The Brothers Karamazov

I mentioned at the beginning of my story that Grigory hated Adelaide Ivanovna, Fyodor Pavlovich’s first wife and the mother of his first son, Dmitri Fyodorovich, and that, on the contrary, he defended his second wife, the shrieker, Sofia Ivanovna, against his master himself and against all who might chance to speak a bad or flippant word about her. His sympathy for the unfortunate woman became something sacred to him, so that even twenty years later he would not suffer a slighting allusion to her from anyone at all, and would at once object to the offender. Outwardly Grigory was a cold and pompous man, taciturn, delivering himself of weighty, unfrivolous words. In the same way, it was impossible to tell at first glance whether he loved his meek, obedient wife or not, and yet he really did love her, and she, of course, knew it. This Marfa Ignatievna not only was not a stupid woman, but was even perhaps more intelligent than her husband, at least more reasonable than he in everyday things, and yet she submitted to him without a murmur and without complaint from the very beginning of their married life, and unquestionably respected his spiritual superiority. It was remarkable that all their life they spoke very little to each other, and then only of the most necessary daily things. Pompous and majestic Grigory always thought through all his affairs and concerns by himself, and Marfa Ignatievna had long ago understood once and for all that he had absolutely no need of her advice. She felt that her husband valued her silence and took it as a sign of her intelligence. He had never beaten her, save only once, and then slightly. In the first year of the marriage of Adelaide Ivanovna and Fyodor Pavlovich, one day in the village, the village girls and women, who were then still serfs, were gathered in the master’s yard to sing and dance. They began “In the Meadows,” and suddenly Marfa Ignatievna, then still a young woman, leaped out in front of the chorus and performed the “Russian dance” in a special manner, not as village women did it, but as she used to dance when she was a servant of the wealthy Miusovs, in their own household theater, where they were taught to dance by a dancing master invited from Moscow. Grigory saw his wife’s performance and, back home, an hour later, taught her a lesson by pulling her hair a little. There the beatings ended forever, and were not repeated even once in the rest of their life, and Marfa Ignatievna also foreswore dancing.

God did not grant them children; there was one baby, but it died. Grigory obviously loved children, and did not even conceal it, that is, he was not ashamed to show it. After Adelaida Ivanovna fled, he took charge of Dmitri Fyodorovich, then a three-year-old boy, and fussed over him for almost a year, combing his hair and even washing him in a tub himself. He took the same trouble over Ivan Fyodorovich, and then over Alyosha, for which he received a slap in the face; but I have already related all that. His own baby gave him only the joy of hope while Marfa Ignatievna was still pregnant. When it was born, it struck his heart with grief and horror. The fact is that the boy was born with six fingers.^[73] Seeing this, Grigory was so mortified that he not only kept silent up to the very day of the baptism, but even went out to the garden especially to be silent. It was spring, and he spent all three days digging beds in the vegetable garden. On the third day they were to baptize the infant; by then Grigory had worked something out. Going into the cottage where the clergy and guests had gathered, including, finally, Fyodor Pavlovich himself, who came in person to be the godfather, he suddenly announced that “the baby oughtn’t to be baptized at all”—announced it not loudly or in many words, but speaking each word through his teeth, and only gazing dully and intently at the priest.

“Why not?” asked the priest with good-humored astonishment.

“Because ... it’s a dragon ... ,” Grigory muttered.

“A dragon? How is he a dragon?”

Grigory was silent for a while.

“A confusion of natures occurred ... ,” he muttered, rather vaguely but very firmly, apparently unwilling to say more.