Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

“How can that be! You lie!” cried out the _moujik_, banging the table with his fist. “It’s a shroud,--I can see! It’s a grave-shroud!” he cried out with tears in his voice, and was silent for a while, hearkening to the abating songs of the sky-larks. Then he shoved the bag away from him, and, shaking his tousled head, began to cry: “I have risen in my pride against God!” said he bitterly, weeping.

And then, straining himself, he began to sing loudly, keeping good time:

“Oh my mother gave me birth and she guarded me,
Though I now a sinner be, unforgivable!
All the torments have I borne,
All the sorrows have I borne,--
Nowheres found I joy for me.
Oh, my mother spoke to me
And she cautioned me;
If she only knew, if she only saw,
She could never bear
Such calamity....”

“Oh, my soul is a sinner and a creeping thing!” he cried out wildly, weeping, and suddenly started clapping his palms with an elderitch laughter: “Beggar-man, give me your money! I know you through and through; I feel you through and through,--give it to me! I know you have it! It can’t be otherwise,--give it to me for love of the Lord God Himself!”

And, swaying, he arose, and the beggar, who had also arisen, felt his legs giving away from fear, felt a dull ache start in his thighs. The tear-stained face of the _moujik_, barely discernible in the twilight, was insane.

“Give it to me!” he repeated, in a voice suddenly grown hoarse. “Give it to me, for the Love of the Queen of Heaven! I can see, I can see,--you’re grabbing at your bosom, at your undershirt; that means you’ve got it,--all your kind has! Give it to me,--it ain’t of no use to you, anyway, whereas it will set me on my feet forever! Give it to me of your own will,--brother, don’t lead me into sin!”

“Can’t do it,” said the beggar, quietly and dispassionately.

“What?”

“Can’t do it. I’ve been saving for twenty years. Can’t bring myself to do it.”

“You ain’t goin’ to give it to me?” asked the _moujik_ hoarsely.

“No ...” said the beggar, barely audible but unshaken.

The _moujik_ was silent for a long while. The beating of their hearts could be heard in the darkness.

“Very well,” said the _moujik_, with an insane submissiveness. “I will kill you; I’ll go and find me a stone and then kill you.”

And, swaying, he went toward the threshold.

The beggar, standing erect in the darkness, made a sweeping and slow sign of the cross. As for the _moujik_, he, with his head lowered like a bull, was already walking about under the windows.

Then there came a crunching sound,--evidently he was pulling a stone out of the foundation.

And a minute later the door slammed again,--and the beggar drew himself up still more.

“For the last time I’m a-telling you ...” the _moujik_ mumbled out with his cracked lips, walking up to him with a big white stone in his hands. “Brother....”

The beggar was silent. His fate could not be seen. Swinging back with his left arm and catching the beggar by his neck, the _moujik_ struck hard his shrinking face with the chill stone. The beggar tore away, backward, and, as he fell, catching the table with his bast-shoe, he struck the back of his head against a stool, and then against the floor. And falling upon him, the _moujik_, squeezing the breath out of his chest, frenziedly began to batter in his throat with the stone.

Ten minutes later he was already far out in the dark, even field. There were many stars out; the air was fresh; the earth gave forth a metallic odour. Completely sobered up, he was walking so rapidly and lightly that he seemed capable of covering a hundred versts more. The amulet, torn off the beggar’s crucifix, he was holding tightly clenched in his hand. Later, he flung it from him into a dark, freshly ploughed field. His eyes were staring fixedly like an owl’s; his teeth were tightly clenched, like a lobster’s claws. Although he had looked for his cap for a long while, he had been unable to find it in the darkness; the chillness beat upon his bared head. His head seemed to him to be of stone.

_1914._

THE SACRIFICE

Simon Novicov, who was living in Oats Ford with his brother Nicon,--Nicon of the withered arm,--was burned out in midsummer, about the fast of St. Peter. The brothers decided to divide their property, and Simon, intending to leave the Ford, was putting up a hut for himself near the great highway.

On the evening before Elijah’s Day the carpenters had asked for leave to go home. After supping with the large family of his brother, in the midst of flies and the clamour of children, he lit his pipe, put on his short sheepskin coat, and said to his folks:

“It’s stuffy in here. I’m going to the building,--I’ll sleep the night there. I’m afraid the tools might be stole.”

“You ought to take the dogs with you, at least,” one of the women counselled him.

“Get along with ye!” said Simon, and went out.

There was a full moon out that night. What with his thoughts of his future household, Simon did not even notice how he had climbed up hill by the broad path to the pasture lands that led out of the village, and, after putting about a verst behind him on the big road, had come right up to his hut, which had a ceiling but was, as yet, unroofed. It stood at the edge of the fields of grain, in the midst of an empty field. Its sashless windows gaped blackly, and it was dully glistening against the light of the moon with the ends of its new corner-beams, with the tow sticking out of its joints, and the sticks and shavings about its threshold. The aureate July moon, which had risen far beyond the ravines of the Ford, hung low and was turbid. Its warm glow was diffused over everything. The ripe grain glimmered whitely ahead,--dully, sombrely, like stretches of sand. But toward the north the sky was altogether overcast,--a cloud was gathering there. A soft breeze, blowing from all sides, would at times gather strength and run fitfully over the rye and oats,--and they would rustle crisply, disquietingly. The cloud toward the north appeared immovable, but it was frequently shot with an eerie, fleeting, golden sheen.

Simon, stooping at the threshold through habit, entered the hut. It was dark and stuffy within it. The yellow moonlight, looking in at the unglazed windows, did not blend with the darkness, but only intensified it. Simon threw down his short sheepskin coat upon the shavings in the middle of the hut, directly in the path of one of the rows of light, and lay down on his back. After drawing at his extinguished pipe for a space, he put it in his pocket, and, after thinking for a little while longer, fell asleep.

But now the wind began blowing in at the windows, and, by way of the entry, through the door. The thunder began muttering dully in the distance. Simon sat up. The wind increased--it was now running over the feverishly murmuring grain without cease, and the light of the moon had become still dimmer. Simon walked out of the hut, and, turning the corner, was among the crisp and sultry swishing of the oats, which were as pallid as a shroud. He glanced at the cloud,--the colour of dark slate, it had taken up half the heavens. The wind was blowing straight in his face, tugging at his hair and tangling it, interfering with his vision. The flashes of lightning, too, interfered with his vision and blinded it, as they flared up, more and more ominous and fiery. Simon, making the sign of the cross, got down on his knees: in the distance, in the midst of the sea of oats, standing out against the bank of the cloud, a small throng was advancing toward him. Their heads were bared; in white girdles, in new short sheepskin coats, they were with difficulty bearing a seven-foot altar-piece, painted by some ancient master. The throng was mistily-spectral, but the image was very plain,--an awesome, severe countenance, showing red upon a black panel, which was burnt by candles, dripped over by wax, and bound at the edges by old, blue-coloured silver.

The wind had parted the hair upon Simon’s brow, pleasantly blowing it back, and Simon, in fear and joy, bowed down to the ground before the image. When he finally did raise his head, he saw that the crowd had halted, awkwardly supporting the image, which was majestically leaning backward; while upon the cloud was limned, as in a church picture, a towering, enormous visage: the mighty, hoary-bearded Elijah himself, clad in chitons of fire, and sitting, like God-Sabbaoth, upon the lifelessly-blueish tiers of the lower clouds, while two greenish-orange rainbows were flaming above him, against the slate-coloured background. And, flashing his lightning-like orbs, blending his voice with the distant rumble of the thunder, Elijah spake to Simon:

“Stand up straight, Simon Novicov. Hearken, ye princes and peasants! I am about to judge him, Simon Novicov,--a peasant tenant of the Eletz province, of the Predtechev District, of the little village of Oats Ford.”

And the entire field, glimmering as white as sand all around, with all its ears of grain together with the tares darted forward, bowing down before Elijah, and amidst their murmur Elijah began to speak:

“I was wroth with thee, Simon Novicov,--I wanted to punish thee.”

“Wherefore, Father?” questioned Simon.

“It is no fitting thing for thee, Simon Novicov, to be questioning me, Elijah. Thou art the one to make answer.”

“Well, forgive me; let it be as thou dost will,” said Simon.

“Summer before last I did kill Pantelei, thy eldest son, with a stroke of lightning; wherefore didst thou bury him in the ground up to his waist, bringing him back to life through black magic?”

“Forgive me, Father,” said Simon, bowing, “I felt sorry for the young lad. Judge for thyself,--why, he would be the one to give me food and drink in my old age.”

“Last summer I did mow, I did trample down thy rye with hail and with whirl-winds: why didst thou get knowledge of it beforehand, and sell this rye while it yet stood uncut?”

“Forgive me, Father,” said Simon, bowing. “My heart felt a forewarning; need did force me to it.”

“Well, was it not I that burned thee out but just now, at St. Peter’s fast? Wherefore dost thou hasten to build anew, to divide thy goods with thy brother?”

“Forgive me, Father,” said Simon, bowing. “My brother of the withered hand is unlucky; I thought all the misfortunes were coming from him.”

“Shut thy eyes. We shall ponder, we shall take counsel, as to thy punishment.”

Simon shut his eyes; he bowed down his head. The wind was noisy,--under cover of its noise he was trying to eavesdrop, on the sly, what Elijah and the peasants were whispering together about. But there came a heavy peal of thunder near at hand,--not a thing could he hear.

“No, we can’t think of anything,” said Elijah with all his voice. “Thou thyself must counsel me.”

“And may I open my eyes?” asked Simon.

“There is no need of that. A blind man thinks all the surer.”

“Thou art a queer fellow, Father,” Simon smiled thoughtfully. “Well, what is there to think about? I shall place a three-rouble candle before thee....”

“Thou hast not the wherewithal. Thou hast spent everything on building.”

“Well, in that case I shall go on a pilgrimage to Kiev, or to Belgorod,” said Simon, irresolutely.

“That’s just loafing, and a waste of shoe-leather. Who’s going to take care of the household?”

Simon went into deep thought.

“Well, then, slay my little girl Anphiska. She’s just going on three. The girl, to tell the truth, is a kind-hearted, endearing little creature,--we will all feel sorry for her; but then, there’s no help for it.... One can’t get everything with just a little!”

“Lend ear, ye faithful,” said Elijah loudly. “I agree.”

And the cloud was rent by such a flame that Simon’s lids almost caught fire, and the heavens were split by such a peal that all the earth quivered beneath him.

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God-Sabbaoth!” whispered Simon. “Heaven defend us!”

When he came to, opening his eyes, Simon beheld only the dust-laden cloud, the deserted, agitated grain, and himself, standing on his knees in the midst of its ears. The wind was whirling in a pillar over the road, and the moon had grown entirely dimmed.

Simon jumped up on his feet. Forgetting all about his short coat, about the axes and the planes, he started off for home, for the village, braving the whirl-winds. The heavy rain caught him out on the common. The dark clouds had piled up above the darkened ravines. The red moon was sinking beyond them. The village was in heavy slumber, but the cattle in the yards were stirring uneasily, the roosters were crowing in alarm. And, running up to his old, half-burned-down hut, Simon heard the wailing of women within. Nicon of the withered arm was standing at the threshold, in his sheepskin coat and without a hat; scrawny and wrinkled beyond his years, he was looking about dully and confusedly.

“There’s been a calamity at your house,” he said, and one could tell by his voice that he was not yet thoroughly awake.

Simon ran into the hut. The women-folk were running about in the darkness, screaming, looking for the sulphur matches. Simon snatched a small box of them out from behind the image, and lit a tallow-wick. The cradle, which was hung near the oven, was swinging from side to side,--the women had been striking against it when they were running about. And within it lay the little girl, dead. She had turned all livid, and a quilt work cap was smouldering on her head.

Simon has been living happily, ever since.

_1913._

AGLAIA

In that community, in that forest village where Aglaia was born and had grown up, she was called Anna.

She was bereaved of her father and mother at an early age. The small-pox visited the village one winter, and many of those who had gone to their rest were carted off then to the churchyard in the settlement beyond Sviyat-Oziero.[3] Two coffins in one day stood in the hut of the Skuratovs as well. The little girl had experienced neither fear nor pity; she had only come to remember forever that odour which emanated from them, which is like nothing else on earth and is unknown and oppressive to the living, and that winter freshness, that cold of the Lenten thaw before Easter, which had been let into the hut by the peasants who were carrying the coffins out to the wide sledge standing under the windows.

[3] Holy Lake. _Trans._

In that forest-covered region the villages are few and small; their crude, log-enclosed yards are scattered without any order, just as the clayey hummocks permit and as near as possible to the little rivers, to the lakes. The folk thereabouts are not so very poor and watch after their goods, their ancient way of living,--notwithstanding the fact that they have been going out to hire since time out of mind, leaving the women to plough the stepmotherly earth, where it is free of the forest; to mow the grasses in the forest; and in winter to whirr at the weaving loom. Toward that way of living did Anna’s heart incline in her childhood; endeared to her were both the black hut and the burning rush light in its cresset.

Katherine, her sister, had long been married. She it was who managed the house,--at first together with her husband, who had been taken into the household; and later, when he began going away for a whole year at a time, all by herself. Under her eyes the girl grew, steadily and rapidly; never did she cry, never did she complain of aught; only she had constant fits of pensiveness. If Katherine called to her, asking what the matter with her was, she would answer simply, saying that her neck was creaking, and that she was listening to it. “There,” she would say, turning her neck, and her fair little face, “do you hear it?” “And what are you thinking of?” “Oh, just so. I don’t know.” During her childhood she never had anything to do with girls of her own age, and never did she go anywheres,--only once had she gone with her sister to that old settlement beyond Sviyat-Oziero, where in the churchyard, under pine trees, crosses of pine wood stick up out of the ground, and where stands a little church of logs, roofed with blackened tiles of wood that look like scales. That was the first time that she had been dressed up in bast slippers and a _sarafan_ of bright coloured linen, and that a necklace and a yellow kerchief had been bought for her.

Katherine grieved about her husband and wept; wept, too, about her childlessness. But, having shed all her tears, she gave a vow to have no more knowledge of her husband. When her husband would come, she would meet him joyously, speaking with him cheerily, painstakingly looked over his shirts, mending all that stood in need of mending; she bustled about the oven, and was pleased when he liked anything; but they slept apart, like strangers. And when he would go away, she would again become wearied and quiet. More and more frequently did she leave the house, staying at a near-by nunnery, visiting the holy old man Rodion, who was striving for his soul in a hut within a forest that was beyond that nunnery. She was perseveringly learning to read, bringing saintly books from the nunnery, and would read them aloud; not in her usual voice, but pitching it in high sing-song. She would be sitting at a table, her eyes cast-down, holding the book with both hands, while the girl stood near by, listening and picking a splinter from the table, looking all about the hut, which was always in the best of order. Drinking in the sounds of her own voice, Katherine read on of saints, of martyrs, who had contemned the dark things of our earth for things heavenly, desirous of crucifying their flesh with its lusts and its passions. Anna listened attentively to the reading, as to a chant in an unknown tongue. But as soon as Katherine would shut the book, she would never ask her to read some more: the book was always beyond her understanding.

In adolescence she grew not by days, but by hours. When she was about thirteen, she became exquisitely slender, tall, and strong. She was gentle, fair of face, blue-eyed, but the work she liked was of the commonest, of the roughest. When summer came on, when Katherine’s husband returned, when the entire village went to the mowing, Anna, too, went with her people and worked like a grown-up. Only, there is not a great deal of summer work in that region. And once more the sisters would be soon left alone, once more they would return to their placid existence; and, once more, having done for the day with the live stock, with the oven, Anna would be sitting at her sewing, or the loom, the while Katherine read aloud: of seas, of deserts, of the city of Rome, of Byzantium, of the miracles and deeds of the first Christians. In the black hut in the forest sounded then words that enchanted the ear: “In the land of Cappadocia, in the reign of the devout Byzantian emperor, Leo the Great ... In the days of the patriarchship of the most holy Joachhim of Alexandria, in Æthiopia, which is most distant from us....” Thus did Anna come to know of the virgins and youths, torn to pieces by wild beasts at pagan circuses; of the heavenly beauty of Barbara, beheaded by her cruel, ferocious, unnatural parent; of the relics of saints, guarded by angels on the Mount of Sinai; of the warrior Eustacius, converted to the true God by the call of the Crucified Himself, who burst out like a refulgent sun between the horns of a deer that he, Eustacius, had been pursuing in the chase; of the labours of Sabbas the Sainted, that dwelt in the Vale of Fires; and of many, many others, who had spent their bitter days nigh desert springs, in crypts, and in mountain cenobies.... During her adolescence she had beheld herself in a dream, clad in a long linen shift and with a crown of iron on her head. And Katherine had told her: “That stands for dying, sister,--for an early death.”

And when she was going on fifteen, she became altogether maidenly, and folks marvelled at her loveliness; the aureately-white colour of her face was just the least bit tinged with a delicate blush; her eyebrows were bushy, of a light flaxen colour, her eyes blue; she was light, well-made,--unless it were that she was disproportionately tall, slender, and long of arm; quietly and beautifully did she raise her lashes. The winter that year was a rigorous one. The forests, the lakes, were snowed under; the openings in the ice were thickly frozen over; the frosty wind burned; and of dawns, two mirror-like, rainbow-tinged suns were flashing at the same time. Before the Christmas holidays Katherine ate bread-and-_kvass_ pudding, and dried oatmeal; but Anna would nourish herself only with bread: “I want to fast till I get another prophetic dream,” she had told her sister. And toward the New Year again did she have a dream: she saw an early, frosty morning; the blinding, icy sun seemed to have just rolled out from beyond the snow-drifts, and a cutting wind was making her catch her breath; she was flying upon skiis against the wind, toward the sun, over the white plains, in pursuit of some wondrous ermine,--but she suddenly tumbled off into some abyss, and was blinded, stiffed in the cloud of snow dust swirling up at the edge of the precipice from under the skiis.

She could understand nothing of this dream; but Anna, during all New Year’s day, did not once look into her sister’s face. The priests were going through the village; when they came to see the Skuratovs in their turn, she hid behind the curtains of the sleeping place above the big oven. During that winter, not having yet become settled in her intentions, she was frequently dreamy, and Katherine would say to her: “I have long been calling you, to go to Father Rodion,--he would ease you of all your worries!”

She read to her that winter of Alexis, the Man of God; and of John, who dwelt in a hut of branches,--both had died in poverty at the gates of their well-born parents; she read of Simeon Stylites, who had rotted alive while standing upon a pillar of stone. Anna asked her: “But why doesn’t Father Rodion stand on a pillar?” And she answered, that the tasks of holy people are varied, that our Russian martyrs had sought salvation, for the most part, in the caverns of Kiev,--and, later on, within impassable forests; or else had attained the Kingdom of Heaven as naked, useless innocents. During that winter did Anna find out about the Russian saints as well,--her spiritual forefathers: about Matthew the Clear-Seeing, upon whom was bestowed the gift of seeing only the dark and base things of this world, of penetrating into the innermost hidden recesses of filth in the hearts of men, of beholding clairvoyantly the visages of underground devils and of hearing their impious counsellings. She heard of Mark the Grave Digger, who had dedicated himself to the burial of the dead, and who through his incessant proximity to Death had gained such sway over it that it trembled at the sound of his voice; she heard of Isaac the Anchorite, who had clad his body in the undressed hide of a goat which had grown to his skin forever, and who gave himself up to mad dances with evil spirits, that enticed him of nights into skipping and reeling to their noisy calls, reeds, tympani and dulcimers.... “From him, from Isaac, started all these innocents,” Katherine had told her. “And how many there were of them afterward, none can reckon up! Father Rodion said thus: ‘There have been none of them in any other land save ours; only to us did the Lord send them as a visitation for our great sins, and through His great grace.’” And she added what she had heard in the nunnery,--the grievous tale of how Russia had retreated out of Kiev into impassable forests and morasses, into its little towns of bast, under the cruel rule of the princes of Muscovy; what Russia had endured from seditions, from internicine wars, from ferocious Tartar hordes and from other chastisements of God: from plague and famine, from fire and heavenly portents. There was then, said she, such a vast multitude of the folks of God, suffering and acting the innocent for the sake of Christ, that the holy songs were not to be heard for their squealing and clamouring in the churches. And a considerable number among them, said she, were canonized among the heavenly throng. There was Simon, from the forests of the Volga regions, who wandered over desert waste lands, hiding himself from the sight of man, clad only in a torn shift, and afterward, dwelling in a city, he was castigated every day by its citizens for his uselessness, and expired from the wounds inflicted during such castigations. There was Procopius, who took upon himself ceaseless tortures in the town of Viatka, for that he would, in the night-time, clamber up into belfries and ring the bells in quick alarum, as though there were a fiery conflagration. There is a Procopius that was born in the region of Ziryan, amongst savages, amongst hunters after beasts; all his life did he go about with three coal-rakes in his hands; he did adore the desert places, the mournful wooded banks of the Sukhona, where, perched upon a little bowlder, he did with tears pray for those that sailed upon it. There was Jacob the Beatified, who sailed in an oaken log, hollowed out into a coffin, upon an ice block, down the river Msta to the benighted dwellers of that poor region; there is John the Hairy, from near Rostov-the-Greater, whose hair was so unruly that it threw into a panic all whosoever might behold it; there was John of Vologda, called Big Cap, small of stature, wrinkled of face, all hung over with crosses,--until his very death he never took off his head covering, that was like to a pot of cast-iron; there was Basil, that went about naked, who wore for apparel, in winter cold and summer heat, only iron chains and a little handkerchief that he bore in his hand.... “Now, sister,” Katherine had said, “they are standing before the face of the Lord, rejoicing among the throng of His Saints; as for their imperishable relics, they repose within shrines of cypress and of silver, in the holiest of cathedrals, by the side of kings and prelates!”

“But why doesn’t Father Rodion be an innocent?” again asked Anna. And Katherine answered that he had followed in the steps of those who imitated not Isaac, but Sergius of Radonezh; he had followed in the steps of the men who had founded monasteries in forests. Father Rodion, said she, had at first sought salvation in an ancient and famed desert place, located in the same regions where, in the midst of a dreary forest, in the hollow trunk of an oak, three centuries old, a great saint had once dwelt. There had Father Rodion served a strict novitiate and taken the habit; had merited through the tears of his repentance, and through his mercilessness toward the flesh, a sight of the countenance of the Queen of Heaven Herself; he had fulfilled his vow of seven years’ seclusion and seven years’ silence, but he was not satisfied with that,--he left the monastery, and had come,--it was now many, many years ago,--into these forests. He had put on shoes of bast, a white robe of sack-cloth, a black stole with an eight-pointed cross upon it, with a depiction of the skull and bones of Adam; he subsists only upon water and uncooked swamp-grass; he has barred the little window of his cabin with a holy icon; he sleeps in a coffin, under an ever-lit holy lamp, and at the hour of every midnight he is incessantly beset by howling beasts, by throngs of ravening dead men, and by devils....

On her fifteenth birthday, at that very age when a maid ought to become a bride, Anna forsook the world forever.

Spring that year came early and was a warm one. The berries ripened in the woods beyond number; the grasses were waist-high, and at the beginning of the Fast of St. Peter[4] the entire village went out to mow them. Anna worked with a will; became sunburned among the grasses and the flowers; the blush flamed darker upon her face; the kerchief, pushed lower over the forehead, hid her warm glance. But once, in the meadow, a great glistening snake with an emerald head wound itself around her bare foot. Seizing the snake with her slim and long hand, tearing away its icy and slippery plait, Anna cast it far from her without even lifting her face. But she was very much scared,--she had become whiter than linen. And Katherine said to her: “This, sister, is the third sign for thee: dread the Arch-Tempter, a dangerous time is coming for thee!” And it may have been the fright, or it might have been these words,--but for a week after that the deathly pallor did not depart from Anna’s face. And just before St. Peter’s Day, suddenly and unexpectedly, she begged to go to the nunnery to hear the all-night mass,--and did go, and did spend the night there, and in the morning was found worthy of staying in the crowd of humble folk near the threshold of the recluse. And a great grace did he show to her: out of all the crowd did he remark her and did beckon her to him. And she came out of his cabin with her head bent low, covering half her face with her kerchief, having pushed it down over the fire of her flaming cheeks, and in the confusion of her emotions did not see the ground beneath her. And a chosen vessel, a sacrifice to God, had he called her; had lit two little wax tapers, and, taking one himself and giving the other to her, had stood a long while in prayer before an image. And afterwards he had ordered her to kiss that image,--and had given her his blessing to enter the nunnery for a novitiate within a short while. “My joy,--thou simple sacrifice!” he had said to her. “Be thou a bride not of this earth but of heaven! I know, full well, thy sister hath prepared thee. I shall concern myself with this also, sinner that I am.”

[4] In midsummer. _Trans._

In the nunnery, in the monastic atmosphere, abandoning the world and her own will for the sake of her spiritual godfather, Anna, who has been named Aglaia upon taking the veil, passed three and thirty months. And when the thirty-third month was almost run, she did depart this life.

How she had lived there, how she had sought her salvation, is known to none, for the remoteness of time. But still some things have remained in the memory of the people. Once upon a time, some peasant pilgrim women, from various and distant places, were bound for that wooded region where Anna had been born. Near a small river which they had to cross, they met the usual wanderer over holy places, in appearance ill-favoured, tattered,--even, to put it plainly, queer, for the reason that his eyes, underneath a derby that had once been high in the world, were bandaged with a kerchief. The women began questioning him about the ways, the roads to the nunnery; about Father Rodion himself, and about Anna. He, in answering them, spoke a bit about himself at first: “I, now, little sisters, don’t know such a terrible lot, myself; however, I can chat a bit with you, for I am returning from those very parts. You,” he said, “must feel uncanny in my company, and I don’t wonder at it: I’m not a sweet sight to many; whoever I meet, whether he be afoot or on horseback, seeing a little old pilgrim going through a forest, hobbling along all by his lonesome with a white kerchief over his eyes, and, to boot, chanting psalms to God,--of course, he’s taken aback. But then, for my sins, far too greedy and quick are my eyes; my sight is so rare and penetrating, that I can see even at night, like a cat; and being in general sharp-sighted beyond measure, because I don’t travel with other folk but keep to myself,--well, for that reason have I resolved to curb a little my corporeal sight....” Then he began telling them how great a distance, by his reckoning, the pilgrim women had left to go; toward what regions they should direct their way; where they might have lodgings and rest; and what sort of a place the nunnery was.

“First,” said he, “will come the settlement near Sviyat-Oziero; then that very village where Anna was born; and then you’ll see another lake, belonging to the convent, which lake, though shallow, is of a decent size, and you’ll have to sail over this lake in a boat. And, as soon as you get out of the boat, right there is the convent itself, so near you might almost reach it with your hand. Of course, there’s no end of woods on the other shore as well, and through the trees you can see, as always, the walls of the convents, the domes of chapels, the cells, the hostels....”

Then, for a long while, he related to them the life of Rodion, the childhood and adolescence of Anna, and, in the end, he told them of her stay in the nunnery:

“Oh, her stay was not a long one,” said he. “It is a pity you say, with such beauty and youth? Of course, to such fools as we, it would be a piteous thing. But it’s plain to be seen Father Rodion knew well what he was about. For he was that way with everybody,--kindly, and meek, and gladsome, yet set on having his way, unto mercilessness; but he was especially so with Aglaia. I, my little ones, have been at the spot where she is resting.... A long little grave, beautiful, all grown over with grass, all green.... And I won’t hide anything,--I won’t hide that it was there, at her grave, that I thought of tying up my eyes; it was Aglaia’s example that gave me the idea; for she, I must tell you, during all her stay in the nunnery, did not for a single hour raise her eyes; even as she had pushed the veil down over them, so did it remain, and she was so sparing of her speech, so evasive, that even Father Rodion himself wondered at her. And yet, come to think of it, it was no easy matter for her to bear her task--to bid eternal farewell to the world, to the face of mankind! And her work in the nunnery was the very hardest that she could find, while her nights she spent standing in prayer. But then, how Father Rodion had come to love her! He marked her out from all the rest, let her come every day into his little cabin; held long converse with her about the future fame of the nunnery; even revealed his visions to her,--with a strict order of silence. Well, and so she burned out, like a candle, in the briefest time.... Again do you sigh, being sorry? I do agree with you, it is a sad thing! But I will tell you something far greater; for her great humility, for her disregard of this world, for her silence and for her toiling beyond her strength, he wrought a thing unheard of: toward the end of the third year of her striving, he invested her with the habit, and afterward, after prayer and holy meditation, he did summon her to him on a certain fearsome hour and commanded her to her end. Yes, that is just the way he spoke to her: ‘My joy, thy time has come! Remain thou in my memory just as glorious as thou now art, standing before me in this hour; depart to God!’ And what think ye? Within four and twenty hours she did forsake this life. She lay down, burning as with a fire,--and passed out. True, he did console her,--he confided to her before her end that by reason of her not having been able, during the first days of her novitiate, to keep just a few things of his secret discourses, only her lips would be rotted. He offered up silver coins for her funeral, and coppers to be given out at her burial; a bundle of candles for a forty days’ mass for her; a yellow candle worth a whole rouble for her coffin; and the coffin itself,--rounded out, of oak, hollowed out of one piece. And he blessed her as she was laid out, slender and just a trifle too tall, within that coffin, with her hair all let out, in two shroud-shifts. She was in an under-cassock of white, with a black selvage all around, and in a black mantle with white crosses on top of it; upon her little head they put a green little cap of velvet, broidered with gold; on top of the cap a small skull cap; and after that they tied a blue shawl with tassels upon her head, and then they put a leathern rosary into her dear hands.... Oh, I can’t tell how fine they arrayed her. And yet, little ones, there is a spiteful rumour which is of the devil, that she did not want to die,--oh, how she didn’t want to!

“Departing in such youth and in such beauty, she took her farewell of everybody, so they say, with tears, saying to all, in a loud voice, ‘Forgive me!’ And at the very last she closed her eyes and said distinctly: ‘And against thee, Mother-Earth, have I sinned in body and soul,--wilt thou forgive me?’ And those words are fearful words: touching their foreheads to the earth, men uttered them in the prayer for repentance throughout ancient Russia, before Whitsuntide, before the heathen day of the water nixies.”

_1916._

THE GRAMMAR OF LOVE

A certain Ivlev was once travelling, in the beginning of June, to a distant region of his provence.

The _tarantass_, with its dusty top all awry, had been given him by his brother-in-law, at whose estate he was passing the summer. The _troika_[5] of small but well-broken horses, with thick matted manes, he had hired in the village, from a wealthy _moujik_. They were driven by a son of that _moujik_, a lad of eighteen,--a plodding fellow, a good husbandman. He was all the time cogitating about something with displeasure, seemed to be offended at something, could not take a joke. And, having become convinced that there was no possibility of getting into talk with him, Ivlev yielded to that peaceful and aimless observation, which chimes in so well with the beat of hoofs and the jangling of little bells.

[5] Three horses, harnessed abreast. _Trans._

The drive was very pleasant at first: the day was warm, grayish: the road a much travelled one; the meadowlands were full of flowers and sky-larks; from the grain-fields, from the dove-coloured fields of rye, spreading onward as far as the eye could see, a pleasant little breeze was blowing, bearing flower pollen over slanting masses of the grain and rye, at times making this pollen dust swirl like smoke,--and the distance even seemed misty from it. The lad, in a new cap and a clumsy jacket made of lustrine, was sitting upright; the fact that the horses were completely entrusted to him, and that he was wearing his best clothes, made him especially serious. As for the horses, they coughed and ran along without hurrying; the off-horse at times made the whiffle-tree scrape against the wheel, at others strained in his harness, and one horse-shoe was constantly flashing under him with its white steel.

“Will we stop at the count’s?” asked the lad, without turning around, when a village came into view ahead of them, enclosing the horizon with its hedges and garden.

“What for?” said Ivlev.

The lad was silent for a time, and having knocked off with a whip a large gadfly that had stuck to a horse, answered sombrely:

“Why, to drink tea....”

“It isn’t tea you’ve got on your mind,” said Ivlev, “you’re always trying to save the horses.”

“It isn’t travelling that worries a horse,--it’s food,” answered the lad with conviction.

Ivlev looked about him: the weather had turned bleaker, discoloured clouds had gathered from all sides, and drops of rain were already falling,--these unassuming days always wind up with a downpour.... An old man in spectacles, who was ploughing near the village, said that only the young countess was at home, but they drove up never the less. The young fellow pulled a long coat over his shoulders, and satisfied with the fact that the horses were resting, was calmly getting soaked under the rain upon the driver’s seat of the _tarantass_, which had been drawn up in the middle of the dirty yard, near a stone trough that had sunk into the ground, which ground was all trampled over by the hoofs of cattle. He was inspecting his boots, was adjusting with his whip-stock the breech-band of the shaft-horse; while Ivlev sat in the drawing room, which was darkening from the rain. He was chatting with the countess and awaiting tea. There was already a smell of shavings burning; the thick green smoke of the samovar, which a barefooted wench on the steps was stuffing with bundles of brightly burning sticks, pouring kerosene over them, floated past the window. The countess was in a capacious pink dressing gown, which showed her powdered bosom; she smoked, inhaling deeply; she patted her hair frequently, baring her firm and rounded arms to the shoulders; inhaling the smoke and laughing, she kept on leading the talk around to love, and, among other things told him about her near neighbour, the land-owner Khvoshchinsky, who, as Ivlev had known ever since childhood, had all his life long been a maniac over his love for his chambermaid Lushka, who had died in early youth. “Ah, this legendary Lushka!” Ivlev had remarked jestingly, slightly confused over his confession. “Because this queer fellow had made a divinity of her, had dedicated all his life to insane dreams of her, I, in my youth, was almost in love with her: I fancied, in thinking of her, God knows what; although, they do say, she was not at all good-looking.” “Yes?” said the countess, without listening. “Why, he died this winter, you know. And Pisarev,--the only one whose visits he tolerated, because of their old friendship,--affirms that in everything else he was not in the least insane, and I believe it,--he was simply different from the run of the men of to-day....” Finally the barefooted wench with unusual carefullness served him with a glass of strong gray tea out of a teapot, and with a small basket of fly-specked tea cookies.

When they started off again, the rain had set in in earnest. It was necessary to raise the top, to cover up with the calcined, shrunken apron, to sit all hunched up. The horses clattered their muffled bells; little streams ran over their dark and glistening haunches; the grasses swished succulently under their wheels as they passed some boundary or other, among the fields of grain, through which the young fellow had driven in the hope of shortening the way; the warm rye-scented air gathered underneath the top, blending with the odour of the old _tarantass_.... “So that’s how things are,--Khvoshchinsky has died,” Ivlev was thinking. “I absolutely must drive up, just to have a glance at this deserted sanctuary of the mysterious Lushka.... But what sort of a man was this Khvoshchinsky? A madman, or simply some sort of an overwhelmed soul, all centred in one thing?” To judge by the stories of old land-owners, who were of the same age as Khvoshchinsky, he had at one time passed for an extraordinarily clever fellow in this province. And suddenly there fell upon him this love, this Lushka; then her unexpected death came,--and everything went to rack and ruin. He locked himself up in the house, in that room where Lushka had lived and died, and had sat there through more than twenty years,--not only not going out anywhere, but not showing himself to anybody even on his own estate. He had sat a hole through and through the mattress on Lushka’s bed, and ascribed literally everything that took place in the world to Lushka’s influence: if there were a thunderstorm,--it was Lushka who sent it; if a war were declared,--it meant that Lushka had so decided; if the harvest happened to be bad,--the peasants had not succeeded in pleasing Lushka....

“You’re driving to Khvoshchinsky’s, aren’t you?” called out Ivlev, putting his head out in the rain.

“To Khvoshchinsky’s,” came from the lad, indistinctly through the noise of the rain; water was running down from his drooping cap by this time. “Going up Pisarev’s hill....”

Ivlev did not know any such road. The settlements were constantly becoming poorer and farther away from the world. The boundary came to an end, the horses were going at a walk, and brought the careening _tarantass_ through a washed-out hollow to the bottom of a little hill, into some still unmown meadows, the green declivities of which stood out mournfully against the low-lying clouds. Then the road, now disappearing, now finding itself anew, began to wind in and out, along the bottoms of gullies, through ravines filled with alder bushes and branching osiers. They came upon somebody’s little apiary--several small logs standing upon a slope, among tall grass with wild strawberries glimmering red through it.... They made a detour of some old dam, sunk among nettles, and a pond long since dried up--a deep hollow, grown over with burdocks taller than a man in height.... A pair of black snipe with a mournful cry darted out of them towards the rainy sky.... But upon the dam, amidst the nettles, an old, big bush was blossoming out with little pale pink flowers,--that charming little tree which is called God’s Own Tree,[6]--and Ivlev suddenly recalled the localities, recalled that he had ridden through here more than once on horseback in his youth, with a gun slung over his shoulders....

[6] Abrotanum; southern wood. _Trans._

“They do say that she drowned herself right here,” said the young fellow unexpectedly.

“You’re talking about the mistress of Khvoshchinsky, aren’t you?” asked Ivlev. “That isn’t so; she didn’t even think of drowning.”

“No,--she did drown herself,” said the lad, “only, they think that he went mad from his poverty, most likely, and not on account of her....”

And after a silence, he roughly added:

“Well, we ought to be driving on again.... For this same Khvoshchinskoë now.... Look at how petered out them horses be!”

“Suit yourself,” said Ivlev.

Upon the hillock whither the road (now lead-coloured from the rain) led, upon a clearing from which the trees had been carried away, among the wet, rotting chips and leaves, among the stumps and young aspen growths, with their bitter and fresh scent, a solitary hut was standing. There was never a soul around,--only the singing green-finches, sitting under the rain upon tall flowers, rang through the entire thin forest that stretched upward beyond the hut. But when the _troika_, splashing through the mud, had come abreast of its threshold, a whole pack of huge hounds dashed out from somewhere,--black, chocolate, and smoke-coloured,--and with ferocious baying swirled around the horses, jumping up to their very muzzles, turning head over heels as they ran, and even spinning up to the very top of the _tarantass_. At the same time, and just as unexpectedly, the sky over the _tarantass_ was split by a deafening peal of thunder, which had not sounded once during the day, while the young fellow began in a rage to lash the dogs with his whip, and the horses dashed away at a gallop among the aspen trunks that began flashing before the eyes....

The village of Khvoshchinskoë could already be seen beyond the forest. The hounds lost ground and at once grew quiet, trotting back in a business-like manner; the forest gave way and again fields opened up ahead. Evening was coming on, and one could not determine now whether the storm-clouds, on three sides, were dispersing or encroaching. On the left was one almost black, with blue openings through which light showed; on the right, a hoary one, rumbling with ceaseless thunder; while toward the west, from Khvoshchinsky’s estate, from beyond the sloping hills over the river valley, was a turbidly blue one, with dusty streaks of rain through which could be seen the roseate mountains of clouds piled in the distance. But the rain was abating about the _tarantass_, and Ivlev, standing up, all bespattered with mud, threw back with pleasure the top, now grown heavy, and freely breathed in the fragrant dampness of the field.

He was looking at the approaching estate, was beholding, at last, that of which he had heard so much; but, even as formerly, it seemed to him that Lushka had lived and died not twenty years ago, but almost in times immemorial. Looking out over the bottom-land, all trace of the shallow little river was lost in the lush vegetation, over which a white king-fisher was soaring. Further on, on a mound, lay rows of hay, grown dark from the rain; among them, far apart from one another, were spread out ancient silvery poplars. The house, rather a large one and at one time white, with its wet roof glistening, stood upon an absolutely bare spot. There was neither garden, nor any outbuildings around it,--only two pillars of brick in lieu of gates, and with burdocks growing in the ditches. When the horses had crossed the little river by a ford and had gone up the hill, some woman, in a man’s summer overcoat with its pockets hanging down, was driving a few turkey hens through the burdocks. The _façade_ of the house was unusually bleak; it had few windows, and all of them were small, and set within thick walls. But then, the sombre front entrances were enormous. From one of them a young man in the gray blouse of a high-school student, belted with a broad strap, was looking with wonder at the arrivals; he was black-haired, with handsome eyes, and of very pleasing appearance, although his face was pale, and as spotted with freckles as a bird’s egg.

It was necessary to explain the visit in some way. Having climbed up to the entrance and given his name, Ivlev said that he wanted to see, and perhaps to buy, the library that, so the countess had said, had been left by the deceased. And the young man, flushing deeply and pulling down his blouse from behind, at once led him into the house. “So this, then, is the son of the famous Lushka!” reflected Ivlev, throwing a rapid glance at everything that met his eyes. He looked back frequently and said anything that came to mind first, just so as to have an additional glance at the master of the house, who appeared too youthful for his years. The latter answered hurriedly, but monosyllabically; he was evidently confused both by his bashfulness and his greed. That he was fearfully glad over the possibility of selling the books, and that he had conceived the notion of not parting with them at a cheap price, was apparent from his very first words, from that awkward hastiness with which he announced that books such as those in his possession could not be gotten for any amount of money. Through the half-dark entry, which was spread with straw rusty from dampness, he led Ivlev into a large ante-room.

“So this is where your father lived?” asked Ivlev, entering and taking off his hat.

“Yes, yes,--here,” the young man hastened to answer. “That is, of course, not just here ... for they used to sit in the bedroom most of all ... but, of course, they came here also....”

“Yes, I know,--for he was ill,” said Ivlev.

The young man flared up.