.” Because of the likelihood of such murmuring and temptation, Father Ferapont was left in peace. As everyone knew, Father Ferapont intensely disliked Father Zosima; and then the news reached him in his little cell that “God’s judgment is not as man’s, and that it has even forestalled nature.” We may suppose that one of the first to run and bring him the news was the Obdorsk visitor, who had been to see him the day before, and who the day before had left him in terror. I have also mentioned that Father Paissy, who stood firmly and immovably reading over the coffin, though he could not hear or see what was taking place outside the cell, had unerringly divined all its essentials in his heart, for he knew his milieu thoroughly. But he was not dismayed, and waited fearlessly for all that might still take place, with a piercing gaze looking ahead to the outcome of the disturbance, which was already present to his mental eye. Then suddenly an extraordinary noise in the front hall, which clearly violated good order, struck his ear. The door was flung open and Father Ferapont appeared on the threshold. Behind him, as one could glimpse and even plainly see from the cell, many monks who accompanied him were crowding at the foot of the porch, and many laymen along with them. This company did not enter the cell, however, and did not come up on the porch, but stopped and waited to see what Father Ferapont would say and do next, for they suspected, even with a certain fear, despite all their boldness, that he had not come for nothing. Having stopped on the threshold, Father Ferapont lifted up his arms, and from under his right arm peeped the keen and curious little eyes of the Obdorsk visitor, the only one who could not keep himself from running up the stairs after Father Ferapont, for he was greatly curious. Apart from him, all the others, on the contrary, drew further back in sudden fear the moment the door was so noisily flung open. Lifting up his hands, Father Ferapont suddenly yelled:

“Casting will I cast out!” and facing all four directions in turn, he at once began making crosses with his hand at the walls and the four corners of the cell. Those who accompanied Father Ferapont understood this action at once; for they knew that he always did the same wherever he went, and that he would not sit down or say a word before driving out the unclean spirits.

“Get thee hence, Satan! Get thee hence, Satan!” he repeated with each sign of the cross. “Casting will I cast out!” he yelled again. He was wearing his coarse habit, girded with a rope. His bare chest overgrown with gray hair appeared from under his hempen shirt. He had nothing at all on his feet. As soon as he started waving his arms, the heavy chains he wore under his habit began shaking and clanking. Father Paissy interrupted his reading, stepped forward, and stood waiting in front of him.

“Wherefore have you come, worthy father? Wherefore do you violate good order? Wherefore do you trouble the humble flock?” he said at last, looking at him sternly.

“Whyfor have I come? Whyfor do you ask? How believest thou?”^[227] Father Ferapont cried in his holy folly. “I came forth to drive out your guests here, the foul devils. I want to see how many you’ve stored up without me. I want to sweep them out with a birch broom.”

“You drive out the unclean one, and it is perhaps him that you serve,” Father Paissy went on fearlessly. “And who can say of himself, ‘I am holy? Can you, father?”

“I am foul, not holy. I would not sit in an armchair, I would not desire to be , worshipped like an idol!” Father Ferapont thundered. “Now people are destroying the holy faith. The deceased, your saint here,” he turned to the crowd, pointing at the coffin with his finger, “denied devils. He gave purgatives against devils. So they’ve bred here like spiders in the corners. And on this day he got himself stunk. In this we see a great sign from God.”

Indeed, it had once happened in Father Zosima’s lifetime. One of the monks began seeing unclean spirits, at first in his dreams and then also in reality. And when, in great fear, he divulged this to the elder, the latter advised him to pray without ceasing and fast zealously. But when that did not help either, he advised him, without abandoning his fasting and prayer, to take a certain medicine. Many found this a temptation and spoke of it among themselves, shaking their heads—Father Ferapont most of all, whom some slanderers had hastened to inform at once of the “extraordinary” instructions the elder had given in this particular case.

“Get thee hence, father!” Father Paissy spoke commandingly. “It is not for men to judge, but for God. Perhaps we see here such a sign’ as neither I, nor you, nor any man is capable of understanding. Get thee hence, father, and do not trouble the flock!” he repeated insistently. “He did not keep the fasts according to his monastic rank, therefore this sign has come. That’s plain enough, it’s a sin to conceal it!” The fanatic, maddened by his zeal, got himself going and would not be still. “He loved candies, the ladies used to bring him candies in their pockets, he was a tea sipper, a glutton, filling his stomach with sweets and his mind with arrogant thoughts ... That is why he suffers this shame ...”

“Frivolous are your words, father!” Father Paissy also raised his voice. “I marvel at your fasting and ascetic life, but frivolous are your words, as if spoken by some worldly youth, callow and inconstant of mind. Therefore get thee hence, father, I command you,” Father Paissy thundered in conclusion.

“I will get hence,” said Father Ferapont, as if somewhat taken aback, but not abandoning his spite. “You learned ones! In great wisdom you exalt yourselves above my nothingness. I came here illiterate, and here forgot what I did know, the Lord himself has protected me, his little one, from your wisdom...”

Father Paissy stood over him and waited firmly. Father Ferapont was silent for a short time; then, suddenly rueful, he put his right hand to his cheek and spoke in a singsong, looking at the coffin of the deceased elder:

“Tomorrow they will sing ‘My Helper and Defender’ over him—a glorious canon—and over me when I croak just What Earthly Joy’—a little song,” he said tearfully and piteously.^[228] “You are proud and puffed up! Empty is this place!” he suddenly yelled like a madman, and, waving his hand, turned quickly, and quickly went down the steps from the porch. The crowd awaiting him below hesitated: some followed him at once, but others lingered, for the cell was still open and Father Paissy, who had come out to the porch after Father Ferapont, was standing and watching. But the raging old man was not finished yet: going about twenty steps off, he suddenly turned towards the setting sun, raised both arms, and, as if he had been cut down, collapsed on the ground with a great cry:

“My Lord has conquered! Christ has conquered with the setting sun!” he cried out frenziedly, lifting up his hands to the sun, and, falling face down on the ground, he sobbed loudly like a little child, shaking all over with tears and spreading his arms on the ground. Now everyone rushed to him, there were exclamations, responsive sobs ... Some kind of frenzy seized them all.

“It is he who is holy! It is he who is righteous!”voices exclaimed, quite fearlessly now. “It is he who should be made an elder,” others added spitefully.

“He would not be made an elder ... he would refuse ... he would not serve a cursed innovation ... he would not ape their foolery,” other voices put in at once, and it was hard to imagine where it would end, but at that moment the bell rang calling them to church. They all suddenly began crossing themselves. Father Ferapont also got up, and, protecting himself with the sign of the cross, went to his cell without looking back, still uttering exclamations, but now quite incoherently. Some few drifted after him, but the majority began to disperse, hurrying to the service. Father Paissy handed over the reading to Father Iosif and went down. He could not be shaken by the frenzied cries of fanatics, but his heart was suddenly saddened and anguished by something in particular, and he felt it. He stopped and suddenly asked himself, “Why do I feel such sadness, almost to the point of dejection?” and perceived at once with surprise that this sudden sadness was evidently owing to a very small and particular cause: it happened that in the crowd milling about the entrance to the cell, among the rest of the excited ones, he had also noticed Alyosha, and he remembered that, seeing him there, he had at once felt, as it were, a pain in his heart. “Can it be that this young one means so much to my heart now?” he suddenly asked himself in surprise. At that moment Alyosha was just passing by him, as if hurrying somewhere, but not in the direction of the church. Their eyes met. Alyosha quickly turned away and dropped his eyes to the ground, and just from the look of the young man, Father Paissy could guess what a great change was taking place in him at that moment.

“Have you, too, fallen into temptation?” Father Paissy exclaimed suddenly. “Can it be that you, too, are with those of little faith?” he added ruefully.

Alyosha stopped and glanced somehow indefinitely at Father Paissy, but again quickly turned away and dropped his eyes to the ground. He stood sideways, not facing his questioner. Father Paissy observed him attentively.

“Where are you hurrying to? The bell is ringing for the service,” he asked again, but Alyosha once more gave no answer.

“Or are you leaving the hermitage? Without permission? Without a blessing?”

Alyosha suddenly gave a twisted smile, raised his eyes strangely, very strangely, to the inquiring father, the one to whom, at his death, his former guide, the former master of his heart and mind, his beloved elder, had entrusted him, and suddenly, still without answering, waved his hand as if he cared nothing even about respect, and with quick steps walked towards the gates of the hermitage.

“But you will come back!” Father Paissy whispered, looking after him with rueful surprise.

Chapter 2: An Opportune Moment

Of course Father Paissy was not mistaken when he decided that his “dear boy” would come back, and perhaps even perceived (if not completely, yet perspicaciously) the true meaning of the mood of Alyosha’s soul. Nevertheless I shall frankly admit that it would be very difficult for me now to convey clearly the precise meaning of this strange and uncertain moment in the life of the hero of my story, whom I love so much and who is still so young. To the rueful question Father Paissy addressed to Alyosha: “Or are you, too, with those of little faith?”—I could, of course, answer firmly for Alyosha: “No, he is not with those of little faith.” Moreover, it was even quite the opposite: all his dismay arose precisely because his faith was so great. But dismay there was, it did arise, and it was so tormenting that even later, long afterwards, Alyosha considered this rueful day one of the most painful and fatal days of his life. If I were asked directly: “Could all this anguish and such great perturbation have arisen in him only because, instead of beginning at once to produce healings, the body of his elder, on the contrary, showed signs of early corruption?” I would answer without hesitation: “Yes, indeed it was so.” I would only ask the reader not to be in too great a hurry to laugh at my young man’s pure heart. Not only have I no intention of apologizing for him, of excusing and justifying his simple faith on account of his youth, for instance, or the little progress he had made formerly in the study of science, and so on and so forth, but I will do the opposite and declare firmly that I sincerely respect the nature of his heart. No doubt some other young man, who takes his heart’s impressions more prudently, who has already learned how to love not ardently but just lukewarmly, whose thoughts, though correct, are too reasonable (and therefore cheap) for his age, such a young man, I say, would avoid what happened to my young man, but in certain cases, really, it is more honorable to yield to some passion, however unwise, if it springs from great love, than not to yield to it at all. Still more so in youth, for a young man who is constantly too reasonable is suspect and of too cheap a price—that is my opinion!”But,” reasonable people may exclaim at this point, “not every young man can believe in such prejudices, and your young man is no example for others.” To this I again reply: yes, my young man believed, believed piously and unshakably, but still I do not apologize for him. You see, though I declared above (and perhaps too hastily) that I was not going to explain, excuse, or justify my hero, I find that it is still necessary, for the further comprehension of my story, to understand certain things. I will say this much: it was not a matter of miracles. It was not an expectation of miracles, frivolous in its impatience. Alyosha did not need miracles then for the triumph of certain convictions (it was not that at all), nor so that some sort of former, preconceived idea would quickly triumph over another—oh, no, by no means: in all this, and above all else, in the first place, there stood before him the person, and only the person—the person of his beloved elder, the person of that righteous man whom he revered to the point of adoration. That was just it, that the entirety of the love for “all and all” that lay hidden in his young and pure heart, then and during the whole previous year, was at times as if wholly concentrated, perhaps even incorrectly, mainly on just one being, at least in the strongest impulses of his heart—on his beloved elder, now deceased. True, this being had stood before him as an indisputable ideal for so long that all his youthful powers and all their yearning could not but turn to this ideal exclusively, in some moments even to the forgetting of “all and all.” (He himself remembered later that on that painful day he quite forgot his brother Dmitri, about whom he had been so worried and grieved the day before; he also forgot to take the two hundred roubles to Ilyushechka’s father, as he had also so fervently intended to do the day before.) Again, it was not miracles he needed, but only a “higher justice,” which, as he believed, had been violated—it was this that wounded his heart so cruelly and suddenly. And what matter if, in the course of events, this “justice” had assumed in Alyosha’s expectations the form of those miracles expected immediately from the remains of his adored former teacher? Everyone in the monastery thought and expected the same, even those whose minds Alyosha revered, Father Paissy himself, for example, and so Alyosha, not troubling himself with any doubts, clothed his dreams in the same form as all the others. And it had been settled thus in his heart for a long time, through the whole year of his life in the monastery, and his heart had acquired the habit of expecting it. But it was justice, justice he thirsted for, not simply miracles! And now he who, according to his hope, was to have been exalted higher than anyone in the whole world, this very man, instead of receiving the glory that was due him, was suddenly thrown down and disgraced! Why? Who had decreed it? Who could have judged so? These were the questions that immediately tormented his inexperienced and virgin heart. He could not bear without insult, even without bitterness of heart, that this most righteous of righteous men should be given over to such derisive and spiteful jeering from a crowd so frivolous and so far beneath him. Let there be no miracles, let nothing miraculous be revealed, let that which was expected immediately not come to pass, but why should there be this ignominy, why should this shame be permitted, why this hasty corruption, which “forestalled nature,” as the spiteful monks were saying? Why this “sign” which they now so triumphantly brought forth together with Father Ferapont, and why did they believe they had any right to bring it forth? Where was Providence and its finger? Why did it hide its finger “at the most necessary moment” (Alyosha thought), as if wanting to submit itself to the blind, mute, merciless laws of nature?

That was why Alyosha’s heart was bleeding, and of course, as I have already said, here first of all was the person he loved more than anything in the world, and this very person was “disgraced,” this very person was “defamed”! Let this murmuring of my young man be thoughtless and rash, but I repeat again for the third time (granting beforehand that it is also perhaps thoughtless of me to do so): I am glad that at such a moment my young man turned out to be not so reasonable, the time will come for an intelligent man to be reasonable, but if at such an exceptional moment there is no love to be found in a young man’s heart, then when will it come? I must not, however, fail to mention in this connection a certain strange phenomenon that did, if only momentarily, reveal itself in Alyosha’s mind at this fatal and confused moment. This new something that appeared and flashed consisted of a certain tormenting impression from his conversation with his brother Ivan the day before, which Alyosha now kept recalling. Precisely now. Oh, not that any of his basic, so to speak elemental, beliefs were shaken in his soul. He loved his God and believed in him steadfastly, though he suddenly murmured against him. Yet some vague but tormenting and evil impression from the recollection of the previous day’s conversation with his brother Ivan now suddenly stirred again in his soul, demanding more and more to come to the surface. It was already quite dark when Rakitin, passing through the pine grove from the hermitage to the monastery, suddenly noticed Alyosha lying face down on the ground under a tree, motionless and as if asleep. He went up and called him by name.

“Is that you, Alexei? Can it be that ... ,” he began, astonished, but stopped without finishing. He was going to say, “Can it be that you’ve come to this?” Alyosha did not glance up at him, but from a slight movement Rakitin guessed at once that he had heard and understood him.

“What’s the matter with you?” he went on in surprise, but the surprise on his face was already beginning to be supplanted by a smile that turned more and more sarcastic.

“Listen, I’ve been looking for you for over two hours. You suddenly disappeared from the place. What are you doing here? What is all this blessed nonsense? Look at me, at least . . .” Alyosha raised his head, sat up, and leaned his back against the tree. He was not crying, but his face wore an expression of suffering, and there was irritation in his eyes. He did not look at Rakitin, incidentally, but somewhere aside.

“You know, you’ve quite changed countenance. No more of that old, notorious meekness of yours. Are you angry with somebody, or what? Offended?”

“Leave me alone!” Alyosha said suddenly, still without looking at him, and waved his hand wearily.

“Oho, so that’s how we are now! We’re snappish, just like other mortals! And we used to be an angel! Well, Alyoshka, you surprise me, do you know that? I mean it. It’s a long time since anything here has surprised me. Still, I did always consider you an educated man...”

Alyosha finally looked at him, but somehow distractedly, as if he still scarcely understood him.

“Can it be just because your old man got himself stunk? Can it be that you seriously believed he’d start pulling off miracles?” Rakitin exclaimed, passing again to the most genuine amazement.

“I believed, I believe, and I want to believe, and I will believe, and what more do you want!” Alyosha cried irritably.

“Precisely nothing, my dear. Ah, the devil! But even thirteen-year-old schoolboys don’t believe such things anymore! Still ... ah, the devil ... So you’ve gotten angry with your God now, you’ve rebelled: they passed you over for promotion, you didn’t get a medal for the feast day! Ah, you!”

Alyosha gave Rakitin a long look, his eyes somehow narrowed, and something flashed in them ... but not anger at Rakitin.

“I do not rebel against my God, I simply ‘do not accept his world,’ “ Alyosha suddenly smiled crookedly.

“What do you mean, you don’t accept his world?” Rakitin thought over his reply for a moment. “What sort of gibberish is that?”

Alyosha did not answer.

“Well, enough talk of trifles, now to business: did you eat anything today?”

“I don’t remember ... I think I did.”

“By the looks of you, you need fortifying. What a sorry sight! You didn’t sleep last night, so I hear, you had a meeting. And then all this fuss and muss ... I bet you had nothing but a piece of blessed bread to chew on. I’ve got a hunk of sausage here in my pocket, I brought it from town just in case, because I was coming here, only you probably won’t...”

“Let’s have your sausage.”

“Aha! So that’s how it is! Real rebellion, barricades and all! Well, brother, that’s not to be sneered at! Let’s go to my place ... I’d love a shot of vodka right now, I’m dead tired. You wouldn’t go so far as to have vodka ... or would you?”

“Let’s have your vodka.”

“Say! Amazing, brother!” Rakitin rolled his eyes. “Well, one way or the other, vodka or sausage, it’s a brave thing, a fine thing, not to be missed! Let’s go!”

Alyosha silently got up from the ground and went after Rakitin.

“If your brother Vanechka could see it, wouldn’t he be surprised! By the way, your good brother Ivan Fyodorovich went off to Moscow this morning, did you know that?”

“Yes,” Alyosha said indifferently, and suddenly the image of his brother Dmitri flashed through his mind, but only flashed, and though it reminded him of something, some urgent business, which could not be put off even a minute longer, some duty, some terrible responsibility, this recollection did not make any impression on him, did not reach his heart, it flitted through his memory and was forgotten. But long afterwards Alyosha kept remembering it.

“Your dear brother Vanechka once pronounced me a ‘giftless liberal windbag.’ And you, too, could not help letting me know once that I was ‘dishonest’ ... Very well! Now we’ll see how gifted and honest you are” (Rakitin finished the phrase to himself, in a whisper). “Bah, listen!” he raised his voice again, “let’s bypass the monastery and take the path straight to town ... Hmm. By the way, I need to stop and see Khokhlakov. Imagine, I wrote her a report about all that happened, and just think, she replied at once with a note, in pencil (the lady simply loves writing notes), that she ‘would not have expected such conduct from such a venerable old man as Father Zosima’! That’s what she wrote: ‘such conduct! She was angry, too; ah, you all...! Wait!” he cried again all at once, stopped suddenly, and, taking Alyosha by the shoulder, made him stop, too.

“You know, Alyoshka,” he looked searchingly in his eyes, entirely absorbed by the impression of the sudden new thought that had shone upon him, and though ostensibly laughing, he was apparently afraid to voice this sudden new thought of his, so hard was it still for him to believe the surprising and quite unexpected mood in which he saw Alyosha now, “Alyoshka, do you know the best place of all for us to go now?” he finally said timidly and ingratiatingly.

“It makes no difference ... wherever you like.”

“Let’s go to Grushenka’s, eh? Will you go?” Rakitin finally uttered, all atremble with timid expectancy. “Let’s go to Grushenka’s,” Alyosha replied calmly and at once, and this was so unexpected for Rakitin—that is, this prompt and calm assent—that he almost jumped back.

“W-well...! Now...!” he shouted in amazement, and suddenly, grasping Alyosha firmly by the arm, he led him quickly along the path, still terribly fearful that his determination might disappear. They walked in silence; Rakitin was even afraid to start talking.

“And how glad she’ll be, how glad ... ,” he muttered, and fell silent again. It was not at all to make Grushenka glad that he was leading Alyosha to her; he was a serious man and never undertook anything without the aim of profiting from it. His aim this time was twofold: first, a revengeful one—that is, to see “the disgrace of the righteous man,” the probable “fall” of Alyosha “from the saints to the sinners,” which he was already savoring in anticipation— and second, he had in mind a material aim as well, one rather profitable for himself, of which more shall be said below.

“Well, if such a moment has come along,” he thought gaily and maliciously to himself, “then we’d better just catch it by the scruff of the neck, the moment, I mean, because it’s very opportune for us.”

Chapter 3: An Onion

Grushenka lived in the busiest part of town, near the cathedral square, in a house belonging to the widow of the merchant Morozov, from whom she rented a small wooden cottage. The widow’s house was large, stone, two-storied, old, and extremely unattractive. The owner, an old woman, lived a secluded life there with her two nieces, also quite elderly spinsters. She had no need to rent the cottage in her backyard, but everyone knew that she had taken Grushenka as her tenant (already four years since) only to please her relative, the merchant Samsonov, who was openly Grushenka’s patron. It was said that in placing his “favorite” with the widow Morozov, the jealous old man had originally had in view the old woman’s keen eye, to keep watch over the new tenant’s behavior. But the keen eye soon turned out to be unnecessary, and in the end the widow Morozov rarely even met Grushenka and finally stopped bothering her altogether with her surveillance. True, it had already been four years since the old man had brought the timid, shy, eighteen-year-old girl, delicate, thin, pensive, and sad, to this house from the provincial capital, and since then much water had flowed under the bridge. All the same, the biography of this girl was only slightly and inconsistently known in our town; nor had anything been learned more recently, even at a time when a great many people began to be interested in the “beauty” Agrafena Alexandrovna had become in four years. There were only rumors that as a seventeen-year-old girl she had been deceived by someone, allegedly some officer, and then abandoned by him forthwith. The officer left, and was soon married somewhere, and Grushenka remained in poverty and disgrace. It was said, however, that though Grushenka had indeed been taken up from poverty by her old man, she was from an honorable family and came in some way from the clergy, being the daughter of a retired deacon or something of the sort. Thus, in four years, from the sensitive, offended, and pitiful orphan, there emerged a red-cheeked, full-bodied Russian beauty, a woman of bold and determined character, proud and insolent, knowing the value of money, acquisitive, tight-fisted, and cautious, who by hook or crook had already succeeded, so they said, in knocking together a little fortune of her own. Everyone was convinced of one thing: that Grushenka was hard to get, and that apart from the old man, her patron, there was not yet a single man in all those four years who could boast of her favors. This was a firm fact, for not a few aspirants had turned up, especially over the past two years, to obtain those favors. But all attempts were in vain; and some of the suitors were even forced to beat a comical and shameful retreat, after the firm and mocking rebuff dealt them by the strong-willed young lady. It was also known that the young lady, especially during the past year, had gotten into what is known as “gescheft,”^[229] and that she had proved herself extraordinarily able in this respect, so that in the end many started calling her a real Jew. Not that she lent money on interest, but it was known, for example, that for some time, together with Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, she had indeed been busily buying up promissory notes for next to nothing, ten kopecks to the rouble, and later made a rouble to ten kopecks on some of them. The ailing Samsonov, who in the past year had lost the use of his swollen legs, a widower, a tyrant over his two grown sons, a man of great wealth, stingy and implacable, fell, however, under the strong influence of his protégée, whom he had at first kept in an iron grip, on a short leash, on “lenten fare,” as some wags said at the time. But Grushenka had succeeded in emancipating herself, having inspired in him, however, a boundless trust regarding her fidelity. This old man, a great businessman (now long deceased), was also of remarkable character, tight-fisted above all and hard as flint, and though Grushenka so struck him that he even could not live without her (in the past two years, for example, it had really been so), he still did not allot her a large, considerable fortune, and even if she had threatened to abandon him altogether, he would still have remained implacable. Instead he allotted her a small sum, and even that, when it became known, was a surprise to everyone. “You’re a sharp woman,” he said to her, giving her about eight thousand roubles, “you’ll make out for yourself; but know this, that apart from your yearly allowance, as usual, you’ll get no more from me before I die, and I will leave you nothing in my will.” And he kept his word: he died and left everything to his sons, whom he had kept about him all his life on the level of servants, with their wives and children, and made no mention of Grushenka in his will. All of this became known afterwards. But he helped Grushenka a great deal with advice on how to manage “her own money” and brought “business” her way. When Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, who originally was connected with Grushenka with regard to some chance “gescheft,” ended quite unexpectedly to himself by falling head over heels in love with her and nearly losing his reason, old Samsonov, who by then already had one foot in the grave, chuckled greatly. It is remarkable that Grushenka, throughout their acquaintance, was fully and even, as it were, cordially frank with her old man, and apparently with no one else in the whole world. Most recently, when Dmitri Fyodorovich had also appeared suddenly with his love, the old man had stopped chuckling. On the contrary, one day he seriously and sternly advised Grushenka: “If you must choose between the two of them, father and son, choose the old man, only in such a way, however, that the old scoundrel is certain to marry you, and makes over at least some of his money in advance. And don’t hobnob with the captain, nothing good will come of it.” These were the very words to Grushenka from the old voluptuary, who already felt himself near death and indeed died five months after giving this advice. I will also note in passing that although many in our town knew about the absurd and ugly rivalry at that time between the Karamazovs, father and son, the object of which was Grushenka, few then understood the true meaning of her relations with the two of them, the old man and the son. Even Grushenka’s two serving women (after the catastrophe, of which we shall speak further on, broke out) later testified in court that Agrafena Alexandrovna received Dmitri Fyodorovich only out of fear, because, they said, “he threatened to kill her.” She had two serving women, one a very old cook, from her parents’ household, ailing and nearly deaf, and the other her granddaughter, a pert young girl, about twenty years old, Grushenka’s maid. Grushenka lived very frugally and in quite poor surroundings. There were only three rooms in her cottage, furnished by the landlady with old mahogany furniture in the fashion of the twenties. When Rakitin and Alyosha arrived, it was already dusk, but there were no lights in the rooms. Grushenka was lying down in her drawing room on her big, clumsy sofa with its imitation mahogany back, hard and upholstered with leather that had long since become worn and full of holes. Under her head were two white down pillows from her bed. She was lying stretched out on her back, motionless, with both hands behind her head. She was dressed up as though she were expecting someone, in a black silk dress, with a delicate lace fichu on her head, which was very becoming to her; the lace shawl thrown around her shoulders was pinned with a massive gold brooch. She precisely was expecting someone, lying as if in anguish and impatience, with a somewhat pale face, with hot lips and eyes, impatiently tapping the arm of the sofa with her right toe. The moment Rakitin and Alyosha appeared, a slight commotion took place: from the front hall they heard Grushenka jump up quickly from the sofa and suddenly cry out in fear: “Who is it?” But the visitors were met by the maid, who at once replied to her mistress:

“It’s not him, miss, it’s some others, they’re all right.”

“What’s the matter with her?” Rakitin muttered as he led Alyosha by the arm into the drawing room. Grushenka stood by the sofa, still looking frightened. A thick coil of her dark brown braid escaped suddenly from under the fichu and fell over her right shoulder, but she did not notice it and did not tuck it back until she had peered into her visitors’ faces and recognized them.

“Ah, it’s you, Rakitka? You got me all frightened. Who did you bring? Who is that with you? Lord, look who he’s brought!” she exclaimed as she made out Alyosha’s face.

“Send for some candles!” Rakitin said with the casual air of a very close acquaintance and intimate, who even has the right to give orders in the house.

“Candles ... of course, candles ... Fenya, fetch him a candle ... Well, you chose a fine time to bring him!” she exclaimed again, nodding at Alyosha, and turning to the mirror, she began to tuck up her braid with both hands. She seemed displeased.

“Why, is something wrong?” Rakitin asked, instantly almost offended.

“You frightened me, Rakitka, that’s what,” Grushenka turned to Alyosha with a smile. “Don’t be afraid of me, Alyosha darling, I’m awfully glad to see you, my so-unexpected visitor. But you, Rakitka, you frightened me: I thought it was Mitya forcing his way in. You see, I tricked him this afternoon, I made him swear to believe me, and then I lied to him. I told him I was going to be with Kuzma Kuzmich, my old man, all evening, counting the money with him till late at night. I go every week and spend a whole evening settling accounts with him. We lock ourselves in: he clicks away on the abacus, and I sit and write it down in the books—I’m the only one he trusts. Mitya believed I’d be there, but I’ve locked myself up in my house and sit here waiting for a message. How could Fenya have let you in! Fenya, Fenya! Run out to the gate, open it, and look around, see if the captain is there anywhere. Maybe he’s hiding and spying on me, I’m scared to death!”

“No one’s there, Agrafena Alexandrovna, I just looked, and I keep peeking through the crack all the time, because I’m in fear and trembling myself.”

“Are the shutters fastened, Fenya? And the curtains should be drawn— there!” she drew the heavy curtains herself, “or he might see the light and come flying in. I’m afraid of your brother Mitya today, Alyosha.” Grushenka was speaking loudly, and though she was worried, she also seemed almost in a sort of ecstasy.

“Why are you so afraid of Mitenka today?” Rakitin inquired. “You don’t seem to be timid with him, he dances to your tune.”

“I told you, I’m expecting a message, a certain golden message, so it would be better now if there were no Mitenka around at all. Besides, he didn’t believe I was going to see Kuzma Kuzmich, I feel it. He must be sitting there in the garden now, behind Fyodor Pavlovich’s house, watching for me. And if he’s sat himself down there, then he won’t come here—so much the better! And I really did run over to see Kuzma Kuzmich, Mitya took me there himself, I told him I’d stay till midnight, and that he must come at midnight to take me home. He left, and I stayed at the old man’s for about ten minutes and came back here again—oh, was I scared, I ran so as not to meet him.”

“And why are you so spruced up? What a curious little cap you’ve got on!”

“You’re much too curious yourself, Rakitin! I told you, I’m expecting a certain message. When it comes, I’ll jump up and fly away, and that will be the last you ever see of me. So I’m all dressed and ready to go.”

“Where will you fly to?”

“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”

“Just look at her! Happy all over ... I’ve never seen you like this. Decked out as if for a ball,” Rakitin looked her up and down.

“A lot you know about balls.”

“And you?”

“I saw a ball once. Two years ago Kuzma Kuzmich’s son got married, and I watched from the gallery. But why am I talking with you, Rakitka, when such a prince is standing here? What a visitor! Alyosha, darling, I look at you and can’t believe it—Lord, how can you be here? To tell the truth, I never dreamed, I never expected, and till now I never believed you would come. Though it’s not the right moment, still I’m awfully glad to see you! Sit down on the sofa, here, like that, my young moon. Really, I still can’t come to my senses ... Ah, Rakitka, why didn’t you bring him yesterday, or the day before...! Well, I’m glad all the same. Maybe it’s even better that it’s now, at such a moment, and not two days ago ...”

She came over friskily, sat down next to Alyosha on the sofa, and looked at him decidedly with admiration. She really was glad, she was not lying when she said so. Her eyes were shining, her lips laughing, but good-naturedly, gaily. Alyosha never expected to see such a kind expression on her face ... He had seldom met her until the day before, had formed a horrifying notion of her, and had been so terribly shocked the day before by her vicious and perfidious escapade with Katerina Ivanovna, that he was very surprised now suddenly to see in her, as it were, quite a different and unexpected being. And however weighed down he was by his own grief, his eyes involuntarily rested on her with attention. Her whole manner also seemed to have changed for the better since the day before: there was almost no trace of that sugary inflection, of those pampered and affected movements ... everything was simple, simple-hearted, her movements were quick, direct, trusting, but she was very excited.

“Oh, Lord, such things keep coming true today, really,” she began prattling again. “And why I’m so glad of you, Alyosha, I don’t know myself. If you asked, I couldn’t say.”

‘“You really don’t know why you’re glad?” Rakitin grinned. “There must have been some reason why you kept pestering me to bring him, bring him, all the time.”

“I had a different reason before, but that’s gone now, it’s not the right moment. I’ll feed you now, that’s what. I’ve become kind now, Rakitka. Do sit down, Rakitka, why are you standing? Ah, you are sitting down? Never fear, Rakitushka will always look out for himself. Now he’s sitting across from us, Alyosha, and feeling offended because I didn’t ask him to sit down before you. My Rakitka is touchy, oh, so touchy!” Grushenka laughed. “Don’t be angry, Rakitka, I’m feeling kind today. But why are you sitting there so sadly, Alyoshechka, or are you afraid of me?” she looked into his eyes with mocking gaiety.

“He has a grief. He didn’t get promoted,” Rakitin said in a deep voice.

“What do you mean, promoted?”

“His elder got smelly.”

“What do you mean, ‘smelly’? You’re spewing a lot of nonsense, you just want to say something nasty. Shut up, fool. Will you let me sit on your lap, Alyosha—like this!” And all at once she sprang up suddenly and, laughing, leaped onto his knees like an affectionate cat, tenderly embracing his neck with her right arm. “I’ll cheer you up, my pious boy! No, really, will you let me sit on your lap for a little, you won’t be angry? Tell me—I’ll jump off.”

Alyosha was silent. He sat afraid to move; he heard her say: “Tell me—I’ll jump off,” but did not answer, as if he were frozen. Yet what was happening in him was not what might have been expected, or what might have been imagined, for example, by Rakitin, who was watching carnivorously from where he sat. The great grief in his soul absorbed all the feelings his heart might have conceived, and if he had been able at that moment to give himself a full accounting, he would have understood that he was now wearing the strongest armor against any seduction and temptation. Nevertheless, despite all the vague unaccountability of his state of soul and all the grief that was weighing on him, he still could not help marveling at a new and strange sensation that was awakening in his heart: this woman, this “horrible” woman, not only did not arouse in him the fear he had felt before, the fear that used to spring up in him every time he thought of a woman, if such a thought flashed through his soul, but, on the contrary, this woman, of whom he was afraid most of all, who was sitting on his knees and embracing him, now aroused in him suddenly quite a different, unexpected, and special feeling, the feeling of some remarkable, great, and most pure-hearted curiosity, and without any fear now, without a trace of his former terror—that was the main thing, and it could not but surprise him.

“Stop babbling nonsense,” Rakitin cried. “You’d better bring us champagne, you owe it to me, you know!”

“It’s true, I owe it to him. I promised him champagne, Alyosha, on top of everything else, if he brought you to me. Let’s have champagne, I’ll drink, too! Fenya, Fenya, bring us champagne, the bottle Mitya left, run quickly. Though I’m stingy, I’ll stand you a bottle—not you, Rakitka, you’re a mushroom, but he is a prince! And though my soul is full of something else now, I’ll drink with you all the same, I want to be naughty!”

“But what is this moment of yours, and what, may I ask, is this message, or is it a secret?” Rakitin put in again with curiosity, pretending as hard as he could that he did not notice the barbs that kept coming at him.

“Eh, it’s no secret, and you know it yourself,” Grushenka suddenly said worriedly, turning to look at Rakitin and leaning back a little from Alyosha, though she stayed seated on his lap with her arm around his neck. “The officer is coming, Rakitin, my officer is coming!”

“I heard he was coming, but is he so nearby?”

“He’s at Mokroye now, he’ll send me a messenger from there, he wrote me so, the letter came just today. I’m sitting here waiting for the messenger.” “Aha! But why in Mokroye?”

“It’s a long story, I’ve told you enough.”

“Take that, Mitenka—ai, ai! Does he know?”

“Know? He doesn’t know anything. If he found out, he’d kill me. But now I’m not afraid at all, I’m not afraid of his knife now. Shut up, Rakitin, don’t remind me of Dmitri Fyodorovich: he’s turned my heart to mush. And I don’t want to think about anything right now. But I can think about Alyoshechka, I’m looking at Alyoshechka ... Smile at me, darling, cheer up, smile at my foolishness, at my joy ... He smiled, he smiled! What a tender look! You know, Alyosha, I keep thinking you must be angry with me because of two days ago, because of the young lady. I was a bitch, that’s what ... Only it’s still good that it happened that way. It was bad, and it was good,” Grushenka suddenly smiled meaningly, and a cruel little line suddenly flashed in her smile. “Mitya says she shouted: ‘She should be flogged! ‘ I must really have offended her. She invited me, wanted to win me over, to seduce me with her chocolate ... No,it’s good that it happened that way,”she smiled again.”But I’m still afraid you’re angry ...”

“Really,” Rakitin suddenly put in again with serious surprise, “she’s really afraid of you, Alyosha, chicken that you are.”

“To you he’s a chicken, Rakitin, that’s what ... because you have no conscience, that’s what! You see, I love him with my soul, that’s what! Do you believe me, Alyosha, that I love you with all my soul?”

“Ah, shameless! She’s confessing her love for you, Alexei!”

“Why not? I do love him.”

“And the officer? And the golden message from Mokroye?” “That’s one thing, and this is another. “ “Just like a woman!”

“Don’t make me angry, Rakitka,” Grushenka caught him up hotly. “That is one thing, and this is another. I love Alyosha differently. It’s true I had sly thoughts about you, Alyosha. I’m a low woman, I’m a violent woman, yet there are moments, Alyosha, when I look upon you as my conscience. I keep thinking: ‘How a man like him must despise a bad woman like me.’ I thought the same thing two days ago, as I was running home from the young lady’s. I noticed you long ago, Alyosha, and Mitya knows, I told him. And Mitya understands. Will you believe, Alyosha, really I look at you sometimes and feel ashamed, ashamed of myself ... And I don’t know, I don’t remember how it was that I started thinking about you, or when it was ...”

Fenya came in and placed a tray on the table, with an uncorked bottle of champagne and three full glasses on it.

“Here’s the champagne!” Rakitin cried. “You’re excited, Agrafena Alexandrovna, and beside yourself. You’ll drink a glass and start dancing. Ehh, even this they couldn’t get right,” he added, examining the champagne. “The old woman poured it in the kitchen, and they brought the bottle without the cork, and it’s warm. Well, let’s have it anyway.”

He went up to the table, took a glass, drank it in one gulp, and poured himself another.

“One doesn’t bump into champagne too often,” he said, licking his chops. “Hey, Alyosha, take a glass, prove yourself. What are we going to drink to? To the gates of paradise? Grusha, take a glass, drink with us to the gates of paradise.”

“What gates of paradise?”

She took her glass. Alyosha took his, sipped at it, and set the glass down again.

“No, I’d better not,” he smiled quietly.

“But you boasted . . .!” Rakitin cried.

“Then I won’t drink either,” Grushenka cut in, “I don’t want to anyway. Drink the whole bottle yourself, Rakitka. If Alyosha drinks, I’ll drink, too.”

“What sentimental slop!” Rakitin taunted. “And sitting on his lap all the while! Granted he has his grief, but what have you got? He rebelled against his God, he was going to gobble sausage...”

“Why so?”

“His elder died today, the elder Zosima, the saint.”

“The elder Zosima died!” Grushenka exclaimed. “Oh, Lord, I didn’t know!” She crossed herself piously. “Lord, but what am I doing now, sitting on his lap!” She suddenly gave a start as if in fright, jumped off his knees at once, and sat down on the sofa. Alyosha gave her a long, surprised look, and something seemed to light up in his face.

“Rakitin,” he suddenly said loudly and firmly, “don’t taunt me with having rebelled against my God. I don’t want to hold any anger against you, and therefore you be kinder, too. I’ve lost such a treasure as you never had, and you cannot judge me now. You’d do better to look here, at her: did you see how she spared me? I came here looking for a wicked soul—I was drawn to that, because I was low and wicked myself, but I found a true sister, I found a treasure—a loving soul ... She spared me just now ... I’m speaking of you, Agrafena Alexandrovna. You restored my soul just now.”

Alyosha was breathless and his lips began to tremble. He stopped.

“Really saved you, did she!” Rakitin laughed spitefully. “Yet she was going to eat you up, do you know that?”

“Stop, Rakitka!” Grushenka suddenly jumped up. “Be still, both of you. I’ll tell you everything now: you be still, Alyosha, because I feel ashamed of hearing such words from you, because I’m wicked, not good—that’s how I am. And you, Rakitka, be still because you’re lying. I did have such a low thought, of eating him up, but now you’re lying, it’s quite different now ... and I don’t want to hear any more from you, Rakitka!” Grushenka spoke all this with unusual excitement.

“Look at them—both senseless!” Rakitin hissed, staring at them both in amazement. “It’s crazy, I feel like I’m in a madhouse. They’ve both gone soft, they’ll start crying in a minute!”

“I will start crying, I will start crying!” Grushenka kept repeating. “He called me his sister, I’ll never forget it! Just know one thing, Rakitka, I may be wicked, but still I gave an onion.”

“An onion? Ah, the devil, they really have gone crazy!”

Rakitin was surprised at their exaltation, which offended and annoyed him, though he should have realized that everything had just come together for them both in such a way that their souls were shaken, which does not happen very often in life. But Rakitin, who could be quite sensitive in understanding everything that concerned himself, was quite crude in understanding the feelings and sensations of his neighbors—partly because of his youthful inexperience, and partly because of his great egoism.

“You see, Alyoshechka,” Grushenka turned to him, laughing nervously, “I’m boasting to Rakitka that I gave an onion, but I’m not boasting to you, I’ll tell you about it for a different reason. It’s just a fable, but a good fable, I heard it when I was still a child, from my Matryona who cooks for me now. It goes like this: Once upon a time there was a woman, and she was wicked as wicked could be, and she died. And not one good deed was left behind her. The devils took her and threw her into the lake of fire. And her guardian angel stood thinking: what good deed of hers can I remember to tell God? Then he remembered and said to God: once she pulled up an onion and gave it to a beggar woman. And God answered: now take that same onion, hold it out to her in the lake, let her take hold of it, and pull, and if you pull her out of the lake, she can go to paradise, but if the onion breaks, she can stay where she is. The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her: here, woman, he said, take hold of it and I’ll pull. And he began pulling carefully, and had almost pulled her all the way out, when other sinners in the lake saw her being pulled out and all began holding on to her so as to be pulled out with her. But the woman was wicked as wicked could be, and she began to kick them with her feet: ‘It’s me who’s getting pulled out, not you; it’s my onion, not yours.’ No sooner did she say it than the onion broke. And the woman fell back into the lake and is burning there to this day. And the angel wept and went away.^[230]That’s the fable, Alyosha, I know it by heart, because I myself am that wicked woman. I boasted to Rakitin that I gave an onion, but I’ll say it differently to you: in my whole life I’ve given just one little onion, that’s how much good I’ve done. And don’t praise me after that, Alyosha, don’t think I’m good, I’m wicked, wicked as can be, and if you praise me you’ll make me ashamed. Ah, let me confess everything: listen, Alyosha, I wanted so much to lure you here and pestered Rakitin so much that I even promised him twenty-five roubles if he’d bring you to me. No, wait, Rakitka!” She went briskly to the table, opened a drawer, got out a purse, and from the purse took a twenty-five-rouble bill.

“What nonsense! What nonsense!” exclaimed Rakitin, taken aback.

“I owe it to you, Rakitka, take it, you won’t refuse, you asked for it yourself,” and she flung the bill at him.

“Why refuse?” Rakitin said in a deep voice, visibly ashamed, but disguising his embarrassment with swagger. “It will truly come in handy; fools exist for the intelligent man’s profit.”

“And now keep still, Rakitka, what I’m going to say now is not for your ears. Sit there in the corner and keep still, you don’t love us, so keep still.”

“What’s there to love you for?” Rakitin snarled, no longer concealing his spite. He put the twenty-five roubles in his pocket, and was decidedly ashamed before Alyosha. He had planned on being paid later, so that Alyosha would not know, but now shame made him angry. Up to that moment he had found it more politic not to contradict Grushenka too much, despite all her barbs, since she obviously had some sort of power over him. But now he, too, got angry:

“One loves for some reason, and what has either of you done for me?”

“You should love for no reason, like Alyosha.”

“How does he love you? What has he shown you, that you’re making such a fuss about it?”

Grushenka stood in the middle of the room; she spoke heatedly, and hysterical notes could be heard in her voice.

“Keep still, Rakitka, you don’t understand anything about us! And don’t you dare speak familiarly with me again, I forbid it. You’re too bold, that’s what! Sit in the corner like my lackey and keep still. And now, Alyosha, I will tell the whole, pure truth to you alone, so that you can see what a creature I am! I tell it to you, not to Rakitka. I wanted to ruin you, I was quite determined, that is the great truth: I wanted it so much that I bribed Rakitka with money to bring you. And why did I want it so much? You knew nothing, Alyosha, you used to turn away from me, you’d walk by me with your eyes on the ground, but I looked at you a hundred times before, I began asking everyone about you. Your face stayed in my heart: ‘He despises me,’ I thought, ‘he doesn’t even want to look at me.’ And finally such a feeling took hold of me that I was surprised at myself: why should I be afraid of a boy like him? I’ll eat him up and laugh. I was so angry! Believe me, no one here dares to say or think they can come to Agrafena Alexandrovna for that bad thing; I have only the old man here, I’m bought and sold to him, Satan married us, but there’s no one else. Yet looking at you, I was determined: I’ll eat him up. Eat him up and laugh. See what a wicked bitch I am, and you called me your sister! Now the man who wronged me has come, I’m sitting here waiting for his message. Do you know what this man has been to me? It’s five years since Kuzma brought me here—I used to sit hiding from people, so that people wouldn’t see or hear me, a silly slip of a girl, sitting and crying, not sleeping all night, thinking: ‘Where is he now, the man who wronged me? He must be laughing at me with some other woman, and what won’t I do to him, if only I ever see him, if only I meet him: I’ll make him pay! How I’ll make him pay! ‘ At night, in the dark, I sobbed into the pillow and kept thinking it all over, I tore my heart on purpose, to ease it with spite: ‘How I’ll make him pay, oh, how I will!’ I would sometimes even scream in the darkness. Then I would suddenly remember that I was not going to do anything to him, but that he was laughing at me now, or maybe had quite forgotten me, just didn’t remember, and then I would throw myself from my bed onto the floor, flooding myself with helpless tears, and shake and shake till dawn. In the morning I would get up worse than a dog, ready to tear the whole world apart. And then you know what: I began saving money, became merciless, grew fat—and do you think I got any smarter? Not a bit. No one sees it, no one in the whole universe knows it, but when the dark of night falls, I sometimes lie just as I used to, as a young girl, five years ago, gnashing my teeth and crying all night, thinking: ‘I’ll show him, oh, yes, I’ll show him!’ Do you hear what I’m saying? Now try to understand me: a month ago I suddenly received this letter: he’s coming, his wife died, he wants to see me. It took my breath away. Lord, I suddenly thought: what if he comes and whistles for me, calls me, and I just crawl to him like a little dog, guilty and beaten! I thought of it and couldn’t believe myself: ‘Am I so base? Will I just run to him?’ And I’ve been so angry with myself all this month that it’s even worse than five years ago. Now you see how violent, how wild I am, Alyosha, I’ve spoken out the whole truth to you! I’ve been toying with Mitya so as not to run to the other one. Keep still, Rakitin, it’s not for you to judge me, I’m not telling it to you. Before you came I was lying here waiting, thinking, deciding my whole fate, and you will never know what was in my heart. No, Alyosha, tell your young lady not to be angry for two days ago. . .! No one in the whole world knows how I feel now, or can know ... Because maybe I’ll take a knife with me today, I haven’t decided yet ...” And having uttered this “pathetic” phrase, Grushenka suddenly could not help herself; she broke off, covered her face with her hands, threw herself onto the sofa, into the pillows, and sobbed like a little child. Alyosha stood up and went over to Rakitin.

“Misha,” he said, “don’t be angry. You’re offended with her, but don’t be angry. Did you hear her just now? One cannot ask so much of a human soul, one should be more merciful ...”

Alyosha said this from an unrestrainable impulse of his heart. He had to speak out and he turned to Rakitin. If there had been no Rakitin, he would have begun exclaiming to himself. But Rakitin looked at him with a sneer, and Alyosha suddenly stopped.

“They just loaded you with your elder, and now you’ve fired your elder off at me, Alyoshenka, little man of God,”^[231] Rakitin said with a hateful smile.

“Don’t laugh, Rakitin, don’t sneer, don’t speak of the deceased: he is higher than anyone who has ever lived!” Alyosha cried with tears in his voice. “I stood up to speak to you not as a judge but as the lowliest of the accused. Who am I compared with her? I came here seeking my own ruin, saying: ‘Who cares, who cares?’ because of my faintheartedness; but she, after five years of torment, as soon as someone comes and speaks a sincere word to her, forgives everything, forgets everything, and weeps! The man who wronged her has come back, he is calling her, and she forgives him everything, and hastens to him with joy, and she won’t take a knife, she won’t! No, I am not like that. I don’t know whether you are like that, Misha, but I am not like that! I learned this lesson today, just now ... She is higher in love than we are ... Have you ever heard her speak before of what she just told now? No, you have not; if you had, you would have understood everything long ago ... and the other woman, who was offended two days ago, she, too, must forgive! And she will forgive if she knows ... and she will know ... This soul is not reconciled yet, it must be spared ... maybe there is a treasure in this soul ...”

Alyosha fell silent, because his breath failed him. Rakitin, despite all his anger, watched in amazement. He had never expected such a tirade from the quiet Alyosha.

“Quite a lawyer we’ve got here! Have you fallen in love with her or something? You win, Agrafena Alexandrovna, our ascetic is really in love with you!” he shouted with an insolent laugh.

Grushenka raised her head from the pillow and looked at Alyosha; a tender smile shone on her face, somehow suddenly swollen with tears.

“Let him be, Alyosha, my cherub, you see how he is, he’s not worth talking to. Mikhail Osipovich,” she turned to Rakitin, “I was about to ask your forgiveness for having been rude to you, but now I don’t want to. Alyosha, come here and sit down,” she beckoned to him with a joyful smile, “sit down, so, and tell me,” she took his hand, smiling, and peered into his face, “you tell me: do I love this man or not? The one who wronged me, do I love him or not? I was lying here in the dark before you came, and kept asking my heart: do I love this man or not? Deliver me, Alyosha, the time has come; it shall be as you decide. Should I forgive him or not?”

“But you’ve already forgiven him,” Alyosha said, smiling.

“Yes, I’ve forgiven him,” Grushenka said meaningly. “What a base heart! To my base heart!” She suddenly snatched a glass from the table, drank it in one gulp, held it up, and smashed it as hard as she could on the floor. The glass shattered and tinkled. A certain cruel line flashed in her smile.

“Or maybe I haven’t forgiven him yet,” she said somehow menacingly, dropping her eyes to the ground, as though she were alone, talking to herself. “Maybe my heart is only getting ready to forgive him. I still have to struggle with my heart. You see, Alyosha, I’ve grown terribly fond of my tears over these five years ... Maybe I’ve come to love only my wrong, and not him at all!”

“I’d hate to be in his skin!” Rakitin hissed.

“And you won’t be, Rakitka, you’ll never be in his skin. You’ll make shoes for me, Rakitka, that’s what I’ll have you do, and you’ll never get a woman like me ... Maybe he won’t either...”

“No? Then why all this finery?” Rakitin taunted her slyly.

“Don’t reproach me with my finery, Rakitka, you don’t know the whole of my heart yet! If I choose, I’ll tear it off right now, I’ll tear it off this very minute!” she cried in a ringing voice. “You don’t know why I need this finery, Rakitka! Maybe I’ll go up to him and say: ‘Did you ever see me like this?’ He left a seventeen-year-old, skinny, consumptive crybaby. I’ll sit down beside him, I’ll seduce him, I’ll set him on fire: ‘Take a good look at me now, my dear sir, because that’s all you’ll get—for there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip! ‘ Maybe that’s why I need this finery, Rakitka,” Grushenka finished with a malicious little laugh. ‘I’m violent, Alyosha, I’m wild. I’ll tear off my finery, I’ll maim myself, my beauty, I’ll burn my face, and slash it with a knife, and go begging. If I choose, I won’t go anywhere or to anyone; if I choose, I’ll send everything back to Kuzma tomorrow, all his presents, and all his money, and go and work all my life as a charwoman . . .! You think I won’t do it, Rakitka, you think I won’t dare to do it? I will, I will do it, I can do it now, only don’t annoy me ... and I’ll get rid of that one, a fig for him, he won’t get me!”

She shouted these last words hysterically, but again could not help herself, covered her face with her hands, threw herself onto the pillow, and again shook with sobs. Rakitin stood up. “Time to go,” he said, “it’s late, they won’t let us into the monastery.”

Grushenka leaped to her feet.

“You’re not going to leave, Alyosha!” she exclaimed in sorrowful amazement. “But what are you doing to me? You stirred me all up, tormented me, and now for another night I’ll be left alone again!”

“What do you want him to do, spend the night here? He can if he wants to! I can go by myself!” Rakitin joked caustically.

“Keep still, you wicked soul,” Grushenka shouted furiously at him, “you never said anything like what he came and told me.”

“Just what did he tell you?” Rakitin grumbled irritably.

“I don’t know, I don’t know what he told me, my heart heard it, he wrung my heart ... He’s the first to pity me, and the only one, that’s what! Why didn’t you come before, you cherub,” she suddenly fell on her knees to him, as if beside herself. “All my life I’ve been waiting for such a one as you, I knew someone like that would come and forgive me. I believed that someone would love me, a dirty woman, not only for my shame...!”

“What did I do for you?” Alyosha answered with a tender smile, and he bent down to her and gently took her hands. “I just gave you an onion, one little onion, that’s all, that’s all...!”

Having said that, he himself started weeping. At the same moment there was a sudden noise at the doorway, someone came into the front hall; Grushenka jumped up, looking terribly frightened. Fenya rushed noisily into the room, shouting:

“My lady, my dear, my lady, a messenger has ridden up,” she exclaimed joyfully and breathlessly. “A carriage has come for you from Mokroye, Timofei the coachman with a troika, they’re changing horses right now ... The letter, the letter, my lady, here’s the letter!”

She was holding the letter in her hand, waving it in the air all the while she was shouting. Grushenka snatched the letter from her and brought it near the candle. It was just a note, a few lines, and she read it in a moment.

“He’s calling me!” she cried, quite pale, her face twisted in a painful smile. “He’s whistling! Crawl, little dog!”

Only for one moment did she hesitate; suddenly the blood rushed to her head and brought fire to her cheeks.

“I’m going!” she suddenly exclaimed. “Oh, my five years! Farewell, everyone! Farewell, Alyosha, my fate is decided ... Go, go, all of you, go away, I don’t want to see you...! Grushenka is flying to a new life ... Rakitka, don’t you think ill of me either. Maybe I’m going to my death! Ah, I feel drunk!”

She left them suddenly and ran to her bedroom. “Well, she can’t be bothered with us now!” Rakitin growled. “Let’s go, or there may be more of this female screaming, I’m sick of these tearful screams ...”

Alyosha mechanically allowed himself to be led out. The carriage stood in the yard, the horses were being unharnessed, people were bustling about with lanterns. A fresh troika was being led in through the open gate. But just as Alyosha and Rakitin were stepping off the porch, the window of Grushenka’s bedroom suddenly opened, and she called after Alyosha in a ringing voice:

“Alyoshechka, bow to your brother Mitenka for me, and tell him not to think ill of me, his wicked woman. And tell him, too, that I said: Grushenka has fallen to a scoundrel, and not to you, a noble man! ‘ And add this, too, that Grushenka loved him for one hour, just for one hour she loved him—and from now on he should remember that hour all his life; tell him, that is what Grushenka bids you forever.”

She finished in a voice full of weeping. The window slammed shut.

“Hm, hm!” Rakitin grunted, laughing. “She does in your brother Mitenka and then tells him to remember all his life. What a carnivore!”

Alyosha made no reply, as if he had not heard; he walked briskly beside Rakitin, apparently in a great hurry; he walked mechanically, his mind apparently elsewhere. Rakitin was suddenly stung, as if someone had touched him on an open wound. He had been expecting something quite different when he brought Grushenka and Alyosha together; what had happened was something other than what he had wanted so much.

“He’s a Pole, this officer of hers,” he spoke again, restraining himself, “and he’s not even an officer now, he served as a customs clerk in Siberia, somewhere on the Chinese border, just some runty little Polack. They say he lost his job. Now he’s heard that Grushenka has some money, so he’s come back—that’s the whole miracle.”

Again it was as if Alyosha did not hear. Rakitin could not help himself:

“So you converted a sinful woman?” he laughed spitefully to Alyosha. “Turned a harlot onto the path of truth? Drove out the seven devils, eh?^[232] So here’s where today’s expected miracles took place!”

“Stop it, Rakitin,” Alyosha replied with suffering in his soul.

“And now you ‘despise’ me for those twenty-five roubles? You think I sold a true friend. But you’re not Christ, and I’m not Judas “

“Ah, Rakitin, I assure you I’d forgotten all about that,” Alyosha exclaimed, “you’ve reminded me of it yourself...”

But now Rakitin finally got mad.

“The devil take you one and all!” he suddenly yelled. “Why the devil did I have anything to do with you! I don’t even want to know you anymore. Go by yourself, there’s your road!”

And turning abruptly into another street, he left Alyosha alone in the dark. Alyosha walked out of town, and went across the fields to the monastery.

Chapter 4: Cana of Galilee

It was very late by monastery rules when Alyosha came to the hermitage. The gatekeeper let him in by a special entrance. It had already struck nine, the hour of general rest and quiet, after such a troubled day for them all. Alyosha timidly opened the door and entered the elder’s cell, where his coffin now stood. There was no one in the cell but Father Paissy, who was alone reading the Gospel over the coffin, and the young novice Porfiry, who, worn out from the previous night’s conversation and the day’s commotion, slept a sound young sleep on the floor in the next room. Father Paissy, though he had heard Alyosha come in, did not even look up at him. Alyosha turned to the right of the door, went to the corner, knelt, and began to pray. His soul was overflowing, but somehow vaguely, and no single sensation stood out, making itself felt too much; on the contrary, one followed another in a sort of slow and calm rotation. But there was sweetness in his heart, and, strangely, Alyosha was not surprised at that. Again he saw this coffin before him, and this dead man all covered up in it, who had been so precious to him, but in his soul there was none of that weeping, gnawing, tormenting pity that had been there earlier, in the morning. Now, as he entered, he fell down before the coffin as if it were a holy thing, but joy, joy was shining in his mind and in his heart. The window of the cell was open, the air was fresh and rather cool—”the smell must have become even worse if they decided to open the window,” Alyosha thought. But even this thought about the putrid odor, which only recently had seemed to him so terrible and inglorious, did not now stir up any of his former anguish and indignation. He quietly began praying, but soon felt that he was praying almost mechanically. Fragments of thoughts flashed in his soul, catching fire like little stars and dying out at once to give way to others, yet there reigned in his soul something whole, firm, assuaging, and he was conscious of it himself. He would ardently begin a prayer, he wanted so much to give thanks and to love ... But, having begun the prayer, he would suddenly pass to something else, lapse into thought, and forget both his prayer and what had interrupted it. He tried listening to what Father Paissy was reading, but, being very worn out, he began little by little to doze off . . .

“And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee,” read Father Paissy, “and the mother of Jesus was there: and both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.”^[233]

“Marriage? What was that ... marriage ... ?” swept like a whirlwind through Alyosha’s mind. “There is happiness for her, too ... She went to the feast ... No, she didn’t take a knife, she didn’t take a knife, that was only a ‘pathetic’ phrase ... Well, one should forgive pathetic phrases, one must. Pathetic phrases ease the soul, without them men’s grief would be too heavy. Rakitin walked off into the alley. As long as Rakitin thinks about his grudges, he will always walk off into some alley ... But the road ... the road is wide, straight, bright, crystal, and the sun is at the end of it ... Ah? .. . what are they reading?”

“And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine ... ,” Alyosha overheard.

“Ah, yes, I’ve been missing it and I didn’t want to miss it, I love that passage: it’s Cana of Galilee, the first miracle ... Ah, that miracle, ah, that lovely miracle! Not grief, but men’s joy Christ visited when he worked his first miracle, he helped men’s joy ... He who loves men, loves their joy . ..’ The dead man used to repeat it all the time, it was one of his main thoughts ... One cannot live without joy, says Mitya ... Yes, Mitya ... All that is true and beautiful is always full of all-forgiveness—that, too, he used to say...”

“. . . Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.”

“Do it ... Joy, the joy of some poor, very poor people ... Why,of course they were poor, if there wasn’t even enough wine for the wedding. Historians write that the people living around the lake of Gennesaret and in all those parts were the poorest people imaginable . . .^[234] And the other great heart of the other great being, who was right there, too, his mother, knew that he came down then not just for his great and awful deed, but that his heart was also open to the simple, artless merrymaking of some uncouth, uncouth but guileless beings, who lovingly invited him to their poor marriage feast. ‘Mine hour is not yet come,’ he says with a quiet smile (he must have smiled meekly to her) ... Indeed, was it to increase the wine at poor weddings that he came down to earth? Yet he went and did what she asked ... Ah, he’s reading again.” “... Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and hear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was (but the servants which drew the water knew), the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.”

“But what’s this? What’s this? Why are the walls of the room opening out? Ah, yes ... this is the marriage, the wedding feast ... yes, of course. Here are the guests, here the newlyweds, and the festive crowd, and ... where is the wise ruler of the feast? But who is this? Who? Again the room is opening out ... Who is getting up from the big table? What ... ? Is he here, too? Why, he is in the coffin ... But here, too ... He has gotten up, he’s seen me, he’s coming over ... Lord!”

Yes, to him, to him he came, the little wizened old man with fine wrinkles on his face, joyful and quietly laughing. Now there was no coffin anymore, and he was wearing the same clothes as the day before, when he sat with them and visitors gathered around him. His face was all uncovered and his eyes were radiant. Can it be that he, too, is at the banquet, that he, too, has been called to the marriage in Cana of Galilee ... ?

“I, too, my dear, I, too, have been called, called and chosen,” the quiet voice spoke over him. “Why are you hiding here, out of sight ... ? Come and join us.”

His voice, the elder Zosima’s voice ... How could it be anyone else, since he was calling? The elder raised Alyosha a little with his hand, and Alyosha got up from his knees.

“We are rejoicing,” the little wizened man continued, “we are drinking new wine, the wine of a new and great joy. See how many guests there are? Here are the bridegroom and the bride, here is the wise ruler of the feast, tasting the new wine. Why are you marveling at me? I gave a little onion, and so I am here. And there are many here who only gave an onion, only one little onion ... What are our deeds? And you, quiet one, you, my meek boy, today you, too, were able to give a little onion to a woman who hungered. Begin, my dear, begin, my meek one, to do your work! And do you see our Sun, do you see him?”

“I’m afraid ... I don’t dare to look,” whispered Alyosha.

“Do not be afraid of him. Awful is his greatness before us, terrible is his loftiness, yet he is boundlessly merciful, he became like us out of love, and he is rejoicing with us, transforming water into wine, that the joy of the guests may not end. He is waiting for new guests, he is ceaselessly calling new guests, now and unto ages of ages. See, they are bringing the new wine, the vessels are being brought in...”

Something burned in Alyosha’s heart, something suddenly filled him almost painfully, tears of rapture nearly burst from his soul ... He stretched out his hands, gave a short cry, and woke up . . .

Again the coffin, the open window, and the quiet, solemn, distinct reading of the Gospel. But Alyosha no longer listened to what was being read. Strangely, he had fallen asleep on his knees, but now he was standing, and suddenly, as if torn from his place, with three firm, quick steps, he went up to the coffin. He even brushed Father Paissy with his shoulder without noticing it. The latter raised his eyes from the book for a moment, but looked away again at once, realizing that something strange was happening with the boy. For about half a minute Alyosha gazed at the coffin, at the covered up, motionless dead man stretched out with an icon on his chest and the cowl with an eight-pointed cross on his head. A moment ago he had heard his voice, and this voice was still sounding in his ears. He listened, waiting to hear more ... but suddenly turned abruptly and walked out of the cell.

He did not stop on the porch, either, but went quickly down the steps. Filled with rapture, his soul yearned for freedom, space, vastness. Over him the heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly. From the zenith to the horizon the still-dim Milky Way stretched its double strand. Night, fresh and quiet, almost unstirring, enveloped the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the church gleamed in the sapphire sky. The luxuriant autumn flowers in the flowerbeds near the house had fallen asleep until morning. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens, the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the stars ... Alyosha stood gazing and suddenly, as if he had been cut down, threw himself to the earth.

He did not know why he was embracing it, he did not try to understand why he longed so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss all of it, but he was kissing it, weeping, sobbing, and watering it with his tears, and he vowed ecstatically to love it, to love it unto ages of ages. “Water the earth with the tears of your joy, and love those tears ... ,” rang in his soul. What was he weeping for? Oh, in his rapture he wept even for the stars that shone on him from the abyss, and “he was not ashamed of this ecstasy.” It was as if threads from all those innumerable worlds of God all came together in his soul, and it was trembling all over, “touching other worlds.” He wanted to forgive everyone and for everything, and to ask forgiveness, oh, not for himself! but for all and for everything, “as others are asking for me,” rang again in his soul. But with each moment he felt clearly and almost tangibly something as firm and immovable as this heavenly vault descend into his soul. Some sort of idea, as it were, was coming to reign in his mind—now for the whole of his life and unto ages of ages. He fell to the earth a weak youth and rose up a fighter, steadfast for the rest of his life, and he knew it and felt it suddenly, in that very moment of his ecstasy. Never, never in all his life would Alyosha forget that moment. “Someone visited my soul in that hour,” he would say afterwards, with firm belief in his words . . .

Three days later he left the monastery, which was also in accordance with the words of his late elder, who had bidden him to “sojourn in the world.”