I. Тлетворный дух

As is known, the bodies of dead monks and schemamonks are not washed.

"When one of the monks departeth unto the Lord (so it is said in the Great Book of Needs), then the appointed monk (that is, the one designated for this) wipes his body with warm water, first tracing with a sponge (that is, a Greek sponge) a cross upon the brow of the deceased, upon his breast, upon his hands and feet and knees, and nothing more."

All this Father Paissy himself performed over the departed.

After the wiping he clothed him in the monastic garb and wrapped him in the mantle; for which, according to the rule, he slit it in several places, so as to wrap it crosswise.

On his head he set the cowl with the eight-pointed cross.

The cowl was left open, but the face of the departed was covered with the black veil.

Into his hands they laid an icon of the Saviour.

In this state, toward morning, they transferred him into the coffin (long since made ready beforehand).

The coffin they resolved to leave in the cell (in the first, large room, the very one in which the late elder had received both the brethren and the laity) for the whole day.

Since by his rank the departed was a hieroschemamonk, it was fitting that hieromonks and hierodeacons should read over him not the Psalter but the Gospel.

The reading was begun, immediately after the requiem, by Father Iosif; while Father Paissy, who himself wished to read afterward through the whole day and the whole night, was for the time being still very busy and preoccupied together with the Father Superior of the hermitage, for there had suddenly begun to make itself felt — and the further it went, the more so — both among the monastery brethren and among the laity who were arriving in crowds from the monastery guest-houses and from the town, something extraordinary, a kind of unheard-of and "unseemly" agitation and impatient expectation.

Both the Superior and Father Paissy made every effort to calm, so far as they could, those who were so fussily worked up.

When the day had already grown light enough, some from the town even began to arrive who had brought their sick along with them, especially children — as if they had been waiting on purpose precisely for this moment, evidently trusting in an immediate power of healing that, by their faith, could not be slow to reveal itself.

And it was only then that it came to light to what degree everyone among us had grown accustomed, even during his lifetime, to regard the departed elder as an unquestionable and great saint.

And among those arriving were by no means people of the common folk alone.

This great expectation of the faithful, displayed so hastily and so nakedly, even with impatience and almost with insistence, struck Father Paissy as an unquestionable temptation, one that, though he had long foreseen it, in actual fact exceeded his expectations.

Meeting some of the agitated monks, Father Paissy even began to admonish them: "Such an expectation, and so immediate, of something great," he said, "is a frivolity possible only among worldly people, but unseemly in us."

But they paid him little heed, and Father Paissy noted this with uneasiness, notwithstanding that even he himself (if everything is to be recalled truthfully), though he was indignant at expectations so excessively impatient and found in them a frivolity and vanity, yet secretly, within himself, in the depths of his own soul, awaited very nearly the same thing as these agitated ones did — something he could not but confess to himself.

Nonetheless, certain encounters were especially unpleasant to him, rousing in him, by some presentiment, grave misgivings.

In the crowd pressing within the departed one's cell he noticed, with an inward revulsion (for which he at once reproached himself), the presence, for instance, of Rakitin, or of a distant guest — the monk from Obdorsk, who was still lingering in the monastery — and both of these Father Paissy for some reason suddenly took to be suspect, though they were not the only ones who might be marked in that same sense.

Of all the agitated, the monk from Obdorsk stood out as the most restless; he could be spotted everywhere, in every spot: everywhere he was questioning, everywhere listening in, everywhere whispering with some peculiar, mysterious air.

The expression of his face, moreover, was of the utmost impatience, and as though already irritated that what was awaited so long was not coming to pass.

As for Rakitin, he, as it turned out afterward, had found himself in the hermitage so early upon a special errand from Madame Khokhlakova.

This kind but spineless woman, who could not herself be admitted into the hermitage, had no sooner woken and learned of the elder's passing than she was suddenly seized by so impetuous a curiosity that she at once dispatched Rakitin to the hermitage in her place, charging him to observe everything and to report to her in writing without delay, roughly every half-hour, about "everything that might happen."

Rakitin she took to be a most pious and believing young man — so well did he know how to get on with everyone and present himself to each according to that person's wishes, provided only that he discerned in it the slightest advantage for himself.

The day was clear and bright, and of the pilgrims who had arrived many crowded about the hermitage graves, which were clustered most densely around the church, though also scattered throughout the whole hermitage.

As he went about the hermitage, Father Paissy suddenly remembered Alyosha, and that he had not seen him for a long while — since nearly the night itself.

And no sooner had he thought of him than he caught sight of him at once, in the most remote corner of the hermitage, by the wall, sitting on the gravestone of a certain monk who had reposed in days of old and was renowned for his ascetic feats.

He sat with his back to the hermitage, his face toward the wall, and as if hiding behind the monument.

Coming right up to him, Father Paissy saw that he, covering his face with both palms, was weeping — soundlessly, yet bitterly — his whole body shaking with sobs.

Father Paissy stood over him for a little while.

"Enough, dear son, enough, friend," he uttered at last, with feeling, "what ails you? Rejoice, do not weep. Or do you not know that this day is the greatest of his days? Where is he now, at this very minute — only call that to mind!"

Alyosha glanced up at him, uncovering his face, swollen with tears like a small child's, but at once, without a word, turned away and again hid behind both palms.

"Well, perhaps that is as it should be," said Father Paissy thoughtfully, "perhaps; then weep — Christ has sent you these tears."

"These tender little tears of yours will serve only as a rest for your soul and to gladden your dear heart," he added, now to himself, as he moved off from Alyosha, thinking of him with love.

He moved off, however, as quickly as he could, for he felt that he himself, perhaps, looking at the boy, would burst into tears.

Meanwhile time was passing; the monastery services and the requiems for the departed continued in due order.

Father Paissy again relieved Father Iosif at the coffin and again took over from him the reading of the Gospel.

But not yet three o'clock in the afternoon had passed when there came to pass something of which I made mention back at the close of the previous book — something so wholly unexpected by us, and so against the common hope, that, I repeat, the detailed and trivial tale of this incident is even to this day recalled with extraordinary vividness in our town and throughout all our district.

Here I will add once more, on my own personal account: it is almost repugnant to me to recall this fussy and scandalous occurrence, in essence the emptiest and most natural of things, and I should certainly have left it out of my narrative altogether, without any mention, had it not exerted a most powerful and definite influence upon the soul and heart of the chief — though only future — hero of my story, Alyosha, working in his soul as it were a fracture and an upheaval, one that shook but also strengthened his mind, now finally, for the whole of his life and toward a definite goal.

And so, to the story.

When, while it was still before daybreak, they had laid the elder's body, prepared for burial, into the coffin and carried it out into the first room, the former reception room, a question arose among those standing by the coffin: ought the windows in the room to be opened?

But this question, voiced by someone in passing and offhandedly, was left without an answer and went almost unnoticed — except that some of those present did mark it, and even then only to themselves, in the sense that to expect putrefaction and a breath of corruption from the body of such a departed one was sheer absurdity, deserving even of pity (if not of a sneer) toward the small faith and frivolity of the one who had uttered the question.

For they expected the very opposite.

And then, shortly after noon, something began that was at first taken in by those coming and going only in silence and to themselves, and even with a visible dread on each one's part of confiding to anyone the thought that was dawning on him; but by three o'clock in the afternoon it had revealed itself already so plainly and incontestably that word of it flew in an instant through the whole hermitage and among all the pilgrims — the hermitage's visitors — at once penetrated the monastery as well and threw all the monastery folk into amazement, and at last, after the very shortest span, reached the town too and stirred up everyone in it, believers and unbelievers alike.