 Beloved fathers and teachers, I was born in a remote northern
province, in the town of V___, of a
noble father, but not of the high nobility, and not of very high rank. He died when I was only two
years old, and I do not remember him at all. He left my mother a small wooden house and some
capital, not a big sum, but enough to keep her and her children without want. And mother had
only the two of us: myself, Zinovy, and my older brother, Markel. He was about eight years older
than I, hot-tempered and irritable by nature, but kind, not given to mockery, and strangely silent,
especially at home with me, mother, and the servants. He was a good student, but did not make
friends with his schoolmates, though he did not quarrel with them either, at least not that our
mother remembered. Half a year before his death, when he was already past seventeen, he took to
visiting a certain solitary man of our town, a political exile it seems, exiled to our town from
Moscow for freethinking. This exile was a great scholar and distinguished philosopher at the
university. For some reason he came to love Markel and welcomed his visits. The young man
spent whole evenings with him, and did so through the whole winter, until the exile was called
back to government service in Petersburg, at his own request, for he had his protectors. The
Great Lent came, but Market did not want to fast, swore and laughed at it: "It's all nonsense,
there isn't any God," so that he horrified mother and the servants, and me, too, his little brother,
for though I was only nine years old, when I heard those words I was very much afraid. Our
servants were all serfs, four of them, all bought in the name of a landowner we knew. I also
remembered how mother sold one of the four, the cook Anfimia, who was lame and elderly, for
sixty paper roubles, and hired a free woman in her place. And so, in the sixth week of Lent, my
brother suddenly grew worse--he had always been unhealthy, with bad lungs, of weak constitution
and inclined to consumption; he was tall, but thin and sickly, yet of quite pleasing countenance.
Perhaps he had caught a cold or something, in any case the doctor came and soon whispered to
mother that his consumption was of the galloping sort, and that he would not live through spring.
Mother started weeping, she started asking my brother cautiously (more so as not to alarm him)
to observe Lent and take communion of the divine and holy mysteries, because he was then still
on his feet. Hearing that, he became angry and swore at God's Church, but still he grew
thoughtful: he understood at once that he was dangerously ill, and that that was why his mother
was urging him, while he was still strong enough, to go to church and receive communion.
Though he knew himself that he had been sick for a long time, and already a year before had once
said coolly at the table, to mother and me: "I'm not long for this world among you, I may not live
another year," and now it was as if he had foretold it. About three days went by, and then came
Holy Week. And on Tuesday morning my brother started keeping the fast and going to church.
"I'm doing it only for your sake, mother, to give you joy and peace," he said to her. Mother wept
from joy, and also from grief: "His end must be near, if there is suddenly such a change in him."
But he did not go to church for long, he took to his bed, so that he had to confess and receive
communion at home. The days grew bright, clear, fragrant--Easter was late that year. All night, I
remember, he used to cough, slept badly, but in the morning he would always get dressed and try
to sit in an armchair. So I remember him: he sits, quiet and meek, he smiles, he is sick but his
countenance is glad, joyful. He was utterly changed in spirit--such a wondrous change had
suddenly begun in him! Our old nanny would come into his room: "Dear, let me light the lamp in
front of your icon." And before, he would never let her, he even used to
blow it out. "Light it, my dear, light it, what a monster I was to forbid you before!
You pray to God as you light the icon
lamp, and I pray, rejoicing at you. So we are praying to the same God." These words seemed
strange to us, and mother used to go to her room and weep, but when she went to him she wiped
her eyes and put on a cheerful face. "Mother, don't weep, my dear," he would say, "I still have a
long time to live, a long time to rejoice with you, and life, life is gladsome, joyful!" "Ah, my dear,
what sort of gladness is there for you, if you burn with fever all night and cough as if your lungs
were about to burst?" "Mama," he answered her, "do not weep, life is paradise, and we are all in
paradise, but we do not want to know it, and if we did want to know it, tomorrow there would be
paradise the world over." And everyone marveled at his words, he spoke so strangely and so
decisively; everyone was moved and wept. Acquaintances came to visit us: "My beloved," he
would say, "my dear ones, how have I deserved your love, why do you love such a one as I, and
how is it that I did not know it, that I did not appreciate it before?"
When the servants came in,
he told them time and again: "My beloved, my dear ones, why do you serve me, am I worthy of
being served? If God were to have mercy on me and let me live, I would begin serving you, for
we must all serve each other." Mother listened and shook her head: "My dear, it's your illness
that makes you talk like that." "Mama, my joy," he said, "it is not possible for there to be no
masters and servants, but let me also be the servant of my servants, the same as they are to me.
And I shall also tell you, dear mother, that each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I
most of all." At that mother even smiled, she wept and smiled: "How can it be," she said, "that
you are the most guilty before everyone? There are murderers and robbers, and how have you
managed to sin so that you should accuse yourself most of all?" "Dear mother, heart of my
heart," he said (he had then begun saying such unexpected, endearing words), "Heart of my heart,
my joyful one, you must know that verily each of us is guilty before everyone, for everyone and
everything. And how could we have lived before, getting angry, and not knowing anything?"
Thus he awoke every day with more and more tenderness, rejoicing and all atremble with love.
The doctor would come--the old German Eisenschmidt used to come to us: "Well, what do you
think, doctor, shall I live one more day in the world?" he would joke with him. "No just one day,
you will live many days," the doctor would answer, "you will live months and years, too." "But
what are years, what are months!" he would exclaim. "Why count the days, when even one day is
enough for a man to know all happiness. My dears, why do we quarrel, boast before each other,
remember each other's offenses? Let us go to the garden, let us walk and play and love and
praise and kiss each other, and bless our life." "He's not long for this world, your son," the
doctor said to mother as she saw him to the porch, "from sickness he is falling into madness."
The windows of his room looked into the garden, and our garden was very shady, with old trees,
the spring buds were already swelling on the branches, the early birds arrived, chattering, singing
through his windows. And suddenly, looking at them and admiring them, he began to ask their
forgiveness, too: "Birds of God, joyful birds, you, too, must forgive me, because I have also
sinned before you." None of us could understand it then, but he was weeping with joy: "Yes," he
said, "there was so much of God's glory around me: birds, trees, meadows, sky, and I alone lived
in shame, I alone dishonored everything, and did not notice the beauty and glory of it at all." You
take too many sins upon yourself," mother used to weep. "Dear mother, my joy, I am weeping
from gladness, not from grief; I want to be guilty before them, only I cannot explain it to you, for
I do not even know how to love them. Let me be sinful before everyone, but so that everyone
will forgive me, and that is paradise. Am I not in paradise now?"
And there was much more that I cannot recall or set down. I remember once I came into his
room alone, when no one was with him. It was a bright evening, the sun was setting and lit up the
whole room with its slanting rays. He beckoned when he saw me, I went over to him, he took me
by the shoulders with both hands, looked tenderly, lovingly into my face; he did not say anything,
he simply looked at me like that for about a minute: "Well," he said, "go now, play, live for me!"
I walked out then and went to play. And later in life I remembered many times, with tears now,
how he told me to live for him. He spoke many more such wondrous and beautiful words, though
we could not understand them then. He died in the third week after Easter, conscious, and
though he had already stopped speaking, he did not change to his very last hour: he looked
joyfully, with gladness in his eyes, seeking us with his eyes, smiling to us, calling us. There was
much talk even in town about his end. It all shook me then, but not deeply, though I cried very
much when he was being buried. I was young, a child, but it all remained indelibly in my heart,
the feeling was hidden there. It all had to rise up and respond in due time. And so it did.
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