‘Don’t you dare!’ yelled Dmitry Fyodorovich. ‘Wait till I’ve gone. Don’t you dare besmirch the name of a most honourable woman in front of me… That you should have the audacity to refer to her is an insult to her… I won’t have it!’
He was choking.
‘Mitya! Mitya!’ Fyodor Pavlovich mocked, his voice quavering as he attempted to shed a few tears. ‘What about my parental blessing? What if I put a curse on you, what then?’
‘Brazen humbug!’ Dmitry Fyodorovich shouted, beside himself.
‘His own father, his own father! Think how he must treat others then! Gentlemen, imagine this: there is in this town of ours a poor but respectable man, a retired captain, burdened with a large family, who had got into trouble and been cashiered—but not publicly, no court martial, his reputation still intact. Three weeks ago our Dmitry Fyodorovich grabbed him by his beard in a tavern, dragged him by his beard out into the street, and beat him up in full view of everyone—and all because this man happened to be on a small confidential errand of mine.’
‘That’s a complete lie! On the face of it, it’s true, but when you examine it in more detail, it’s a lie!’ Dmitry Fyodorovich’s whole body was shaking with rage. ‘Father! I’m not trying to justify my actions. Yes, I openly admit, I behaved like a wild beast towards the captain, and I now despise myself for my uncontrollable rage, but that captain, that messenger of yours, went to the lady whom you referred to as a floozie, and told her on your instructions that if I persisted in demanding an account of my property from you, she should take my promissory notes, which are now in your possession, and sue me to have me convicted and put behind bars. And now you’re reproaching me for fancying that lady, whereas it was you yourself who instructed her how to trap me! Didn’t you know she owned up and told me everything, and she just laughed at you! But the real reason you want to see me in gaol is that you’re jealous, because you’ve begun to make advances to her yourself, and I know all about it, she was killing herself with laughter—do you hear me?—killing herself with laughter as she told me the story. So there you have the man himself, reverend sirs, the father, reproaching his depraved son! You gentlemen who are my witnesses, pardon my rage, but I knew this wily old devil would get us all together just to create a scandal. I came to forgive and forget if only he’d offered me his hand! But seeing that he has just insulted not only me, but also the most honourable of ladies, whose very name I refuse to mention out of respect for her, I’ve decided to expose his whole game in public, father or no father!…’
He was unable to continue. His eyes were blazing and his breathing was laboured. And everyone else in the cell was agitated too. All except the starets rose to their feet in alarm. The hieromonks looked on sternly, but waited to see how the starets would respond. The latter, however, remained seated, still looking extremely pale, not from agitation but rather from the exhaustion of illness. A suppliant smile flickered over his lips; now and again he would raise his hand as though to restrain the demented visitors, and of course a single gesture of his would have sufficed to terminate the proceedings; but it appeared that he too was waiting for something, and he watched intently, as if trying to fathom something, as though there were something he had not yet grasped. Finally, Pyotr Aleksandrovich Miusov announced that he felt he had been utterly demeaned and disgraced.
‘We’re all to blame for the scandalous scene we’ve just witnessed!’ he said heatedly. ‘Believe me, on my way here I never anticipated it would come to this, even though I knew who I was dealing with… We must put a stop to this at once! Your Reverence, believe me, I really did not have any detailed knowledge of all the goings-on that have just come to light, I didn’t want to believe them, and it’s the first time I’ve heard of such a thing… a father jealous of his own son over a disreputable woman and conspiring with the creature herself to put his son behind bars… And this is the company in which I’ve been obliged to appear here… I’ve been deceived; I say to all of you that I have been deceived just as much as everybody else has been…’
‘Dmitry Fyodorovich!’ Fyodor Pavlovich suddenly shouted in an unrecognizable voice. ‘If you were not my son, I’d challenge you to a duel this instant… with pistols, at three paces… across a pocket handkerchief!* Across a handkerchief!’ he yelled, stamping both his feet.
There are occasions on which old liars, who have spent their whole lives dissembling, get so carried away that they really do tremble and weep with emotion, despite the fact that at that very moment (or only a split second later) they could well admit to themselves, ‘You’re lying, you old reprobate, you’re play-acting even now, never mind all that “sacred” anger of yours, it’s all a sham.’
Dmitry Fyodorovich scowled viciously and looked at his father with indescribable contempt.
‘I imagined… I imagined’, he spoke quietly and with selfcontrol, ‘that I would come home to my father with the angel of my heart, my fiancée, and that I would cherish him in his old age, but all I see before me is a depraved old roué and the vilest of buffoons!’
‘To a duel!’ the old reprobate shrieked again, panting for breath and spluttering saliva with every word. ‘As for you, Pyotr Aleksandrovich Miusov, know you this, my good sir, that in the whole of your lineage there isn’t and probably never has been a single woman more high-minded and more honest—more honest, do you hear?—than this “creature”, as you had the audacity to call her just now! And as for you, Dmitry Fyodorovich, you’ve exchanged your fiancée for this “creature”, and so it follows, in your own estimation, that your fiancée isn’t fit to touch the hem of her dress—that’s the sort of “creature” she is.’
‘For shame!’ Father Yosif could not contain himself.
‘Shame and disgrace indeed,’ Kalganov, who had been silent until now, shouted suddenly, blushing to the roots of his hair, his adolescent voice quivering with emotion.
‘A man like him doesn’t deserve to live!’ Dmitry Fyodorovich growled, beside himself with rage, his awkwardly raised shoulders lending him a hunched appearance. ‘Tell me, is he to be allowed to continue to contaminate the earth with his existence?’ He looked at everyone in turn, pointing at the old man with his finger. He spoke slowly and deliberately.
‘Did you hear him, holy fathers, did you hear the murderer?’ Fyodor Pavlovich turned on Father Yosif. ‘Here’s the answer to your “for shame”! What shame? This “creature”, this “disreputable woman”, is holier, perhaps, than any of you monks seeking salvation here! Maybe her fall goes back to her youth, to her repressive background, but she “loved much”,* and Christ forgave her that loved much…’
‘It wasn’t for that kind of love that Christ forgave…’, the meek Father Yosif objected querulously.
‘Wrong, it was for that kind, precisely for that kind, holy monks, for just that kind! Here you are, saving your souls on pickled cabbage, and you imagine yourselves to be righteous! You eat gudgeon, one gudgeon a day, and you think you can buy God with gudgeon!’
‘Intolerable, quite intolerable!’ The words resounded all round the cell.
But this whole disgraceful scene came to an abrupt end. The starets suddenly stood up. Alyosha, overcome by fear and embarrassment, nevertheless managed to reach out and support him by the arm. The starets walked towards Dmitry Fyodorovich and, when he was right next to him, went down on his knees before him. For a brief second Alyosha thought he had stumbled from exhaustion, but this was not so. As he went down on his knees, the starets made an obeisance, a full, unmistakable and conscious obeisance, even touching the floor with his forehead at Dmitry Fyodorovich’s feet. Alyosha was so astonished that he even failed to assist him when he was rising to his feet. A faint smile played around the starets’s lips.
‘Forgive me! Forgive me, all!’ he said, bowing in all directions to his guests.
For a few moments Dmitry Fyodorovich stood thunderstruck: the starets kneeling at his feet—what could it mean? At last he cried out, ‘Oh God!’ and, covering his fac
e with his hands, rushed out of the room. The other guests followed him in a crowd, forgetting in their confusion to take leave of their host. Only the hieromonks went up to him again for his blessing.
‘Why did he kneel before him—was it some kind of symbolism again, or something?’ muttered Fyodor Pavlovich in an attempt to strike up a conversation, but not daring to address anyone in particular and visibly cowed for some reason. At that moment the whole company was leaving through the hermitage gates.
‘I cannot be responsible for a madhouse or the madmen inside it,’ Miusov immediately retorted angrily, ‘but I shall rid myself of your company once and for all, Fyodor Pavlovich. Where’s that monk now?…’
That monk, the one who had invited them to dine with the abbot, did not keep them waiting. He met the guests at the bottom of the steps leading down from the starets’s cell, as though he had been waiting for them there all the time.
‘Honourable father,’ Pyotr Aleksandrovich said to the monk irritably, ‘would you be kind enough to convey my profound respects to the reverend abbot, with my personal apologies to his eminence, and say that, owing to sudden and unforeseen circumstances, it will be quite impossible for me, despite my most heartfelt wishes, to have the honour of partaking of the repast.’
‘My word, unforeseen circumstances—he means me!’ Fyodor Pavlovich immediately joined in. ‘Did you hear that, father? Pyotr Aleksandrovich objects to my company, otherwise he’d have accepted immediately. You must go, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, you must accept the reverend abbot’s invitation and—bon appétit! Remember, though, I’m the one who’s declining the invitation, not you! I’m going straight home, I shall eat at home. I find it impossible to eat here, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, my very dear cousin.’
‘I’m not your cousin and never have been, you despicable wretch!’
‘I said it on purpose to annoy you, because you insist on denying that you’re a relative of mine; you’re my kinsman though, however much you may try to deny it. I can prove it to you from church records. You can stay here if you want, Ivan Fyodorovich. I’ll send the horses to fetch you when it’s time. As for you, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, it’s only common politeness that you should go to the reverend abbot to apologize for what we both got up to just now…’
‘Are you really going home then? Or is it just one of your tricks?’
‘Pyotr Aleksandrovich, after what’s happened I simply wouldn’t dare to show my face there! I got carried away; I’m sorry, gentlemen, I got completely carried away! I’m deeply shocked! And, what’s more, ashamed! My dear sirs, one man will have a heart like Alexander the Great’s, another like a little lap-dog’s; mine’s like the little lap-dog’s. I’ve lost my nerve! After a scene like that, how could I possibly stay for lunch and tuck into the monastic delicacies? I’d be too ashamed, I couldn’t, I’m sorry!’
‘God only knows, he’s up to something!’ Miusov paused to reflect, following the retreating buffoon with a mistrustful eye. The latter turned round and, noticing that Pyotr Aleksandrovich was watching him, blew him a kiss.
‘What about you, are you going to go?’ Miusov asked Ivan Fyodorovich curtly.
‘Why not? After all, I did have a special invitation from the abbot yesterday.’
‘Unfortunately, I really do feel I have an obligation to go to this wretched lunch,’ Miusov continued with the same bitter irritability, paying not the slightest attention to the presence of the little monk. ‘At least we should apologize for the scene we created and explain that it wasn’t our fault. What do you think?’
‘Yes, we must explain it wasn’t our fault. Besides, father isn’t going to be there,’ Ivan Fyodorovich added.
‘Your father would be the last straw! This damned lunch!’
At last they all set off. The monk kept quiet and listened. On the way through the wood he commented only that the reverend abbot had already been waiting a long time and that they were over half an hour late. No one replied. Miusov glanced at Ivan Fyodorovich with loathing.
‘Off he goes to lunch as if nothing had happened!’ he said to himself. ‘A brazen face and a Karamazov’s conscience.’
7
THE CAREERIST SEMINARIAN
ALYOSHA took the starets into the bedroom, and helped him to sit down on his bed. It was a very small room containing only essential furniture; instead of a mattress, the narrow iron bed had just a strip of felt on. In a corner of the room, by the icons, stood a lectern on which lay a crucifix and a copy of the New Testament. The starets lowered himself on to the bed, exhausted; his eyes were staring and he breathed with difficulty. Having settled on the bed, he gave Alyosha a penetrating look, as though he were deliberating about something.
‘Off you go now, my dear boy, off you go! Porfiry will see to me, you hurry along. You should go to the abbot’s and serve at table.’
‘I’d rather stay here, with your blessing,’ Alyosha said imploringly.
‘You’re of greater need there. There is no peace between them. You will help them at table and make yourself useful. Should devilry rear its head, say a prayer. You must know, my son (the starets liked to address him thus), this will not be the place for you in the future. Remember that, my boy. As soon as God sees fit that I should pass away—leave the monastery. Leave it for ever.’
Alyosha shuddered.
‘What is wrong? This is not the place for you. I give you my blessing to go out into the world in humility and obedience. You still have a long pilgrimage before you. And you must marry, you must. You will have to endure all things before you return. There is much to accomplish. But I have confidence in you, which is why I am sending you forth. Christ be with you. Do not forsake Him, and He will not forsake you. You will experience much grief, and in grief you will find happiness. Here is my commandment to you: seek happiness in grief! Toil, toil unceasingly. Remember my words henceforth, for even though I shall talk with you again, not only my days but my hours too are numbered.’
Alyosha’s face crumpled. The corners of his mouth trembled.
‘What is it now?’ the starets smiled gently. ‘Let the lay people bid farewell to their departed ones in tears, here we rejoice when a father departs. We rejoice and we pray for him. Leave me now. I must pray. Go, you must make haste. Stay close to your brothers. Not just to one, but to both.’
The starets raised his hand in blessing. Although Alyosha would dearly have liked to stay behind, there was no room for argument. On the tip of his tongue was a question he was dying to ask—what had been the significance of that obeisance before his brother Dmitry—but he did not have the courage. He knew that the starets would have explained it to him of his own accord if that were possible. But it seemed that that was not his wish. That obeisance had made an extraordinary impression on Alyosha; he believed blindly that it had a mysterious purpose. Mysterious, and perhaps even terrible. As he hurried through the gates of the hermitage on the way to the monastery for the abbot’s dinner (merely to serve at table, of course), his heart suddenly contracted with pain and he stopped dead: it was as if he heard the words of the starets once more, foretelling his impending death. What the starets foretold, especially with such exactitude, would undoubtedly come about, that was a sacred article of faith for Alyosha. But how was he to survive without him, what would it be like not to see him or hear him any more? And where would he go? ‘He commands me not to weep and to leave the monastery. Oh Lord!’ It was a long time since Alyosha had experienced such deep anguish. He quickened his pace through the wood which separated the cloister from the monastery and, unable to endure the thoughts weighing so heavily upon him, looked up at the ancient pines growing on either side of the forest track. The walk was not long, about five hundred paces, no more; at this hour he was unlikely to meet anyone. But suddenly, on the first bend, he noticed Rakitin. He was waiting for someone.
‘You’re not waiting for me, are you?’ asked Alyosha as he drew level with him.
‘Yes, I am,’ Rakitin smiled. ‘You’re hurrying to
the abbot’s, aren’t you? I know. He’s giving a lunch. There hasn’t been a lunch like it since he entertained the archbishop and General Pakhatov, do you remember? I shan’t be there, but you go along, and serve the garnished meats. Tell me one thing, Aleksei: what was that performance all about? That’s what I wanted to ask you.’
‘What performance?’
‘Well, that obeisance he made to your brother Dmitry Fyodorovich. He put his head right down to the floor!’
‘Are you talking about Father Zosima?’
‘Yes, Father Zosima.’
The Karamazov Brothers Page 14
