The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  ‘Amen! Amen!’ Father Païsy affirmed reverently and gravely.

  ‘Strange, most uncommonly strange!’ said Miusov, in pent-up indignation rather than anger.

  ‘What is it you find strange?’ Father Yosif enquired cautiously.

  ‘What are we supposed to make of all this?’ Miusov exploded. ‘The state is to be done away with on earth, and the Church is to be elevated to the level of the state! That isn’t just ultramontanism, that’s arch-ultramontanism! Not even Pope Gregory VII* could have thought of anything like that!’

  ‘You’ve completely misunderstood the position!’ said Father Païsy severely. ‘It’s not the Church that becomes the state, don’t you see? That would be Rome’s way. That is Satan’s third temptation.* On the contrary, it is the state that transforms itself into the Church, elevates itself to the Church and becomes the Church over all the earth, which of course is the complete opposite of any ultramontanism and Rome and all your talk, and is nothing less than the preordained task of Orthodoxy upon earth. The star will shine forth from the East.’*

  Miusov remained demonstratively silent. His whole bearing expressed immense dignity. A supercilious and condescending smile appeared on his lips. Alyosha had followed the whole scene with a pounding heart. The conversation had disturbed him profoundly. He happened to glance at Rakitin, standing motionless by the door where he had stood throughout, looking and listening intently even though his eyes remained lowered. Seeing his flushed face, Alyosha guessed that Rakitin too was disturbed, probably no less than he; Alyosha knew why he was disturbed.

  ‘Gentlemen, allow me to tell you a little story,’ Miusov said suddenly, with an especially imposing air. ‘Some years ago in Paris, soon after the December Revolution,* I happened to be visiting an acquaintance of mine, an extremely important person, a member of the government at the time, and at his house I met a very interesting man. This person was not actually a secret agent himself, but was in charge of a whole department of secret agents—a fairly influential post in its way. Taking advantage of the opportunity, I struck up a conversation with him out of sheer curiosity, and since he had not been invited there as a social acquaintance but in an official capacity to deliver some sort of report, and seeing for himself how I was received by his chief, he did me the honour of speaking to me with some frankness—up to a point of course, that is to say he was polite rather than candid, that French kind of politeness, especially as he saw he was addressing a foreigner. But I understood him very well. The subject was the socialist revolutionaries, who were being pursued at the time. To cut a long story short, I’ll just quote a most interesting remark that this fellow came out with. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “we’re not worried about every last one of these socialists—anarchists, atheists, revolutionaries, and the like. We keep an eye on them and their movements are known to us, but amongst them there are a few, though not many, of a special kind: they believe in God, they’re Christians, but they are socialists at the same time. They’re the ones we fear most of all; they’re terrible people! A Christian socialist is more formidable than an atheist socialist.” I was struck by these words at the time, and listening to you just now, gentlemen, happened to remind me of them—’

  ‘So you think they apply to us, you take us for socialists?’ Father Païsy asked straight out, without mincing his words. But before Pyotr Aleksandrovich had time to reply the door opened and in came the long-awaited Dmitry Fyodorovich. By this time everyone had given up expecting him, and his sudden appearance was greeted with astonishment.

  6

  A MAN LIKE HIM DOESN’T DESERVE TO LIVE!

  DMITRY FYODOROVICH, a young man of twenty-eight, of medium height and pleasing aspect, looked, however, much older than his years. He was muscular and, by all appearances, physically very strong; nevertheless, there was something sickly about his face. It was gaunt, with sunken, unhealthy-looking sallow cheeks. For all the resolute intensity of his protruding, rather large dark eyes, there was a certain indecision in them. Even when he was agitated and spoke in anger, the look in his eyes seemed to be at variance with his mood and to be expressing something quite different, something quite unrelated to the present moment. ‘Difficult to tell what he’s thinking,’ those who talked to him would sometimes remark. Others, seeing something melancholy and pensive in his eyes, would occasionally be astonished at his sudden laughter, indicative of the cheerful and playful nature of his thoughts at the very moment when he appeared to be so gloomy. There was a possible explanation, however, for his sickly-looking appearance at that time: everyone knew of the extremely wild and dissolute life to which he had abandoned himself since his arrival, and everyone was equally well aware of the extreme state of exasperation to which he had been driven by the squabbles with his father over the disputed money. This had already become a topic of conversation in the town. It is true that he was irritable by nature, ‘erratic and unstable’, as our justice of the peace, Semyon Ivanovich Kachalnikov, had aptly described him at a gathering in our town. He entered the cell impeccably dressed, in a buttoned-up frock-coat and black gloves, holding a top hat in his hand. As a military man who had recently resigned his commission, he still sported a moustache, but was otherwise clean-shaven. His dark-brown hair was trimmed short and brushed forward at the temples. He walked with long, resolute, soldierly strides. He stopped briefly in the doorway, glanced round the room, and made straight for the starets, whom he surmised to be the host. He bowed deeply and asked for his blessing; the starets half rose and blessed him. Dmitry Fyodorovich kissed his hand respectfully and said in extreme agitation, almost in vexation:

  ‘Will you be so kind as to excuse me for keeping you waiting so long, but my father’s servant, Smerdyakov, when I asked him specially about the time of the meeting, assured me twice most definitely that it was at one o’clock. And now I discover…’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the starets interrupted. ‘You’re a little late, but it doesn’t matter, it’s no great misfortune.’

  ‘I’m very grateful to you, and I couldn’t have expected any less from your kindness.’ Having snapped out these words, Dmitry Fyodorovich bowed once more and then, turning towards his father, gave an equally deep and respectful bow to him. It was clear that he had thought about this bow beforehand and that he intended it sincerely, considering it his duty to convey his humble respect and good intentions. Fyodor Pavlovich, although taken by surprise, made a prompt and fitting gesture; in response to Dmitry Fyodorovich’s bow, he jumped to his feet and reciprocated with an equally deep bow. His face suddenly took on a grave expression, which, however, lent it an air of extreme malice. Then, without saying another word, Dmitry Fyodorovich made a general bow to the rest of the company, strode to the window with his long decisive steps, sat down on the only available chair close to Father Païsy, and leaned forward with his whole body in immediate readiness to concentrate on the conversation that he had interrupted.

  Dmitry Fyodorovich’s entry could not have taken more than about two minutes, and the conversation resumed immediately. By now, however, Pyotr Aleksandrovich did not deem it necessary to reply to Father Païsy’s determined and almost peeved question.

  ‘With your permission, I should like to drop this subject,’ he said with a nonchalant air. ‘It’s a pretty complicated one, anyway. There, Ivan Fyodorovich is smiling at us: no doubt he too has something interesting to say about this. Ask him!’

  ‘I’ve nothing much to say, except for one small point,’ Ivan Fyodorovich replied immediately, ‘and that is that European liberals in general, and even our Russian liberal dilettanti, frequently confuse the end results of socialism with those of Christianity, and have done so for a long time. This outlandish conclusion is, of course, very typical. As a matter of fact, it seems that it’s not only the liberals and dilettanti who confuse socialism with Christianity,* but in many cases the forces of law and order do so too—foreign ones, of course. Your Parisian story is quite typical, Pyotr Aleksandrovich.’


  ‘Once and for all, I would ask permission to drop the subject,’ Pyotr Aleksandrovich repeated. ‘Instead, gentlemen, let me tell you another story about Ivan Fyodorovich himself, a most interesting and characteristic one. Only five days ago, in the course of an argument in local company consisting mostly of ladies, he solemnly observed that there was absolutely nothing in the whole world to induce men to love their fellow men, that there was absolutely no law of nature to make man love humanity, and that if love did exist and had existed at all in the world up to now, then it was not by virtue of the natural law, but entirely because man believed in his own immortality. He added as an aside that it was precisely that which constituted the natural law, namely, that once man’s faith in his own immortality was destroyed, not only would his capacity for love be exhausted, but so would the vital forces that sustained life on this earth. And furthermore, nothing would be immoral then, everything would be permitted, even anthropophagy. And finally, as though all this were not enough, he declared that for every individual, such as you and me, for example, who does not believe either in God or in his own immortality,* the natural moral law is bound immediately to become the complete opposite of the religion-based law that preceded it, and that egoism, even extending to the perpetration of crime, would not only be permissible but would be recognized as the essential, the most rational, and even the noblest raison d’être of the human condition. By this paradox, gentlemen, you may judge for yourselves what other weird ideas our beloved eccentric and paradoxist Ivan Fyodorovich may entertain, and may perhaps yet have in store for us.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ Dmitry Fyodorovich burst out suddenly and unexpectedly. ‘If I heard you correctly: “Crime must not only be permitted, it must be recognized as the most necessary and most intelligent way out of the situation in which every non-believer finds himself.” Is that what you actually said?’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Father Païsy.

  ‘I’ll remember that.’

  With these words, Dmitry Fyodorovich fell silent just as abruptly as he had interrupted the conversation. Everyone looked at him with curiosity.

  ‘Is that really what you think the consequence would be if man were to lose faith in the immortality of the soul?’ the starets suddenly asked Ivan Fyodorovich.

  ‘Yes, that is what I argued. There can be no virtue without immortality.’

  ‘You are blessed if that is what you believe, or else you must be very unhappy!’

  ‘Why unhappy?’ Ivan Fyodorovich smiled.

  ‘Because in all likelihood you believe neither in the immortality of your soul nor even in what you wrote about the Church and its role in society.’

  ‘You may be right!… Still, I wasn’t just joking either…’, Ivan Fyodorovich confessed suddenly and unexpectedly, and immediately blushed.

  ‘You were not just joking, that is very true. You have not yet come to terms with this idea in your heart, and you are tormented by it. But the martyr too may sometimes trivialize his despair, out of desperation you understand. As things stand, your magazine articles and discussions at social gatherings are no more than trivialized pursuits born of desperation; having lost faith in your own dialectics, you have turned at heart into a bitter cynic… The problem remains unresolved in your mind, and until it is, you shall remain profoundly unhappy…’

  ‘But can I resolve it? Can I resolve it in a positive sense?’ Ivan Fyodorovich continued his strange questioning, still looking at the starets with the same enigmatic smile.

  ‘If the question cannot be resolved in a positive sense, it will never be resolved in a negative one either; you yourself know this attribute of your soul, and therein lies the whole reason for your torment. But give thanks to the Creator for endowing you with such a noble soul, capable of undergoing such torment: “Set your affections on things above, for our conversation is in heaven.”* Pray God that the question may be resolved in your soul while you are still on earth, and may God sanctify your path!’

  The starets, remaining seated, raised his hand and was about to bless Ivan Fyodorovich, when the latter suddenly rose from his chair, went up to him, accepted his blessing, and, kissing his hand, returned in silence to his seat. His expression was resolute and serious. This action, like the whole of the preceding conversation with the starets, so unexpected from Ivan Fyodorovich, impressed everyone with its mystery and even gravitas, so that the whole room fell silent for a moment, and an expression close to apprehension appeared on Alyosha’s face. But suddenly Miusov shrugged his shoulders, and at the same moment Fyodor Pavlovich sprang to his feet.

  ‘Most divine and holy starets!’ he cried, pointing at Ivan Fyodorovich, ‘that is my son, flesh of my flesh, my most beloved flesh! He is, so to speak, my most respectful Karl Moor, while this son who has just come in, Dmitry Fyodorovich, and against whom I am seeking justice from you, he is the most disrespectful Franz Moor—both from Schiller’s The Robbers,* and so it follows that I must be the Regierender Graf von Moor! Be our judge and save us! Not only do we want you to pray for us, we also want you to enlighten us.’

  ‘Stop acting the fool, and do not start by insulting your family,’ said the starets in a feeble, exhausted voice. He was clearly becoming more and more tired, and his strength was visibly ebbing.

  ‘This is a most unworthy farce, which I foresaw on my way here!’ Dmitry Fyodorovich exclaimed indignantly, also leaping to his feet. ‘I’m sorry, Reverend Father,’ he turned to the starets, ‘I am an uneducated man and I don’t even know how to address you, but you’ve been deceived, and you were much too kind to allow us to meet here. My father only wants a scandal—he’s got his own reasons—he’s always got his own reasons. This time, however, I think I know what he’s up to…’

  ‘Everybody accuses me, everybody!’ Fyodor Pavlovich shouted back. ‘Pyotr Aleksandrovich over there, he also accuses me!’ He suddenly turned towards Miusov, though the latter had no intention of interrupting him.

  ‘They accuse me of pocketing my children’s money and not giving a damn, but, if I’m not mistaken, don’t courts of law exist? You’ll get what’s due to you, Dmitry Fyodorovich; your own receipts, letters, and agreements will show how much you’ve already received, how much you’ve squandered, and how much you’ve still got left! Why doesn’t Pyotr Aleksandrovich say something? He knows about Dmitry Fyodorovich. It’s because everybody’s against me, and when all’s said and done it’s Dmitry Fyodorovich who owes me money, and not just kopecks but several thousand roubles, I’ve got all the documentation! Hasn’t he been causing havoc right across the town, what with all his goings-on? And in the town where he was garrisoned, he’d think nothing of spending a thousand or two just to seduce some decent young girl; we know all the sordid details, Dmitry Fyodorovich, and I’m going to prove it… Most Reverend Father, would you believe it? He persuaded a most respectable young lady to fall in love with him, one from a good family, well off, the daughter of his former commander, a brave colonel who was awarded the order of St Anne with crossed swords,* compromised her by offering marriage, now she’s here all alone, his fiancée, while he goes and deserts her for one of the town’s floozies. But even though this floozie has been living, so to say, in common-law wedlock with a certain respectable gentleman, she’s an independent type, an impregnable fortress, just like a lawful wedded wife, because she’s virtuous—yes, holy fathers, she is virtuous! But Dmitry Fyodorovich wants to unlock this fortress with a golden key, which is why he’s here now, trying to bully me into giving him more money when he’s already squandered thousands on her; that’s why he borrows money all the time, and by the way, can you guess who from? Shall I tell them, Mitya?’