The Karamazov Brothers Page 10

  ‘No, it is not true,’ the starets replied.

  ‘There’s nothing of the kind anywhere in the Saints’ Calendar,’ said one of the hieromonks, the librarian. ‘Of which saint did you say this was written?’

  ‘I don’t know which one it was. Don’t know, haven’t any idea. I’ve been deceived by what somebody said. I just happened to hear it, and do you know who from? Pyotr Aleksandrovich Miusov, who got so upset by Diderot just now, he’s the one who told me the story.’

  ‘I never told you anything of the kind. I don’t even speak to you.’

  ‘It’s true it wasn’t me you told it to; but you told it in company where I happened to be present, three or four years ago it must have been. The reason I’ve mentioned it is because you undermined my faith with that funny story, Pyotr Aleksandrovich. You didn’t know, you didn’t realize it at the time, but I went home with my faith severely undermined, and it’s gone from bad to worse ever since. Yes, Pyotr Aleksandrovich, what a loss of faith there was, and you were the cause of it! Never mind Diderot, sir!’

  Fyodor Pavlovich was thoroughly worked up, although it was quite obvious to everyone that he was play-acting again. Miusov, however, was stung to the quick.

  ‘What stuff and nonsense, it’s ridiculous,’ he muttered. ‘Perhaps I did say something some time ago… but not to you. I was told the story myself. I heard it from a Frenchman in Paris who said that it was in our Saints’ Calendar and is read at the midday service… He’s a great scholar, he’s made a special study of Russian statistics… lived for years in Russia… I’ve never read the Saints’ Calendar myself… and I don’t intend to either… The things you hear at dinner—we were having dinner at the time.’

  ‘Ah yes, you had dinner and I lost my faith!’ Fyodor Pavlovich mocked.

  ‘What has your faith got to do with me!’ Miusov began shouting, but he suddenly bit his tongue and said contemptuously, ‘You literally defile everything you touch.’

  The starets suddenly got up from his seat.

  ‘Excuse me, gentlemen, I have to leave you for a few minutes,’ he said, speaking to all the visitors. ‘People who arrived here before you are waiting for me. And as for you, stop telling lies!’ he added, turning with good humour towards Fyodor Pavlovich.

  As he got up to leave the cell, Alyosha and the novice rushed over to help him down the steps. Alyosha was breathless; he was glad to get away, but glad, too, that the starets had not been offended and was in good spirits. The starets was making for the veranda to give his blessing to those who were waiting for him. Fyodor Pavlovich, however, stopped him at the door of the cell.

  ‘Most blessed of men!’ he exclaimed with feeling. ‘Allow me just once more to kiss your hand. Yes, one can talk to you, one has such a rapport with you! Do you think I’m always such a liar and that I never stop clowning? You see, I was deliberately playacting all the time just to test you. I’ve been probing you all the time to see if we could get along with each other. To see if there was room enough for my humility alongside your pride. I award you a certificate of merit: we could indeed get along with each other! But now I’ll keep quiet, I won’t say a thing. I’ll sit down in this chair and not say a word. Pyotr Aleksandrovich, it’s your turn to have the floor. You’re the principal person here now… for the next ten minutes.’

  3

  DEVOUT PEASANT WOMEN

  THE crowd waiting down beside the wooden veranda built on the outer side of the hermitage wall was on this occasion composed entirely of women, some twenty in all. They had been informed that the starets would eventually appear, and had gathered there in expectation. Mrs Khokhlakova, the landowner’s widow, and her daughter had also come out onto the veranda; they too had been waiting for the starets, but in the separate quarters allocated for visiting gentlewomen. Mrs Khokhlakova, a wealthy lady, always dressed with taste, was still quite young and very comely in appearance, somewhat pale-skinned, with very lively, almost completely black eyes. She could not have been more than thirty-three years old and had been a widow for about five years. Her fourteen-year-old daughter suffered from paralysis of the legs. The poor girl had been unable to walk for about six months, and had to be wheeled around in a long Bath-chair on rubber-rimmed wheels. She had a charming little face, somewhat thin from sickness, but cheerful. There was a mischievous sparkle in her large dark eyes with their long lashes. Her mother had been planning since the spring to take her abroad, but they had been delayed the whole summer by estate business. They had been staying in our town for about a week, more for business than devotional reasons, but three days previously had paid the starets a visit. Now they had suddenly come again, and even though they knew that the starets could receive hardly anyone, had fervently sought ‘the happiness of beholding the great healer once more’.

  While waiting for the starets to appear, the mother sat on a chair next to her daughter’s invalid chair, and within two paces of her stood an old monk, not from our monastery, but a visitor from a remote and little-known northern settlement. He too wished to be blessed by the starets. But when the starets appeared on the veranda, he went straight to the peasant women. The crowd began to press towards the little porch with its three steps leading from the low veranda to the open ground below. The starets positioned himself on the upper step, put on his stole, and began to bless the women crowding around him. A klikusha was dragged up to him by both hands. As soon as she caught sight of the starets, she began to utter absurd squeals, to hiccup and to tremble all over, as though she were in labour. Laying his stole on her head, the starets said a short prayer over her, and she immediately fell silent and became calm. I do not know how it is nowadays, but in my childhood I often saw and heard these klikushi in villages and monasteries. They would be brought to the midday service, yelping and barking like bitches, fit to bring the roof down, but when the Host was brought out and they were led up to it, their ‘devilry’ would immediately cease, and for a time the sufferers would remain calm. As a child, I was greatly surprised and intrigued by all this. But in answer to my enquiries at the time, I was told by other landowners, and especially by my teachers in the town, that this was all a sham to avoid work and that it could be eradicated by suitably strict measures, and various anecdotes were quoted in support of this. But, to my surprise, I later discovered from medical specialists that this was not a case of shamming at all, but an unfortunate women’s complaint to be found mostly, it appeared, here in Russia, testifying to the unhappy lot of our village women, an illness caused by debilitating work undertaken too soon after difficult, complicated, and medically unsupervised labour, and further aggravated by hopeless misery, beatings, and so on, which apparently some female constitutions lacked the strength to endure. The strange instantaneous recovery of the raving and flailing woman as soon as she was led up to the Host, which was represented to me as pretence, even trickery, instigated perhaps by the ‘clergy’ themselves, may in fact have occurred perfectly naturally, and the women ushering her into the presence of the Host, and, more to the point, the sick woman herself, may have sincerely believed that the evil spirits that possessed her would be driven out once she was in the presence of the Host and made to bow before it. And in that case the distraught and, of course, mentally disturbed woman was bound to experience (could not but experience) a shock to her whole system on bowing before the Host, a shock caused by anticipation of the promised miracle and complete faith in its occurrence. And it would occur, if only for a brief moment. Precisely the same thing happened on this occasion too, as soon as the starets laid his stole on the sick woman.

  Many of the women crowding around him were moved at this moment to tears of exultation; some pressed forward to kiss the hem of his garment, others began to wail. He blessed all of them and spoke to some. He already knew the klikusha, who came from near by, from a village only six versts from the monastery, and had been brought to him on previous occasions.

  ‘And here’s one from far away.’ The starets pointed to a woman who, wh
ile not old, was very emaciated and hollow-cheeked, not so much sunburnt as blackened all over her face. She was on her knees, staring motionless at the starets. There was something akin to frenzy in her gaze.

  ‘Yes, from far away, father, from far away, three hundred versts from here. From far away, father, from far away.’ The woman spoke in a singsong voice, continuing to move her head from side to side in a rocking motion, with one cheek resting in the palm of her hand. She spoke as though she were keening. There is a kind of grief among the common people that is mute and long-suffering, that turns inwards and is silent. But there is also a convulsive grief which will sometimes break out into tears and turn to keening. This is found particularly in women. It is no easier to bear than the silent grief. For keening soothes only in that it inflames and wears out the heart. Such grief seeks no consolation; it feeds on its own unassuageable despair. Keening is only a compulsion to keep reopening the wound.

  ‘You’re a tradeswoman by the look of you, isn’t that so?’ the starets asked, studying her with curiosity.

  ‘Yes, we’re townsfolk, father, townsfolk. We’re peasants, but townsfolk, we’re settled in the town now. It’s to see you I’ve come, father. We’ve heard about you, father, we’ve heard about you. Buried my baby, my little boy, and set off to pray to God. I’ve been to three monasteries and they said, “Go there too, Nastasyushka”,* meaning here, love, to see you, that is. So I’ve come, stayed for the midnight service, and come here today to see you.’

  ‘Why are you weeping?’

  ‘My little boy,* father, just short of three, another three months and he’d have turned three. It’s my little boy that’s tormenting me, father, my little boy. He was the last one that Nikitushka* and I had left out of four, but the little ones just won’t stay with us, dear, they won’t. I buried the first three and didn’t grieve over them too much at all, but I buried this last one and I just can’t forget him. It’s just as if he’s standing before me now and won’t go away. I’ve cried my heart out for him. One look at his little clothes, his little shirt and shoes, and it sets me off. I spread out everything that’s left of his, every little thing, I look at it all, and I just howl. I said to Nikitushka, my husband that is, “Husband, let me go on a pilgrimage.” He’s a coachman, we’re not poor, father, we’re not poor at all, we run our own cab, it’s all our own, the horses and the cab. But what’s the good of it all to us now? He’s taken to drinking when I’m not at home, my Nikitushka has, he’s always been a bit that way; the minute my back’s turned, he’s at it again. But now I don’t even think about him. I’ve been away from home over two months. I’ve forgotten he exists, I’ve forgotten everything, and I’m past caring. What do I need him for any more? I’ve finished with him, finished with him, finished with everybody. And I don’t even want to see my house again or anything I own, I’ve turned my back on everything!’

  ‘Now listen, mother,’ said the starets, ‘a long time ago a great saint once saw a mother like you in church, weeping for her infant, her one and only, whom the Lord had claimed too. “Do you not know”, the saint said to her, “how indignant these little ones are before the throne of God? There is no one more indignant than them in the Kingdom of Heaven: ‘You granted us life, Lord,’ they say to God, ‘and no sooner did we see it than You took it away from us.’ And so fearlessly do they clamour and demand an answer that the Lord at once grants them the rank of angels. And hence”, said the saint, “you too must rejoice, woman, and weep not, for your little one also is now amongst God’s host of angels.” That’s what the saint said to the weeping woman in those far-off times. And he was a great saint and could not have told her an untruth. Know, therefore, mother, that your little one too now stands before the throne of Almighty God, happy and rejoicing, and is praying to God for you. Weep therefore, but rejoice too.’

  The woman, resting her cheek on her hand, listened to him with downcast eyes. She gave a deep sigh.

  ‘That’s just how Nikitushka used to comfort me too, word for word he said the same thing as you. “You foolish woman,” he said, “why are you crying? Our little son is surely now with the Lord God, singing with the angels.” And he said this to me and he was weeping himself, I could see he was weeping just like me. “I know that, Nikitushka,” I said. “Where else could he possibly be if not with the Lord God, but he isn’t here, he isn’t with us now, Nikitushka, he isn’t sitting here beside us as he used to.” Oh, if only I could have a peep at him just once, if only I could look at him just one more time, I wouldn’t go up to him, wouldn’t say a word, I’d stay quiet in a corner, if only I could see him just for one little minute, hear him playing in the yard and running in as he used to and calling out in his little voice, “Mamma, where are you?” If only I could hear him running through the room just once more, only once more, his little feet going pitter-patter, ever so fast, I remember how he used to run up to me shouting and laughing, if only I could hear his little feet again, his little feet, I’d recognize him at once! But he’s gone, father, he’s gone, and I’ll never hear him again! This is his belt, but he’s gone and I’ll never see him again, or hear him…!’

  She drew from her bosom her boy’s little woven belt and, after one glance at it, was immediately convulsed by weeping, the tears streaming through her fingers which she held pressed to her eyes.

  ‘And this is as it was of old,’ said the starets, “Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not”,* such is the appointed lot of you mothers here on earth. And be not comforted, for there is no need to be comforted, so be not comforted and weep, only each time that you weep, be sure to remember that your little son is among the angels of God, that he looks down on you from on high and sees you, rejoices in your tears and points them out to the Lord God. And long will you continue to weep the great mourning of mothers, but in the end it will turn to quiet joy,* and your bitter tears will be but tears of quiet tenderness, purifying the soul and absolving it from sin. I shall remember your little one in my prayers for the souls of the departed—what was his name?’

  ‘Aleksei, father.’

  ‘A good name. After Aleksei, the man of God?’*

  ‘Yes, man of God, father, man of God, Aleksei, the man of God.’

  ‘A saint indeed! I shall remember him, mother, I shall remember him and your sorrow in my prayers, and I shall pray for your husband. Only it is wrong for you to abandon him. Go back to your husband and care for him. If your little boy should see from above that you have left his father, he will weep for both of you; why should you disrupt his bliss? For indeed he lives, verily he lives, for the soul lives eternally; he is not in the house, and yet he is at your side, unseen. How can he enter your home if, as you say, you have grown to detest it? To whom will he come if he doesn’t find you, his mother and his father, together? Now he appears to you in your dreams and you are tormenting yourself, but if you return home, he will send you pleasant dreams. Go back to your husband, mother, go back to him this very day.’

  ‘I will, dear love, I’ll go back just as you say. You’ve comforted me no end. Nikitushka, my Nikitushka, you’re expecting me, my love, I’m sure you are!’ The woman started keening, but the starets had already turned to a very old woman who was not dressed as a pilgrim, but like a townswoman. It was evident from her eyes that she had come to the starets about some specific matter. She introduced herself as the widow of a non-commissioned officer from near by, in fact from our town. Her son Vasenka had served somewhere in the Army Commissariat and then gone to Siberia, to Irkutsk. He had written twice from there, but it was a year since he had last written. She had been making enquiries about him, but didn’t know the correct person to approach.

  ‘So the other day Stepanida Ilyinishna Bedryagina says to me—she’s a merchant’s wife, by the way, and she’s rich—she says to me, Prokhorovna, why don’t you ask at your church, she says, for your son to be remembered with the souls of the departed. Then his soul, she says, will feel the hurt and he
’ll write you a letter. It’s true, says Stepanida Ilyinishna, it’s absolutely true, it’s been tried many times. Only I’m not quite sure about it myself… Is it true or not, father, will it be all right to do it?’

  ‘You mustn’t think of such a thing! Shame on you for asking. How can anyone, and especially a mother, pray for the repose of a living soul! This is a great sin, it’s like sorcery, to be forgiven only on account of your ignorance. The best thing you can do is to pray to the Mother of God, our unfailing helper and mediatrix, for your son’s well-being, and pray, too, that she should forgive you your erroneous thinking. And here’s another thing I will tell you, Prokhorovna: either your son himself will come back to you soon, or, if not, he’ll certainly send you a letter. You can be sure of that. Go now without fear. Your dear son is alive, I can tell you.’

  ‘Our dear father, may God reward you, you who are our benefactor, who prays for us all and for our sins…’

  But the starets had already caught the blazing eyes of an emaciated, consumptive-looking, but still young peasant woman staring at him from the crowd. She gazed at him mutely, with imploring eyes, but seemed afraid to approach.