The Brothers Karamazov (18 page)

Once, when the newly appointed governor of our province was making a tour of inspection, he paid a surprise visit to our town and was quite outraged when he caught sight of Lizaveta, although they explained to him that she was a holy fool. God’s fool or not, he declared, a young girl going around in nothing but a smock was a violation of the standards of decency, and he issued a warning that it must happen no more. But after the governor was gone, Lizaveta was again to be seen around town wearing nothing but her smock, just as before.

After her father died, the pious people of the church became even more sentimental about her, since she was now officially an orphan. Indeed, everyone in town seemed to like her and no one bullied or annoyed her, not even the schoolboys—and our schoolboys are a mischievous lot. She could enter strange houses and no one would chase her away. Indeed, people always received her kindly and gave her a kopek or two. But she would take the coin and go straight to an alms-box in the church or outside the prison and drop it in. If she was given a bun or a roll, she never failed to give it away to the first child she met, or she would stop some wealthy lady and offer it to her. And, strangely enough, the rich ladies would accept it with great joy. She herself lived on black bread and water—nothing else. She could walk into any big store and wander around amidst expensive things. Even if they had money lying there, the owners never bothered to keep an eye on her, for they knew that they could have left a thousand rubles in cash and forgotten all about it, and she would not have taken a single kopek.

She seldom went inside a church and either spent her nights on a church porch or climbed over some wattle fence (we still have many wattle fences in town) into a vegetable garden.

About once a week she went home, that is, to the house of her late father’s employers, and in cold winters she went there to sleep almost every night, either in the entrance hall or in the cowshed. People looking at her wondered how she survived, but she was used to living as she did and, although she was so short, she was very strongly built. Some of our respectable people claimed she lived the way she did out of sheer pride, but that didn’t seem to make much sense: she could not pronounce even one word—now and then she would move her tongue about and produce only a mooing sound—so where was there room for pride in her?

Once, quite long ago, on a warm September night, when there was a full moon and it was late by our provincial standards, half a dozen of our gentlemen, who had left the club in a rather inebriated state, were making their way home through the back gardens. They were walking along a lane bordered by wattle fences behind which lay the kitchen gardens of the nearby houses. The lane itself led to a little bridge over the long, stinking puddle that is often referred to, in these parts, as a river. And by one of the wattle fences the merry gang found Lizaveta asleep among the weeds and nettles. The sight of her made the gentlemen laugh uproariously and elicited some extremely crude remarks. Then one of them asked a rather outlandish question: “Could anyone regard this animal as a woman? For instance, at this moment, could . . .” etc. With haughty disdain, the others decided that it was quite unthinkable. But one disagreed—Fyodor Karamazov, who happened to be among them. He stepped forward and declared that she could very easily be regarded as a woman, that, indeed, she had a certain spice to her, and so on and so forth. It is true that at that time he was particularly anxious to be an amusing companion to the local gentlemen, and while he pretended to be one of them, felt they considered him a flunkey. This was soon after he had received the news from Petersburg of his first wife Adelaida’s death and, wearing mourning crape on his hat, he was drinking and misbehaving scandalously enough to outrage even the most unprincipled rogues in our town. The gentlemen burst into loud laughter at Karamazov’s surprising statement and one of them even challenged him to back his words with deeds while the others went on elaborating on their horror and disgust, although with extraordinary exhilaration. Finally, however, they tired of it and walked off.

Later, Karamazov swore he had left with the rest of the gang, and it may have been quite true: no one has ever known for sure. But five or six months later, the town discovered with shock and horror that Lizaveta was pregnant. Who could possibly be the offender? Then suddenly the rumor spread that it was Fyodor Karamazov. Where did that rumor originate? Of the merry gang of gentlemen, only one was still in town by then, a middle-aged and respectable state councillor, the father of grown-up daughters, who certainly would not have spread such a rumor even if there had been something to it. The other five had moved out of our area. But the rumor pointed at Karamazov, and persistently so. Karamazov, of course, did not seem bothered by it all. Had the allegations against him been made only by some local shopkeepers or tradesmen, he would hardly have bothered to acknowledge them. For at that time he was proud and kept company only with gentlemen and civil servants, whom he felt obliged to amuse. This was one of the occasions on which Gregory fiercely defended his master, not only trying to disprove the allegations against him, but openly upbraiding the accusers until he succeeded in making many of them change their minds. “Whatever happened to her was her own fault,” he claimed with great assurance, and her seducer, he said, was none other than Karp the Wrench—a dangerous escaped convict, who at that time was living in hiding in our town. This seemed quite a plausible conjecture because people remembered Karp well and especially that around that time, in the fall, he had been roaming the streets at night and had robbed three people. But all these rumors and arguments did not in the least change the general sympathy for the poor holy fool; in fact, the opposite was true—people showed even more kindness and concern for her. Mrs. Kondratiev, a well-to-do merchant’s widow, took Lizaveta to her house early in April and tried to keep her there at least until the baby was born. Lizaveta was watched night and day, but on the very last day she managed to slip away, ending up in Fyodor Karamazov’s garden. How she managed to get over the tall fence, especially in the last stages of pregnancy, remains a mystery. Some claim that she was helped over it, others that it was a case of levitation. Complicated though it may be, the true explanation probably does not involve any supernatural intervention—having spent many nights in people’s vegetable gardens, Lizaveta had become an expert climber of wattle fences and could conceivably, pregnant as she was, have somehow managed to climb over the tall wooden fence and jump down into Fyodor Karamazov’s garden, perhaps hurting herself in the process.

Gregory rushed back, sent Martha to help Lizaveta, and himself went to fetch an old midwife who, very conveniently, lived nearby. The baby was saved, but Lizaveta died at dawn. Gregory took the baby boy home, told his wife to sit down, put the little boy into her lap, right against her breast, and said to her: “This is a child of God, an orphan; he is everybody’s kin, and ours more than anyone else’s. Our little departed one has sent us this baby born of the son of the devil and of a holy woman. Feed him and weep no more.” And Martha brought up the boy. They christened him Paul and registered his patronymic as Fyodorovich as a matter of course, without asking anyone’s permission. Fyodor Karamazov did not object to this; in fact, he found it rather amusing. And later he called him Smerdyakov—the Reeking One—from his mother’s nickname—Lizaveta Smerdyashchaya, Reeking Lizaveta. And now this same Smerdyakov was Karamazov’s cook, and at the beginning of our narrative he lived in the servants’ cottage with Gregory and Martha.

I should really say more about him, but I am ashamed to impose any more stories of common servants on my readers. So I will resume my story, trusting that, as it develops, Smerdyakov will become sufficiently understandable to the reader.

Chapter 3: The Confession Of An Ardent Heart In Verse

AFTER HE had heard Mr. Karamazov’s command, shouted at him from the carriage as it was pulling away from the monastery, Alyosha stood for a while looking quite lost. Not that he stood there brooding for long—that would not have been like him at all. Despite his great uneasiness, he went to the Father Superior’s kitchen and found out what had happened. Then he set out for town, hoping that on the way he’d somehow manage to settle the problem that was now weighing on him. He was not really worried by his father’s order that he move back home, “mattress, pillow, and all”—he understood very well that a command shouted out like that was just his father’s way of showing off and enjoying the sheer “beauty” of the gesture. Alyosha felt that his father was a bit like a certain tradesman in the town. A few days earlier, in front of his guests at his own birthday celebration, this man had started smashing his own crockery and tearing his and his wife’s clothes, because he was not offered enough vodka; then he went on to break every stick of furniture in his house and smash all the windows, and he did it all for the “beauty” of the gesture, as Mr. Karamazov had just now. Obviously, the next day, when he had calmed down, the tradesman regretted his smashed furniture, broken crockery, and all the rest; and Alyosha was convinced that tomorrow, perhaps even today, his father might very well allow him to return to the monastery. Besides, he was sure that, whomever else his father might want to hurt, he would never hurt him. As a matter of fact, Alyosha was convinced that there was not a man in the whole world who would wish to offend him or, for that matter, who could offend him. He had accepted that once and for all as a self-evident truth, and so he had no misgivings now on his way to his father’s house.

He was filled, however, with a vague, entirely different sort of apprehension. It was tantalizingly painful because he could not quite put his finger on it. It was an uneasy feeling about the woman—Katerina—who had begged him so insistently to come and see her, in the note transmitted to him by Mrs. Khokhlakov. He had no idea what it was about and the urgency of her demand had immediately filled his heart with an anguish that had grown stronger with every hour, throughout all the incidents and scenes that had taken place in the monastery, including his father’s latest performance at the Father Superior’s. It was not because he had no idea what she wanted to say to him or what he would answer her that he was worried. Nor was it because she was a woman for, although he knew very little about women, he had lived among them from his early childhood until the day he had entered the monastery. No, he was uneasy about this particular woman—he was afraid of Katerina and he had been afraid of her ever since he had first seen her. He had seen her only once or twice, at the most three times, and on one occasion he had exchanged a few words with her. The impression she had left on him was that of a beautiful, haughty, and domineering young woman. Yet it was not her beauty that troubled him; it was something else. And it was the indefinable origin of his anxiety that was causing it to increase in him now. He knew her aims were of the noblest; he had no doubt about that. She was trying to save his brother Dmitry, who had wronged her, and she was doing it out of sheer generosity. But although he understood this and acknowledged her noble and generous intentions, the nearer he came to her house, the more strongly he felt cold shivers running down his spine.

He knew that his brother Ivan, who was a very close friend of hers, would not be there, since he was at that moment with their father. He was even more sure that Dmitry would not be with her either, and he even felt the reason for Dmitry’s absence. So he would have to face her all alone. He would have very much liked to see Dmitry before having this frightening talk with her. He wanted to stop off at his place first and find out a few things from him, without, of course, showing him the note. But Dmitry lived far away and very likely was not even at home now. He stopped and then, after a minute’s deliberation, made up his mind. He hurriedly crossed himself in a familiar gesture and, suddenly smiling over something, set out for the frightening woman’s house.

He knew which house she lived in. If he went there by Bolshaya Street and then crossed the square, it would be quite a distance. Our small town is spread out and it takes quite a while to get from one end to the other. Besides, his father was expecting him: he might not have calmed down yet and might still be thinking of what he had told Alyosha and have another fit of temper—so Alyosha had to hurry if he wanted to get to both places quickly. He decided to take every possible short cut since he knew the town like the palm of his hand. So he went the back way, ignoring the streets, following deserted paths, climbing over fences, walking across other people’s yards, but since he was well known and liked in town no one objected—people simply waved to him. In this way he could get to Bolshaya Street twice as fast. At one point he passed very close to his father’s house, as he crossed the yard of a little old house with four windows that stood next to Karamazov’s property. The house belonged to a legless old woman. She lived there with her daughter, a former chambermaid, who had worked for a succession of upperclass Petersburg families until a year before, when she had been forced to come home to look after her invalid mother, and who liked to go about town in her elegant Petersburg dresses. The old woman and her daughter, however, had gradually spent all their savings and were now completely indigent; every day they came to Mr. Karamazov’s kitchen for bread and soup, which Martha very readily gave them. But though she came for her plate of soup, the daughter never sold any of her dresses, one of which even had a long train. Alyosha had learned this quite accidentally from his friend Rakitin, who knew absolutely everything that went on in town. Of course, no sooner had Alyosha learned that fact than he immediately proceeded to forget it. But now, as he came up to the old woman’s garden, the thought of the dress with the train came back to him. He raised his lowered head and, to his immense surprise, saw someone he had never expected to find there.

From behind the wattle fence giving onto the next garden emerged the head and shoulders of his brother Dmitry, who obviously was standing on something. Dmitry was making violent gestures with his hands, beckoning to Alyosha to come closer and obviously not wanting to call out to him or even to utter a word for fear of being heard. Alyosha ran over to the fence.