The Brothers Karamazov (14 page)

“Be quiet!” Dmitry screamed. “Don’t you dare besmirch the name of that most honorable girl in my presence! Wait at least until I’ve left the room . . . The very fact that you’ve dared to mention her at all is a disgrace to her . . . I won’t allow it!”

He was gasping for breath.

“Mitya, Mitya!” Karamazov exclaimed hysterically, forcing tears from his eyes. “Does your father’s blessing mean nothing to you? What if I should put a curse on you? What would you do then?”

“You shameless hypocrite!” Dmitry roared furiously.

“That’s the way he talks to his father, his father, mind you! So imagine how he treats other people. Listen, gentlemen, there is in our town a poor but honorable man, a former army captain; he had some bad luck and was forced to resign his commission, but it was done quietly. There was no court martial, and no slur on his honor. He is the head of a large family . . . Well, three weeks ago, this son of mine, Dmitry, met him in a tavern, grabbed him by the beard, pulled him out into the street, and gave him a brutal beating in public. And his only reason for doing it was that the man had been running occasional errands for me, in connection with a certain business of mine.”

“You liar, you liar!” Dmitry roared, shaking with rage. “Superficially it’s true, but deep down it’s a lie! I’m not trying to justify what I did, father. Yes, I admit publicly that I acted like a wild beast toward that captain, and now I’m sorry. I loathe myself for losing my temper and behaving like a brute. But that captain, acting on your behalf, went to see the lady whom you describe as the ‘local beauty,’ offered to give her promissory notes of mine that you have in your possession, and told her that if I continued to pester you she could demand that I pay up at once. Then, if I insisted too rigorously on settling the matter of my inheritance, she could have me thrown into debtor’s prison. Now you talk disapprovingly of my weakness for that woman, but it was you yourself who prompted her to lure me! Why, she told me that quite plainly and laughed at you! As to having me locked up, you only want it done because you’re jealous of me, because you’ve been chasing after that woman yourself. I found out about that too, and again she laughed—do you hear me?—laughed at you, as she repeated it all to me. So, holy men, you can see what kind of a father he is—whether he has the right to accuse his son of disorderly behavior! Gentlemen, please forgive me for losing my temper again, but it’s just as I anticipated: the old hypocrite has lured us all here to take part in a disgraceful public scene. I came here intending to forgive him if he would just offer me his hand; I was prepared to ask his forgiveness and to forgive him. But now that he has insulted not only me but also one whose name I venerate too highly to pronounce here, I’ve decided to expose his schemes for everyone to see, even though he is my father.”

He could not go on. His eyes flashed. He could hardly catch his breath. But everybody in the cell seemed perturbed. They all, except the elder, rose nervously from their seats. The two monks watched what was happening with stern expressions, looking at the elder to see what to do next. The elder, however, remained seated, looking very pale, but from sheer physical exhaustion rather than from emotional tension. A wan, imploring smile twisted his lips and from time to time he would raise one of his hands, as though begging the two raving men to stop. Of course, he could have put an end to the scene if he had wished, but he himself seemed to be waiting for something, watching attentively, as though he were trying to make up his mind about something that was still unclear to him . . .

In the end it was Miusov who, feeling himself humiliated and disgraced, decided he could not stand it any longer.

“We are all to blame for this disgraceful scene!” he said angrily. “But I must say I didn’t anticipate anything of this sort, although I knew the man with whom I came here. We must put an end to it at once! Please believe me, Your Reverence, I was quite unaware of certain details that have come to light here; I refused to believe the rumors I heard and this is the first time I have learned . . . A father jealous of his son because of a disreputable woman and plotting with the creature to have his son locked up . . . And it was in such company that I had to come here! My trust has been abused and I want to make it clear that I am as much a victim of deception as all the others . . .”

“Dmitry Karamazov!” old Karamazov shrieked suddenly in a voice that was not his own. “If you were not my son, I’d challenge you to a duel this very second—pistols . . . at three paces . . . across a handkerchief!” He stood there, stamping his feet.

There are moments when old fakes who have been play-acting all their lives become so involved in the role they have assumed that they actually shake and weep with emotion, even though at that very moment (or perhaps a second later) they may whisper to themselves: “Why, you shameless old fake, you’re putting it all on even now; all your holy indignation and outraged wrath is nothing but a sham!”

Dmitry frowned deeply, looking at his father with unutterable contempt.

“I somehow . . . somehow imagined,” he said in a quiet, controlled voice, “that I’d come home with the girl I loved, my future wife, and that we’d look after my father in his old age . . . Instead, I find nothing but a depraved, despicable old buffoon!”

“I challenge you to a duel!” the old man, gasping for breath, shrieked again, every word accompanied by a shower of spittle. “As to you, Mr. Miusov, let me tell you, that I don’t believe there is, or ever has been, in your entire family history, a woman as honorable as the one whom you have dared refer to as a ‘creature’! And you, Dmitry, you’re only too eager to exchange your fiancée for that ‘creature’ and so admit that your fiancée is not worth the ‘creature’s’ little toe even!”

Father Joseph could not refrain from murmuring, “Shame, shame . . .”

“A shame and a disgrace!” Kalganov, who until then had not uttered a sound, cried out in his boyish voice, the blood rushing to his face.

“Why should such a man live?” Dmitry growled, almost frantic with rage, his shoulders so bent that he looked like a hunchback. “You tell me,” he said slowly and deliberately, looking at everyone in the room in turn, and pointing at his father. “Should he be allowed to go on defiling the earth with his existence?”

“You heard him, you heard him, you monks! You heard the parricide!” Fyodor Karamazov turned suddenly on Father Joseph. “That may answer your ‘shame’ perhaps. What should I be ashamed of anyway? That ‘creature,’ that ‘disorderly woman,’ may actually be more holy than you, you gentlemanly monks who are so busy saving your souls! Even if, depraved by her environment, she succumbed to sin in her youth, she has since loved much, and Christ Himself forgave her who loved much . . .”

“It wasn’t for that kind of love that Christ forgave . . .” Father Joseph, the gentle librarian, replied quickly and impatiently.

“You’re wrong, monk, it was for just that kind of love! You sit here, eat cabbage, and think that you’re saving your souls, that you’re righteous men! You eat carp, a carp a day, and you are convinced that you can bribe God by eating carp, aren’t you?”

“It’s too much! It’s unbearable! It’s intolerable!” Voices came from all sides of the cell.

Then the outrageous scene came to an abrupt and most unexpected end. The elder rose from his seat. Alyosha, who was almost out of his mind with anxiety for him and for the rest of them, managed nevertheless to support him by the arm. The elder moved toward Dmitry and, when he was close to him, he went down on his knees before him. Alyosha at first thought he had fallen from sheer exhaustion, but it was not so. Once on his knees, the elder bowed to the ground before Dmitry—a deliberate, complete bow so that his forehead actually touched the ground. Alyosha was so surprised that he could not collect himself in time to assist the elder as he got to his feet again. A faint smile was playing on the elder’s lips.

“Forgive me! Forgive me, all of you!” he said, bowing to each visitor in turn.

For a few seconds Dmitry stood there like a man stunned by a blow. The elder bowing to the ground before him—what was this? Suddenly he cried, “Oh, my God,” covered his face with his hands, and rushed out of the cell.

The other visitors followed him out, in their confusion even forgetting to take leave of the elder. Only the two monks went over to him and asked his blessing once more.

As the visitors were leaving the hermitage, Mr. Karamazov, who had quieted down for the moment, made an attempt to resume the conversation.

“Why did he have to prostrate himself like that?” he said, without daring to address anyone in particular. “Was it symbolic of something, or what?”

“I cannot understand what goes on in a madhouse and what makes madmen act as they do,” Miusov replied irritatedly. “But one thing I can tell you, Mr. Karamazov—I’m going to rid myself of your company once and for all . . . Ah, where’s that other monk?”

“That monk,” that is, the one who had earlier brought them the invitation to lunch at the Father Superior’s, did not keep them waiting. He was right there to meet them as they came down the steps from the elder’s cell, as if he had been waiting for them all the time.

“Do me a great favor, Venerable Father,” Miusov said to him in an irritated tone. “Convey my deepest respects to the Father Superior and apologize to him for me—Miusov—personally and tell him that, much as I would have liked to, I am unable to attend his lunch, because of unforeseen circumstances.”

“And to think that the ‘unforeseen circumstance’ is me!” Karamazov butted in. “You understand, Father, Mr. Miusov refuses to accept the Father Superior’s invitation because he doesn’t wish to be seen in my company—otherwise, he would have accepted it. And you will accept it, Mr. Miusov. Please go to lunch with the Father Superior, and I wish you 
bon appetit
! It is I who will decline the invitation, not you. I’ll go home and eat there, for I don’t feel I could do so here, Mr. Miusov, my dear kinsman!”

“I’m no kinsman of yours and never have been, and I despise you!”

“I said that just to enrage you, because you deny that we are relatives, although we are—you may say what you wish, but I can prove it. As to you, Ivan, you may stay if you wish. I’ll send the carriage to pick you up later. Well, Mr. Miusov, even simple courtesy obliges you to accept the Father Superior’s invitation now, if only to apologize for your bad behavior and mine in his monastery.”

“Are you really leaving? This isn’t just another trick of yours?”

“How could I dare to trick you now, after what has just happened? I got carried away, gentlemen, a little carried away, and, besides, I received quite a shock in there! And I am ashamed, too. You know, gentlemen, one person will have a heart like Alexander the Great’s, and another one like a lap-dog’s. Mine is like a lap-dog’s. And so I lost my nerve! Well then, how, after that escapade, could I go to a luncheon and fill myself with a variety of monastery sauces and specialties? No, gentlemen, I am too embarrassed to do so, so you’ll just have to excuse me!”

As Karamazov walked off, Miusov followed him with his eye, wondering: “What if the old clown is trying to trick me again? Who can tell with him?” Karamazov looked back and, seeing that he was watching him, blew him a kiss.

“What about you, Ivan?” Miusov asked gruffly. “Are you going to the lunch?”

“Why not? Especially since the Father Superior sent me a personal invitation yesterday.”

“Unfortunately,” Miusov said in the same bitter, irritated tone, paying no attention to the presence of the monk, who could hear everything, “I really feel obliged to go to this confounded luncheon . . . We should at least apologize for what happened at the elder’s and explain that it was really none of our doing, don’t you think?”

“Yes, we ought to make clear that it was not our fault,” Ivan said, “and besides, my father won’t be there.”

“I certainly hope he won’t—that would really be the last straw! Ah, damn the lunch!”

And yet they all went. The little monk listened to their conversation in silence. Only once, as they were crossing the little wood that separated the hermitage from the rest of the monastery, did he remark that the Father Superior must have been long expecting them, since they were already half an hour late. No one answered him. At one point Miusov glanced at Ivan with hatred in his eyes.

“He’s going to the luncheon as if nothing had happened,” he thought. “He is brazen-faced and has the conscience of a Karamazov.”

Chapter 7: A Career-Conscious Divinity Student

ALYOSHA HELPED his elder to the bedroom and sat him down on the bed. It was a tiny room containing only the most indispensable furniture. The very narrow iron bed had a strip of felt for a mattress. In a corner by the icons, there was a lectern with a cross and a Bible lying on it. The elder lowered himself onto the bed, completely exhausted; his eyes shone and he breathed with great difficulty. Once seated, he looked at Alyosha very intently, as if deliberating about something.

“Go on, my boy, be off. Porfiry will take care of me,” he said. “They need you over there, so go to the Father Superior’s and help them out during lunch.”

“Allow me to stay here,” Alyosha murmured beseechingly.

“They need you more than I do. There’s no peace there. So you help them out, be really useful to them. And if the devil stirs them up again, say a prayer. And you know, son” (the elder liked to call him that), “the monastery is really no place for you. Remember that, my boy. When God decides the time has come for me to die, you must leave the monastery, leave it for good.”

Alyosha gasped.

“What’s the matter? No, this isn’t the place for you, at least not yet. I am sending you out into the world with my blessings, and you will be of great service there. There’s still a long, long road ahead of you. And you’ll take a wife, too. Yes, you will. You’ll have to go through many, many things before you return. And there is a great deal for you to do. But I have no doubts about you. That is why I am sending you. Christ is with you. Do not abandon Him and He will not abandon you. You will know great sorrow and in that sorrow you will find happiness. This is my last message to you: Seek happiness through sorrow. Work and work without rest. And from now on, remember my words for, although we shall talk again, not only my days but my hours are numbered.”