The Brothers Karamazov

And then, quite soon after finding his mother’s grave, Alyosha suddenly announced to him that he wanted to enter the monastery and that the monks were prepared to accept him as a novice. He explained further that this was his highest desire and that he was asking for his solemn consent as his father. The old man already knew that the elder Zosima, who was seeking salvation in the monastery hermitage, had made a particular impression on his “quiet boy.”

“That elder is, of course, the most honest man there,” he remarked, having listened to Alyosha silently and thoughtfully, almost, however, as if he were not at all surprised by his request. “Hm ... so that’s where you want to go, my quiet boy!” He was half drunk, and suddenly smiled his long, half-drunken smile, which was not devoid of cunning and drunken slyness. “Hm ... I even had a feeling you’d end up with something like that, can you imagine? That’s just where you were headed. Well, why not? After all, you do have your little two thousand—there’s a dowry for you!—and I, my angel, will never forget you, I’ll pay in for you now, too, whatever’s due, if they ask. And if they don’t ask, well, we can’t go pushing ourselves on them, can we? You spend money like a canary, anyway, two little grains a week ... Hm. You know, there’s one monastery that has a little village nearby, and everybody around knows that only ‘monastery wives’ live there, that’s what they call them, about thirty little bits of wives, I’d say ... I was there, and, you know, it’s interesting—in its own way, of course, for the sake of variety. The only trouble is this terrible Russianism, there are no French women at all, not so far, and there could be, the money’s there, plenty of it. Once the word gets around, they’ll come. Well, there’s nothing like that here, no monastery wives, and about two hundred monks. It’s honest. They fast. I admit it ... Hm. So you want to go to the monks? You know, I’m sorry for you, Alyosha, truly, believe me, I’ve grown to love you ... However, it’s a good opportunity: you can pray for us sinners, we’ve sat around sinning too much. I keep thinking all the time: who is ever going to pray for me? Is there anyone in the world? My dear boy, you know, I’m terribly stupid about these things, would you believe it? Terribly stupid. You see, stupid as I am, I still keep thinking about it, I keep thinking, every once in a while, of course, not all the time. Surely it’s impossible, I think, that the devils will forget to drag me down to their place with their hooks when I die. And then I think: hooks? Where do they get them? What are they made of? Iron? Where do they forge them? Have they got some kind of factory down there? You know, in the monastery the monks probably believe there’s a ceiling in hell, for instance. Now me, I’m ready to believe in hell, only there shouldn’t be any ceiling; that would be, as it were, more refined, more enlightened, more Lutheran, in other words. Does it really make any difference—with a ceiling or without a ceiling? But that’s what the damned question is all about! Because if there’s no ceiling, then there are no hooks. And if there are no hooks, the whole thing falls apart, which, again, is unlikely, because then who will drag me down with hooks, because if they don’t drag me down, what then, and where is there any justice in the world? Il faudrait les inventer,^[10] those hooks, just for me, for me alone, because you have no idea, Alyosha, what a stinker I am...!” “No, there are no hooks there,” Alyosha said quietly and seriously, studying his father.

“Yes, yes. Only shadows of hooks. I know, I know. That’s how one Frenchman described hell: J’ai vu l’ombre d’un cocher, qui avec l’ombre d’une brosse frottait l’ombre d’une carrosse.^[11] How do you know, my dear, that there are no hooks? When you’ve been with the monks for a while, you’ll sing a different tune. But go, get to the truth there, and come back and tell me: anyway it will be easier to go to the other world knowing for certain what it’s like. And it will be more proper for you to live with the monks than with me, a little old drunk man with his young girls ... though you’re like an angel, nothing touches you. Well, maybe nothing will touch you there either, that’s why I’m letting you do it, because I hope for that. The devil hasn’t made off with your wits. You’ll burn and burn out, you’ll get cured and come back. And I’ll be waiting for you: I really feel you’re the only one in the world who hasn’t condemned me, you are, my dear boy, I feel it, how can I not feel it...!”

He even began to snivel. He was sentimental. He was wicked and sentimental.

Chapter 5: Elders