The Brothers Karamazov (53 page)

Easter was late that year, and the days grew long and clear and bright and full of the fragrance of spring. I remember he spent restless nights, coughing all the time, but in the morning he would insist on getting dressed and trying to sit up in an armchair. And I can still see him now, sitting in that armchair, gentle, smiling, and always looking cheerful despite his illness. He was completely changed; it was really an unbelievable change that took place in him. When, for instance, our old nanny entered his room and asked him, “Would it be all right, my dear, if I lighted the lamp before your icon”—something he used not to allow her to do; he would even blow the lamp out if he found it lighted—this time he said to her: “Go ahead, dear nanny, light it. I was a monster before not to let you light it. For that’s your way of praying to God, and watching you makes me happy and in my happiness I pray for you too, which means that both of us are praying to the same God.”

These words seemed very strange to us, and mother cried all the time except when she went into Markel’s room; then she’d dry her eyes and try to look cheerful. “Don’t cry, mother, don’t,” he’d tell her. “I still have a long time to live and have a good time, for life is so good and so full of joy!”

“How can it be such a joy to you, my darling, when you are so feverish at night and cough so that it sounds as if your chest is about to burst . . .”

“Mother,” he would answer, “don’t be sad. Life is paradise; we all live in paradise, although we don’t want to see it. As soon as we are willing to recognize it, the whole world will become a paradise; it could happen tomorrow, any time.”

Everyone was surprised at his words and at the assurance with which he said these things; we were all moved and it made us cry. When friends came to see him, he would say to them: “It’s so nice of you to come, for I don’t know what I’ve done to earn your love and I can’t begin to understand how you can love someone like me, nor can I understand how I could have failed to appreciate it until now.” To the servants who entered his room, he kept saying, “Why must you wait on me like this, my dear friends? Do you really think I deserve to be waited on by you? If God spares me for now and I go on living, I’ll wait on you too, for we should all wait on each other.”

Mother listened to him, shaking her head. “It’s your illness that makes you talk like this, my dear.”

“My dearest, beloved mother,” he said, “since it is impossible to do without masters and servants in the world, let me also be a servant to my servants, just as they are to me. And I’ll tell you also, mother dear—we are all guilty toward others and I am the guiltiest of all.”

That made even mother laugh. “I would like to know,” she said, laughing and crying at the same time, “how you can be the guiltiest of all? With all the thieves and murderers, what have you done to accuse yourself like this?”

“Mother, my own dear blood”—he sometimes used the most peculiar endearments—“my own dear blood, my sweet joy, know that this is the truth and that every one of us is answerable for everyone else and for everything. I don’t know how to explain it to you, but I feel it so strongly that it hurts. And now, the way we used to live before seems strange to me, how we got annoyed at one another, and how we knew nothing then.”

And he would awaken in this state every morning, becoming more and more touching and more and more elated, literally trembling with love.

When the doctor came—an old German called Eisenschmidt—Markel would ask him: “Tell me, doctor, will I be one more day in this world?” He always joked with the doctor, who would answer: “It’s not a question of a day, or even many days. You’ll be here for many months and years yet . . .”

“There’s no need for years or even months, days are enough; a single day is sufficient for a man to discover what happiness is. Why must we quarrel, brag, and remember offenses against us? Why shouldn’t we go into the garden right now and love, kiss, praise, and enjoy one another, and bless our lives?” When mother saw the doctor off, he said to her: “I’m afraid your son is not long for this world—his illness has affected his brain now.”

The windows of my brother’s room gave onto our garden, which was full of shady old trees in which the young spring buds were swelling and the first spring birds were chirruping and singing. And as he watched and admired the little birds, he suddenly started to ask them, too, to forgive him: “God’s little birds, please forgive me, for I have sinned before you, too.” Now that was something nobody could really understand. But Markel lay there with tears of joy rolling down his cheeks. “Yes,” he explained, “I used to be surrounded by the glory of God—the birds and the trees and the fields and the sky—and I alone lived in degradation. I was the only one who was an insult to everything, and I didn’t even notice all the beauty and the glory of the world.”

“Aren’t you taking too many sins upon yourself?” mother would ask him sometimes.

“Mother, my life’s delight, why, don’t you see that it’s not out of sorrow that I am crying? I am crying from joy, mother. Why, I want to stand guilty before everybody and everything, although I can’t explain to you why, because I don’t even know how to love them. But if I have sinned before everyone, they will all forgive me now, and then we will have heaven on earth. Don’t you think I am living in heaven now?”

And there was much more of this that I cannot remember or describe. I recall coming into his room once when no one else was there. It was a clear evening, the sun was setting, and the whole room was lighted by its slanting rays. He beckoned me to him when he saw me. I walked over to him and he put his hands on my shoulders. He looked tenderly and lovingly into my eyes and continued to look at me in that manner for a whole minute perhaps, without saying anything. “All right,” he said in the end, “now go and play and live some of life for me.” So I left him and went out to play. But later I often remembered with tears in my eyes how he had asked me to live for him. Yes, he said many more inspired and beautiful things that at the time, however, I could not understand. He died in the third week after Easter. He was fully conscious until the very end, although he could no longer talk by then. Still, up to the very last moment he did not change. He looked happy and there was a spark of joy in his eyes. He smiled at us, seeking each one of us out, as if speaking to us. Even in town, people talked of his death for a long time. It was all a shock to me, but not a very violent one, although I cried a lot when they buried him. I was still too young, a mere child, but it all remained in my heart, ineffaceable, but dormant for a while. In good time, though, it was bound to come to life again and make itself known. And that’s just what happened.

B. The Holy Bible in Father Zosima’s Life

I was all my mother had left then, but soon some good friends persuaded her that, since I was now her only son and she was not really poor, she ought to follow the example of so many other parents and send me to Petersburg, so as not to deprive me of a brilliant career. And they convinced her to send me to the Petersburg Cadet Corps School so that eventually I could become an officer in the Imperial Guards. Mother hesitated for a long time, as it was very hard for her to part with her remaining son, but finally, after much weeping, she made up her mind to do it, because she felt it was the best for my future happiness. So she took me to Petersburg and entered me in the Cadet Corps School. And that was the last I ever saw of her, for she died three years later, having spent the time in between missing her two sons and being wretched without them.

I have nothing but happy memories of my mother’s home. There is nothing a man cherishes more than the memories of his early childhood in his parents’ home; this is always true as long as there was at least a little love and harmony in his family. Even if a man’s childhood was spent in a very bad home, he may still have some happy memories, as long as his mind can seek out the patches of happiness. Among memories of my childhood, I must also include my memories of the story of Jesus, about which I was very curious when I was still quite small. I had at that time a book with beautiful pictures in it called 
A Hundred and Four Stories from the Old and New Testaments;
 indeed, it was the book from which I learned to read. That book is still on my shelf here; I have treasured it as a reminder of my childhood. But I remember that, before I was eight and before I had learned to read properly, I had a sort of spiritual experience. That year my mother took me to morning mass on the Monday before Easter. I don’t remember where my brother was that day, but there were only the two of us—my mother and I. It was a bright, sunny day and I remember clearly the incense rising from the censer and wafting slowly upward, while from a little window in the cupola sunbeams streamed down into the church, and it looked as if the incense, rising in waves, was melting in the sunlight. I looked at it, feeling somehow deeply moved, and it was then that, for the first time in my life, I felt I had glimpsed the meaning of the Word of God and was open to receive its seeds. Then a boy came out and stood in the middle of the church. He was holding a big book, so big, indeed, that it seemed to me that he had difficulty carrying it. He placed the book on the lectern, opened it, and started to read from it. And all of a sudden I understood something of what was being read in the house of God . . .

There was a man in the land of Uz, a righteous and pious man, and he had so much wealth, so many camels, so many sheep, and so many donkeys; his children were happy and he cherished them and prayed for them, in case they sinned as they enjoyed themselves. But when the sons of God came before the Lord, Satan came among them and said to Him that he had been everywhere, all over the earth and beneath it. “And have you seen My servant Job?” God asked him and with pride pointed out to Satan His great and holy servant. Satan smiled at God’s words and said: “Give him over to me and You will see that Your servant will deny You and curse Your name.” And God gave over to Satan the righteous man whom He so loved, and Satan smote his children, killed his cattle, and scattered his wealth, bringing all this down upon him at the same time, as if it were caused by divine lightning. And Job tore his clothes and threw himself on the ground and said: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return into the earth: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord now and forever!”

Fathers and teachers, please forgive my tears now—it is as if my whole childhood were rising up before me and I breathe now as I breathed then, as an eight-year-old boy, and I feel just as I felt then—surprised and awed and happy. Everything struck my imagination then: the camels, Satan talking to God in that way, God giving His servant over to Satan who sought his perdition, and the servant of God exclaiming, “Blessed be Your name though You chastise me,” followed by the soft, sweet singing of “Harken unto my prayer” in the church, and again the incense rising from the priest’s censer and everyone kneeling in prayer. And ever since then I have been unable to read that holy story without my eyes filling with tears—I know, for I read it only yesterday! There is so much in it that is great, mysterious, inconceivable!

Later I was to hear sarcastic and blasphemous remarks about it, words full of conceit: Why should God give the most beloved of His saints to Satan so that he could play games with him, take away his children, smite him with sores and boils from which he would scrape the pus with a potsherd? Was it simply to enable Him to boast to Satan later and say to him something like, “See how My saint can suffer for My sake!” But then the very greatness of the story lies precisely in its mystery—here fleeting, earthly reality confronts eternal truth. Just as in the first days of creation when the Creator, at the end of each day, paused to admire His work with the words, “That which I have created is good!”—so in this story He looks at Job and again praises His creation. And Job, when he praises the Lord, serves not only Him but His whole creation, for generations and generations, forever and ever, for that is what he was foreordained to do.

Oh, what a great book it is and how much we learn from it! What a miraculous book is the Holy Bible and what strength it gives to man! It is like a sculpted model of the world, of mankind, and of the characters of men; everything is there and it contains guidance for us for all ages. How many mysteries are solved in it, how many revealed!

And so God raises Job up and gives him back his wealth, and many years pass. Job again has children, new children, whom he loves. But how can he possibly love these new children of his when the others are no longer there, when he has lost them? Can he be completely happy when he remembers his dead children, however dear to his heart his new children may be? But he can be happy, he can know happiness again, because a mysterious process gradually transforms an old grief into a quiet happiness; seething youth is replaced by gentle and serene old age. Every day I bless the rising sun and my heart sings to it as it did before; but now I love the sunset even more, and its long, slanting rays bring back to me quiet, touching, tender memories, dear faces, and images from my long and blessed life. Over everything there hovers the Lord’s truth and justice that moves our hearts, reconciles everything, and is all-forgiving!

My life is coming to an end—I know it, hear it. But with every day that is left to me I feel that my earthly life is already blending into a new, infinite, unknown, future life, anticipation of which sets my soul atremble with ecstasy, makes my mind glow and my heart weep with joy.

Friends and teachers, I have often heard, and of late more than ever, that our clergy, particularly our rural clergy, complain bitterly over their lowly status and the low stipends they receive. They go so far as to declare in print—I have read such statements myself—that they can no longer interpret the Holy Scriptures to people because they are so poor and that if Lutherans or heretics come to take their flocks away from them—then, let them, for “we are not properly paid.” I think to myself, may the Lord grant them the higher stipend that is so important to them (because their complaint is justified), but the truth is that, if someone is to blame, we must share in that blame ourselves. For even a priest who is short of time and overburdened with work and church services can still snatch at least an hour a week to remember God. Besides, he does not work all the time, all year round. He could start by inviting a group of children to his house once a week in the evening, for instance, and perhaps, when their parents heard about it, they might come and join their little ones. And there is no need to build palaces to do that; let him invite them to his hut and not worry that they may make it dirty, for he’ll only have them there for one hour a week. He could open the Book and read to them out of it; there would be no need for him to spout wisdom to them, to give himself airs, and to feel himself superior to them. He need only read with feeling and humility and be gratified if they listen to him and understand him; he himself should enjoy the words he reads, only stopping now and then to explain some expression or phrase that an uneducated person might not know—and let him not worry: the heart of a Russian Christian will, in the end, understand everything!