And having said this, he burst into tears himself. At this moment they were startled by a noise outside; someone had come into the entrance hall. Fenya burst into the room, shouting loudly.
‘Madam, my dearest madam, the courier has arrived!’ she cried joyfully and breathlessly. ‘There’s a tarantass from Mokroye come to fetch you, it’s Timofei with his troika, they’ll have changed the horses in a moment… The letter, the letter, madam, here’s the letter!’
The letter was in her hand, and she kept waving it about and shouting all the time. Grushenka snatched the letter from her and brought it near a candle. It was just a small note, a few lines, and she read them instantly.
‘He’s clicked his fingers at me!’ she exclaimed, her pale face contorted by a sickly smile. ‘He’s whistled for me! Crawl, you little bitch!’
But, just for one second, she stood still as though undecided; in an instant blood rushed to her face and her cheeks flushed scarlet.
‘I’m going!’ she exclaimed suddenly. ‘Five years of my life! Goodbye! Goodbye, Alyosha, my fate is sealed… Go away, clear off, all of you, I don’t want to see any of you!… Grushenka’s flying off to a new life… Even you mustn’t think ill of me, Rakitka. I may be going to my death! Oh dear! I think I’m drunk!’
Suddenly she left them and ran into her bedroom.
‘Well, she’s got more important things than us on her mind now!’ grunted Rakitin. ‘Let’s go, otherwise there’ll be more of that female screeching, I’m fed up with all that weeping and screaming…’
Alyosha let himself be led out like a puppet. A tarantass was standing in the courtyard, horses were being unharnessed, someone was walking around with a lantern, there was a lot of bustle. A freshly harnessed troika was being led in through the gates. But scarcely had Alyosha and Rakitin descended the steps of the porch than Grushenka’s bedroom window opened and she called out after Alyosha in a clear voice.
‘Alyoshechka, give my love to your brother Mitenka, and tell him not to think ill of his wicked Grushenka. And tell him I said: “It’s a scoundrel who’ll win Grushenka, and not a nice person like him!” And one more thing, say that Grushenka loved him for just one hour, one single hour is all she loved him for—so let him remember this hour for the rest of his life, and tell him that’s all Grushenka asks of him!…’
She broke off, sobbing. The window slammed shut.
‘Hm, hm!’ observed Rakitin, laughing. ‘First she sticks a knife in your brother Mitenka, then she asks him to remember her all his life. What a bitch!’
Alyosha did not respond, he seemed not to have heard; he walked very fast alongside Rakitin, as if in a dreadful hurry, and seemed to be in a kind of trance, walking almost mechanically. Suddenly Rakitin started, as though someone had touched an open wound. This was not at all what he had expected earlier, on the way to Grushenka’s with Alyosha; something quite different had happened, and not at all what he would have wished.
‘He’s a Pole, that officer of hers,’ he began again, trying to control himself, ‘he’s not even an officer now, he used to be a customs official in Siberia—somewhere on the Chinese border I suppose—he’s just an insignificant little Pole. They say he lost his job. Then he heard that Grushenka was in the money, so he came back—that’s all there is to it.’
Again Alyosha appeared not to hear. Rakitin could stand it no longer.
‘So, you’ve saved a sinner, have you?’ he laughed maliciously at Alyosha. ‘You’ve set the fallen woman on the path of virtue, is that it? You’ve cast seven devils out of her,* eh? So the miracle everyone’s been expecting has happened!’
‘Stop it, Rakitin,’ responded Alyosha with a heavy heart.
‘Is it the twenty-five roubles you despise me for? I suppose you think I’ve betrayed a true friend. But you’re not Christ, nor am I Judas.’
‘Honestly, Rakitin, I assure you, I’d stopped thinking about the money altogether,’ exclaimed Alyosha, ‘it’s you who brought it up just now…’
But Rakitin was completely incensed by now.
‘You can all go to hell, every single one of you!’ he burst out suddenly. ‘Why the devil did I ever have anything to do with you! You can drop dead as far as I’m concerned! Go on, clear off!’
He turned around abruptly and went off along another road, leaving Alyosha alone in the dusk. Alyosha left the town and set off across the field, towards the monastery.
4
CANA OF GALILEE*
IT was already quite late in the monastery day when Alyosha returned to the hermitage, and the gatekeeper let him in through a special entrance. The clock struck nine—it was time for rest and peace after a day that had been so disquieting for all. Alyosha timidly opened the door and entered the starets’s cell, where the coffin was now standing. The cell was empty apart from Father Païsy, solitarily reading the Gospels over the coffin, and the novice Porfiry, who, exhausted by the previous night’s discussion and the day’s excitement and events, was now sound asleep on the floor in the neighbouring room. Although Father Païsy heard Alyosha come in, he did not even turn around to glance at him. As he came through the door Alyosha turned right, went to the corner, and knelt down to pray. His soul was full to overflowing, but in a state of confusion in which no single feeling predominated, for as soon as one feeling welled up it was overtaken by another, in a steady, unending stream. His heart felt at ease but, strangely, he was not surprised at this. Once again he saw the coffin before him and the shrouded corpse which was so precious to him, but he no longer felt any of that harrowing, distressing, agonizing regret that he had felt in the morning. On entering the cell he fell to his knees in front of the coffin, as if before a shrine, but it was joy, sheer joy which filled his heart and mind. One window of the cell was open and the air was fresh and cool—’the odour must have got even stronger, if they had to open the window’, thought Alyosha. But even the thought of the odour of putrefaction, which had appeared so repulsive and degrading to him earlier on, did not now arouse that former anguish and revulsion. He began to pray in an undertone, but he soon realized that he was unable to concentrate. Fragmented thoughts kept flashing through his mind and flaring up, like shooting stars, in quick succession, but he himself was well aware of something whole, steadfast, and comforting in his soul. Every now and again he would begin a fervent prayer; he so much wanted to offer thanks and to love… But having started a prayer he would suddenly be distracted, become lost in thought, and forget not only the prayer but also what had distracted him. He started listening to what Father Païsy was reading but, overcome by exhaustion, gradually fell asleep…
‘And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee,’ read Father Païsy, ‘and the mother of Jesus was there: And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.’
‘Marriage? What’s that… marriage…’, the words hurtled through Alyosha’s mind, ‘she too is fortunate… she’s gone to the feast… No, she hasn’t taken a knife with her, she hasn’t… that was just a cry of anguish. Well… cries of anguish must be forgiven, certainly. Cries of anguish are a comfort to the soul… Without them, grief would be unbearable. Rakitin went off into a side-street. All the while Rakitin keeps thinking about his grudges, he’ll always be slinking off into side-streets… And the road… the road is wide, straight and bright, crystalline, and the sun is at the bottom of it… Ah?… What’s he reading?’
‘And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine..’, Alyosha heard.
‘Oh yes, I’ve missed something, and I didn’t want to miss it, I like this bit: it’s Cana of Galilee, the first miracle… Oh, that miracle, oh, that sweet miracle! It was not people’s grief, it was their joy that Christ was sharing when He performed the first miracle; He was helping to celebrate their joy… “Whosoever loves the people, loves their joy too…”, the starets used to repeat this constantly, it was one of his main teachings… Without joy, one cannot live, says Mitya… Ah yes—Mitya… All tha
t’s true and wonderful is always full of forgiveness—he said that too…’
‘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 people, some very poor people… They must have been poor, of course, if they didn’t even have enough wine for a wedding… Historians* tell us that some of the poorest people imaginable were scattered around Lake Genezareth and its surroundings at the time… And another superior being, His Mother, also with a great heart, was there with Him, and she knew that He had become incarnate not merely to accomplish his awesome mission, but also to show that His heart was open to the innocent, artless joys of any simple and guileless people who might kindly invite Him to their humble marriage feast. “Mine hour is not yet come,” He had said to her with a gentle smile (He could not but give her a gentle smile)… Really, would He have come down to earth merely to provide more wine at the marriage feasts of the poor? And yet, at her behest He did just that… Oh, 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 bear 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 is the room expanding?… Oh yes… it’s the wedding, the marriage… yes, of course. Here are the guests, here’s the young couple sitting down, and the merry crowd, and… where could the wise governor be? But who’s this? Who? The walls have moved again… Who’s that getting up at the top table? What… he’s here too? But surely he’s in his coffin… But he’s here too… He’s got up, he’s seen me, he’s coming here… Lord!…’
Yes, he was coming straight to him: the small, wizened old man, his face covered in tiny wrinkles, was coming up to him, full of joy and laughing gently. His coffin had gone, and he was dressed as he had been when he sat with them yesterday and his guests had assembled to see him. His expression was unclouded, his eyes shining. ‘It’s him all right, so it appears he too is at the feast, he too has been called to the marriage in Cana of Galilee…’
‘I was, my friend, I was indeed called and invited,’ he heard a soft voice sigh over him. ‘Why are you hiding from us here?… Come and join us.’
‘That’s his voice, Starets Zosima’s voice… Yes, who else could it be, calling?’ The starets put out his hand to help Alyosha to his feet.
‘Let us make merry,’ continued the wizened little old man, ‘let us drink the new wine, the wine of new happiness, of great happiness; see how many guests there are! There’s the bride and bridegroom, there’s the wise governor, he’s tasting the new wine. Why are you surprised to see me? I offered an onion and that’s why I’m here too. And many people here have offered just one onion, just one little onion each… What do all our works amount to? And you too, my gentle, my humble child, today you too managed to offer an onion to a hungry woman. Begin, my kind, my humble child, begin your task!… And do you see our light, do you see Him?’
‘I’m afraid… I daren’t look…’, whispered Alyosha.
‘Don’t be afraid of Him. He is terrible in his grandeur, awesome in His majesty, but He is infinitely merciful, He has taken on our likeness through his love for us and has joined in our merrymaking, He has turned water into wine that the guests’ joy should not be interrupted, He is expecting new guests to arrive, always inviting new ones, and for all eternity this time. There, they’re bringing in the new wine, do you see them carrying the pitchers?…’
Something burned in Alyosha’s heart, something swelled in it till it hurt, tears of ecstasy welled up within him… He put out his arms, cried out, and woke up…
There was the coffin again, the open window, and the soft, solemn, steady voice reading the Gospels. But Alyosha was no longer listening to what was being read. Strange, he had fallen asleep on his knees and now he was on his feet—and suddenly, with three resolute, rapid steps, he went right up to the coffin. He even brushed Father Païsy with his shoulder without noticing it. The latter momentarily raised his eyes from the book to look at him, but averted them immediately, realizing that something strange had come over the young man. For about half a minute Alyosha kept looking at the coffin with the shrouded, still figure stretched out in it, an icon on his chest, and a barred cross on his cowl. He had just heard that voice, and it was still ringing in his ears. He was still listening, still expecting to hear more… but suddenly, turning abruptly, he went out of the cell.
He did not even stop in the porch, but descended the steps quickly. His soul, brimming with ecstasy, was yearning for freedom, for wide-open spaces. Overhead, stretching into infinity, was the heavenly dome, full of silent, shimmering stars. From the zenith to the horizon stretched the forked outlines of the faintly visible Milky Way. A cool, silent, motionless night had enveloped the earth. The white towers and gilded cupolas of the monastery church gleamed in the sapphire night. The splendid autumn flowers in the beds around the house were dormant for the night. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens, the mystery of the earth appeared to reach out to the stars… Alyosha stood gazing; suddenly he fell to the ground, as though stunned.
He did not know why he was embracing the earth, he could not explain to himself why it was that he wanted to kiss it with such abandon, to kiss the whole of it, and yet he kept kissing it as he wept and sobbed, drenching it with his tears, and passionately swearing to love it, to love it for ever and ever. ‘Drench the earth with the tears of thy joy and love these thy tears…’, these words echoed in his soul. What was he weeping about? Oh, in his ecstasy he was weeping even for those stars which shone upon him from infinity, and ‘he was not ashamed of his passion’. It was as though threads from all of God’s countless worlds had converged in his soul, and it quivered ‘on contact with these distant worlds’. He wished to forgive everyone for everything and to ask forgiveness—oh, not for himself, but for others! ‘They would then ask forgiveness for me,’ were the words that echoed in his mind. But with each passing moment he became distinctly, almost palpably aware that something as firm and immutable as the vault of heaven was entering his soul. An idea seemed to be taking possession of his mind—and it would be for his whole life and for eternity. He fell to the ground a weak adolescent, but when he rose to his feet he was a hardened warrior for life, and he felt and recognized this in a flash of ecstasy. And never, never in his whole life would Alyosha be able to forget this moment. ‘Someone visited my soul on that occasion,’ he would repeat later, firmly believing his own words…
Three days later he left the monastery, in accordance with the instruction of his deceased starets to ‘go out into the world’.
BOOK EIGHT
Mitya
1
KUZMA SAMSONOV
NOW, while Grushenka, rushing to embrace her new life, was bidding farewell to Dmitry Fyodorovich, enjoining him to remember for ever the one hour during which she had loved him, Dmitry Fyodorovich himself, knowing nothing of what had befallen her, was burdened with cares and in a terrible state of confusion. His mental state had been so extreme during these past two days that he really could have developed inflammation of the brain, as he himself said later. Alyosha had not been able to find him the previous morning, nor had his brother Ivan been able to arrange a meeting with him in the tavern. The couple who owned the rooms where he was lodging had, on his orders, refused to reveal his whereabouts. He himself had been nothing short of frantic for the last few days, ‘struggling with my soul and trying to
find my own salvation’, as he himself admitted later, and despite the fact that he was afraid to go away even for a minute in case he missed Grushenka, he had actually left town for a few hours on an urgent matter. All this subsequently came to light in the most detailed and official manner, but we shall now record only the main events of the two dreadful days preceding the frightful catastrophe which was to engulf him so unexpectedly.
Although it was true that Grushenka had loved him genuinely and sincerely for that one hour, she had also managed to torture him cruelly and mercilessly at the same time. The fact of the matter was that he could not fathom any of her intentions—there was no possibility of coaxing them out of her with kindness, nor of forcing her to reveal them—she would never have given in, but would have rounded on him and rejected him altogether; that he fully realized. At the time he had reason to suspect that she too was experiencing an inner struggle, that she was torn by some kind of extreme indecision, was trying to decide on a course of action but was incapable of coming to a decision, and he therefore, not surprisingly, assumed with a sinking heart that at times she must positively detest him and his passionate advances. Perhaps that was precisely how things had been, but he still could not understand what it was that troubled Grushenka. In truth, the whole question resolved itself in two ways for him: ‘Either it’ll be me, or it’ll be Fyodor Pavlovich.’ Here, by the way, it is necessary to be quite clear about one thing: he was quite sure that Fyodor Pavlovich would (if he had not done so already) certainly offer to marry Grushenka, and he did not think for a moment that the old lecher believed he could get away with just paying three thousand roubles. Mitya surmised this from his knowledge of Grushenka and her character. And so it could have appeared to him at times that all Grushenka’s troubles and all her indecisiveness stemmed merely from the fact that she did not know which of the two to choose and which choice would turn out to be the more advantageous. As for the ‘officer’, that fateful figure in Grushenka’s life, whose imminent arrival she was expecting with such fear and anxiety, strangely enough it did not even occur to Mitya to think about him during these days. True, Grushenka had kept very quiet about this just recently. However, he knew from Grushenka herself all about the letter she had received a month ago from her one-time seducer, and to some extent he also knew its contents. Once, in a spiteful moment, she had shown it to him, but to her surprise he had attached almost no significance to it whatsoever. And it would have been very difficult to explain why—perhaps simply because, weighed down as he was by all the embarrassment and frustration of his struggle with his father over this woman, he could not imagine facing something even more frightening and dangerous, at least not then. And as for the suitor suddenly appearing out of the blue after a five-year absence, this he simply refused to believe, especially the possibility of his arriving so soon. It was also true that in that very first letter from the ‘officer’, which Mitya had been shown, the officer’s return was mentioned only very vaguely; the letter was very vague, very flowery, and full of sentimental outpourings. It should be noted that, on that occasion, Grushenka had managed to conceal the last few lines from him, in which his return was mentioned rather more specifically. Moreover, Mitya recalled later that, at that moment, he had seemed to detect in Grushenka’s face a certain involuntary and proud contempt for that communication from Siberia. Following this, Grushenka had given no hint of any further contact she might have had with this new rival of Mitya’s. Thus, little by little, he had even managed to forget about the officer. All he thought about was the fact that whatever happened and however things turned out, the impending final confrontation between himself and Fyodor Pavlovich was nigh, and was bound to occur before anything else. He had been awaiting Grushenka’s imminent decision with bated breath, which he believed she would make on the spur of the moment, on impulse as it were. She might suddenly say to him: ‘Take me, I’m yours for ever,’ and that would be the end of the matter: he would seize her and carry her off to the other end of the world straight away. Oh, he’d take her far away at once, as far away as possible, if not to the other end of the world then at least to the other end of Russia, where he would marry her and they would settle down incognito, so that no one at all, anywhere, should know who they were. Then, oh then, would begin a totally new life! He dreamed unceasingly and obsessively of this fresh, rejuvenated, and from now on ‘virtuous’ life, ‘virtuous, at all costs virtuous’. He yearned for this resurrection and rejuvenation. The foul morass into which he had sunk of his own volition was too unbearable for him, and like very many other people in his situation he based his hopes most of all on a change of scene: if only it were not for these people, if only it were not for these circumstances, if only one could flee from this place—everything would be reborn and begin anew! That is what he believed and longed for.
The Karamazov Brothers Page 56
