The Brothers Karamazov (8 page)

The elder sat down on a leather-covered mahogany sofa of antique design, while inviting his four visitors to sit on four mahogany chairs covered with badly worn black leather ranged along the opposite wall. The two monks took chairs on either side of the room—one by the window and the other by the door—while the divinity student, Alyosha, and the novice remained standing. The whole cell was rather small and drab-looking. It had only the most indispensable furniture, and even that was poor and crude. There were two pots of flowers on the window sill and, in a corner, many icons, one of them a large picture of the Mother of God probably painted long before the Schism. A lamp burned in front of it. Next to it were two icons in shiny settings, and beyond them some carved cherubs, little china eggs, an ivory Catholic cross with a 
Mater Dolorosa
 with her arms around it, and a few foreign engravings, copies of the great Italian masters of bygone times. Beside these costly, graceful foreign engravings were some rather crude native Russian lithographs of saints and martyrs, the kind that could be bought at any local fair for a few kopeks. On the other walls hung a few portraits of Russian bishops, past and present.

Miusov made a cursory inspection of all this “conventional rubbish,” then turned to look intently at the elder. He rated his own powers of judgment rather highly, a weakness which was excusable in him, since he was already past fifty, an age at which an intelligent, cultured man of the world of independent means acquires an exaggerated opinion of his own judgment, sometimes despite himself.

He disliked the elder at first glance. Indeed, there was something in Zosima’s face that many besides Miusov would have disliked. He was a short, stooped little man with very weak legs who, because of ill-health, looked at least ten years older than his sixty-five years. His very thin face was covered with tiny wrinkles, especially around his eyes. His eyes, small, quick, and shiny, made two bright dots in his face. He was bald except for some thin gray hair around the temples; his wedge-shaped beard was very small and scanty, and he had thin, thread-like lips, which formed readily into a smile. His nose, although it was not really long, was sharp, like the beak of a small bird.

“All the signs of a wicked, pettily supercilious nature . . .” flashed through Miusov’s head. He was still very annoyed with himself.

A small, cheap wall clock with weights hurriedly struck twelve times, and this helped to get the conversation started.

“Noon on the dot!” Mr. Karamazov cried out. “And still no sign of my son Dmitry! I apologize for him, Holy Elder!”

The “Holy Elder” actually made Alyosha shudder.

“I, on the other hand,” Karamazov went on, “am always punctual. I always arrive exactly on time, knowing that punctuality is the courtesy of kings.”

“Well, whatever else you may be, you’re certainly no king,” Miusov muttered, unable to contain his irritation.

“Yes, that’s true, I’m no king. Believe it or not, Mr. Miusov, I was aware of that myself. I’ll even swear to it! I don’t know why, but I always say the wrong thing! Ah, Your Reverence!” he exclaimed with a sudden pathos. “You have before you a buffoon, a true buffoon—that’s how I will introduce myself. Alas, it’s an old habit with me! And if I sometimes talk nonsense, it is actually intentional, to make people laugh, to please them. One must try to please, mustn’t one? For instance, about seven years ago, I arrived in a small town where I was trying to set up a little business deal in partnership with some small local businessmen. Of course, we had to see the local 
ispravnik
 first to ask a favor of him—you know what I mean—and invite him to dinner. So we go there, and the 
ispravnik
appears, and he turns out to be a big, fat fellow with blondish hair and an unsmiling face—the most dangerous type in such cases—it’s their livers, you see, their livers . . . Well, I turn to him and, with the self-assurance of a man of the world, I say, ‘Mr. 
Ispravnik,
we’ve come to beg you to be our Napravnik, if I may say so.’ ‘How’s that, your Napravnik? What do you mean by that?’ I could see right away that it hadn’t gone over. He just stood there staring at me and looking solemn. ‘I was just trying to make a pun,’ I said, ‘trying to cheer up the company a little. That Mr. Napravnik I was referring to is one of the greatest Russian conductors, and it’s a sort of conductor that we need for the harmony of our little enterprise.’ I thought I had given him a reasonable explanation, and the comparison was to the point too, but he just said, ‘I’m an 
ispravnik
 and I will not tolerate puns with reference to my official capacity.’ And he started to walk out on us. ‘Wait,’ I call out to him. ‘You’re right, absolutely right. You’re an 
ispravnik
 and not Mr. Napravnik.’ ‘No,’ he says, ‘you cannot take it back now—I am Napravnik.’ And, of course, our business deal fell through. It’s always the same with me—I get myself into trouble by being too friendly! Once—it was many, many years ago—I said to a very important man: ‘Your wife, sir,’ I said, ‘is a very ticklish lady,’ meaning in the sense of honor, of moral qualities, you know, and I never expected him to ask me: ‘What do you know about it? Have you ever tickled her?’ Well, I thought it was an opening for some amiable chit-chat, so I said, ‘Why, yes, sir, I must say I have.’ Well, the fellow gave me quite a tickling then, too! I can tell it now without shame because it happened so long ago but, in general, I always manage to do myself some harm that way.”

“Like right now, for instance,” Miusov muttered disgustedly.

The elder was looking at the two of them in silence.

“You don’t say! Well, will you believe me, Mr. Miusov, if I tell you I was aware of that too and, what’s more, as soon as I started to speak, I knew, I somehow felt, that you’d be the first to make some remark? Whenever I realize, Your Reverence, that my joke isn’t succeeding, my cheeks begin to stick to my lower gums, like a sort of cramp. It’s happened ever since my youth when I used to be a hanger-on to the local landed gentry, earning my living by being a parasite. I’m a thorough-going buffoon, a born buffoon, which is like being one of God’s fools, Your Reverence. I won’t deny, though, that there may be an unholy spirit in me, too, but it must be one of minor rank—if it were more important it would surely have chosen better quarters—but certainly not you, Mr. Miusov. You’d offer it pretty shabby quarters, let me tell you. I, at least, believe in God. And if I’ve had some doubts of late, they’re gone now as I sit here, expecting to hear words of great wisdom. I, Reverend Father, am like the philosopher Diderot. You may have heard, Holy Father, how Diderot went to see the Metropolitan Platon, in the time of the Empress Catherine. He marched in and immediately announced: ‘There is no God!’ The holy patriarch raised his finger and replied: ‘The fool has said in his heart, There is no God!’ And the next thing, Diderot was lying at his feet and wailing: ‘I believe. I want to be baptized!’ And so he was baptized then and there, and Princess Dashkov acted as his godmother and Potemkin as his godfather.”

“This is outrageous! You know very well you’re talking nonsense and that stupid anecdote is quite untrue. Why must you carry on like this?” Miusov said in a shaking voice, feeling that he was losing control over himself.

“All my life, I’ve suspected it wasn’t true!” Karamazov cried excitedly. “And now let me tell you the whole truth, gentlemen! Forgive me, oh great elder—I made up that last bit about Diderot’s being baptized as I was telling the story. It had never even occurred to me till then. I invented it to spice things up a bit. That’s why I’m carrying on, Mr. Miusov, to be good company, you know, although there are times when I don’t really know myself why I do it. As to the Diderot story, I heard the patriarch’s reply to him at least twenty times from the landowners in whose houses I spent my youth and, by the way, from your Auntie Mavra, among others, Mr. Miusov. To this day, they are all convinced that the atheist Diderot went to see the Metropolitan Platon to argue with him about God.”

Miusov was on his feet now. He had not only lost patience—he didn’t seem to know what he was doing. He was seething with rage and was conscious that that made him ridiculous too. Indeed, something quite incredible was taking place in the cell. Until then, for forty or fifty years, the people who had been received there by the elder and his predecessors had come with a feeling of deep reverence. Everyone admitted was conscious of having been granted a great favor; many knelt the moment they entered and remained kneeling throughout the visit. Even the most learned and prominent people, including free-thinkers who came out of curiosity or for some such reason, all felt bound to behave with tact and respect as long as they were in the elder’s presence, whether they were received with other visitors or privately. This was especially so because there was no question of money here, but only of love and kindness, on the one hand, and, on the other, penitence or the longing to solve some spiritual problem or resolve a difficult personal crisis. Consequently, Karamazov’s buffoonery, so disrespectful and out of place, surprised and bewildered at least some of the witnesses to the scene. The monks, although their expressions did not change, waited tensely to hear what the elder would say, and seemed ready to leap to their feet like Miusov. Alyosha stood with his head bowed, looking as if he were about to burst into tears. He was surprised, too, that his brother Ivan, the only person there on whom he had relied, and the only person in the world who had an influence on his father and could have stopped him, sat motionless in his chair, his eyes lowered, apparently waiting curiously to see how it would all end, as if he himself were a complete outsider and could not possibly be affected. As to the divinity student, Rakitin, whom he knew well, almost intimately, Alyosha didn’t even dare look at him, for he knew his thoughts (he was, indeed, the only man in the monastery to know them).

“Please forgive me,” Miusov said, addressing the elder. “I am afraid you may think that I too have a part in this ridiculous farce. I made a mistake in thinking that even a man like Fyodor Karamazov would understand his obligations when received by a highly respectable person . . . It never occurred to me that I would have to apologize merely for having come in his company and . . .”

Miusov, too embarrassed to go on, was about to walk out of the room.

“Please don’t worry,” the elder said. He stood up abruptly on his weak legs, took Miusov by both hands, and made him sit down again. “Think nothing of it. Believe me, I particularly appreciate having you as my guest,” Zosima added, bowing to Miusov and returning to his own seat on the sofa.

“Oh, great elder! I await your verdict: am I insulting you with my exuberant behavior or not?” Karamazov cried, gripping the arms of his chair with his hands as though he would jump up if he received an unfavorable answer.

“You too, sir, please be at ease and rest assured that there is nothing to worry about,” the elder said in a firm tone. “I want you to feel completely at home and, above all, not to be ashamed of yourself, for that is what causes all the trouble.”

“Completely at home? You mean be my natural self? Oh, that is too kind, much too kind, but I am deeply moved and I accept your invitation! But let me warn you, Blessed Father, do not encourage me to be my natural self. Don’t take the chance. Even I wouldn’t dare to let myself go entirely. I tell you that for your own good. As for the rest, it is still shrouded in darkness, although there are those who are only too anxious to tell all sorts of stories about me. Yes, I’m referring to you, Mr. Miusov. As for you, most holy man, allow me only to express my profound admiration!” He stood up and, raising his hands toward the ceiling, declaimed: “‘Blessed be the womb that bore thee and the paps that gave thee suck’—particularly the paps! Your remark just now that I mustn’t be ashamed because ‘that is what causes all the trouble’ showed that you could see right through me and decipher all that’s going on inside me. Just as you said, I do feel ashamed when I meet people—that I am the lowest of the low and that they take me for a buffoon. ‘All right,’ I say to myself, ‘so I’ll act like a buffoon.’ I don’t care what they think of me because I really believe that every one of them is even lower than I. Yes, that’s why I’m a buffoon—it’s out of shame, as you said, great elder, out of sheer shame! It’s a fact that I misbehave this way because I’m oversensitive. If I could only feel that all the people I met considered me a nice, intelligent fellow, I’m sure I’d be the kindest of men!”

All of a sudden he knelt down, exclaiming:

“Oh teacher, what should I do to gain eternal life?”

It was hard to tell whether he was still fooling or was now really deeply moved. The elder looked at him smilingly and said:

“You have known for a long time what to do—you are intelligent enough to see it yourself: stop indulging in drunkenness and incontinence of speech, do not give way to sensual lust and particularly to your passion for money. Also, close down your taverns; if you cannot close them all, close at least two or three. And, above all, stop lying.”

“You mean that story I told about Diderot?”

“No, I didn’t really mean that. The important thing is to stop lying to yourself. A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself as well as for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal, in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying—lying to others and to yourself. A man who lies to himself, for instance, can take offense whenever he wishes, for there are times when it is rather pleasant to feel wronged—don’t you agree? So a man may know very well that no one has offended him, and may invent an offense, lie just for the beauty of it, or exaggerate what someone said to create a situation, making a mountain out of a molehill. And although he is well aware of it himself, he nevertheless does feel offended because he enjoys doing so, derives great pleasure from it, and so he comes to feel real hostility toward the imaginary offender . . . But, please, get up off your knees and sit down. You know very well that your kneeling is also an insincere gesture, a lie . . .”