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.
(b) Of Holy Scripture in the Life of Father Zosima
We were left alone then, mother and I. Soon some good acquaintances advised her: look, you have only one boy left, and you are not poor, you have money, so why don’t you send your son to Petersburg, as others do, for staying here you may be depriving him of a distinguished future. And they put it into my mother’s head to take me to Petersburg to the Cadet Corps, so that later I could enter the Imperial Guard. Mother hesitated a long time: how could she part with her last son? But nevertheless she made up her mind to it, though not without many tears, thinking it would contribute to my happiness. She took me to Petersburg and had me enrolled, and after that I never saw her again, for she died three years later, and during all those three years she grieved and trembled over us both. From my parental home I brought only precious memories, for no memories are more precious to a man than those of his earliest childhood in his parental home, and that is almost always so, as long as there is even a little bit of love and unity in the family. But from a very bad family, too, one can keep precious memories, if only one’s soul knows how to seek out what is precious. With my memories of home I count also my memories of sacred history, which I, though only a child in my parental home, was very curious to know. I had a book of sacred history then, with beautiful pictures, entitled
One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories from the Old and New Testaments, and I was learning to read with it.[189] It is still lying here on my shelf, I keep it as a precious reminder. But I remember how, even before I learned to read, a certain spiritual perception visited me for the first time, when I was just eight years old. Mother took me to church by myself (I do not remember where my brother was then), during Holy Week, to the Monday liturgy. It was a clear day, and, remembering it now, I seem to see again the incense rising from the censer and quietly ascending upwards, and from above, through a narrow window in the cupola, God’s rays pouring down upon us in the church, and the incense rising up to them in waves, as if dissolving into them. I looked with deep tenderness, and for the first time in my life I consciously received the first seed of the word of God in my soul. A young man walked out into the middle of the church with a big book, so big that it seemed to me he even had difficulty carrying it, and he placed it on the analogion,[190] opened it, and began to read, and suddenly, then, for the first time I understood something, for the first time in my life I understood what was read in God’s church. There was a man in the land of Ur,[191] rightful and pious, and he had so much wealth, so many camels, so many sheep and asses, and his children made merry, and he loved them very much and beseeched God for them: for it may be that they have sinned in their merrymaking. Now Satan goes up before God together with the sons of God, and says to the Lord that he has walked all over the earth and under the earth. “And have you seen my servant Job?” God asks him. And God boasted before Satan, pointing to his great and holy servant. And Satan smiled at God’s words: “Hand him over to me and you shall see that your servant will begin to murmur and will curse your name.” And God handed over his righteous man, whom he loved so, to Satan, and Satan smote his children and his cattle, and scattered his wealth, all suddenly, as if with divine lightning, and Job rent his garments and threw himself to the ground and cried out: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return into the earth: the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord henceforth and forevermore!”[192] Fathers and teachers, bear with these tears of mine—for it is as if my whole childhood were rising again before me, and I am breathing now as I breathed then with my eight-year-old little breast, and feel, as I did then, astonishment, confusion, and joy. And the camels, which then so took my fancy, and Satan, who spoke thus with God, and God, who gave his servant over to ruin, and his servant crying out: “Blessed be thy name, albeit thou chastise me”—and then the soft and sweet singing in the church: “Let my prayer arise ... ,” and again the incense from the priest’s censer, and the kneeling prayer![193] Since then—even just yesterday I turned to it—I cannot read this most holy story without tears. And so much in it is great, mysterious, inconceivable! Later I heard the words of the scoffers and blasphemers, proud words: how could the Lord hand over the most beloved of his saints for Satan to play with him, to take away his children, to smite him with disease and sores so that he scraped the pus from his wounds with a potsherd, and all for what? Only so as to boast before Satan: “See what my saint can suffer for my sake!” But what is great here is this very mystery—that the passing earthly image and eternal truth here touched each other. In the face of earthly truth, the enacting of eternal truth is accomplished. Here the Creator, as in the first days of creation, crowning each day with praise: “That which I have created is good,” looks at Job and again praises his creation. And Job, praising God, does not only serve him, but will also serve his whole creation, from generation to generation and unto ages of ages,