Read Online The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Andrew R. MacAndrew - Free Book Online Page B

flocked there from all over Russia to see him and ask for his blessing. They prostrated themselves before him, wept, kissed his feet and the earth on which he stood; wailing peasant women held up their children and led sick and hysterical village girls to him. The elder spoke to them, said a short prayer, blessed them, and sent them away in peace. Later, though, he was so weak after his bouts of illness that he hardly had the strength to leave his cell, and there were times when pilgrims had to wait several days for him to appear. Alyosha never felt the least surprise that all these people should love the elder, that they should prostrate themselves before him, weeping with emotion at the mere sight of his face. Oh, he understood very well that for the meek soul of a simple Russian, exhausted by grief and hardship and, above all, by constant injustice and sin, his own or the world’s, there was no stronger need than to find a holy shrine or a saint to prostrate himself before and to worship. “Even though sin and injustice and temptation are all around us, we know that there is on this earth a holy man, a saint who is just and knows the truth, and this means that truth and justice have not vanished from the earth and so will come to us too and rule over all the world, as has been promised.” Alyosha knew that this was what the humble folk felt, that this was how they thought. This, he knew with his reason, but that Zosima was such a saint, a guardian of divine justice—that was something Alyosha never doubted, something that he felt spontaneously, like all the weeping peasants and the sick women who held their children up to the elder. And the conviction that, after his death, Zosima would confer great glory on the monastery was, perhaps, stronger in Alyosha than in anyone else at the monastery. Indeed, a strange, profound, overwhelming ecstasy had burned in him more and more powerfully of late. He was not in the least troubled by the fact that Zosima stood before him an isolated phenomenon: “It makes no difference, he is a saint, and his heart knows the secret of regeneration for all, the power that will finally establish the rule of truth on earth. Then all men will be saints and will love one another, and there will be no poor and no rich, no mighty and no humiliated—all will be the children of God and the true kingdom of Christ will come.” This is what Alyosha felt in his heart.
    The arrival of his brothers, whom, before this, he had not known at all, seemed to make a tremendous impression on Alyosha. He got to know his half brother Dmitry more quickly than his brother Ivan and felt closer to him, although Dmitry arrived later. Alyosha was very eager to get to know Ivan, but although his brother had been in town for two whole months and they saw each other quite often, they still seemed unable to really make friends. Alyosha himself was silent and reserved; he seemed a little embarrassed and as if he were expecting something from his brother, and Ivan, although at first Alyosha felt his long and scrutinizing looks resting upon him, soon appeared to lose all interest in him. Alyosha, who was rather taken aback by this change, ascribed his brother’s distant attitude to the difference in their ages and, above all, in their education. But at times he also suspected that Ivan’s lack of interest and sympathy might be due to other causes about which he knew nothing. He somehow felt that Ivan was absorbed in something within himself, something very important, that he was pursuing some goal, perhaps a very difficult goal, which simply left no room for Alyosha in his thoughts, and that this explained why he looked at him so absentmindedly. Alyosha also wondered whether the cultured atheist might not feel some contempt for a silly novice. He knew very well that his brother was an atheist and could not possibly take offense at his brother’s contempt, if contempt there was; yet he was in a state of acute discomfort, for