Scene from The Last JudgmentGood morning, or afternoon, or I guess late night, depending on when you are reading this. Today, being Sunday and all, I wanted to share with you a great little story found in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Which is, by a country mile, the greatest novel I have had the pleasure of reading.

Once upon a time there was a woman and she was wicked as wicked could be, and she died. And not one good deed was left behind her. The devils took her and plunged her into the lake of fire. And her guardian angle stood thinking: what good deed of hers can I remember to tell God. The he remembered and said to God: once she pulled up an onion in her garden and gave it to a beggar woman. And God answered: now take the same onion, hold it out to her in the lake, let her take hold of it, and pull, and if you pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks; then she must stay where she is. The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. Come, said he, catch hold and I’ll pull. he began pulling carefully, and had almost pulled her all the way out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But the woman was wicked as wicked could be and she began to kick them with her feet. ‘I’m to be pulled out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours.’ No sooner did she say that, and the onion broke. And the woman fell back into the lake and she is burning there to this day. And the angel wept and went away.