The Brothers Karamazov

“That’s quite true, I’m not a king. And just imagine, Pyotr Alexandrovich, I even knew it myself, by God! You see, I’m always saying something out of place! Your reverence,” he exclaimed with a sort of instant pathos, “you see before you a buffoon! Verily, a buffoon! Thus I introduce myself! It’s an old habit, alas! And if I sometimes tell lies inappropriately, I do it even on purpose, on purpose to be pleasant and make people laugh. One ought to be pleasant, isn’t that so? I came to a little town seven years ago, I had a little business there, and went around with some of their merchants. So we called on the police commissioner, the ispravnik, because we wanted to see him about something and invite him to have dinner with us. Out comes the ispravnik, a tall man, fat, blond, and gloomy—the most dangerous type in such cases— it’s the liver, the liver. I spoke directly with him, you know, with the familiarity of a man of the world: ‘Mr. Ispravnik,’ I said to him, ‘be, so to speak, our Napravnik!’^[29]

‘What do you mean, your Napravnik?’ I can see from the first split second that it’s not coming off, that he’s standing there seriously, but I keep on: ‘I wanted,’ I say, ‘to make a joke, for our general amusement. Mr. Napravnik is our famous Russian Kapellmeister, and we, for the harmony of our enterprise, also precisely need a sort of Kapellmeister, as it were . . .’ I explained it all and compared it quite reasonably, didn’t I? I beg your pardon,’ he says, ‘I am an ispravnik, and I will not allow you to use my title for your puns. ‘ He turned around and was about to walk away. I started after him, calling out: ‘Yes, yes, you are an ispravnik, not Napravnik.’ ‘No,’ he says, ‘have it your way. I am Napravnik.’ And just imagine, our deal fell through! And that’s how I am, it’s always like that with me. I’m forever damaging myself with my own courtesy! Once, this was many years ago now, I said to an influential person, ‘Your wife, sir, is a ticklish woman,’ referring to her honor, her moral qualities, so to speak. And he suddenly retorted, ‘Did you tickle her?’ I couldn’t help myself; why not a little pleasant banter, I thought? ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I did tickle her, sir.’ Well, at that he gave me quite a tickling...! But it was a long time ago, so I’m not even ashamed to tell about it. I’m always damaging myself like that!”

“You’re doing it now, too,” Miusov muttered in disgust.

The elder silently looked from one to the other.

“Really! Imagine, I knew it all along, Pyotr Alexandrovich, and, you know I even had a feeling that I was doing it just as I started speaking, and you know, I even had a feeling that you would be the first to point it out to me. In those seconds when I see that my joke isn’t going over, my cheeks, reverend lather, begin to stick to my lower gums; it feels almost like a cramp; I’ve had it since my young days, when I was a sponger on the gentry and made my living by sponging. I’m a natural-born buffoon, I am, reverend father, just like a holy fool; I won’t deny that there’s maybe an unclean spirit living in me, too not a very high caliber one, by the way, otherwise he would have chosen grander quarters, only not you, Pyotr Alexandrovich, your quarters are none too grand either. But to make up for it, I believe, I believe in God. It’s only lately that I’ve begun to have doubts, but to make up for it I’m sitting and waiting to hear lofty words. I am, reverend father, like the philosopher Diderot.^[30] Do you know, most holy father, how Diderot the philosopher came to see Metropolitan Platon^[31] in the time of the empress Catherine? He walks in and says right off: ‘There is no God.’ To which the great hierarch raises his finger and answers: ‘The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.’^[32] Right then and there our man fell at his feet: ‘I believe,’ he cries, ‘I will accept baptism!’ And so they baptized him at once. Princess Dashkova^[33] was his godmother, and his godfather was Potiomkin . . .”^[34] “Fyodor Pavlovich, this is unbearable! You know yourself that you are lying, that your silly story isn’t true. Why are you clowning?” Miusov said in a trembling voice, losing all control of himself.