I
THE evening service was being celebrated on the eve of Palm Sunday
in the Old Petrovsky Convent. When they began distributing the palm
it was close upon ten o'clock, the candles were burning dimly, the
wicks wanted snuffing; it was all in a sort of mist. In the twilight
of the church the crowd seemed heaving like the sea, and to Bishop
Pyotr, who had been unwell for the last three days, it seemed that
all the faces--old and young, men's and women's--were alike,
that everyone who came up for the palm had the same expression in
his eyes. In the mist he could not see the doors; the crowd kept
moving and looked as though there were no end to it. The female
choir was singing, a nun was reading the prayers for the day.
How stifling, how hot it was! How long the service went on! Bishop
Pyotr was tired. His breathing was laboured and rapid, his throat
was parched, his shoulders ached with weariness, his legs were
trembling. And it disturbed him unpleasantly when a religious maniac
uttered occasional shrieks in the gallery. And then all of a sudden,
as though in a dream or delirium, it seemed to the bishop as though
his own mother Marya Timofyevna, whom he had not seen for nine
years, or some old woman just like his mother, came up to him out
of the crowd, and, after taking a palm branch from him, walked away
looking at him all the while good-humouredly with a kind, joyful
smile until she was lost in the crowd. And for some reason tears
flowed down his face. There was peace in his heart, everything was
well, yet he kept gazing fixedly towards the left choir, where the
prayers were being read, where in the dusk of evening you could not
recognize anyone, and--wept. Tears glistened on his face and on
his beard. Here someone close at hand was weeping, then someone
else farther away, then others and still others, and little by
little the church was filled with soft weeping. And a little later,
within five minutes, the nuns' choir was singing; no one was weeping
and everything was as before.
Soon the service was over. When the bishop got into his carriage
to drive home, the gay, melodious chime of the heavy, costly bells
was filling the whole garden in the moonlight. The white walls, the
white crosses on the tombs, the white birch-trees and black shadows,
and the far-away moon in the sky exactly over the convent, seemed
now living their own life, apart and incomprehensible, yet very
near to man. It was the beginning of April, and after the warm
spring day it turned cool; there was a faint touch of frost, and
the breath of spring could be felt in the soft, chilly air. The
road from the convent to the town was sandy, the horses had to go
at a walking pace, and on both sides of the carriage in the brilliant,
peaceful moonlight there were people trudging along home from church
through the sand. And all was silent, sunk in thought; everything
around seemed kindly, youthful, akin, everything--trees and sky
and even the moon, and one longed to think that so it would be
always.
At last the carriage drove into the town and rumbled along the
principal street. The shops were already shut, but at Erakin's, the
millionaire shopkeeper's, they were trying the new electric lights,
which flickered brightly, and a crowd of people were gathered round.
Then came wide, dark, deserted streets, one after another; then the
highroad, the open country, the fragrance of pines. And suddenly
there rose up before the bishop's eyes a white turreted wall, and
behind it a tall belfry in the full moonlight, and beside it five
shining, golden cupolas: this was the Pankratievsky Monastery, in
which Bishop Pyotr lived. And here, too, high above the monastery,
was the silent, dreamy moon. The carriage drove in at the gate,
crunching over the sand; here and there in the moonlight there were
glimpses of dark monastic figures, and there was the sound of
footsteps on the flag-stones. . . .
"You know, your holiness, your mamma arrived while you were away,"
the lay brother informed the bishop as he went into his cell.
"My mother? When did she come?"
"Before the evening service. She asked first where you were and
then she went to the convent."
"Then it was her I saw in the church, just now! Oh, Lord!"
And the bishop laughed with joy.
"She bade me tell your holiness," the lay brother went on, "that
she would come to-morrow. She had a little girl with her--her
grandchild, I suppose. They are staying at Ovsyannikov's inn."
"What time is it now?"
"A little after eleven."
"Oh, how vexing!"
The bishop sat for a little while in the parlour, hesitating, and
as it were refusing to believe it was so late. His arms and legs
were stiff, his head ached. He was hot and uncomfortable. After
resting a little he went into his bedroom, and there, too, he sat
a little, still thinking of his mother; he could hear the lay brother
going away, and Father Sisoy coughing the other side of the wall.
The monastery clock struck a quarter.
The bishop changed his clothes and began reading the prayers before
sleep. He read attentively those old, long familiar prayers, and
at the same time thought about his mother. She had nine children
and about forty grandchildren. At one time, she had lived with her
husband, the deacon, in a poor village; she had lived there a very
long time from the age of seventeen to sixty. The bishop remembered
her from early childhood, almost from the age of three, and--how
he had loved her! Sweet, precious childhood, always fondly remembered!
Why did it, that long-past time that could never return, why did
it seem brighter, fuller, and more festive than it had really been?
When in his childhood or youth he had been ill, how tender and
sympathetic his mother had been! And now his prayers mingled with
the memories, which gleamed more and more brightly like a flame,
and the prayers did not hinder his thinking of his mother.
When he had finished his prayers he undressed and lay down, and at
once, as soon as it was dark, there rose before his mind his dead
father, his mother, his native village Lesopolye . . . the creak
of wheels, the bleat of sheep, the church bells on bright summer
mornings, the gypsies under the window--oh, how sweet to think
of it! He remembered the priest of Lesopolye, Father Simeon--mild,
gentle, kindly; he was a lean little man, while his son, a divinity
student, was a huge fellow and talked in a roaring bass voice. The
priest's son had flown into a rage with the cook and abused her:
"Ah, you Jehud's ass!" and Father Simeon overhearing it, said not
a word, and was only ashamed because he could not remember where
such an ass was mentioned in the Bible. After him the priest at
Lesopolye had been Father Demyan, who used to drink heavily, and
at times drank till he saw green snakes, and was even nicknamed
Demyan Snakeseer. The schoolmaster at Lesopolye was Matvey Nikolaitch,
who had been a divinity student, a kind and intelligent man, but
he, too, was a drunkard; he never beat the schoolchildren, but for
some reason he always had hanging on his wall a bunch of birch-twigs,
and below it an utterly meaningless inscription in Latin: "Betula
kinderbalsamica secuta." He had a shaggy black dog whom he called
Syntax.
And his holiness laughed. Six miles from Lesopolye was the village
Obnino with a wonder-working ikon. In the summer they used to carry
the ikon in procession about the neighbouring villages and ring the
bells the whole day long; first in one village and then in another,
and it used to seem to the bishop then that joy was quivering in
the air, and he (in those days his name was Pavlusha) used to follow
the ikon, bareheaded and barefoot, with naïve faith, with a naïve
smile, infinitely happy. In Obnino, he remembered now, there were
always a lot of people, and the priest there, Father Alexey, to
save time during mass, used to make his deaf nephew Ilarion read
the names of those for whose health or whose souls' peace prayers
were asked. Ilarion used to read them, now and then getting a five
or ten kopeck piece for the service, and only when he was grey and
bald, when life was nearly over, he suddenly saw written on one of
the pieces of paper: "What a fool you are, Ilarion." Up to fifteen
at least Pavlusha was undeveloped and idle at his lessons, so much
so that they thought of taking him away from the clerical school
and putting him into a shop; one day, going to the post at Obnino
for letters, he had stared a long time at the post-office clerks
and asked: "Allow me to ask, how do you get your salary, every month
or every day?"
His holiness crossed himself and turned over on the other side,
trying to stop thinking and go to sleep.
"My mother has come," he remembered and laughed.
The moon peeped in at the window, the floor was lighted up, and
there were shadows on it. A cricket was chirping. Through the wall
Father Sisoy was snoring in the next room, and his aged snore had
a sound that suggested loneliness, forlornness, even vagrancy. Sisoy
had once been housekeeper to the bishop of the diocese, and was
called now "the former Father Housekeeper"; he was seventy years
old, he lived in a monastery twelve miles from the town and stayed
sometimes in the town, too. He had come to the Pankratievsky Monastery
three days before, and the bishop had kept him that he might talk
to him at his leisure about matters of business, about the arrangements
here. . . .
At half-past one they began ringing for matins. Father Sisoy could
be heard coughing, muttering something in a discontented voice,
then he got up and walked barefoot about the rooms.
"Father Sisoy," the bishop called.
Sisoy went back to his room and a little later made his appearance
in his boots, with a candle; he had on his cassock over his
underclothes and on his head was an old faded skull-cap.
"I can't sleep," said the bishop, sitting up. "I must be unwell.
And what it is I don't know. Fever!"
"You must have caught cold, your holiness. You must be rubbed with
tallow." Sisoy stood a little and yawned. "O Lord, forgive me, a
sinner."
"They had the electric lights on at Erakin's today," he said; "I
don't like it!"
Father Sisoy was old, lean, bent, always dissatisfied with something,
and his eyes were angry-looking and prominent as a crab's.
"I don't like it," he said, going away. "I don't like it. Bother
it!"