The Brothers Karamazov

n The Servants’ Quarters

The Karamazovs’ house was far from being in the center of the town, but
it was not quite outside it. It was a pleasant‐looking old house of two
stories, painted gray, with a red iron roof. It was roomy and snug, and
might still last many years. There were all sorts of unexpected little
cupboards and closets and staircases. There were rats in it, but Fyodor
Pavlovitch did not altogether dislike them. “One doesn’t feel so
solitary when one’s left alone in the evening,” he used to say. It was
his habit to send the servants away to the lodge for the night and to
lock himself up alone. The lodge was a roomy and solid building in the
yard. Fyodor Pavlovitch used to have the cooking done there, although
there was a kitchen in the house; he did not like the smell of cooking,
and, winter and summer alike, the dishes were carried in across the
courtyard. The house was built for a large family; there was room for
five times as many, with their servants. But at the time of our story
there was no one living in the house but Fyodor Pavlovitch and his son
Ivan. And in the lodge there were only three servants: old Grigory, and
his old wife Marfa, and a young man called Smerdyakov. Of these three
we must say a few words. Of old Grigory we have said something already.
He was firm and determined and went blindly and obstinately for his
object, if once he had been brought by any reasons (and they were often
very illogical ones) to believe that it was immutably right. He was
honest and incorruptible. His wife, Marfa Ignatyevna, had obeyed her
husband’s will implicitly all her life, yet she had pestered him
terribly after the emancipation of the serfs. She was set on leaving
Fyodor Pavlovitch and opening a little shop in Moscow with their small
savings. But Grigory decided then, once for all, that “the woman’s
talking nonsense, for every woman is dishonest,” and that they ought
not to leave their old master, whatever he might be, for “that was now
their duty.”

“Do you understand what duty is?” he asked Marfa Ignatyevna.

“I understand what duty means, Grigory Vassilyevitch, but why it’s our
duty to stay here I never shall understand,” Marfa answered firmly.

“Well, don’t understand then. But so it shall be. And you hold your
tongue.”

And so it was. They did not go away, and Fyodor Pavlovitch promised
them a small sum for wages, and paid it regularly. Grigory knew, too,
that he had an indisputable influence over his master. It was true, and
he was aware of it. Fyodor Pavlovitch was an obstinate and cunning
buffoon, yet, though his will was strong enough “in some of the affairs
of life,” as he expressed it, he found himself, to his surprise,
extremely feeble in facing certain other emergencies. He knew his
weaknesses and was afraid of them. There are positions in which one has
to keep a sharp look out. And that’s not easy without a trustworthy
man, and Grigory was a most trustworthy man. Many times in the course
of his life Fyodor Pavlovitch had only just escaped a sound thrashing
through Grigory’s intervention, and on each occasion the old servant
gave him a good lecture. But it wasn’t only thrashings that Fyodor
Pavlovitch was afraid of. There were graver occasions, and very subtle
and complicated ones, when Fyodor Pavlovitch could not have explained
the extraordinary craving for some one faithful and devoted, which
sometimes unaccountably came upon him all in a moment. It was almost a
morbid condition. Corrupt and often cruel in his lust, like some
noxious insect, Fyodor Pavlovitch was sometimes, in moments of
drunkenness, overcome by superstitious terror and a moral convulsion
which took an almost physical form. “My soul’s simply quaking in my
throat at those times,” he used to say. At such moments he liked to
feel that there was near at hand, in the lodge if not in the room, a
strong, faithful man, virtuous and unlike himself, who had seen all his
debauchery and knew all his secrets, but was ready in his devotion to
overlook all that, not to oppose him, above all, not to reproach him or
threaten him with anything, either in this world or in the next, and,
in case of need, to defend him—from whom? From somebody unknown, but
terrible and dangerous. What he needed was to feel that there was
another man, an old and tried friend, that he might call him in his
sick moments merely to look at his face, or, perhaps, exchange some
quite irrelevant words with him. And if the old servant were not angry,
he felt comforted, and if he were angry, he was more dejected. It
happened even (very rarely however) that Fyodor Pavlovitch went at
night to the lodge to wake Grigory and fetch him for a moment. When the
old man came, Fyodor Pavlovitch would begin talking about the most
trivial matters, and would soon let him go again, sometimes even with a
jest. And after he had gone, Fyodor Pavlovitch would get into bed with
a curse and sleep the sleep of the just. Something of the same sort had
happened to Fyodor Pavlovitch on Alyosha’s arrival. Alyosha “pierced
his heart” by “living with him, seeing everything and blaming nothing.”
Moreover, Alyosha brought with him something his father had never known
before: a complete absence of contempt for him and an invariable
kindness, a perfectly natural unaffected devotion to the old man who
deserved it so little. All this was a complete surprise to the old
profligate, who had dropped all family ties. It was a new and
surprising experience for him, who had till then loved nothing but
“evil.” When Alyosha had left him, he confessed to himself that he had
learnt something he had not till then been willing to learn.

I have mentioned already that Grigory had detested Adelaïda Ivanovna,
the first wife of Fyodor Pavlovitch and the mother of Dmitri, and that
he had, on the contrary, protected Sofya Ivanovna, the poor “crazy
woman,” against his master and any one who chanced to speak ill or
lightly of her. His sympathy for the unhappy wife had become something
sacred to him, so that even now, twenty years after, he could not bear
a slighting allusion to her from any one, and would at once check the
offender. Externally, Grigory was cold, dignified and taciturn, and
spoke, weighing his words, without frivolity. It was impossible to tell
at first sight whether he loved his meek, obedient wife; but he really
did love her, and she knew it.

Marfa Ignatyevna was by no means foolish; she was probably, indeed,
cleverer than her husband, or, at least, more prudent than he in
worldly affairs, and yet she had given in to him in everything without
question or complaint ever since her marriage, and respected him for
his spiritual superiority. It was remarkable how little they spoke to
one another in the course of their lives, and only of the most
necessary daily affairs. The grave and dignified Grigory thought over
all his cares and duties alone, so that Marfa Ignatyevna had long grown
used to knowing that he did not need her advice. She felt that her
husband respected her silence, and took it as a sign of her good sense.
He had never beaten her but once, and then only slightly. Once during
the year after Fyodor Pavlovitch’s marriage with Adelaïda Ivanovna, the
village girls and women—at that time serfs—were called together before
the house to sing and dance. They were beginning “In the Green
Meadows,” when Marfa, at that time a young woman, skipped forward and
danced “the Russian Dance,” not in the village fashion, but as she had
danced it when she was a servant in the service of the rich Miüsov
family, in their private theater, where the actors were taught to dance
by a dancing master from Moscow. Grigory saw how his wife danced, and,
an hour later, at home in their cottage he gave her a lesson, pulling
her hair a little. But there it ended: the beating was never repeated,
and Marfa Ignatyevna gave up dancing.

God had not blessed them with children. One child was born but it died.
Grigory was fond of children, and was not ashamed of showing it. When
Adelaïda Ivanovna had run away, Grigory took Dmitri, then a child of
three years old, combed his hair and washed him in a tub with his own
hands, and looked after him for almost a year. Afterwards he had looked
after Ivan and Alyosha, for which the general’s widow had rewarded him
with a slap in the face; but I have already related all that. The only
happiness his own child had brought him had been in the anticipation of
its birth. When it was born, he was overwhelmed with grief and horror.
The baby had six fingers. Grigory was so crushed by this, that he was
not only silent till the day of the christening, but kept away in the
garden. It was spring, and he spent three days digging the kitchen
garden. The third day was fixed for christening the baby: mean‐time
Grigory had reached a conclusion. Going into the cottage where the
clergy were assembled and the visitors had arrived, including Fyodor
Pavlovitch, who was to stand god‐ father, he suddenly announced that
the baby “ought not to be christened at all.” He announced this
quietly, briefly, forcing out his words, and gazing with dull
intentness at the priest.

“Why not?” asked the priest with good‐humored surprise.

“Because it’s a dragon,” muttered Grigory.

“A dragon? What dragon?”

Grigory did not speak for some time. “It’s a confusion of nature,” he
muttered vaguely, but firmly, and obviously unwilling to say more.

They laughed, and of course christened the poor baby. Grigory prayed
earnestly at the font, but his opinion of the new‐born child remained
unchanged. Yet he did not interfere in any way. As long as the sickly
infant lived he scarcely looked at it, tried indeed not to notice it,
and for the most part kept out of the cottage. But when, at the end of
a fortnight, the baby died of thrush, he himself laid the child in its
little coffin, looked at it in profound grief, and when they were
filling up the shallow little grave he fell on his knees and bowed down
to the earth. He did not for years afterwards mention his child, nor
did Marfa speak of the baby before him, and, even if Grigory were not
present, she never spoke of it above a whisper. Marfa observed that,
from the day of the burial, he devoted himself to “religion,” and took
to reading the Lives of the Saints, for the most part sitting alone
and in silence, and always putting on his big, round, silver‐rimmed
spectacles. He rarely read aloud, only perhaps in Lent. He was fond of
the Book of Job, and had somehow got hold of a copy of the sayings and
sermons of “the God‐fearing Father Isaac the Syrian,” which he read
persistently for years together, understanding very little of it, but
perhaps prizing and loving it the more for that. Of late he had begun
to listen to the doctrines of the sect of Flagellants settled in the
neighborhood. He was evidently shaken by them, but judged it unfitting
to go over to the new faith. His habit of theological reading gave him
an expression of still greater gravity.

He was perhaps predisposed to mysticism. And the birth of his deformed
child, and its death, had, as though by special design, been
accompanied by another strange and marvelous event, which, as he said
later, had left a “stamp” upon his soul. It happened that, on the very
night after the burial of his child, Marfa was awakened by the wail of
a new‐born baby. She was frightened and waked her husband. He listened
and said he thought it was more like some one groaning, “it might be a
woman.” He got up and dressed. It was a rather warm night in May. As he
went down the steps, he distinctly heard groans coming from the garden.
But the gate from the yard into the garden was locked at night, and
there was no other way of entering it, for it was enclosed all round by
a strong, high fence. Going back into the house, Grigory lighted a
lantern, took the garden key, and taking no notice of the hysterical
fears of his wife, who was still persuaded that she heard a child
crying, and that it was her own baby crying and calling for her, went
into the garden in silence. There he heard at once that the groans came
from the bath‐house that stood near the garden gate, and that they were
the groans of a woman. Opening the door of the bath‐house, he saw a
sight which petrified him. An idiot girl, who wandered about the
streets and was known to the whole town by the nickname of Lizaveta
Smerdyastchaya (Stinking Lizaveta), had got into the bath‐ house and
had just given birth to a child. She lay dying with the baby beside
her. She said nothing, for she had never been able to speak. But her
story needs a chapter to itself.