Alyosha’s face again betrayed strong emotion. The corners of his mouth quivered.
“What is it again?” Father Zossima asked, smiling gently. “The worldly may follow the dead with tears, but here we rejoice over the father who is departing. We rejoice and pray for him. Leave me, I must pray. Go, and make haste. Be near your brothers. And not near one only, but near both.”
Father Zossima raised his hand to bless him. Alyosha could make no protest, though he had a great longing to remain. He longed, moreover, to ask the significance of his bowing to Dmitri, the question was on the tip of his tongue, but he dared not ask it. He knew that the elder would have explained it unasked if he had thought fit. But evidently it was not his will. That action had made a terrible impression on Alyosha; he believed blindly in its mysterious significance. Mysterious, and perhaps awful.
As he hastened out of the hermatage precincts to reach the monastery in time to serve at the Father Superior’s dinner, he felt a sudden pang at his heart, and stopped short. He seemed to hear again Father Zossima’s words, foretelling his approaching end. What he had foretold so exactly must infallibly come to pass. Alyosha believed that implicitly. But how could he go? He had told him not to weep, and to leave the monastery. Good God! It was long since Alyosha had known such anguish. He hurried through the copse that divided the monastery from the hermitage, and unable to bear the burden of his thoughts, he gazed at the ancient pines beside the path. He had not far to go — about five hundred paces. He expected to meet no one at that hour, but at the first turn of the path he noticed Rakitin. He was waiting for someone.
“Are you waiting for me?” asked Alyosha, overtaking him.
“Yes,” grinned Rakitin. “You are hurrying to the Father Superior, I know; he has a banquet. There’s not been such a banquet since the Superior entertained the Bishop and General Pahatov, do you remember? I shan’t be there, but you go and hand the sauces. Tell me one thing, Alexey, what does that vision mean? That’s what I want to ask you.”
“What vision?”
“That bowing to your brother, Dmitri. And didn’t he tap the ground with his forehead, too!”
“You speak of Father Zossima?”
“Yes, of Father Zossima,”
“Tapped the ground?”
“Ah, an irreverent expression! Well, what of it? Anyway, what does that vision mean?”
“I don’t know what it means, Misha.”
“I knew he wouldn’t explain it to you There’s nothing wonderful about it, of course, only the usual holy mummery. But there was an object in the performance. All the pious people in the town will talk about it and spread the story through the province, wondering what it meant. To my thinking the old man really has a keen nose; he sniffed a crime. Your house stinks of it.”
Rakitin evidently had something he was eager to speak of.
“It’ll be in your family, this crime. Between your brothers and your rich old father. So Father Zossima flopped down to be ready for what may turn up. If something happens later on, it’ll be: ‘Ah, the holy man foresaw it, prophesied it!’ though it’s a poor sort of prophecy, flopping like that. ‘Ah, but it was symbolic,’ they’ll say, ‘an allegory,’ and the devil knows what all! It’ll be remembered to his glory: ‘He predicted the crime and marked the criminal!’ That’s always the way with these crazy fanatics; they cross themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the temple. Like your elder, he takes a stick to a just man and falls at the feet of a murderer.”
“What crime? What do you mean?”
Alyosha stopped dead. Rakitin stopped, too.
“What murderer? As though you didn’t know! I’ll bet you’ve thought of it before. That’s interesting, too, by the way. Listen, Alyosha, you always speak the truth, though you’re always between two stools. Have you thought of it or not? Answer.”
“I have,” answered Alyosha in a low voice. Even Rakitin was taken aback.
“What? Have you really?” he cried.
“I… I’ve not exactly thought it,” muttered Alyosha, “but directly you began speaking so strangely, I fancied I had thought of it myself.”
“You see? (And how well you expressed it!) Looking at your father and your brother Mitya to-day you thought of a crime. Then I’m not mistaken?”
“But wait, wait a minute,” Alyosha broke in uneasily, “What has led you to see all this? Why does it interest you? That’s the first question.”
“Two questions, disconnected, but natural. I’ll deal with them separately. What led me to see it? I shouldn’t have seen it, if I hadn’t suddenly understood your brother Dmitri, seen right into the very heart of him all at once. I caught the whole man from one trait. These very honest but passionate people have a line which mustn’t be crossed. If it were, he’d run at your father with a knife. But your father’s a drunken and abandoned old sinner, who can never draw the line — if they both themselves go, they’ll both come to grief.”
“No, Misha, no. If that’s all, you’ve reassured me. It won’t come to that.”
“But why are you trembling? Let me tell you; he may be honest, our Mitya (he is stupid, but honest), but he’s — a sensualist. That’s the very definition and inner essence of him. It’s your father has handed him on his low sensuality. Do you know, I simply wonder at you, Alyosha, how you can have kept your purity. You’re a Karamazov too, you know! In your family sensuality is carried to a disease. But now, these three sensualists are watching one another, with their knives in their belts. The three of them are knocking their heads together, and you may be the fourth.”
“You are mistaken about that woman. Dmitri despises her,” said Alyosha, with a sort of shudder.
“Grushenka? No, brother, he doesn’t despise her. Since he has openly abandoned his betrothed for her, he doesn’t despise her. There’s something here, my dear boy, that you don’t understand yet. A man will fall in love with some beauty, with a woman’s body, or even with a part of a woman’s body (a sensualist can understand that), and he’ll abandon his own children for her, sell his father and mother, and his country, Russia, too. If he’s honest, he’ll steal; if he’s humane, he’ll murder; if he’s faithful, he’ll deceive. Pushkin, the poet of women’s feet, sung of their feet in his verse. Others don’t sing their praises, but they can’t look at their feet without a thrill — and it’s not only their feet. Contempt’s no help here, brother, even if he did despise Grushenka. He does, but he can’t tear himself away.”
“I understand that,” Alyosha jerked out suddenly.
“Really? Well, I dare say you do understand, since you blurt it out at the first word,” said Rakitin, malignantly. “That escaped you unawares, and the confession’s the more precious. So it’s a familiar subject; you’ve thought about it already, about sensuality, I mean! Oh, you virgin soul! You’re a quiet one, Alyosha, you’re a saint, I know, but the devil only knows what you’ve thought about, and what you know already! You are pure, but you’ve been down into the depths…. I’ve been watching you a long time. You’re a Karamazov yourself; you’re a thorough Karamazov — no doubt birth and selection have something to answer for. You’re a sensualist from your father, a crazy saint from your mother. Why do you tremble? Is it true, then? Do you know, Grushenka has been begging me to bring you along. ‘I’ll pull off his cassock,’ she says. You can’t think how she keeps begging me to bring you. I wondered why she took such an interest in you. Do you know, she’s