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

his love for her, for he was always

reserved and silent and had no friend to whom he would have opened his

heart. He was looked upon simply as an acquaintance, and not a very

intimate one, of the murdered woman, as for the previous fortnight

he had not even visited her. A serf of hers called Pyotr was at once

suspected, and every circumstance confirmed the suspicion. The man

knew-indeed his mistress did not conceal the fact-that having to

send one of her serfs as a recruit she had decided to send him, as

he had no relations and his conduct was unsatisfactory. People had

heard him angrily threatening to murder her when he was drunk in a

tavern. Two days before her death, he had run away, staying no one

knew where in the town. The day after the murder, he was found on

the road leading out of the town, dead drunk, with a knife in his

pocket, and his right hand happened to be stained with blood. He

declared that his nose had been bleeding, but no one believed him. The

maids confessed that they had gone to a party and that the street door

had been left open till they returned. And a number of similar details

came to light, throwing suspicion on the innocent servant.

 

They arrested him, and he was tried for the murder; but a week

after the arrest, the prisoner fell sick of a fever and died

unconscious in the hospital. There the matter ended and the judges and

the authorities and everyone in the town remained convinced that the

crime had been committed by no one but the servant who had died in the

hospital. And after that the punishment began.

 

My mysterious visitor, now my friend, told me that at first he was

not in the least troubled by pangs of conscience. He was miserable a

long time, but not for that reason; only from regret that he had

killed the woman he loved, that she was no more, that in killing her

he had killed his love, while the fire of passion was still in his

veins. But of the innocent blood he had shed, of the murder of a

fellow creature, he scarcely thought. The thought that his victim

might have become the wife of another man was insupportable to him,

and so, for a long time, he was convinced in his conscience that he

could not have acted otherwise.

 

At first he was worried at the arrest of the servant, but his

illness and death soon set his mind at rest, for the man’s death was

apparently (so he reflected at the time) not owing to his arrest or

his fright, but a chill he had taken on the day he ran away, when he

had lain all night dead drunk on the damp ground. The theft of the

money and other things troubled him little, for he argued that the

theft had not been committed for gain but to avert suspicion. The

sum stolen was small, and he shortly afterwards subscribed the whole

of it, and much more, towards the funds for maintaining an almshouse

in the town. He did this on purpose to set his conscience at rest

about the theft, and it’s a remarkable fact that for a long time he

really was at peace-he told me this himself. He entered then upon a

career of great activity in the service, volunteered for a difficult

and laborious duty, which occupied him two years, and being a man of

strong will almost forgot the past. Whenever he recalled it, he

tried not to think of it at all. He became active in philanthropy too,

founded and helped to maintain many institutions in the town, did a

good deal in the two capitals, and in both Moscow and Petersburg was

elected a member of philanthropic societies.

 

At last, however, he began brooding over the past, and the

strain of it was too much for him. Then he was attracted by a fine and

intelligent girl and soon after married her, hoping that marriage

would dispel his lonely depression, and that by entering on a new life

and scrupulously doing his duty to his wife and children, he would

escape from old memories altogether. But the very opposite of what

he expected happened. He began, even in the first month of his

marriage, to be continually fretted by the thought, “My wife loves me-but what if she knew?” When she first told him that she would soon

bear him a child, he was troubled. “I am giving life, but I have taken

life.” Children came. “How dare I love them, teach and educate them,

how can I talk to them of virtue? I have shed blood.” They were

splendid children, he longed to caress them; “and I can’t look at

their innocent candid faces, I am unworthy.”

 

At last he began to be bitterly and ominously haunted by the blood

of his murdered victim, by the young life he had destroyed, by the

blood that cried out for vengeance. He had begun to have awful dreams.

But, being a man of fortitude, he bore his suffering a long time,

thinking: “I shall expiate everything by this secret agony.” But

that hope, too, was vain; the longer it went on, the more intense

was his suffering.

 

He was respected in society for his active benevolence, though

everyone was overawed by his stern and gloomy character. But the

more he was respected, the more intolerable it was for him. He

confessed to me that he had thoughts of killing himself. But he

began to be haunted by another idea-an idea which he had at first

regarded as impossible and unthinkable, though at last it got such a

hold on his heart that he could not shake it off. He dreamed of rising

up, going out and confessing in the face of all men that he had

committed murder. For three years this dream had pursued him, haunting

him in different forms. At last he believed with his whole heart

that if he confessed his crime, he would heal his soul and would be at

peace for ever. But this belief filled his heart with terror, for

how could he carry it out? And then came what happened at my duel.

 

“Looking at you, I have made up my mind.”

 

I looked at him.

 

“Is it possible,” I cried, clasping my hands, “that such a trivial

incident could give rise to a resolution in you?”

 

“My resolution has been growing for the last three years,” he

answered, “and your story only gave the last touch to it. Looking at

you, I reproached myself and envied you.” He said this to me almost

sullenly.

 

“But you won’t be believed,” I observed; “it’s fourteen years

ago.”

 

“I have proofs, great proofs. I shall show them.”

 

Then I cried and kissed him.

 

“Tell me one thing, one thing,” he said (as though it all depended

upon me), “my wife, my children! My wife may die of grief, and

though my children won’t lose their rank and property, they’ll be a

convict’s children and for ever! And what a memory, what a memory of

me I shall leave in their hearts!”

 

I said nothing.

 

“And to part from them, to leave them for ever? It’s for ever, you

know, for ever!” I sat still and repeated a silent prayer. I got up at

last, I felt afraid.

 

“Well?” He looked at me.

 

“Go!” said I, “confess. Everything passes, only the truth remains.

Your children will understand, when they grow up, the nobility of your

resolution.”

 

He left me that time as though he had made up his mind. Yet for

more than a fortnight afterwards, he came to me every evening, still

preparing himself, still unable to bring himself to the point. He made

my heart ache. One day he would come determined and say fervently:

 

“I know it will be heaven for me, heaven, the moment I confess.

Fourteen years I’ve been in hell. I want to suffer. I will take my

punishment and begin to live. You can pass through the world doing

wrong, but there’s no turning back. Now I dare not love my neighbour

nor even my own children. Good God, my children will understand,

perhaps, what my punishment has cost me and will not condemn me! God

is not in strength but in truth.”

 

“All will understand your sacrifice,” I said to him, “if not at

once, they will understand later; for you have served truth, the

higher truth, not of the earth.”

 

And he would go away seeming comforted, but next day he would come

again, bitter, pale, sarcastic.

 

“Every time I come to you, you look at me so inquisitively as

though to say, ‘He has still not confessed!’ Wait a bit, don’t despise

me too much. It’s not such an easy thing to do as you would think.

Perhaps I shall not do it at all. You won’t go and inform against me

then, will you?”

 

And far from looking at him with indiscreet curiosity, I was

afraid to look at him at all. I was quite ill from anxiety, and my

heart was full of tears. I could not sleep at night.

 

“I have just come from my wife,” he went on. “Do you understand

what the word ‘wife’ means? When I went out, the children called to

me, ‘Goodbye, father, make haste back to read The Children’s Magazine

with us.’ No, you don’t understand that! No one is wise from another

man’s woe.”

 

His eyes were glittering, his lips were twitching. Suddenly he

struck the table with his fist so that everything on it danced-it was

the first time he had done such a thing, he was such a mild man.

 

“But need I?” he exclaimed, “must I? No one has been condemned, no

one has been sent to Siberia in my place, the man died of fever. And

I’ve been punished by my sufferings for the blood I shed. And I shan’t

be believed, they won’t believe my proofs. Need I confess, need I? I

am ready to go on suffering all my life for the blood I have shed,

if only my wife and children may be spared. Will it be just to ruin

them with me? Aren’t we making a mistake? What is right in this

case? And will people recognise it, will they appreciate it, will they

respect it?”

 

“Good Lord!” I thought to myself, “he is thinking of other

people’s respect at such a moment!” And I felt so sorry for him

then, that I believe I would have shared his fate if it could have

comforted him. I saw he was beside himself. I was aghast, realising

with my heart as well as my mind what such a resolution meant.

 

“Decide my fate!” he exclaimed again.

 

“Go and confess,” I whispered to him. My voice failed me, but I

whispered it firmly. I took up the New Testament from the table, the

Russian translation, and showed him the Gospel of St. John, chapter

12, verse 24:

 

“Verily, verily, I say unto you,

 

except a corn of wheat fall into

 

the ground and die, it abideth alone:

 

but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

 

I had just been reading that verse when he came in. He read it.

 

“That’s true,” he said, he smiled bitterly. “It’s terrible the

things you find in those books,” he said, after a pause. “It’s easy

enough to thrust them upon one. And who wrote them? Can they have been

written by men?”

 

“The Holy Spirit wrote them,” said I.

 

“It’s easy for