IV. Cana of Galilee

It was already very late by monastery standards when Alyosha came to the hermitage; the gatekeeper let him in by a special way. It had already struck nine—the hour of general rest and repose after a day so troubling for everyone. Alyosha timidly opened the door and stepped into the elder’s cell, where his coffin now stood. Apart from Father Paisy, who was reading the Gospel over the coffin in solitude, and the young novice Porfiry, who was worn out from the previous night’s talk and the day’s bustle and was sleeping on the floor in the other room the sound sleep of youth, there was no one in the cell. Father Paisy, though he heard Alyosha come in, did not even look in his direction. Alyosha turned to the right of the door, into the corner, knelt down, and began to pray. His soul was overflowing, but somehow confusedly, and no single sensation stood out and made itself felt too strongly; on the contrary, one displaced another in a kind of quiet, even rotation. But there was sweetness in his heart, and, strangely, Alyosha was not surprised at it. Again he saw before him this coffin, this dead man, so precious to him, covered all over, but there was no weeping, aching, tormenting pity in his soul, as there had been that morning. On coming in just now he had fallen down before the coffin as before a holy thing, but joy, joy was shining in his mind and in his heart. One of the cell’s windows stood open, and the air was fresh and coolish—“so the smell has grown still stronger, if they’ve decided to open the window,” thought Alyosha. But even this thought of the odor of corruption, which only a little while ago had seemed to him so terrible and inglorious, did not stir up in him now the anguish and indignation of earlier. He began quietly to pray, but soon felt himself that he was praying almost mechanically. Fragments of thoughts flashed through his soul, flared up like little stars and went out at once, giving way to others, but in return something whole, firm, assuaging reigned in his soul, and he was aware of it himself. At times he would begin a prayer ardently, he so wanted to give thanks and to love… But having begun the prayer, he would suddenly pass on to something else, fall to thinking, forget both the prayer and what had interrupted it. He began to listen to what Father Paisy was reading, but, being very tired, little by little he began to doze…

“And on the third day a marriage took place in Cana of Galilee,” Father Paisy was reading, “and the mother of Jesus was there. And Jesus too was invited to the marriage, and his disciples.”

“A marriage? What is that… a marriage…” it swept like a whirlwind through Alyosha’s mind. “She has happiness too… she has gone off to the feast… No, she didn’t take the knife, she didn’t take the knife… That was only a ‘pitiful’ word… Well… pitiful words must be forgiven, without fail. Pitiful words comfort the soul… without them grief would be too heavy for people. Rakitin went off down the side street. As long as Rakitin thinks about his grievances, he will always be going off down a side street… But the road… the road is broad, straight, bright, crystal, and the sun is at the end of it… Eh?… What are they reading?”

“…And when the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him: They have no wine…” Alyosha heard.

“Ah yes, I missed something there, and I didn’t want to miss it, I love this place: this is Cana of Galilee, the first miracle… Ah, that miracle, ah, that lovely miracle! Not grief but human joy Christ visited when he worked a miracle for the first time, he helped human joy… ‘Whoever loves people loves their joy too…’ The dead man used to repeat that every minute, it was one of his chief thoughts… One cannot live without joy, says Mitya… Yes, Mitya… Everything that is true and beautiful is always full of all-forgiveness—that again he used to say…”

“…Jesus said to her: Woman, what is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come. His mother said to the servants: Whatever he tells you, do it.”

“Do it… Joy, the joy of some poor, very poor people… Of course poor, if there wasn’t even enough wine for a wedding… The historians write, you know, that around the Lake of Gennesaret and in all those parts there lived at that time the very poorest population one can imagine… And that other great heart of that other great being who was there too, his mother, knew that he had come down then not only for his great and terrible feat, but that his heart was open even to the simple, artless merriment of some dark, dark and guileless beings, who had kindly invited him to their poor marriage. ‘My hour has not yet come,’ he says with a quiet smile (he surely smiled at her meekly)… Really, can it be that he came down to earth to multiply the wine at poor weddings? And yet he went and did it at her request… Ah, he’s reading again.”

“…Jesus said to them: Fill the water jars with water. And they filled them to the brim.

“And he said to them: Now draw some out and carry it to the steward of the feast. And they carried it.

“When the steward of the feast had tasted the wine that had been water, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward of the feast called the bridegroom

“And said to him: Every man sets out the good wine first, and when the guests have drunk their fill, then the poorer; but you have kept the good wine until now.”

“But what is this, what is this? Why are the walls moving apart… Ah yes… why, this is the marriage, a wedding… yes, of course. There are the guests, there sit the newlyweds, and the merry crowd, and… but where is the most wise steward of the feast? But who is that? Who? The walls have moved apart again… Who is that getting up there from the great table? What… He is here too? But he is in the coffin… Yet he is here too… he has got up, he has seen me, he is coming this way… Lord!…

“Yes, to him, he has come up to him, the dried-up little old man, with fine little wrinkles on his face, joyful and quietly laughing. There is no coffin anymore, and he is in the same clothes as yesterday when he sat with them, when the visitors had gathered around him. His face is all uncovered, his eyes are shining. How can this be, so he too is at the feast, he too has been invited to the marriage in Cana of Galilee…

“‘I too, my dear, I too am invited, invited and called,’ a quiet voice sounds above him. ‘Why have you hidden yourself here, so that no one can see you… you come and join us too.’

“His voice, the voice of the elder Zosima… And how could it not be he, if he is calling? The elder raised Alyosha with his hand, and Alyosha rose from his knees.

“‘We are making merry,’ the dried-up little old man goes on, ‘we are drinking new wine, the wine of a new, great joy; do you see how many guests there are? Here are the bridegroom and the bride, here is the most wise steward of the feast, tasting the new wine. Why do you wonder at me? I gave away an onion, and so I am here too. And many here only gave away an onion each, only one little onion each… What are our deeds? And you too, my quiet one, you too, my meek boy, you too were able today to give an onion to a woman who hungered. Begin, my dear, begin, my meek one, your work!… And do you see our sun, do you see him?’

“‘I am afraid… I dare not look…’ whispered Alyosha.

“‘Do not be afraid of him. He is terrible in his greatness before us, awful in his loftiness, but infinitely merciful, out of love he became like us and is making merry with us, he is turning water into wine so that the guests’ joy may not be cut short, he is waiting for new guests, he is ceaselessly calling new ones, and now forever and ever. See, they are bringing the new wine, do you see, they are bringing the vessels…’”

Something was burning in Alyosha’s heart, something suddenly filled it to the point of pain, tears of rapture were bursting from his soul… He stretched out his arms, cried out, and woke up…

Again the coffin, the open window, and the quiet, grave, distinct reading of the Gospel. But Alyosha was no longer listening to what was being read. Strange, he had fallen asleep on his knees, and now he was standing on his feet, and suddenly, as if tearing himself from the spot, he went up close to the coffin with three firm, rapid steps. He even brushed Father Paisy with his shoulder and did not notice it. Father Paisy raised his eyes from the book to him for an instant, but at once looked away again, realizing that something strange had happened to the young man. For half a minute Alyosha gazed at the coffin, at the dead man lying stretched out in it, covered, motionless, with the icon on his breast and the cowl with the eight-pointed cross on his head. Only a moment ago he had heard his voice, and it still sounded in his ears. He was still listening, he was still waiting for the sounds… but suddenly, turning sharply, he went out of the cell.

He did not stop even on the porch, but went quickly down the steps. His soul, full of rapture, thirsted for freedom, space, breadth. Above him the vault of heaven, full of quiet shining stars, was spread wide and boundless. From the zenith to the horizon the Milky Way, still faint, ran double. The night, fresh and still to the point of motionlessness, lay over the earth. Against the sapphire sky shone the white towers and the golden domes of the cathedral. The luxuriant autumn flowers in the beds around the house had fallen asleep till morning. The silence of the earth seemed to be merging with the silence of the heavens, the mystery of the earth was touching the mystery of the stars… Alyosha stood, gazed, and suddenly, as if his legs had been cut from under him, threw himself down upon the earth.

He did not know why he was embracing it, he did not give himself any account of why he so irresistibly longed to kiss it, to kiss all of it, but he kissed it weeping, sobbing, and drenching it with his tears, and vowed ecstatically to love it, to love it forever and ever. “Drench the earth with the tears of your joy, and love these tears of yours…” rang out in his soul. What was he weeping about? Oh, in his rapture he was weeping even over those stars that shone on him from the abyss, and he “was not ashamed of this ecstasy.” It was as if threads from all those countless worlds of God had come together all at once in his soul, and it was all trembling, “in contact with other worlds.” He wanted to forgive everyone and for everything and to ask forgiveness, oh! not for himself, but for everyone, for all and for everything, “and others are asking for me,” it rang out again in his soul. But with every moment he felt clearly and as if tangibly how something firm and unshakable, like that vault of heaven, was descending into his soul. Some sort of idea, as it were, was coming to reign in his mind—and now for his whole life and forever and ever. He had fallen upon the earth a weak youth, and he rose up a fighter, steadfast for the rest of his life, and he knew and felt this suddenly, in that same moment of his rapture. And never, never in all his life afterward could Alyosha forget that moment. “Someone visited my soul in that hour,” he would say afterward, with firm faith in his words…

Three days later he left the monastery, which was in accord with the word of his late elder, who had bidden him to “abide in the world.”