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

of it before. I made

it up to add piquancy. I play the fool, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, to

make myself agreeable. Though I really don’t know myself, sometimes,

what I do it for. And as for Diderot, I heard as far as ‘the fool hath

said in his heart’ twenty times from the gentry about here when I

was young. I heard your aunt, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, tell the story.

They all believe to this day that the infidel Diderot came to

dispute about God with the Metropolitan Platon….”

 

Miusov got up, forgetting himself in his impatience. He was

furious, and conscious of being ridiculous.

 

What was taking place in the cell was really incredible. For forty

or fifty years past, from the times of former elders, no visitors

had entered that cell without feelings of the profoundest

veneration. Almost everyone admitted to the cell felt that a great

favour was being shown him. Many remained kneeling during the whole

visit. Of those visitors, many had been men of high rank and learning,

some even free thinkers, attracted by curiosity, but all without

exception had shown the profoundest reverence and delicacy, for here

there was no question of money, but only, on the one side love and

kindness, and on the other penitence and eager desire to decide some

spiritual problem or crisis. So that such buffoonery amazed and

bewildered the spectators, or at least some of them. The monks, with

unchanged countenances, waited, with earnest attention, to hear what

the elder would say, but seemed on the point of standing up, like

Miusov. Alyosha stood, with hanging head, on the verge of tears.

What seemed to him strangest of all was that his brother Ivan, on whom

alone he had rested his hopes, and who alone had such influence on his

father that he could have stopped him, sat now quite unmoved, with

downcast eyes, apparently waiting with interest to see how it would

end, as though he had nothing to do with it. Alyosha did not dare to

look at Rakitin, the divinity student, whom he knew almost intimately.

He alone in the monastery knew Rakitin’s thoughts.

 

“Forgive me,” began Miusov, addressing Father Zossima, “for

perhaps I seem to be taking part in this shameful foolery. I made a

mistake in believing that even a man like Fyodor Pavlovitch would

understand what was due on a visit to so honoured a personage. I did

not suppose I should have to apologise simply for having come with

him….”

 

Pyotr Alexandrovitch could say no more, and was about to leave the

room, overwhelmed with confusion.

 

“Don’t distress yourself, I beg.” The elder got on to his feeble

legs, and taking Pyotr Alexandrovitch by both hands, made him sit down

again. “I beg you not to disturb yourself. I particularly beg you to

be my guest.” And with a bow he went back and sat down again on his

little sofa.

 

“Great elder, speak! Do I annoy you by my vivacity?” Fyodor

Pavlovitch cried suddenly, clutching the arms of his chair in both

hands, as though ready to leap up from it if the answer were

unfavourable.

 

“I earnestly beg you, too, not to disturb yourself, and not to

be uneasy,” the elder said impressively. “Do not trouble. Make

yourself quite at home. And, above all, do not be so ashamed of

yourself, for that is at the root of it all.”

 

“Quite at home? To be my natural self? Oh, that is much too

much, but I accept it with grateful joy. Do you know, blessed

father, you’d better not invite me to be my natural self. Don’t risk

it…. I will not go so far as that myself. I warn you for your own

sake. Well, the rest is still plunged in the mists of uncertainty,

though there are people who’d be pleased to describe me for you. I

mean that for you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. But as for you, holy being,

let me tell you, I am brimming over with ecstasy.”

 

He got up, and throwing up his hands, declaimed, “Blessed be the

womb that bare thee, and the paps that gave thee suck-the paps

especially. When you said just now, ‘Don’t be so ashamed of

yourself, for that is at the root of it all,’ you pierced right

through me by that remark, and read me to the core. Indeed, I always

feel when I meet people that I am lower than all, and that they all

take me for a buffoon. So I say, ‘Let me really play the buffoon. I am

not afraid of your opinion, for you are every one of you worse than

I am.’ That is why I am a buffoon. It is from shame, great elder, from

shame; it’s simply over-sensitiveness that makes me rowdy. If I had

only been sure that everyone would accept me as the kindest and wisest

of men, oh, Lord, what a good man I should have been then! Teacher!”

he fell suddenly on his knees, “what must I do to gain eternal life?”

 

It was difficult even now to decide whether he was joking or

really moved.

 

Father Zossima, lifting his eyes, looked at him, and said with a

smile:

 

“You have known for a long time what you must do. You have sense

enough: don’t give way to drunkenness and incontinence of speech;

don’t give way to sensual lust; and, above all, to the love of

money. And close your taverns. If you can’t close all, at least two or

three. And, above all-don’t lie.”

 

“You mean about Diderot?”

 

“No, not about Diderot. Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The

man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a

pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him,

and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no

respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself

without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and

sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other

men and to himself. The man who lies to himself can be more easily

offended than anyone. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take

offence, isn’t it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but

that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and

exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a

mountain out of a molehill-he knows that himself, yet he will be

the first to take offence, and will revel in his resentment till he

feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness. But

get up, sit down, I beg you. All this, too, is deceitful

posturing….”

 

“Blessed man! Give me your hand to kiss.”

 

Fyodor Pavlovitch skipped up, and imprinted a rapid kiss on the

elder’s thin hand. “It is, it is pleasant to take offence. You said

that so well, as I never heard it before. Yes, I have been all my life

taking offence, to please myself, taking offence on aesthetic grounds,

for it is not so much pleasant as distinguished sometimes to be

insulted-that you had forgotten, great elder, it is distinguished!

I shall make a note of that. But I have been lying, lying positively

my whole life long, every day and hour of it. Of a truth, I am a

lie, and the father of lies. Though I believe I am not the father of

lies. I am getting mixed in my texts. Say, the son of lies, and that

will be enough. Only… my angel… may sometimes talk about

Diderot! Diderot will do no harm, though sometimes a word will do

harm. Great elder, by the way, I was forgetting, though I had been

meaning for the last two years to come here on purpose to ask and to

find out something. Only do tell Pyotr Alexandrovitch not to interrupt

me. Here is my question: Is it true, great Father, that the story is

told somewhere in the Lives of the Saints of a holy saint martyred for

his faith who, when his head was cut off at last, stood up, picked

up his head, and, ‘courteously kissing it,’ walked a long way,

carrying it in his hands. Is that true or not, honoured Father?”

 

“No, it is untrue,” said the elder.

 

“There is nothing of the kind in all the lives of the saints. What

saint do you say the story is told of?” asked the Father Librarian.

 

“I do not know what saint. I do not know, and can’t tell. I was

deceived. I was told the story. I had heard it, and do you know who

told it? Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miusov here, was so angry just now about

Diderot. He it was who told the story.”

 

“I have never told it you, I never speak to you at all.”

 

“It is true you did not tell me, but you told it when I was

present. It was three years ago. I mentioned it because by that

ridiculous story you shook my faith, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. You knew

nothing of it, but I went home with my faith shaken, and I have been

getting more and more shaken ever since. Yes, Pyotr Alexandrovitch,

you were the cause of a great fall. That was not a Diderot!

 

Fyodor Pavlovitch got excited and pathetic, though it was

perfectly clear to everyone by now that he was playing a part again.

Yet Miusov was stung by his words.

 

“What nonsense, and it is all nonsense,” he muttered. “I may

really have told it, some time or other… but not to you. I was

told it myself. I heard it in Paris from a Frenchman. He told me it

was read at our mass from the Lives of the Saints… he was a very

learned man who had made a special study of Russian statistics and had

lived a long time in Russia…. I have not read the Lives of the

Saints myself, and I am not going to read them… all sorts of

things are said at dinner-we were dining then.”

 

“Yes, you were dining then, and so I lost my faith!” said Fyodor

Pavlovitch, mimicking him.

 

“What do I care for your faith?” Miusov was on the point of

shouting, but he suddenly checked himself, and said with contempt,

“You defile everything you touch.”

 

The elder suddenly rose from his seat. “Excuse me, gentlemen,

for leaving you a few minutes,” he said, addressing all his guests. “I

have visitors awaiting me who arrived before you. But don’t you tell

lies all the same,” he added, turning to Fyodor Pavlovitch with a

good-humoured face. He went out of the cell. Alyosha and the novice

flew to escort him down the steps. Alyosha was breathless: he was glad

to get away, but he was glad, too, that the elder was good-humoured

and not offended. Father Zossima was going towards the portico to

bless the people waiting for him there. But Fyodor Pavlovitch

persisted, in stopping him at the door of the cell.

 

“Blessed man!” he cried, with feeling. “Allow me to kiss your hand

once more. Yes, with you I could still talk, I could still get on.

Do you think I always lie and play the fool like this? Believe me, I

have been acting like this all the time on purpose to try you. I

have been testing you all the time to see whether I could get on

with you. Is there room for my humility beside your pride? I am

ready to give you a testimonial that one can get on with you! But now,

I’ll be quiet; I will keep quiet all the time. I’ll sit in a chair