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

and Markel would not fast, he was

rude and laughed at it. “That’s all silly twaddle, and there is no

God,” he said, horrifying my mother, the servants, and me too. For

though I was only nine, I too was aghast at hearing such words. We had

four servants, all serfs. I remember my mother selling one of the

four, the cook Afimya, who was lame and elderly, for sixty paper

roubles, and hiring a free servant to take her place.

 

In the sixth week in Lent, my brother, who was never strong and

had a tendency to consumption, was taken ill. He was tall but thin and

delicate-looking, and of very pleasing countenance. I suppose he

caught cold, anyway the doctor, who came, soon whispered to my

mother that it was galloping consumption, that he would not live

through the spring. My mother began weeping, and, careful not to alarm

my brother, she entreated him to go to church, to confess and take the

sacrament, as he was still able to move about. This made him angry,

and he said something profane about the church. He grew thoughtful,

however; he guessed at once that he was seriously ill, and that that

was why his mother was begging him to confess and take the

sacrament. He had been aware, indeed, for a long time past, that he

was far from well, and had a year before coolly observed at dinner

to your mother and me, “My life won’t be long among you, I may not

live another year,” which seemed now like a prophecy.

 

Three days passed and Holy Week had come. And on Tuesday morning

my brother began going to church. “I am doing this simply for your

sake, mother, to please and comfort you,” he said. My mother wept with

joy and grief. “His end must be near,” she thought, “if there’s such a

change in him.” But he was not able to go to church long, he took to

his bed, so he had to confess and take the sacrament at home.

 

It was a late Easter, and the days were bright, fine, and full

of fragrance. I remember he used to cough all night and sleep badly,

but in the morning he dressed and tried to sit up in an armchair.

That’s how I remember him sitting, sweet and gentle, smiling, his face

bright and joyous, in spite of his illness. A marvellous change passed

over him, his spirit seemed transformed. The old nurse would come in

and say, “Let me light the lamp before the holy image, my dear.” And

once he would not have allowed it and would have blown it out.

 

“Light it, light it, dear, I was a wretch to have prevented you

doing it. You are praying when you light the lamp, and I am praying

when I rejoice seeing you. So we are praying to the same God.”

 

Those words seemed strange to us, and mother would go to her

room and weep, but when she went in to him she wiped her eyes and

looked cheerful. “Mother, don’t weep, darling,” he would say, “I’ve

long to live yet, long to rejoice with you, and life is glad and

joyful.”

 

“Ah, dear boy, how can you talk of joy when you lie feverish at

night, coughing as though you would tear yourself to pieces.”

 

“Don’t cry, mother,” he would answer, “life is paradise, and we

are all in paradise, but we won’t see it; if we would, we should

have heaven on earth the next day.”

 

Everyone wondered at his words, he spoke so strangely and

positively; we were all touched and wept. Friends came to see us.

“Dear ones,” he would say to them, “what have I done that you should

love me so, how can you love anyone like me, and how was it I did

not know, I did not appreciate it before?”

 

When the servants came in to him he would say continually,

“Dear, kind people, why are you doing so much for me, do I deserve

to be waited on? If it were God’s will for me to live, I would wait on

you, for all men should wait on one another.”

 

Mother shook her head as she listened. “My darling, it’s your

illness makes you talk like that.”

 

“Mother darling,” he would say, “there must be servants and

masters, but if so I will be the servant of my servants, the same as

they are to me. And another thing, mother, every one of us has

sinned against all men, and I more than any.”

 

Mother positively smiled at that, smiled through her tears.

“Why, how could you have sinned against all men, more than all?

Robbers and murderers have done that, but what sin have you

committed yet, that you hold yourself more guilty than all?”

 

“Mother, little heart of mine,” he said (he had begun using such

strange caressing words at that time), “little heart of mine, my

joy, believe me, everyone is really responsible to all men for all men

and for everything. I don’t know how to explain it to you, but I

feel it is so, painfully even. And how is it we went on then living,

getting angry and not knowing?”

 

So he would get up every day, more and more sweet and joyous and

full of love. When the doctor, an old German called Eisenschmidt,

came:

 

“Well, doctor, have I another day in this world?” he would ask,

joking.

 

“You’ll live many days yet,” the doctor would answer, “and

months and years too.”

 

“Months and years!” he would exclaim. “Why reckon the days? One

day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dear ones, why do we

quarrel, try to outshine each other and keep grudges against each

other? Let’s go straight into the garden, walk and play there, love,

appreciate, and kiss each other, and glorify life.”

 

“Your son cannot last long,” the doctor told my mother, as she

accompanied him the door. “The disease is affecting his brain.”

 

The windows of his room looked out into the garden, and our garden

was a shady one, with old trees in it which were coming into bud.

The first birds of spring were flitting in the branches, chirruping

and singing at the windows. And looking at them and admiring them,

he began suddenly begging their forgiveness too: “Birds of heaven,

happy birds, forgive me, for I have sinned against you too.” None of

us could understand that at the time, but he shed tears of joy. “Yes,”

he said, “there was such a glory of God all about me: birds, trees,

meadows, sky; only I lived in shame and dishonoured it all and did not

notice the beauty and glory.”

 

“You take too many sins on yourself,” mother used to say, weeping.

 

“Mother, darling, it’s for joy, not for grief I am crying.

Though I can’t explain it to you, I like to humble myself before them,

for I don’t know how to love them enough. If I have sinned against

everyone, yet all forgive me, too, and that’s heaven. Am I not in

heaven now?”

 

And there was a great deal more I don’t remember. I remember I

went once into his room when there was no one else there. It was a

bright evening, the sun was setting, and the whole room was lighted

up. He beckoned me, and I went up to him. He put his hands on my

shoulders and looked into my face tenderly, lovingly; he said

nothing for a minute, only looked at me like that.

 

“Well,” he said, “run and play now, enjoy life for me too.”

 

I went out then and ran to play. And many times in my life

afterwards I remembered even with tears how he told me to enjoy life

for him too. There were many other marvellous and beautiful sayings of

his, though we did not understand them at the time. He died the

third week after Easter. He was fully conscious though he could not

talk; up to his last hour he did not change. He looked happy, his eyes

beamed and sought us, he smiled at us, beckoned us. There was a

great deal of talk even in the town about his death. I was impressed

by all this at the time, but not too much so, though I cried a good

deal at his funeral. I was young then, a child, but a lasting

impression, a hidden feeling of it all, remained in my heart, ready to

rise up and respond when the time came. So indeed it happened.

 

(b) Of the Holy Scriptures in the Life of Father Zossima.

 

I was left alone with my mother. Her friends began advising her to

send me to Petersburg as other parents did. “You have only one son

now,” they said, “and have a fair income, and you will be depriving

him perhaps of a brilliant career if you keep him here.” They

suggested I should be sent to Petersburg to the Cadet Corps, that I

might afterwards enter the Imperial Guard. My mother hesitated for a

long time, it was awful to part with her only child, but she made up

her mind to it at last, though not without many tears, believing she

was acting for my happiness. She brought me to Petersburg and put me

into the Cadet Corps, and I never saw her again. For she too died

three years afterwards. She spent those three years mourning and

grieving for both of us.

 

From the house of my childhood I have brought nothing but precious

memories, for there are no memories more precious than those of

early childhood in one’s first home. And that is almost always so if

there is any love and harmony in the family at all. Indeed, precious

memories may remain even of a bad home, if only the heart knows how to

find what is precious. With my memories of home I count, too, my

memories of the Bible, which, child as I was, I was very eager to read

at home. I had a book of Scripture history then with excellent

pictures, called A Hundred and Four Stories from the Old and New

Testament, and I learned to read from it. I have it lying on my

shelf now; I keep it as a precious relic of the past. But even

before I learned to read, I remember first being moved to devotional

feeling at eight years old. My mother took me alone to mass (I don’t

remember where my brother was at the time) on the Monday before

Easter. It was a fine day, and I remember to-day, as though I saw it

now, how the incense rose from the censer and softly floated upwards

and, overhead in the cupola, mingled in rising waves with the sunlight

that streamed in at the little window. I was stirred by the sight, and

for the first time in my life I consciously received the seed of God’s

word in my heart. A youth came out into the middle of the church

carrying a big book, so large that at the time I fancied he could

scarcely carry it. He laid it on the reading desk, opened it, and

began reading, and suddenly for the first time I understood

something read in the church of God. In the land of Uz, there lived

a man, righteous and God-fearing, and he had great wealth, so many

camels, so many sheep and asses, and his children feasted, and he

loved them very much and prayed for them. “It may be that my sons have

sinned in their feasting.” Now the devil came before the Lord together

with the