I’m not ashamed to tell the story. I’m always injuring myself like that.”
“You’re doing it now,” muttered Miusov, with disgust.
Father Zossima scrutinised them both in silence.
“Am I? Would you believe it, I was aware of that, too, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, and let tell you, indeed, I foresaw I should as soon as I began to speak. And do you know I foresaw, too, that you’d be the first to remark on it. The minute I see my joke isn’t coming off, your reverence, both my cheeks feel as though they were drawn down to the lower jaw and there is almost a spasm in them. That’s been so since I was young, when I had to make jokes for my living in noblemen’s families. I am an inveterate buffoon, and have been from birth up, your reverence, it’s as though it were a craze in me. I dare say it’s a devil within me. But only a little one. A more serious one would have chosen another lodging. But not your soul, Pyotr Alexandrovitch; you’re not a lodging worth having either. But I do believe — I believe in God, though I have had doubts of late. But now I sit and await words of wisdom. I’m like the philosopher, Diderot, your reverence. Did you ever hear, most Holy Father, how Diderot went to see the Metropolitan Platon, in the time of the Empress Catherine? He went in and said straight out, ‘There is no God.’ To which the great bishop lifted up his finger and answered, ‘The fool has said in his heart there is no God and he fell down at his feet on the spot. ‘I believe,’ he cried, ‘and will be christened.’ And so he was. Princess Dashkov was his godmother, and Potyomkin his godfather.”
“Fyodor Pavlovitch, this is unbearable! You know you’re telling lies and that that stupid anecdote isn’t true. Why are you playing the fool?” cried Miusov in a shaking voice.
“I suspected all my life that it wasn’t true,” Fyodor Pavlovitch cried with conviction. “But I’ll tell you the whole truth, gentlemen. Great elder! Forgive me, the last thing about Diderot’s christening I made up just now. I never thought of it before. I made it up to add piquancy. I play the fool, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, to make myself agreeable. Though I really don’t know myself, sometimes, what I do it for. And as for Diderot, I heard as far as ‘the fool hath said in his heart’ twenty times from the gentry about here when I was young. I heard your aunt, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, tell the story. They all believe to this day that the infidel Diderot came to dispute about God with the Metropolitan Platon….”
Miusov got up, forgetting himself in his impatience. He was furious, and conscious of being ridiculous.
What was taking place in the cell was really incredible. For forty or fifty years past, from the times of former elders, no visitors had entered that cell without feelings of the profoundest veneration. Almost everyone admitted to the cell felt that a great favour was being shown him. Many remained kneeling during the whole visit. Of those visitors, many had been men of high rank and learning, some even free thinkers, attracted by curiosity, but all without exception had shown the profoundest reverence and delicacy, for here there was no question of money, but only, on the one side love and kindness, and on the other penitence and eager desire to decide some spiritual problem or crisis. So that such buffoonery amazed and bewildered the spectators, or at least some of them. The monks, with unchanged countenances, waited, with earnest attention, to hear what the elder would say, but seemed on the point of standing up, like Miusov. Alyosha stood, with hanging head, on the verge of tears. What seemed to him strangest of all was that his brother Ivan, on whom alone he had rested his hopes, and who alone had such influence on his father that he could have stopped him, sat now quite unmoved, with downcast eyes, apparently waiting with interest to see how it would end, as though he had nothing to do with it. Alyosha did not dare to look at Rakitin, the divinity student, whom he knew almost intimately. He alone in the monastery knew Rakitin’s thoughts.
“Forgive me,” began Miusov, addressing Father Zossima, “for perhaps I seem to be taking part in this shameful foolery. I made a mistake in believing that even a man like Fyodor Pavlovitch would understand what was due on a visit to so honoured a personage. I did not suppose I should have to apologise simply for having come with him….”
Pyotr Alexandrovitch could say no more, and was about to leave the room, overwhelmed with confusion.
“Don’t distress yourself, I beg.” The elder got on to his feeble legs, and taking Pyotr Alexandrovitch by both hands, made him sit down again. “I beg you not to disturb yourself. I particularly beg you to be my guest.” And with a bow he went back and sat down again on his little sofa.
“Great elder, speak! Do I annoy you by my vivacity?” Fyodor Pavlovitch cried suddenly, clutching the arms of his chair in both hands, as though ready to leap up from it if the answer were unfavourable.
“I earnestly beg you, too, not to disturb yourself, and not to be uneasy,” the elder said impressively. “Do not trouble. Make yourself quite at home. And, above all, do not be so ashamed of yourself, for that is at the root of it all.”
“Quite at home? To be my natural self? Oh, that is much too much, but I accept it with grateful joy. Do you know, blessed father, you’d better not invite me to be my natural self. Don’t risk it…. I will not go so far as that myself. I warn you for your own sake. Well, the rest is still plunged in the mists of uncertainty, though there are people who’d be pleased to describe me for you. I mean that for you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. But as for you, holy being, let me tell you, I am brimming over with ecstasy.”
He got up, and throwing up his hands, declaimed, “Blessed be the womb that bare thee, and the paps that gave thee suck — the paps especially. When you said just now, ‘Don’t be so ashamed of yourself, for that is at the root of it all,’ you pierced right through me by that remark, and read me to the core. Indeed, I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon. So I say, ‘Let me really play the buffoon. I am not afraid of your opinion, for you are every one of you worse than I am.’ That is why I am a buffoon. It is from shame, great elder, from shame; it’s simply over-sensitiveness that makes me rowdy. If I had only been sure that everyone would accept me as the kindest and wisest of men, oh, Lord, what a good man I should have been then! Teacher!” he fell suddenly on his knees, “what must I do to gain eternal life?”
It was difficult even now to decide whether he was joking or really moved.
Father Zossima, lifting his eyes, looked at him, and said with a smile:
“You have known for a long time what you must do. You have sense enough: don’t give way to drunkenness and incontinence of speech; don’t give way to sensual lust; and, above all, to the love of money. And close your taverns. If you can’t close all, at least two or three. And, above all — don’t lie.”
“You mean about Diderot?”
“No, not about Diderot. Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offence, isn’t it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill — he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offence, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness. But get up, sit down, I beg you. All this, too, is deceitful posturing….”
“Blessed man! Give me your hand to kiss.”
Fyodor
