The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

together in his cell earlier,

waiting for him to wake, having received a most confident assurance

from Father Paissy that “the teacher would get up, and as he had

himself promised in the morning, converse once more with those dear to

his heart.” This promise and indeed every word of the dying elder

Father Paissy put implicit trust in. If he had seen him unconscious,

if he had seen him breathe his last, and yet had his promise that he

would rise up and say good-bye to him, he would not have believed

perhaps even in death, but would still have expected the dead man to

recover and fulfil his promise. In the morning as he lay down to

sleep, Father Zossima had told him positively: “I shall not die

without the delight of another conversation with you, beloved of my

heart. I shall look once more on your dear face and pour out my

heart to you once again.” The monks, who had gathered for this

probably last conversation with Father Zossima, had all been his

devoted friends for many years. There were four of them: Father

Iosif and Father Paissy, Father Mihail the warden of the hermitage,

a man not very old and far from being learned. He was of humble

origin, of strong will and steadfast faith, of austere appearance, but

of deep tenderness, though he obviously concealed it as though he were

almost ashamed of it. The fourth, Father Anfim, was a very old and

humble little monk of the poorest peasant class. He was almost

illiterate, and very quiet, scarcely speaking to anyone. He was the

humblest of the humble, and looked as though he had been frightened by

something great and awful beyond the scope of his intelligence. Father

Zossima had a great affection for this timorous man, and always

treated him with marked respect, though perhaps there was no one he

had known to whom he had said less, in spite of the fact that he had

spent years wandering about holy Russia with him. That was very long

ago, forty years before, when Father Zossima first began his life as a

monk in a poor and little monastery at Kostroma, and when, shortly

after, he had accompanied Father Anfim on his pilgrimage to collect

alms for their poor monastery.

 

The whole party were in the bedroom which, as we mentioned before,

was very small, so that there was scarcely room for the four of them

(in addition to Porfiry, the novice, who stood) to sit round Father

Zossima on chairs brought from the sitting room. It was already

beginning to get dark, the room was lighted up by the lamps and the

candles before the ikons.

 

Seeing Alyosha standing embarrassed in the doorway, Father Zossima

smiled at him joyfully and held out his hand.

 

“Welcome, my quiet one, welcome, my dear, here you are too. I knew

you would come.”

 

Alyosha went up to him, bowed down before him to the ground and

wept. Something surged up from his heart, his soul was quivering, he

wanted to sob.

 

“Come, don’t weep over me yet,” Father Zossima smiled, laying

his right hand on his head. “You see I am sitting up talking; maybe

I shall live another twenty years yet, as that dear good woman from

Vishegorye, with her little Lizaveta in her arms, wished me yesterday.

God bless the mother and the little girl Lizaveta,” he crossed

himself. “Porfiry, did you take her offering where I told you?”

 

He meant the sixty copecks brought him the day before by the

good-humoured woman to be given “to someone poorer than me.” Such

offerings, always of money gained by personal toil, are made by way of

penance voluntarily undertaken. The elder had sent Porfiry the evening

before to a widow, whose house had been burnt down lately, and who

after the fire had gone with her children begging alms. Porfiry

hastened to reply that he had given the money, as he had been

instructed, “from an unknown benefactress.”

 

“Get up, my dear boy,” the elder went on to Alyosha. “Let me

look at you. Have you been home and seen your brother?” It seemed

strange to Alyosha that he asked so confidently and precisely, about

one of his brothers only-but which one? Then perhaps he had sent

him out both yesterday and to-day for the sake of that brother.

 

“I have seen one of my brothers,” answered Alyosha.

 

“I mean the elder one, to whom I bowed down.”

 

“I only saw him yesterday and could not find him to-day,” said

Alyosha.

 

“Make haste to find him, go again to-morrow and make haste,

leave everything and make haste. Perhaps you may still have time to

prevent something terrible. I bowed down yesterday to the great

suffering in store for him.”

 

He was suddenly silent and seemed to be pondering. The words

were strange. Father Iosif, who had witnessed the scene yesterday,

exchanged glances with Father Paissy. Alyosha could not resist asking:

 

“Father and teacher,” he began with extreme emotion, “your words

are too obscure…. What is this suffering in store for him?”

 

“Don’t inquire. I seemed to see something terrible yesterday… as

though his whole future were expressed in his eyes. A look came into

his eyes-so that I was instantly horror-stricken at what that man

is preparing for himself. Once or twice in my life I’ve seen such a

look in a man’s face… reflecting as it were his future fate, and

that fate, alas, came to pass. I sent you to him, Alexey, for I

thought your brotherly face would help him. But everything and all our

fates are from the Lord. ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the

ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth

much fruit.’ Remember that. You, Alexey, I’ve many times silently

blessed for your face, know that,” added the elder with a gentle

smile. “This is what I think of you, you will go forth from these

walls, but will live like a monk in the world. You will have many

enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many

misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will

bless life and will make others bless it-which is what matters

most. Well, that is your character. Fathers and teachers,” he

addressed his friends with a tender smile, “I have never till to-day

told even him why the face of this youth is so dear to me. Now I

will tell you. His face has been as it were a remembrance and a

prophecy for me. At the dawn of my life when I was a child I had an

elder brother who died before my eyes at seventeen. And later on in

the course of my life I gradually became convinced that that brother

had been for a guidance and a sign from on high for me. For had he not

come into my life, I should never perhaps, so I fancy at least, have

become a monk and entered on this precious path. He appeared first

to me in my childhood, and here, at the end of my pilgrimage, he seems

to have come to me over again. It is marvellous, fathers and teachers,

that Alexey, who has some, though not a great, resemblance in face,

seems to me so like him spiritually, that many times I have taken

him for that young man, my brother, mysteriously come back to me at

the end of my pilgrimage, as a reminder and an inspiration. So that

I positively wondered at so strange a dream in myself. Do you hear

this, Porfiry?” he turned to the novice who waited on him. “Many times

I’ve seen in your face as it were a look of mortification that I

love Alexey more than you. Now you know why that was so, but I love

you too, know that, and many times I grieved at your mortification.

I should like to tell you, dear friends, of that youth, my brother,

for there has been no presence in my life more precious, more

significant and touching. My heart is full of tenderness, and I look

at my whole life at this moment as though living through it again.”

 

Here I must observe that this last conversation of Father

Zossima with the friends who visited him on the last day of his life

has been partly preserved in writing. Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov

wrote it down from memory, some time after his elder’s death. But

whether this was only the conversation that took place then, or

whether he added to it his notes of parts of former conversations with

his teacher, I cannot determine. In his account, Father Zossima’s talk

goes on without interruption, as though he told his life to his

friends in the form of a story, though there is no doubt, from other

accounts of it, that the conversation that evening was general. Though

the guests did not interrupt Father Zossima much, yet they too talked,

perhaps even told something themselves. Besides, Father Zossima

could not have carried on an uninterrupted narrative, for he was

sometimes gasping for breath, his voice failed him, and he even lay

down to rest on his bed, though he did not fall asleep and his

visitors did not leave their seats. Once or twice the conversation was

interrupted by Father Paissy’s reading the Gospel. It is worthy of

note, too, that no one of them supposed that he would die that

night, for on that evening of his life after his deep sleep in the day

he seemed suddenly to have found new strength, which kept him up

through this long conversation. It was like a last effort of love

which gave him marvellous energy; only for a little time, however, for

his life was cut short immediately.. But of that later. I will only

add now that I have preferred to confine myself to the account given

by Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov. It will be shorter and not so

fatiguing, though, of course, as I must repeat, Alyosha took a great

deal from previous conversations and added them to it.

 

Notes of the Life of the deceased Priest and Monk, the Elder

Zossima, taken from his own words by Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov.

 

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

 

(a) Father Zossima’s Brother.

 

Beloved fathers and teachers, I was born in a distant province

in the north, in the town of V. My father was a gentleman by birth,

but of no great consequence or position. He died when I was only two

years old, and I don’t remember him at all. He left my mother a

small house built of wood, and a fortune, not large, but sufficient to

keep her and her children in comfort. There were two of us, my elder

brother Markel and I. He was eight years older than I was, of hasty,

irritable temperament, but kindhearted and never ironical. He was

remarkably silent, especially at home with me, his mother, and the

servants. He did well at school, but did not get on with his

schoolfellows, though he never quarrelled, at least so my mother

has told me. Six months before his death, when he was seventeen, he

made friends with a political exile who had been banished from

Moscow to our town for freethinking, and led a solitary existence

there. He was a good scholar who had gained distinction in

philosophy in the university. Something made him take a fancy to

Markel, and he used to ask him to see him. The young man would spend

whole evenings with him during that winter, till the exile was

summoned to Petersburg to take up his post again at his own request,

as he had powerful friends.

 

It was the beginning of Lent,