It was the beginning of Lent, and Markel would not fast, he was rude and laughed at it. 'That's all silly twaddle, and there is no God,' he said, horrifying my mother, the servants, and me too. For though I was only nine, I too was aghast at hearing such words. We had four servants, all serfs. I remember my mother selling one of the four, the cook Afimya, who was lame and elderly, for sixty paper roubles, and hiring a free servant to take her place.
In the sixth week in Lent, my brother, who was never strong and had a tendency to consumption, was taken ill. He was tall but thin and delicate-looking, and of very pleasing countenance. I suppose he caught cold, anyway the doctor, who came, soon whispered to my mother that it was galloping consumption, that he would not live through the spring. My mother began weeping, and, careful not to alarm my brother, she entreated him to go to church, to confess and take the sacrament, as he was still able to move about. This made him angry, and he said something profane about the church. He grew thoughtful, however; he guessed at once that he was seriously ill, and that that was why his mother was begging him to confess and take the sacrament. He had been aware, indeed, for a long time past, that he was far from well, and had a year before coolly observed at dinner to your mother and me, 'My life won't be long among you, I may not live another year,' which seemed now like a prophecy.
Three days passed and Holy Week had come. And on Tuesday morning my brother began going to church. 'I am doing this simply for your sake, mother, to please and comfort you,' he said. My mother wept with joy and grief. 'His end must be near,' she thought, 'if there's such a change in him.' But he was not able to go to church long, he took to his bed, so he had to confess and take the sacrament at home.
It was a late Easter, and the days were bright, fine, and full of fragrance. I remember he used to cough all night and sleep badly, but in the morning he dressed and tried to sit up in an arm-chair. That's how I remember him sitting, sweet and gentle, smiling, his face bright and joyous, in spite of his illness. A marvellous change passed over him, his spirit seemed transformed. The old nurse would come in and say, 'Let me light the lamp before the holy image, my dear.' And once he would not have allowed it and would have blown it out.
'Light it, light it, dear, I was a wretch to have prevented you doing it. You are praying when you light the lamp, and I am praying when I rejoice seeing you. So we are praying to the same God.'
Those words seemed strange to us, and mother would go to her room and weep, but when she went in to him she wiped her eyes and looked cheerful. 'Mother, don't weep, darling,' he would say, 'I've long to live yet, long to rejoice with you, and life is glad and joyful.'
'Ah, dear boy, how can you talk of joy when you lie feverish at night, coughing as though you would tear yourself to pieces.'
'Don't cry, mother,' he would answer, 'life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we won't see it; if we would, we should have heaven on earth the next day.'
Everyone wondered at his words, he spoke so strangely and positively; we were all touched and wept. Friends came to see us. 'Dear ones,' he would say to them, 'what have I done that you should love me so, how can you love anyone like me, and how was it I did not know, I did not appreciate it before?'
When the servants came in to him he would say continually, 'Dear, kind people, why are you doing so much for me, do I deserve to be waited on? If it were God's will for me to live, I would wait on you, for all men should wait on one another.'
Mother shook her head as she listened. 'My darling, it's your illness makes you talk like that.'
'Mother darling,' he would say, 'there must be servants and masters, but if so I will be the servant of my servants, the same as they are to me. And another thing, mother, every one of us has sinned against all men, and I more than any.'
Mother positively smiled at that, smiled through her tears. 'Why, how could you have sinned against all men, more than all? Robbers and murderers have done that, but what sin have you committed yet, that you hold yourself more guilty than all?'
'Mother, little heart of mine,' he said (he had begun using such strange caressing words at that time), 'little heart of mine, my joy, believe me, everyone is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything. I don't know how to explain it to you, but I feel it is so, painfully even. And how is it we went on then living, getting angry and not knowing?'
So he would get up every day, more and more sweet and joyous and full of love. When the doctor, an old German called Eisenschmidt, came:
'Well, doctor, have I another day in this world?' he would ask, joking.
'You'll live many days yet,' the doctor would answer, 'and months and years too.'
'Months and years!' he would exclaim. 'Why reckon the days? One day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dear ones, why do we quarrel, try to outshine each other and keep grudges against each other? Let's go straight into the garden, walk and play there, love, appreciate, and kiss each other, and glorify life.'
'Your son cannot last long,' the doctor told my mother, as she accompanied him the door. 'The disease is affecting his brain.'
The windows of his room looked out into the garden, and our garden was a shady one, with old trees in it which were coming into bud. The first birds of spring were flitting in the branches, chirruping and singing at the windows. And looking at them and admiring them, he began suddenly begging their forgiveness too: 'Birds of heaven, happy birds, forgive me, for I have sinned against you too.' None of us could understand that at the time, but he shed tears of joy. 'Yes,' he said, 'there was such a glory of God all about me: birds, trees, meadows, sky; only I lived in shame and dishonoured it all and did not notice the beauty and glory.'
'You take too many sins on yourself,' mother used to say, weeping.
'Mother, darling, it's for joy, not for grief I am crying. Though I can't explain it to you, I like to humble myself before them, for I don't know how to love them enough. If I have sinned against everyone, yet all forgive me, too, and that's heaven. Am I not in heaven now?'
And there was a great deal more I don't remember. I remember I went once into his room when there was no one else there. It was a bright evening, the sun was setting, and the whole room was lighted up. He beckoned me, and I went up to him. He put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my face tenderly, lovingly; he said nothing for a minute, only looked at me like that.
'Well,' he said, 'run and play now, enjoy life for me too.'
I went out then and ran to play. And many times in my life afterwards I remembered even with tears how he told me to enjoy life for him too. There were many other marvellous and beautiful sayings of his, though we did not understand them at the time. He died the third week after Easter. He was fully conscious though he could not talk; up to his last hour he did not change. He looked happy, his eyes beamed and sought us, he smiled at us, beckoned us. There was a great deal of talk even in the town about his death. I was impressed by all this at the time, but not too much so, though I cried a good deal at his funeral. I was young then, a child, but a lasting impression, a hidden feeling of it all, remained in my heart, ready to rise up and respond when the time came. So indeed it happened.
(b) Of the Holy Scriptures in the Life of Father Zossima.
I was left alone with my mother. Her friends began advising her to send me to Petersburg as other parents did. 'You have only one son now,' they said, 'and have a fair income, and you will be depriving him perhaps of a brilliant career if you keep him here.' They suggested I should be sent to Petersburg to the Cadet Corps, that I might afterwards enter the Imperial Guard. My mother hesitated for a long time, it was awful to part with her only child, but she made up her mind to it at last, though not without many tears, believing she was acting for my happiness. She brought me to Petersburg and put me into the Cadet Corps, and I never saw her again. For she too died three years afterwards. She spent those three years mourning and grieving for both of us.
From the house of my childhood I have brought nothing but precious memories, for there are no memories more precious than those of early childhood in one's first home. And that is almost always so if there is any love and harmony in the family at all. Indeed, precious memories may remain even of a bad home, if only the heart knows how to find what is precious. With my memories of home I count, too, my memories of the Bible, which, child as I was, I was very eager to read at home. I had a book of Scripture history then with excellent pictures, called A Hundred and Four Stories from the Old and New Testament, and I learned to read from it. I have it lying on my shelf now; I keep it as a precious relic of the past. But even before I learned to read, I remember first being moved to devotional feeling at eight years old. My mother took me alone to mass (I don't remember where my brother was at the time) on the Monday before Easter. It was a fine day, and I remember to-day, as though I saw it now, how the incense rose from the censer and softly floated upwards and, overhead in the cupola, mingled in rising waves with
