The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  ‘Why don’t you write to the priest yourself, and he’ll handle it.’

  ‘He can’t, it’s not that simple. The priest wouldn’t know how to go about it. He’s pure gold, I’d ask him to look after twenty thousand without a receipt, but he doesn’t have the least idea, he’s a babe in arms, a crow could outwit him. And yet, you know, he’s an educated man. This Gorstkin looks like any other peasant, what with his blue tunic, but he’s an out-and-out rogue, and that’s the problem: he’s an inveterate liar. Sometimes he tells such lies that one wonders why. Three years ago he said his wife had died and that he’d already married another, and, can you believe it, not a word of it was true: his wife never died, she’s alive, and, what’s more, she beats him every third day. So that’s what we need to find out: is he lying or not when he says he’ll buy it for eleven thousand?’

  ‘Well, what can I do about it? I don’t know what he’s up to either!’

  ‘Hold on, wait a minute. You’ll manage fine, because I’ll tell you everything to look out for with him, Gorstkin, that is; I’ve had dealings with him for ages. Look, you have to watch his beard; he’s got a nasty reddish wisp of a beard. If his beard shakes and he gets angry when he speaks—that means everything’s fine, he’s telling the truth, he wants to do a deal; but if he strokes his beard with his left hand and chuckles—well, that means he wants to swindle you, he’s up to something. Never look him in the eye, you won’t learn anything from his eyes, he’s a deep one, a swindler—watch his beard. I’ll give you a note for him; just show it to him. He’s Gorstkin, only he’s not Gorstkin, he’s called Lurcher, but don’t call him that, otherwise he’ll go berserk. If you do a deal with him and everything looks fine, write to me at once. Just a couple of words, “he’s not lying”. Hold out for eleven thousand, though you can come down one thousand, no more. Just think: eight and eleven—three thousand difference. Three thousand’s better than a kick in the shins; besides, it could be ages before I found another purchaser, and I really need the money. Let him know I’m serious, and I’ll dash up there myself and settle the deal, I’ll find time somehow. But right now, what do I want to go rushing out there for if this priest fellow has made it all up? Well, are you going or not?’

  ‘I haven’t got time. Let me off this once.’

  ‘Oh go on, do your old father a favour, I won’t forget it! You’re all heartless, all of you, that’s what you are! What’s a day or two to you? Where are you going now, to Venice? Your Venice won’t fall down in a couple of days. I’d send Alyosha, but what does Alyosha know about such matters? I only ask you because you’re an intelligent person, as anyone can see. You don’t know the timber trade, but you’ve got your wits about you. You just have to find out whether the man’s talking seriously or not. I’m telling you, watch his beard; if it shakes, he’s serious.’

  ‘You’re twisting my arm to go to that damn Chermashnya, aren’t you?’ exclaimed Ivan Fyodorovich with a nasty grin.

  Fyodor Pavlovich either did not notice the nastiness or chose to ignore it, but he picked up on the grin.

  ‘So you’ll go then, will you? I’ll scribble a note at once.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’m going or not, I’ll decide on the way.’

  ‘Why “on the way”; decide now. My dear boy, decide now! When you’ve done the deal, write me a couple of lines, hand them to the priest, and he’ll send them to me before you can say Jack Robinson. And then I won’t hold you up any more, you can go to Venice. The priest will take you back to Volovya staging post himself…’

  The old man was simply delighted; he scribbled the note, sent for the horses, and gave Ivan the note and some brandy. Usually, when he was happy, the old man would become effusive, but this time he seemed to be holding himself in check. For instance, he did not say a single word about Dmitry Fyodorovich. He was not in the least moved by their parting. He did not even seem to be able to find anything to talk about, which fact was not lost on Ivan Fyodorovich. ‘He’s had enough of me,’ he thought to himself. It was only as he accompanied his son down the steps that the old man began to get excited and made to kiss him. But Ivan Fyodorovich quickly held out his hand, obviously to foil the attempt. The old man understood at once, and checked himself.

  ‘Well, God be with you, God be with you!’ he called from the steps. ‘You’ll be back sometime, won’t you? I mean it, do come, I’ll always be glad to see you. Well, Christ be with you.’

  Ivan Fyodorovich climbed into the tarantass.

  ‘Goodbye Ivan. Don’t be too hard on me!’ shouted his father for the last time.

  All the servants had come to see him off: Smerdyakov, Marfa, and Grigory. Ivan Fyodorovich gave them all ten roubles each. When he had settled himself into the tarantass, Smerdyakov rushed to adjust the mat under his feet.

  ‘You see… I’m going to Chermashnya after all,’ Ivan Fyodorovich somehow burst out. As on the previous day, this was a spontaneous exclamation and was even accompanied by a nervous little laugh. He was to remember this for a long time.

  ‘So it’s true what people say, that it’s always interesting to talk to an intelligent person,’ observed Smerdyakov weightily, with a penetrating glance at Ivan Fyodorovich.

  The tarantass started up and gathered speed. The traveller’s soul was troubled, but he looked around eagerly at the fields, at the hills, at the villages, at a flock of wild geese flying past him high in the clear sky. And suddenly he began to have a feeling of well-being. He attempted to strike up a conversation with the driver, and something the peasant said interested him enormously, but a minute later he realized that it had all gone in one ear and out the other, and that, in truth, he had understood nothing of what the man had said. He fell silent, and that was fine, too; the air was clean, fresh, chilly, the sky was clear. The faces of Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha flashed across his mind’s eye, but he smiled to himself, blew gently on the dear ghosts, and they flew away. ‘Their time will come,’ he thought. They reached the staging post quickly, changed horses, and rushed on to Volovya. ‘“Interesting to talk to an intelligent man”, what did he mean by that?’ he held his breath suddenly. ‘And why did I tell him I was going to Chermashnya?’ They reached Volovya. Ivan Fyodorovich got out of the tarantass and was immediately surrounded by drivers plying for hire. They were competing to take him to Chermashnya, twelve versts by country tracks. He gave orders to harness the horses. He entered the staging-post house, looked around, glanced at the caretaker’s wife, and walked quickly out again on to the steps.

  ‘No need to go to Chermashnya. Can you get me to the station in good time for the seven o’clock train, boys?’

  ‘We’ll just make it. Shall we harness the horses?’

  ‘Yes, as quick as you can. Will any of you be going into town tomorrow?’

  ‘Why yes, Mitry’s going.’

  ‘Mitry, could you do me a favour? Call on my father, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, and tell him I didn’t go to Chermashnya after all. Can you do that?’

  ‘Of course, I’ll drop in; I’ve known Fyodor Pavlovich for ages.’

  ‘And here’s a tip for you, because I doubt he’ll give you one…’, Ivan Fyodorovich laughed cheerfully.

  ‘That’s for sure, he won’t,’ Mitry laughed too. ‘Thank you, sir, I’ll be sure to do it…’

  At seven o’clock that evening Ivan Fyodorovich boarded the train and sped off to Moscow. ‘That’s the end of that chapter of my life, I’ve done with my old world for ever, and it’s all in the past now, the lot; I’m off to a new world, new places, and I shan’t look back!’ But instead of exultation darkness enveloped his soul, and sadness such as he had never felt before in his whole life overwhelmed his heart. He spent the night thinking; the train flew along, and it was only at dawn, as it drew into Moscow, that he came to himself.

  ‘I’m a scoundrel!’ he whispered to himself.

  As for Fyodor Pavlovich, having seen off his ‘dear’ son, he was quite satisfied. For a whole two hours he felt almost happy an
d partook of a little brandy; but suddenly an incident occurred in the house that was annoying and upsetting for everyone and, in the twinkling of an eye, plunged Fyodor Pavlovich into great confusion: Smerdyakov went to fetch something from the cellar and fell from the top step. It was a good thing that Marfa Ignatyevna happened to be in the yard just then and heard him in time. She did not see him fall, but she heard the shriek—that special shriek, strange, but already long familiar to her—the shriek of an epileptic having a fit. Whether the fit began as he started down the stairs, in which case, of course, he would have fallen unconscious to the bottom, or whether, on the contrary—Smerdyakov being a known epileptic—the fall and the shock had brought on the fit, it was impossible to tell, but they found him at the bottom of the cellar steps, foaming at the mouth, and his body twisting and thrashing about in convulsions. They thought at first that he had probably injured himself, broken something, an arm or a leg, but ‘God protected him’, as Marfa Ignatyevna said; nothing of that sort had happened, only it was difficult to lift him and carry him up from the cellar into the daylight. However, they asked the neighbours to help, and somehow they managed it. Fyodor Pavlovich was present throughout this incident and, obviously scared and somewhat dazed, personally lent a hand. The patient, however, did not come round: the fit ceased for a while, but then recommenced, and everyone concluded that it would go on as it had the year before, when he had accidentally fallen from the attic. They remembered that on that occasion they had applied ice to his temples. There was still some ice in the cellar, and Marfa Ignatyevna saw to that, while in the afternoon Fyodor Pavlovich sent for Herzenstube, who came promptly. Having examined the patient carefully (he was one of the most conscientious and attentive doctors in the whole province, an elderly and respectable little man), he concluded that it was an extremely serious fit and ‘could have serious complications’ which he, Herzenstube, did not yet fully understand, but that the next morning, if the initial treatment had not proved effective, he would consider alternative treatment. They installed the patient in the outhouse, in the little room next to Grigory and Marfa Ignatyevna’s. From then on, the whole day was nothing but a succession of misfortunes for Fyodor Pavlovich: Marfa Ignatyevna prepared the dinner, the soup was dishwater compared to Smerdyakov’s soup, and the chicken was so dried up that he simply could not chew it. To the bitter but nevertheless justified reproaches of her master, Marfa Ignatyevna retorted that she had never studied haute cuisine and that the chicken had been very old in any case. By the evening another problem had arisen: Fyodor Pavlovich was informed that Grigory, who had been ailing for three days, was finally about to take to his bed completely, with lumbago. Fyodor Pavlovich finished his tea as quickly as possible and locked himself alone in the house. He waited in a terrible state of trepidation. The fact was that he was expecting Grushenka almost for sure that very evening; at least, Smerdyakov had practically assured him earlier that morning that ‘she promised to come, sir, without fail’. The irrepressible old man’s heart was beating violently, and he paced up and down the empty rooms, listening attentively. He had to keep a sharp look-out: Dmitry Fyodorovich might be lying in wait somewhere or other, and when she knocked on the window (Smerdyakov had already assured Fyodor Pavlovich three days before that he had told her where and when to knock), he would have to open the door as quickly as possible and not keep her waiting on the doorstep even for a second, in case, God forbid, she took fright and ran away. This made Fyodor Pavlovich restless, but never before had his heart seethed with sweeter hope: it was almost certain that this time she would come!…

  BOOK SIX

  A Russian Monk

  1

  STARETS ZOSIMA AND HIS VISITORS

  WHEN Alyosha, with a heavy heart and in a state of panic, entered the starets’s cell, he stopped short in astonishment: instead of the dying man, sick and unconscious, that he had feared he would find, the first thing he saw was the starets sitting in his chair, exhausted by weakness, yet with a cheerful and alert expression and surrounded by visitors, with whom he was conducting a calm and enlightened conversation. As a matter of fact he had left his bed not more than a quarter of an hour before Alyosha’s arrival; the visitors had already congregated in his cell, waiting for him to awake, Father Païsy having firmly assured them that the teacher, as he himself had promised that same morning, would definitely get up once more to talk to those who were dear to his heart. Father Païsy firmly believed this promise as he believed the failing starets’s every word in fact, to the extent that were he to see him completely unconscious and not even breathing, as long as he had his promise to rise once more and say farewell he would probably refuse to believe even in death itself, and would fully expect the dying man to regain consciousness and keep his promise. And that very morning Starets Zosima had clearly said to him before falling asleep: ‘I shall not die until I have had the pleasure of talking once more to you, dearly beloved friends of my heart, until I have seen your kind faces and opened my heart to you all again.’ Those who had gathered for this, in all probability, last conversation with the starets were his most devoted friends, whom he had known for many years. There were four of them; three of them were hieromonks—Father Yosif, Father Païsy, and Father Mikhail, the Father Superior of the hermitage, still not very old, not nearly as learned as the others, of humble birth but resolute in spirit, artless and unshakeable in his faith, endowed in spite of his stern appearance with a profound kindness of heart, yet concealing that kindness even to the point of being ashamed of it. The fourth visitor, Brother Anfim, was a very old and unprepossessing little monk from the poorest peasant stock, almost illiterate, taciturn and reticent, hardly ever entering into conversation with anyone, the humblest of the humble, with the appearance of having been permanently frightened by some prodigious and awesome event quite beyond his powers of comprehension. Starets Zosima loved this apparently intimidated monk dearly, and throughout his life had treated him with the utmost respect, although there was probably no one with whom he had exchanged fewer words, despite the fact that in the past the two of them had spent many years wandering together throughout the length and breadth of Holy Russia. This was a very long time ago, maybe forty years or so, when Starets Zosima had first taken up his vocation as a monk in a poor, obscure Kostromsk monastery and, soon afterwards, had set out to accompany Father Anfim on his wanderings to beg for offerings for that poor little monastery. The host and his visitors had settled in the starets’s bedroom, which, as previously mentioned, was rather cramped, so that there was barely enough space for all four of them (the novice Porfiry remained standing) to sit round the starets’s armchair on chairs that had been brought in from the other room. Dusk was falling, and the room was lit by night-lamps and wax candles in front of the icons. Catching sight of Alyosha, who had stopped in the doorway in some confusion, the starets gave him a joyful smile and extended his hand.

  ‘Welcome, my quiet one, welcome, my kind one, so here you are. I knew you’d come.’

  Alyosha approached him, bowed to the ground before him, and burst into tears. Something was striving to tear itself free from his breast, his soul was in turmoil, he wanted to cry his heart out.

  ‘Come, come, it’s too soon to shed tears over me,’ the starets smiled, placing his right hand on Alyosha’s head. ‘You see, I’m sitting here talking, perhaps I’ll go on living for the next twenty years, as that good, kind woman wished me yesterday, the one from Vyshegorye with her daughter Lizaveta in her arms. Lord, remember the mother and her little Lizaveta!’ He crossed himself. ‘Porfiry, have you delivered her gift as I told you?’

  He had remembered the sixty kopecks which his jolly, good-humoured follower had left the day before to be given to ‘someone that’s poorer than me’. Such offerings are made as a penance which people voluntarily impose upon themselves for some reason, and which invariably consist of money earned by their own labour. Before the day was out the starets had dispatched Porfiry to a townswoman of ours whose house had rece
ntly burned down, a widow with two children, who had to go begging for alms after the fire. Porfiry hastened to inform him that the matter had been accomplished and that, as instructed, he had handed over the gift ‘from an unknown benefactress’.

  ‘Stand up, my boy,’ the starets continued, addressing Alyosha, ‘let me have a look at you. Did you visit your family and see your brother?’

  It seemed strange to Alyosha that he should be enquiring so deliberately and specifically about only one of his brothers—which one though? Whichever one it was, it seemed probable he had sent him away yesterday as well as today for the sake of this brother.

  ‘I saw one of my brothers,’ Alyosha replied.

  ‘I’m talking about the elder one, the one I bowed to.’