BOOK VI: THE RUSSIAN MONK

Chapter 1: The Elder Zosima and His Visitors

When Alyosha, with anxiety and pain in his heart, entered the elder’s cell, he stopped almost in amazement: instead of a dying sick man, perhaps already unconscious, as he had feared to find him, he suddenly saw him sitting in an armchair, his face, though worn out from weakness, cheerful and gay, surrounded by visitors and engaging with them in quiet and bright conversation. However, he had gotten up from bed not more than a quarter of an hour before Alyosha arrived; his visitors had gathered in his cell earlier and waited for him to wake, trusting in the firm assurance of Father Paissy that “the teacher will undoubtedly get up, in order to converse once more with those dear to his heart, as he himself said, and as he himself promised in the morning.” Father Paissy believed firmly in this promise, and in every word of the departing elder, so much so that if he had seen him already quite unconscious and even no longer breathing, but had his promise that he would arise once more and say farewell to him, he would perhaps not have believed even death itself and would have kept expecting the dying man to come to and fulfill what had been promised. And that morning, as he was falling asleep, the elder Zosima had said positively to him: “I shall not die before I have once more drunk deeply of conversation with you, beloved of my heart, before I have looked upon your dear faces and poured out my soul to you once more.” Those who gathered for this, probably the last of the elder’s talks, were his most faithful friends from long ago. There were four of them: the hieromonks Father Iosif and Father Paissy, the hieromonk Father Mikhail, superior of the hermitage, not yet a very old man, far from very learned, of humble origin, but firm in spirit, with inviolable and simple faith, of stern appearance, but pervaded by a deep tenderness of heart, though he obviously concealed his tenderness even to the point of some sort of shame. The fourth visitor was quite old, a simple little monk from the poorest peasantry, Brother Anfim, all but illiterate, quiet and taciturn, rarely speaking to anyone, the humblest of the humble, who had the look of a man who has been permanently frightened by something great and awesome that was more than his mind could sustain. The elder Zosima very much loved this, as it were, trembling man, and throughout his life treated him with unusual respect, though throughout his life he had perhaps said fewer words to him than to anyone else, despite the fact that he had once spent many years traveling with him all over holy Russia. That was now very long ago, about forty years before, when the elder Zosima first began his monastic effort in a poor, little-known monastery in Kostroma, and when, soon after that, he went to accompany Father Anfim on his journeys collecting donations for their poor Kostroma monastery. Host and visitors all settled in the elder’s second room, where his bed stood, a very small room, as was pointed out earlier, so that the four of them (not counting the novice Porfiry, who remained standing) had barely enough room to place themselves around the elder’s armchair on chairs brought from the first room. Dusk was falling; the room was lighted by oil-lamps and wax candles before the icons. When he saw Alyosha, who became embarrassed as he entered and stopped in the doorway, the elder joyfully smiled to him and held out his hand:

“Greetings, my quiet one, greetings, my dear, so you’ve come. I knew you would come.”

Alyosha went up to him, prostrated before him, and began to weep. Something was bursting from his heart, his soul was trembling, he wanted to sob.

“Come now, don’t weep over me yet,” smiled the elder, laying his right hand on his head, “you see, I am sitting and talking, perhaps I’ll live twenty years more, as that woman wished me yesterday, that kind, dear woman from Vyshegorye, with the girl Lizaveta in her arms. Remember, = Lord, both the mother and the girl Lizaveta!” He crossed himself. “Porfiry, did you take her offering where I told you?”

He was remembering the sixty kopecks donated by the cheerful worshipper the day before, to be given “to someone poorer than I am.” Such offerings are made as a penance, taken upon oneself voluntarily for one reason or another, and always from money gained by one’s own labor. That same evening the elder had sent Porfiry to one of our townspeople, a widow with several children, who had recently lost everything in a fire and afterwards went begging. Porfiry hastened to report that it had been done, and that he had given the money, as he was instructed, “from an unknown benefactress.”

“Stand up, my dear,” the elder continued to Alyosha, “let me look at you. Have you been with your people, did you see your brother?”

It seemed strange to Alyosha that he should ask so firmly and precisely about just one of his brothers—but which one? Perhaps it was for that same brother that he had sent him away both yesterday and today.

“I saw one of my brothers,” Alyosha replied. “I mean the one from yesterday, the older one, before whom I bowed to the ground.”

“I saw him only yesterday; today I simply couldn’t find him,” said Alyosha.

“Make haste and find him, go again tomorrow and make haste, leave everything and make haste. Perhaps you’ll still be able to prevent something terrible. I bowed yesterday to his great future suffering.”

He suddenly fell silent and seemed to lapse into thought. His words were strange. Father Iosif, a witness to the elder’s bow the day before, exchanged glances with Father Paissy. Alyosha could not help himself:

“Father and teacher,” he spoke in great excitement, “your words are too vague ... What is this suffering that awaits him?”

“Do not be curious. Yesterday I seemed to see something terrible ... as if his eyes yesterday expressed his whole fate. He had a certain look ... so that I was immediately horrified in my heart at what this man was preparing for himself. Once or twice in my life I’ve seen people with the same expression in their faces ... as if it portrayed the whole fate of the person, and that fate, alas, came about. I sent you to him, Alexei, because I thought your brotherly countenance would help him. But everything is from the Lord, and all our fates as well. ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’ Remember that. And you, Alexei, I have blessed in my thoughts many times in my life for your face, know that,” the elder said with a quiet smile. “Thus I think of you: you will go forth from these walls, but you will sojourn in the world like a monk. You will have many opponents, but your very enemies will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but through them you will be happy, and you will bless life and cause others to bless it—which is the most important thing. That is how you are. My fathers and teachers,” he turned to his visitors with a tender smile, “till this day I have never said even to him why the face of this youth is so dear to my soul. Only now do I say: his face has been, as it were, a reminder and a prophecy for me. At the dawn of my days, when still a little child, I had an older brother who died in his youth, before my eyes, being only seventeen years old. And later, making my way through life, I gradually came to see that this brother was, as it were, a pointer and a destination from above in my fate, for if he had not appeared in my life, if he had not been at all, then never, perhaps, as I think, would I have entered monastic orders and set out upon this precious path. That first appearance was still in my childhood, and now, on the decline of my path, a repetition of him, as it were, appeared before my eyes. It is a wonder, fathers and teachers, that while he does not resemble him very much in appearance, but only slightly, Alexei seemed to me to resemble him so much spiritually that many times I have actually taken him, as it were, for that youth, my brother, come to me mysteriously at the end of my way, for a certain remembrance and perception, so that I was even surprised at myself and this strange fancy of mine. Do you hear, Porfiry?” he turned to the novice who served him. “Many times I have seen you look distressed, as it were, that I should love Alexei more than you. Now you know why it was so, but I love you, too, know that, and I have grieved many times at your distress. And to you, my dear visitors, I wish to speak of this youth, my brother, for there has been no appearance in my life more precious than this one, more prophetic and moving. My heart feels tender, and at this moment I am contemplating my whole life as if I were living it all anew ...”