The Brothers Karamazov

Rakitin, as an insignificant person, could not have been invited to dinner, but Father Iosif and Father Paissy, along with another hieromonk, were invited. They were already waiting in the Superior’s dining room when Pyotr Alexandrovich, Kalganov, and Ivan Fyodorovich entered. The landowner Maximov was also waiting to one side. The Father Superior stepped forward into the middle of the room to meet his guests. He was a tall, lean, but still vigorous old man, dark-haired with much gray, and with a long, pious, and important face. He bowed silently to his guests, and this time they came up to receive the blessing. Miusov even risked trying to kiss his hand, but the Superior somehow snatched it away just in time, and the kiss did not take place. But Ivan Fyodorovich and Kalganov this time got the full blessing, that is, with the most simple-hearted and ordinary smack on the hand.

“We really must beg your forgiveness, your noble reverence,”^[64]

Pyotr Alexandrovich began, grinning affably, but still in a solemn and respectful tone, “for arriving by ourselves, without our fellow guest, Fyodor Pavlovich, whom you also invited. He felt obliged to miss your dinner, and not without reason. In the reverend Father Zosima’s cell, being carried away by his unfortunate family quarrel with his son, he spoke certain quite inappropriate words ... quite indecent, that is ... of which it appears”—he glanced at the hieromonks—”your noble reverence has already been informed. And therefore, aware that he was at fault and sincerely repentant, he felt ashamed, and, unable to overcome it, asked us, myself and his son, Ivan Fyodorovich, to declare before you his sincere regret, remorse, and repentance ... In a word, he hopes and wishes to make up for it all later, and for now, asking your blessing, he begs you to forget what has happened...”

Miusov fell silent. Having spoken the final words of his tirade, he was left feeling thoroughly pleased with himself, so much so that not even a trace of his recent irritation remained in his soul. He again fully and sincerely loved mankind. The Superior, having listened to him with a solemn air, inclined his head slightly and spoke in reply:

“I most sincerely regret our guest’s absence. Perhaps over our dinner he would have come to love us, and we him. Gentlemen, welcome to my table.”

He stood facing the icon and began to pray aloud. They all bowed their heads respectfully, and the landowner Maximov even edged somehow especially forward, with his palms pressed together in special reverence.

And at that moment Fyodor Pavlovich cut his last caper. It should be noted that he indeed intended to leave and indeed felt the impossibility, after his shameful behavior in the elder’s cell, of going to dinner at the Superior’s as if nothing had happened. It was not that he was so very much ashamed and blamed himself; perhaps even quite the contrary; but still he felt that to stay for dinner would really be improper. But when his rattling carriage drew up to the porch of the inn, and he was already getting into it, he suddenly stopped. He remembered his own words at the elder’s: “It always seems to me, when I go somewhere, that I am lower than everyone else and that they all take me for a buffoon—so let me indeed play the buffoon, because all of you, to a man, are lower and stupider than I am.” He wanted to revenge himself on all of them for his own nasty tricks. At the same moment he suddenly remembered being asked once before, at some point: “Why do you hate so-and-so so much?” And he had replied then, in a fit of buffoonish impudence: “I’ll tell you why: he never did anything to me, it’s true, but I once played a most shameless nasty trick on him, and the moment I did it, I immediately hated him for it.” Remembering it now, he sniggered softly and maliciously, in a moment’s hesitation. His eyes gleamed, and his lips even trembled. “Since I’ve started it, I may as well finish it,” he decided suddenly. His innermost feeling at that moment might be expressed in the following words: “There is no way to rehabilitate myself now, so why don’t I just spit all over them without any shame; tell them, ‘You’ll never make me ashamed, and that’s that!’” He ordered the coachman to wait, and with quick steps went back to the monastery, straight to the Superior’s. He did not quite know what he was going to do, but he knew that he was no longer in control of himself—a little push, and in no time he would reach the utmost limits of some abomination—only an abomination, by the way, never anything criminal, never an escapade punishable by law. In that respect he always managed to restrain himself, and even amazed himself in some cases. He appeared in the Superior’s dining room precisely at the moment when the prayer was over and everyone was moving to the table. He stopped on the threshold, looked around at the gathering, and laughed his long, insolent, wicked little laugh, staring them all valiantly in the face.