The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Andrew R. MacAndrew

himself, although, on the whole, he seemed quite satisfied with it. He particularly liked to point to his nose which, though not very long, was remarkably narrow and beaked. “It is a genuine Roman nose,” he would say, “and, with my Adam’s apple, it makes me look like a Roman patrician of the decadent period.” He seemed very proud of this.
    Shortly after he had been shown his mother’s grave, Alyosha suddenly announced to his father that he wanted to enter the monastery and that the monks were willing to accept him as a novice. He explained that this was his fervent desire and that he was asking for paternal consent. Mr. Karamazov was already aware of the impression made by the elder, Zosima, who was living in the monastery’s hermitage, on his “gentle boy.”
    “Old Zosima is certainly the most honest among the monks,” he said, after listening to Alyosha’s request in thoughtful silence. He seemed hardly surprised. “Hm . . . so that’s what you want, my gentle boy!” He had been drinking and suddenly his face dissolved into a wide, half-drunken smile, in which there was a spark of besotted cunning. “Hm . . . you may not believe it, but I’ve had a feeling for a long time that you’d come up with something like this in the end. Well, if that’s what you want, I have no objections. You have those two thousand rubles of your own, for dowry if you need it, and, for my part, you can be sure I’ll never let you down. I’ll even pay for your admission if they ask for it. Of course, if they don’t ask for it, there’s no reason for us to force it on them, is there? Why, you’re no more expensive to keep than a canary—two grains a week—that’s all you need . . . Hm-hm . . . now let me tell you that I know of a monastery with a nice little settlement nearby inhabited only by women, the monastery wives—that’s what the people of the district call them, for everyone knows about it. I’d say there are thirty of those ‘wives’ in the settlement. I’ve been there, and it was very interesting—in its own way, of course, just as a change. It’s a bit spoilt by Russian nationalism, though: there’s still not a single Frenchwoman there, although they could easily afford some—it’s a very prosperous monastery indeed. But French girls will soon hear of it and they’ll come of their own accord. But there’s nothing like that in our monastery—no monastery wives although there are two hundred monks. It’s all honest. They keep their fasts. Well, I must say . . . hm . . . So you want to be a monk? I’m certainly sorry you want to leave, Alyosha—it’s surprising how attached to you I’ve become . . . It will have one advantage, though: you can pray for us sinners, for we may have gone too far in our sinning. Yes, sir, I’ve wondered for a long time whether anyone would ever pray for me, whether there was a man in the world who would want to. Ah, my dear boy, you wouldn’t believe how stupid I am on that point. Awfully stupid. But stupid as I am about these things, I do think of them now and then—for you wouldn’t expect me to think of them all the time, would you? Well then, sometimes I reason like this: ‘As soon as I die, the devils are sure to drag me down to their place with their hooks.’ But then I think: ‘What hooks? What are they made of? Are they iron hooks? If so, where were they forged? Do they have some kind of ironworks down there, or what?’ Why, I’m sure the monks in the monastery take it for granted that hell has, for instance, a ceiling. But it would be easier for me to imagine a hell without a ceiling—that would be more refined, more enlightened, more Lutheran, that is. And what difference does it make whether hell has a ceiling or not? Oh no, it damn well makes all the difference in the world, because if there’s no ceiling, there aren’t any hooks either, and if there aren’t any hooks, then the whole idea goes to pieces. And that too is hard to believe