II. Such a Moment

Father Paisy, of course, was not mistaken when he decided that his “dear boy” would come back again, and perhaps he even saw into (not entirely, but still with insight) the true meaning of Alyosha’s state of soul. Nevertheless, I confess frankly that I myself would find it very hard now to convey clearly the precise meaning of this strange and indefinite moment in the life of the hero of my story, so dearly loved by me and still so young. To Father Paisy’s sorrowful question, directed at Alyosha: “Are you, too, with those of little faith?” I might, of course, answer firmly on Alyosha’s behalf: “No, he is not with those of little faith.” More than that, it was even quite the opposite: all his confusion came precisely from the fact that he believed so much. But the confusion was there all the same, it did happen all the same, and it was so tormenting that even afterward, long afterward, Alyosha counted that sorrowful day as one of the most painful and fateful days of his life. And if I am asked straight out: “Could all this anguish and such alarm really have arisen in him only because the body of his elder, instead of at once beginning to work healings, had on the contrary undergone early corruption?” I will answer without beating about the bush: “Yes, that is indeed how it was.” I would only ask the reader not to be in too great a hurry to laugh at my young man’s pure heart. As for me, not only do I not intend to ask forgiveness for him, or to excuse and justify his simple faith by his youth, for instance, or by the little progress he had made in the subjects he had studied before, and so on and so forth, but I will do just the opposite and declare firmly that I feel a sincere respect for the nature of his heart. No doubt some other young man, one who takes in the heart’s impressions cautiously, who already knows how to love not ardently but only warmly, with a mind that is sound enough but, for his age, much too sensible (and therefore cheap), such a young man, I say, would have avoided what happened to my young man; but in some cases, truly, it is more honorable to give way to some passion, however unreasonable, so long as it springs from a great love, than not to give way to it at all. And in youth all the more, for a young man who is too constantly sensible is not to be relied on, and his price is cheap—that is my opinion! “But,” sensible people will perhaps exclaim at this point, “not every young man can believe in such a superstition, and your young man is no rule for the rest.” To this I will answer once again: yes, my young man believed, believed sacredly and unshakably, but all the same I do not ask forgiveness for him.

You see: though I declared above (and perhaps too hastily) that I would not explain, excuse, or justify my hero, I see that something must all the same be made clear for the further understanding of the story. This is what I will say: it was not exactly a matter of miracles here. It was not an expectation of miracles frivolous in its impatience. And it was not for the triumph of any convictions that Alyosha needed miracles then (that least of all), not for any former, preconceived idea that might the sooner triumph over another—oh no, not at all: here, in all of this, and above all, in the first place, there stood before him a face, and only a face—the face of his beloved elder, the face of that righteous man whom he had revered to the point of adoration. The thing is precisely that all the love concealed in his young and pure heart for “everyone and everything,” at that time and during the whole year before it, had at times, as it were, become concentrated wholly, and perhaps even wrongly, on one being chiefly, at least in the strongest impulses of his heart—on his beloved elder, now deceased. True, this being had stood before him so long as an indisputable ideal that all his young strength and all its striving could not but turn exclusively toward this ideal, and at moments even to the point of forgetting “everyone and everything.” (He remembered himself afterward that on this heavy day he had completely forgotten his brother Dmitri, over whom he had worried and grieved so much the day before; it had also slipped his mind to take the two hundred rubles to Ilyushechka’s father, which only the day before he had so ardently meant to do.) But again, it was not miracles he needed, but only “a higher justice,” which, as he believed, had been violated, and by which his heart had been wounded so cruelly and so suddenly. And what does it matter that this “justice,” in Alyosha’s expectations, by the very course of things, had taken the form of miracles expected at once from the remains of his adored former guide? But then, everyone in the monastery thought and expected the same, even those before whose minds Alyosha bowed, Father Paisy himself, for instance, and so Alyosha, not troubling himself with any doubts, clothed his own dreams too in the same form in which everyone had clothed theirs. And besides, this had long been so arranged in his heart, through the whole year of his life in the monastery, and his heart had already acquired the habit of expecting it so. But it was justice he thirsted for, justice, and not merely miracles! And now the one who should have been, by his hopes, exalted above everyone in the whole world—that very one, instead of the glory that was his due, was suddenly cast down and disgraced! What for? Who had judged? Who could have decided so?—these were the questions that at once tormented his inexperienced and virginal heart. He could not endure without offense, without even bitterness of heart, that the most righteous of the righteous had been given over to such mocking and spiteful derision by so frivolous a crowd, standing so far below him. Well, let there have been no miracles at all, let nothing wonderful have appeared and let what was immediately expected not have come true; but why had disgrace appeared, why had shame been permitted, why this hasty corruption, which had “outstripped nature,” as the spiteful monks said? Why this “sign,” which they now so triumphantly deduced together with Father Ferapont, and why did they believe they had even gained the right to deduce it? Where, then, was providence and its finger? Why had it hidden its finger “at the most needful moment” (thought Alyosha), and as if it had itself chosen to submit to blind, dumb, pitiless natural laws?

This is what made Alyosha’s heart run with blood, and of course, as I have said already, there stood here above all a face, beloved by him more than anything in the world, and that same face “put to shame,” that same face “dishonored”! Granted that this murmuring of my young man’s was frivolous and unreasonable, but again, for the third time I repeat (and agree beforehand that perhaps this too is said frivolously): I am glad that my young man turned out not so reasonable at such a moment, for reason will always come in its time to a man who is not stupid, but if even at such an exceptional moment there is no love in a young man’s heart, then when will it come? I will not, however, pass over in silence on this occasion a certain strange phenomenon, which, though only for an instant, still did reveal itself in Alyosha’s mind at this fateful and confused moment. This new something that appeared and flashed by consisted of a certain tormenting impression from his conversation of the day before with his brother Ivan, which Alyosha now kept recalling incessantly. Precisely now. Oh, not that anything among the fundamental, the elemental, so to speak, beliefs of his soul had been shaken. His God he loved, and in him he believed unshakably, though he had suddenly begun to murmur against him. And yet some vague but tormenting and evil impression from the recollection of yesterday’s conversation with his brother Ivan suddenly stirred again now in his soul and kept asking more and more to come up to the surface. When it had already begun to grow quite dark, Rakitin, passing through the pine grove from the hermitage to the monastery, suddenly noticed Alyosha lying under a tree with his face to the ground, motionless and as if asleep. He went up and called to him.

“You here, Alexei? Can it be that you…” he began in surprise, but stopped without finishing. He had meant to say: “Can it be that you’ve come to this?” Alyosha did not look at him, but from a certain movement of his Rakitin guessed at once that he heard and understood him.

“But what’s the matter with you?” he went on in surprise, but the surprise was already beginning to give way on his face to a smile that took on a more and more mocking expression.

“Listen, I’ve been looking for you for over two hours. You suddenly vanished from there. What are you doing here? What sort of pious nonsense is this? At least look at me…”

Alyosha lifted his head, sat up, and propped his back against the tree. He was not crying, but his face expressed suffering, and irritation showed in his eyes. He was not looking at Rakitin, however, but somewhere off to the side.

“You know, your face has completely changed. None of that famous meekness of yours from before. Angry with somebody, or what? Did someone hurt you?”

“Leave me alone!” Alyosha said suddenly, still not looking at him, and waved his hand wearily.

“Oho, so that’s how we are now! Shouting at people just like the rest of us mortals. And this from one of the angels! Well, Alyoshka, you’ve surprised me, you know that, I’m telling you sincerely. It’s a long time since anything here surprised me. And I did take you for an educated man, after all…”

Alyosha looked at him at last, but somehow absently, as though still understanding him poorly.

“Can it really be only because your old man’s begun to stink? Did you seriously believe he was going to start pulling off miracles?” exclaimed Rakitin, passing again into the most sincere amazement.

“I believed, I believe, and I want to believe, and I will believe, what more do you want!” Alyosha shouted irritably.

“Nothing at all, my dear fellow. Pfoo, damn it, a thirteen-year-old schoolboy doesn’t believe that nowadays. But then, damn it… So now you’ve gone and got angry with that God of yours, you’ve rebelled: passed over for promotion, they say, no medal for the holiday! Oh, you people!”

Alyosha looked at Rakitin long, and with his eyes somehow narrowed, and something suddenly flashed in his eyes… but not bitterness against Rakitin.

“I’m not rebelling against my God, I simply ‘do not accept his world,’” Alyosha suddenly said with a crooked smile.

“What do you mean, you don’t accept the world?” Rakitin thought over his answer for a tiny moment. “What’s this gibberish?”

Alyosha did not answer.

“Well, enough of these trifles, now to business: have you eaten today?”

“I don’t remember… I did eat, I think.”

“You need to keep your strength up, to judge by your face. It makes one feel sorry, looking at you. You didn’t sleep all night either, I heard, there was some sort of session among you there. And then all this fuss and smearing… Most likely you chewed nothing but a little bit of antidoron. I’ve got some sausage with me in my pocket, I picked it up in town earlier on the way here, just in case, only you won’t touch sausage, of course…”

“Give me some sausage.”

“Aha! So that’s how it is with you! So it’s outright rebellion, barricades! Well, brother, that’s not a thing to be sniffed at. Let’s go to my place… I could do with a drop of vodka myself now, I’m dead tired. Vodka, I suppose, you won’t dare… or will you have some?”

“Give me vodka too.”

“Well, look at that! That’s a wonder, brother!” Rakitin looked at him wildly. “Well, one way or another, vodka or sausage, this is a bold, fine business and not to be missed, come on!”

Alyosha rose from the ground in silence and followed Rakitin.

“If your brother Vanechka could see this, how amazed he’d be! By the way, your brother Ivan Fyodorovich went rolling off to Moscow this morning, did you know?”

“I know,” Alyosha said indifferently, and suddenly the image of his brother Dmitri flashed through his mind, but only flashed, and though it reminded him of something, of some urgent business that could not be put off a minute longer, some duty, a terrible obligation, this recollection too made no impression on him, did not reach his heart, and in the same instant flew out of his memory and was forgotten. But long afterward Alyosha remembered this.

“Your brother Vanechka once pronounced that I was a ‘talentless liberal sack.’ And you too, once, couldn’t hold back and gave me to understand that I was ‘dishonorable’… So be it! Now let me have a look at your talent and honor” (this Rakitin finished to himself, in a whisper). “Pfoo, listen!” he began again aloud. “Let’s skip the monastery and take the path straight into town… Hm. I ought to drop in on Khokhlakova, by the way. Imagine: I wrote her about everything that happened, and, just think, she answers me in a flash with a note, in pencil (that lady is terribly fond of writing notes), that ‘she never expected such conduct from so venerable an elder as Father Zosima!’ That’s exactly what she wrote: ‘conduct’! She’s angry too, you see; oh, all of you! Wait!” he suddenly shouted again, stopped short, and, holding Alyosha by the shoulder, stopped him too.

“You know, Alyoshka,” he looked searchingly into his eyes, wholly under the impression of a sudden new thought that had suddenly lit him up, and though he was laughing outwardly, he was evidently afraid to say this new sudden thought of his aloud, so little could he still believe in the mood, so wonderful to him and so utterly unexpected, in which he now saw Alyosha, “Alyoshka, do you know where it would be best of all for us to go now?” he brought out at last, timidly and ingratiatingly.

“It’s all the same… wherever you like.”

“Let’s go to Grushenka’s, eh? Will you come?” Rakitin pronounced at last, trembling all over with timid expectation.

“Let’s go to Grushenka’s,” Alyosha answered calmly and at once, and this was so unexpected for Rakitin, that is, such quick and calm consent, that he almost jumped back.

“W-well!… There!” he began to shout in amazement, but suddenly, seizing Alyosha firmly by the arm, he drew him quickly along the path, still terribly afraid that his resolve would vanish. They walked in silence; Rakitin was even afraid to speak.

“And how glad she’ll be, how glad…” he began to mutter, but fell silent again. And it was not at all for Grushenka’s gladness that he was drawing Alyosha to her; he was a serious man and undertook nothing without an aim advantageous to himself. His aim now was twofold: first, vengeful, that is, to see “the disgrace of the righteous” and Alyosha’s probable “fall” “from the saints to the sinners,” which he was already relishing in advance; and second, he had in view here a certain material aim as well, a very advantageous one for him, of which more will be said below.

“So such a moment has come along,” he thought to himself, gaily and spitefully, “and so we’ll seize it by the scruff of the neck, this little moment, for it suits us very well.”