It appears that Alyosha was strongly impressed by the arrival of his two brothers, whom until then he had not known at all. He became friends more quickly and intimately with his half-brother, Dmitri Fyodorovich—though he arrived later—than with his other brother, Ivan Fyodorovich. He was terribly interested in getting to know his brother Ivan, but though the latter had already spent two months in our town, and they met fairly often, they still somehow were not close: Alyosha was reticent himself, and seemed as if he were waiting for something, as if he were ashamed of something; and his brother Ivan, though Alyosha noticed how he looked long and curiously at him at first, soon seemed even to have stopped thinking about him. Alyosha noticed this with some puzzlement. He attributed his brother’s indifference to the disparity in their ages and especially in their education. But he also thought that, perhaps, such scant curiosity and interest in him on Ivan’s part might be caused by something completely unknown to him. For some reason he kept thinking that Ivan was preoccupied with something, something inward and important, that he was striving towards some goal, possibly a very difficult one, so that he simply could not be bothered with him, and that that was the only reason why he looked at Alyosha so absently. Alyosha also kept wondering whether the learned atheist did not feel some sort of contempt for him, the silly little novice. He knew perfectly well that his brother was an atheist. This contempt, if there were any, could not offend him, but still he was waiting with some sort of anxious puzzlement, which he himself did not understand, waiting for his brother to move closer to him. His brother Dmitri Fyodorovich spoke of their brother Ivan with the deepest respect; he talked about him with a special sort of feeling. It was from him that Alyosha learned all the details of the important affair that had recently joined the two older brothers with such a wonderful and close bond. Dmitri’s rapturous words about his brother Ivan were all the more significant in Alyosha’s eyes since, compared with Ivan, Dmitri was an almost entirely uneducated man, and the two placed side by side would seem to present so striking a contrast, in personality as well as in character, that it would perhaps be impossible to imagine two men more unlike each other.
It was at that time that the meeting, or one might better say the family gath-ering, of all the members of this discordant family, which had such an extraordinary influence on Alyosha, took place in the elder’s cell. The pretext for the gathering, in reality, was false. Precisely at that time, the disagreements between Dmitri Fyodorovich and his father, Fyodor Pavlovich, over the inheritance and the property accounts had, it seemed, reached an impossible point. Their relations sharpened and became unbearable. Fyodor Pavlovich was apparently the first to suggest, apparently as a joke, that they all get together in the elder Zosima’s cell, and, without resorting to his direct mediation, still come to some decent agreement, since the dignity and personality of the elder might be somehow influential and conciliatory. Dmitri Fyodorovich, who had never been at the elder’s and had never even seen him, thought, of course, that they wanted to frighten him with the elder, as it were, but since he secretly reproached himself for a number of especially harsh outbursts recently in his arguments with his father, he decided to accept the challenge. Incidentally, he did not live in his father’s house, like Ivan Fyodorovich, but by himself at the other end of town. It happened that Pyotr Alexandrovich Miusov, who was living among us at the time, especially seized upon this idea of Fyodor Pavlovich’s. A liberal of the forties and fifties, a freethinker and an atheist, Miusov, perhaps out of boredom, or perhaps for some lighthearted sport, enthusiastically took part in the affair. He suddenly wanted to have a look at the monastery and the “saint.” Since his old feud with the monastery was still going on, and the lawsuit over the boundaries of their land and some rights for cutting wood in the forest and fishing in the river and so on was still being dragged out, he hastened to take advantage of this meeting under the pretext of an intention to settle everything with the Father Superior and end all their controversies amicably. A visitor with such good intentions would, of course, be received in the monastery more attentively and deferentially than one who was merely curious. All these considerations could result in establishing in the monastery a certain inside influence over the ailing elder, who lately almost never left his cell and refused, because of his illness, to receive even ordinary visitors. In the end, the elder agreed to see them, and the day was fixed. “Who made me a divider over them?”[22] he merely remarked to Alyosha with a smile.
When he heard about this meeting, Alyosha was very disturbed. If any of these quarrelers and litigants could take such a council seriously, it was undoubtedly only his brother Dmitri. The rest would come with frivolous purposes, perhaps offensive to the elder—this Alyosha knew. His brother Ivan and Miusov would come out of curiosity, perhaps of the crudest sort, and his father, perhaps, for some buffoonery or theatrics. Oh, although Alyosha said nothing, he already knew his father through and through. I repeat, this boy was not at all as naive as everyone thought he was. He waited for the appointed day with a heavy heart. No doubt he was concerned within himself, in his heart, that somehow all these family disagreements should end. Nevertheless, his greatest concern was for the elder: he trembled for him, for his glory; he feared any insult to him, especially Miusov’s refined, polite jibes and the haughty innuendos of the learned Ivan, as he pictured it all to himself. He even wanted to risk warning the elder, to tell him something about these persons who were soon to arrive, but he thought better of it and kept silent. He only sent word to his brother Dmitri, through an acquaintance, on the eve of the appointed day, that he loved him and expected him to keep his promise. Dmitri thought for a moment, because he could not recall what he had promised, and replied in a letter that he would do his best to restrain himself “in the face of vileness,” and that although he deeply respected the elder and their brother Ivan, he was convinced that the whole thing was either some sort of trap, or an unworthy farce. “Nevertheless, I would sooner bite off my own tongue than fail to show respect for the saintly man you esteem so highly,” Dmitri concluded his note. Alyosha was not greatly encouraged by it.
BOOK II: AN INAPPROPRIATE GATHERING
Chapter 1: They Arrive at the Monastery
The day was beautiful, warm and clear. It was the end of August. The meeting with the elder had been appointed for immediately after the late liturgy, about half past eleven. Our monastery visitors did not, however, appear at the liturgy, but arrived just as the show was over. They drove up in two carriages: in the first, a jaunty barouche drawn by a pair of expensive horses, sat Pyotr Alexandrovich Miusov with a distant relative of his, a very young man, about twenty years old, Pyotr Fomich Kalganov. This young man was preparing to enter university, whereas Miusov, with whom he was for some reason meanwhile living, was tempting him to go abroad with him, to Zurich or Jena, to enter university and pursue his studies there. The young man was still undecided. He was thoughtful and, as it were, distracted. He had a nice face, was strongly built and rather tall. His gaze sometimes acquired a strange fixity: like all very distracted people, he would sometimes look directly at you, and for a long time, without seeing you at all. He was taciturn and somewhat awkward, but occasionally—only, by the way, when he was alone with someone—he would suddenly become terribly talkative, impulsive, giggly, laughing sometimes for no reason at all. But as quickly and suddenly as his animation was born, it would also quickly and suddenly die out. He was always well and even elegantly dressed; he already possessed some independent means and had expectations of much more. He was friendly with Alyosha.