The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Oh, even in hell there are those who remain proud and defiant in spite of indisputable knowledge and the contemplation of irrefutable truth; there are terrible creatures who are in complete communion with Satan and his proud spirit. They have chosen hell voluntarily, and they are never sated with it; they indeed are willing martyrs. For in cursing life and God, they have damned themselves. They feed upon their own evil pride, just as if a hungry man in a desert were to suck blood from his own body.* They are unfulfilled for ever and ever, but they reject forgiveness and deny the God who beckons them. They are unable to contemplate the living God save with hatred, and they demand that there be no God of life, that God destroy Himself and all His creation. And they shall burn everlastingly in the flames of their own hatred, and long for death and for non-being. But death shall not be granted them…

  Thus ends Aleksei Fydorovich Karamazov’s manuscript. I repeat: it is incomplete and fragmentary. For instance, the biographical information covers only the starets’s early youth. As regards his teachings and opinions, they have been collected together as if to form a unified whole, although in actual fact they were spoken at different times and prompted by a variety of circumstances. However, not everything that the starets said in those final hours of his life has been reproduced word for word, only a general idea of the spirit and substance of the discourse is presented here, unlike other entries in Aleksei Fyodorovich’s manuscript, which relate to the starets’s former teachings. The starets’s end actually came very unexpectedly. For although everyone who had gathered to see him that final night understood full well that his end was nigh, it was nevertheless impossible to imagine that it would come so suddenly; on the contrary, his friends, as I have already remarked above, seeing how alert and talkative he seemed to be, were even convinced that there had been a marked improvement in his condition, even if only temporarily. Even five minutes before his death, as they sub sequently related with surprise, it was still not possible to foresee anything. He suddenly felt the most acute pain in his chest, became pale, and clasped his hands tightly to his heart. Thereupon everyone rose from their seats and rushed towards him; but he, continuing to smile at everyone through his pain, gently slumped from his chair and fell to his knees, turned his face to the ground, spread out his arms and, as though in a transport of joy, kissing the ground and praying (as he himself had taught), gave up his soul to God peacefully and gladly. The news of his demise immediately spread through the hermitage and reached the monastery. Those who were closest to the deceased and those selected by order of seniority began to prepare the body in accordance with ancient ritual, and all the monks assembled in the monastery chapel. Before dawn, as rumour later had it, news of his death had reached the town. By morning, nearly the whole town was talking about the event, and many of its citizens had flocked to the monastery. But we shall speak of this later, in the next book; for the present, we shall merely add that even before the day was out something had happened which was so unexpected and, judging by the effect both within the monastic community and in the town, so strange, alarming, and perplexing that even now, all these years later, our town still preserves the most vivid memories of that day, which left so many of its inhabitants filled with alarm…

  PART THREE

  BOOK SEVEN

  Alyosha

  1

  ODOUR OF PUTREFACTION

  THE body of the deceased schemahieromonk, Father Zosima, was prepared for burial according to the prescribed rites. As is well known, ablutions are not performed on the bodies of deceased monks. ‘If a monk departs in the Lord (so it is written in the Great Book of Prayers), the designated monk (that is, the one appointed to the task), after making the sign of the cross with a Greek sponge on the forehead, fingers, hands, feet, and knees, merely sponges the body with warm water, and nothing else.’ Father Païsy himself performed these rites on the deceased. After sponging him down he clothed him in a monk’s robe and laid him in a shroud, in which, as stipulated in the rules, he cut a slit so as to be able to wind it round the body in a cruciform manner. Over his head he drew a cowl on which was embroidered a Slavonic cross, leaving his face exposed, but covered with a thin black veil. An icon of Our Saviour was placed in his hands. In the early morning the body, thus vested, was placed in a coffin which had been prepared long before. The intention was to leave the coffin in the cell (in the ante-room, the room where before his death the starets used to receive his fellow monks and lay visitors) for the whole day. Since by title the deceased was a schemahieromonk, it was a requirement that the hieromonks and hierodeacons read the Gospels, rather than the Psalter, over his body. Father Yosif began reading straight after the liturgy for the dead; Father Païsy, who wanted to take over and continue the reading himself all through the following day and night, was temporarily distracted and preoccupied by something else; he and the prior of the hermitage had noticed with concern that the monastic community, as well as the visiting clergy and the laity who had been flocking to the monastery from the town, had begun to manifest an uncommonly strange, nay unbecoming, agitation and impatient expectation which, as time passed, began to intensify rapidly. Both Father Païsy and the prior did their best to try to quell this restlessness and agitation. By daybreak more people began to arrive from the town, some even bringing their sick ones with them, especially children, as though they had been waiting specifically for this event, apparently putting their trust in the healing power which, they believed, would manifest itself soon. It was this that finally demonstrated how much our local people had come to revere the deceased starets as a great and undoubted saint, even in his lifetime. And those who came were by no means only the simple, uneducated folk. This eager expectation on the part of the faithful, expressed in such an urgent, blatant, even impatient and almost demanding manner, struck Father Païsy as scandalous, and though he had foreseen it long ago, in the event it exceeded even his worst fears. On encountering the more restless of the monks, Father Païsy even began to admonish them: ‘Such an anxious wish for something momentous to happen is a mark of shallowness befitting only the laity, but for us it is unbecoming.’ But no one paid much heed to him, and Father Païsy noted with anxiety that even he himself (if the whole truth be known), while professing indignation at the excessive expectancy and regarding it as something shallow and vain, secretly, deep down in his heart of hearts, longed for almost the very same thing, and could not help but admit this to himself. Nevertheless, there were some people whose company he found particularly unpleasant and in whose presence he had a strange premonition that caused him serious misgivings. In the crowded cell of the deceased he noticed with deep loathing (for which he immediately reproached himself) the presence of Rakitin, for instance, as well as the guest from afar—the monk from Obdorsk, who was still staying in the monastery. For some reason Father Païsy immediately began to regard them both with suspicion—even though they were not the only ones who could be said to arouse such suspicion. Among the expectant multitude the most excited was the monk from Obdorsk; he was to be seen everywhere, in every corner, questioning everyone, listening everywhere, and whispering in a particularly mysterious manner. His face wore the most impatient expression, as though resentful that the awaited event was taking so long to materialize. As for Rakitin, he, it later transpired, had come to the hermitage at this early hour on the express orders of Mrs Khokhlakova, who could not be admitted to the hermitage in person. As soon as she woke and learned what had happened, that kind but weak-willed lady had been overcome by such irrepressible curiosity that she had immediately dispatched Rakitin to the hermitage to make copious notes and report immediately to her in writing, at approximately half hourly intervals, everything that was going on. She regarded Rakitin as one of the most pious and religious young men—so clever was he at handling people and ingratiating himself with everyone if he saw even the slightest personal gain therein. The day was sunny and bright, and many of the devout visitors crowded round the hermitage graves, which were particularly n
umerous near the church, others being scattered throughout the grounds. While going round the hermitage, Father Païsy suddenly remembered about Alyosha and the fact that he had not seen him for some time, to be precise since the previous night. And no sooner had he remembered about him than he caught sight of him in the furthest corner of the hermitage, by the fence, sitting on the gravestone of a spiritually valiant and long-deceased monk. He sat with his back to the hermitage, facing the fence, and appeared to be hiding behind the gravestone. Going up to him, Father Païsy saw that he had buried his face in his hands and was crying bitterly, though without a sound, his whole body convulsed with every sob. Father Païsy stood beside him for a while.

  ‘That will do, my son, that will do, my friend,’ he said at last, with compassion, ‘there’s no need for this! You should rejoice, not weep. Don’t you know that this is his greatest day? Just think where he is now, at this moment, just think of that!’

  Alyosha half glanced at him, revealing his swollen, tear-stained face, like a small child’s, and immediately without a word turned away and buried his face in his hands again.

  ‘Perhaps it’s just as well,’ Father Païsy said thoughtfully, ‘weep, if you must. Christ has sent you these tears.’ And as he left Alyosha, he thought affectionately: ‘Your sweet tears are a respite for your soul and will contribute to the joy of your dear heart.’ With that, he departed quickly, because he realized that if he looked at Alyosha any longer he himself might burst into tears. Meanwhile, time was passing, and the monastic services and prayers appointed for the dead were being said. Father Païsy relieved Father Yosif at the coffin and continued the reading of the Gospels. But it was not yet three o’clock in the afternoon when something took place to which I have referred at the end of my previous book, something so unforeseen and so contrary to general expectation that, even to this day, a detailed but confused version of the story is still vividly recalled in our town and throughout the district. Here I shall add a personal observation: I can hardly bear to recall that disturbing and scandalous event, in reality quite insignificant and natural, and of course I would have omitted it from my story altogether had it not had a most important and pronounced influence on the heart and soul of the principal, albeit future, hero of my story, Alyosha, producing a kind of crisis in him, an upheaval that shook him profoundly, but at the same time finally and irrevocably confirmed him in his beliefs and determined his future direction.

  And so, let us proceed with the story. Before daybreak, when the starets’s body had been robed, placed in the coffin in readiness for burial and transferred to the ante-room, formerly the reception room, the question arose amongst the people assembled round the coffin as to whether or not to open the windows. However, this question, raised casually and in passing by someone, was left unanswered, almost unnoticed—and even if anyone present did notice it, he kept it to himself, since the very idea of putrefaction or an odour of putrefaction from the body of such a man was utterly absurd, worthy even of pity (if not ridicule), and would indicate a lack of faith and a shallowness in whoever had raised the question in the first place. For everyone was expecting precisely the opposite. And so, shortly after midday, something occurred that at first was observed in silence and without comment by those present—they were evidently afraid of communicating their nagging doubts to anyone else—but which by three in the afternoon had manifested itself so clearly and unmistakably that news of it spread in a flash throughout the whole hermitage and amongst all the mourners and visitors, then immediately throughout the monastery, causing consternation among the community, and finally, in no time at all, reached the town too and affected everyone in it, both believers and non-believers. The non-believers were triumphant, and as for the believers, there were some amongst them who gloated even more than the non-believers, for ‘people do love the downfall of a righteous man and his degradation’, as the late starets himself had once said in one of his homilies. The fact was that, little by little and then ever more noticeably, an odour of putrefaction began to emanate from the coffin which, by three o’clock in the afternoon, was already only too evident and was becoming even worse. It was a long time since such a scandal had occurred; indeed, never in the whole living memory of the monastery had there been so blatant and crude an example, simply unimaginable under any other circumstances, as the scandal that took place amongst the monks themselves immediately after this event. Much later, even after the passage of many years, some of the more intelligent of our brethren, recalling this day in all its detail, were astonished, indeed aghast, that the scandal could have reached such proportions. For in the past, too, it happened at times that very pious, God-fearing monks, whose piety was apparent to all, would die, and from their humble coffins, naturally, as from all corpses, would emanate an odour of putrefaction, but this in no way affected people’s faith or caused the least disquiet. Of course, there were also long-since departed brethren who were still remembered in the monastery and whose remains, so legend had it, had not undergone decay, producing instead a soothing and mysterious effect upon the whole community and surviving in people’s memories as an example of something magnificent and holy and as a pledge of even greater glory to come from their sepulchres in the future if, God willing, the time for this should come to pass. A particularly vivid memory had been preserved of one such starets, Job, a famous ascetic and observer of the vows of silence and fasting, who, having lived to the age of one hundred and five, died long ago, in the first decade of our century, and whose grave used to be pointed out with inordinate reverence to all visiting worshippers, accompanied by mysterious references to some future great events. (It was by this very grave that Father Païsy had found Alyosha seated that morning.) Besides this long-deceased starets, there was the similarly remembered and fairly recently deceased famous schemahieromonk, Starets Varsophony—whom Father Zosima had succeeded, and who, in his lifetime, had been regarded simply as a holy fool by all the worshippers who came to the monastery. Both of them, it was said, lay in their coffins as though still alive and were buried with no signs of putrefaction, and their faces even appeared to glow. Some even claimed to remember that these bodies had exuded a distinctly sweet odour of sanctity. But, despite these striking reminiscences, it was still difficult to explain the real reason why such a senseless, grotesque, and unholy phenomenon should have occurred around the coffin of Starets Zosima. Personally, I think that many other factors coincided here, that there were many different reasons which all conspired together. One such, for instance, was the aforementioned long-running enmity, still deeply buried in the memory of many of the monastery monks, towards the cult of startsy as a pernicious innovation. But, of course, the main reason was envy of the deceased’s sanctity, a sanctity which had been established so firmly during his lifetime that it seemed unseemly to dispute it. For even though the deceased starets had attracted many people, more through love than through miracles, and had gathered around him a whole circle of disciples, yet in spite of this, indeed because of it, he had engendered much envy, which in turn had created bitter enemies, overt as well as covert, and not only in the monastic community but also beyond it. For instance, he had not done anyone any harm, and yet: ‘Why is he considered so holy?’ And this question alone, repeated as it was over a period of time, eventually led to a veritable outburst of the most vicious hatred. It is for this reason I think that many, having detected the smell of putrefaction from his body, and so soon after the event—for not even a day had elapsed since his death—were inordinately glad; even amongst the followers who up to that day had venerated him there were those who immediately interpreted the event as a personal insult and affront. Subsequent events unfolded in the following manner.