II

On Annunciation Day, after the mail train had been sent off, Matvey

was sitting in the refreshment bar, talking and drinking tea with

lemon in it.

The waiter and Zhukov the policeman were listening to him.

"I was, I must tell you," Matvey was saying, "inclined to religion

from my earliest childhood. I was only twelve years old when I used

to read the epistle in church, and my parents were greatly delighted,

and every summer I used to go on a pilgrimage with my dear mother.

Sometimes other lads would be singing songs and catching crayfish,

while I would be all the time with my mother. My elders commended

me, and, indeed, I was pleased myself that I was of such good

behaviour. And when my mother sent me with her blessing to the

factory, I used between working hours to sing tenor there in our

choir, and nothing gave me greater pleasure. I needn't say, I drank

no vodka, I smoked no tobacco, and lived in chastity; but we all

know such a mode of life is displeasing to the enemy of mankind,

and he, the unclean spirit, once tried to ruin me and began to

darken my mind, just as now with my cousin. First of all, I took a

vow to fast every Monday and not to eat meat any day, and as time

went on all sorts of fancies came over me. For the first week of

Lent down to Saturday the holy fathers have ordained a diet of dry

food, but it is no sin for the weak or those who work hard even to

drink tea, yet not a crumb passed into my mouth till the Sunday,

and afterwards all through Lent I did not allow myself a drop of

oil, and on Wednesdays and Fridays I did not touch a morsel at all.

It was the same in the lesser fasts. Sometimes in St. Peter's fast

our factory lads would have fish soup, while I would sit a little

apart from them and suck a dry crust. Different people have different

powers, of course, but I can say of myself I did not find fast days

hard, and, indeed, the greater the zeal the easier it seems. You

are only hungry on the first days of the fast, and then you get

used to it; it goes on getting easier, and by the end of a week you

don't mind it at all, and there is a numb feeling in your legs as

though you were not on earth, but in the clouds. And, besides that,

I laid all sorts of penances on myself; I used to get up in the

night and pray, bowing down to the ground, used to drag heavy stones

from place to place, used to go out barefoot in the snow, and I

even wore chains, too. Only, as time went on, you know, I was

confessing one day to the priest and suddenly this reflection

occurred to me: why, this priest, I thought, is married, he eats

meat and smokes tobacco--how can he confess me, and what power

has he to absolve my sins if he is more sinful that I? I even scruple

to eat Lenten oil, while he eats sturgeon, I dare say. I went to

another priest, and he, as ill luck would have it, was a fat fleshy

man, in a silk cassock; he rustled like a lady, and he smelt of

tobacco too. I went to fast and confess in the monastery, and my

heart was not at ease even there; I kept fancying the monks were

not living according to their rules. And after that I could not

find a service to my mind: in one place they read the service too

fast, in another they sang the wrong prayer, in a third the sacristan

stammered. Sometimes, the Lord forgive me a sinner, I would stand

in church and my heart would throb with anger. How could one pray,

feeling like that? And I fancied that the people in the church did

not cross themselves properly, did not listen properly; wherever I

looked it seemed to me that they were all drunkards, that they broke

the fast, smoked, lived loose lives and played cards. I was the

only one who lived according to the commandments. The wily spirit

did not slumber; it got worse as it went on. I gave up singing in

the choir and I did not go to church at all; since my notion was

that I was a righteous man and that the church did not suit me owing

to its imperfections--that is, indeed, like a fallen angel, I was

puffed up in my pride beyond all belief. After this I began attempting

to make a church for myself. I hired from a deaf woman a tiny little

room, a long way out of town near the cemetery, and made a prayer-room

like my cousin's, only I had big church candlesticks, too, and a

real censer. In this prayer-room of mine I kept the rules of holy

Mount Athos--that is, every day my matins began at midnight without

fail, and on the eve of the chief of the twelve great holy days my

midnight service lasted ten hours and sometimes even twelve. Monks

are allowed by rule to sit during the singing of the Psalter and

the reading of the Bible, but I wanted to be better than the monks,

and so I used to stand all through. I used to read and sing slowly,

with tears and sighing, lifting up my hands, and I used to go

straight from prayer to work without sleeping; and, indeed, I was

always praying at my work, too. Well, it got all over the town

'Matvey is a saint; Matvey heals the sick and senseless.' I never

had healed anyone, of course, but we all know wherever any heresy

or false doctrine springs up there's no keeping the female sex away.

They are just like flies on the honey. Old maids and females of all

sorts came trailing to me, bowing down to my feet, kissing my hands

and crying out I was a saint and all the rest of it, and one even

saw a halo round my head. It was too crowded in the prayer-room. I

took a bigger room, and then we had a regular tower of Babel. The

devil got hold of me completely and screened the light from my eyes

with his unclean hoofs. We all behaved as though we were frantic.

I read, while the old maids and other females sang, and then after

standing on their legs for twenty-four hours or longer without

eating or drinking, suddenly a trembling would come over them as

though they were in a fever; after that, one would begin screaming

and then another--it was horrible! I, too, would shiver all over

like a Jew in a frying-pan, I don't know myself why, and our legs

began to prance about. It's a strange thing, indeed: you don't want

to, but you prance about and waggle your arms; and after that,

screaming and shrieking, we all danced and ran after one another

--ran till we dropped; and in that way, in wild frenzy, I fell

into fornication."

The policeman laughed, but, noticing that no one else was laughing,

became serious and said:

"That's Molokanism. I have heard they are all like that in the

Caucasus."

"But I was not killed by a thunderbolt," Matvey went on, crossing

himself before the ikon and moving his lips. "My dead mother must

have been praying for me in the other world. When everyone in the

town looked upon me as a saint, and even the ladies and gentlemen

of good family used to come to me in secret for consolation, I

happened to go into our landlord, Osip Varlamitch, to ask forgiveness

--it was the Day of Forgiveness--and he fastened the door with

the hook, and we were left alone face to face. And he began to

reprove me, and I must tell you Osip Varlamitch was a man of brains,

though without education, and everyone respected and feared him,

for he was a man of stern, God-fearing life and worked hard. He had

been the mayor of the town, and a warden of the church for twenty

years maybe, and had done a great deal of good; he had covered all

the New Moscow Road with gravel, had painted the church, and had

decorated the columns to look like malachite. Well, he fastened the

door, and--'I have been wanting to get at you for a long time,

you rascal, . . .' he said. 'You think you are a saint,' he said.

'No you are not a saint, but a backslider from God, a heretic and

an evildoer! . . .' And he went on and on. . . . I can't tell you

how he said it, so eloquently and cleverly, as though it were all

written down, and so touchingly. He talked for two hours. His words

penetrated my soul; my eyes were opened. I listened, listened and

--burst into sobs! 'Be an ordinary man,' he said, 'eat and drink,

dress and pray like everyone else. All that is above the ordinary

is of the devil. Your chains,' he said, 'are of the devil; your

fasting is of the devil; your prayer-room is of the devil. It is

all pride,' he said. Next day, on Monday in Holy Week, it pleased

God I should fall ill. I ruptured myself and was taken to the

hospital. I was terribly worried, and wept bitterly and trembled.

I thought there was a straight road before me from the hospital to

hell, and I almost died. I was in misery on a bed of sickness for

six months, and when I was discharged the first thing I did I

confessed, and took the sacrament in the regular way and became a

man again. Osip Varlamitch saw me off home and exhorted me: 'Remember,

Matvey, that anything above the ordinary is of the devil.' And now

I eat and drink like everyone else and pray like everyone else

. . . . If it happens now that the priest smells of tobacco or vodka I

don't venture to blame him, because the priest, too, of course, is

an ordinary man. But as soon as I am told that in the town or in

the village a saint has set up who does not eat for weeks, and makes

rules of his own, I know whose work it is. So that is how I carried

on in the past, gentlemen. Now, like Osip Varlamitch, I am continually

exhorting my cousins and reproaching them, but I am a voice crying

in the wilderness. God has not vouchsafed me the gift."

Matvey's story evidently made no impression whatever. Sergey

Nikanoritch said nothing, but began clearing the refreshments off

the counter, while the policeman began talking of how rich Matvey's

cousin was.

"He must have thirty thousand at least," he said.

Zhukov the policeman, a sturdy, well-fed, red-haired man with a

full face (his cheeks quivered when he walked), usually sat lolling

and crossing his legs when not in the presence of his superiors.

As he talked he swayed to and fro and whistled carelessly, while

his face had a self-satisfied replete air, as though he had just

had dinner. He was making money, and he always talked of it with

the air of a connoisseur. He undertook jobs as an agent, and when

anyone wanted to sell an estate, a horse or a carriage, they applied

to him.

"Yes, it will be thirty thousand, I dare say," Sergey Nikanoritch

assented. "Your grandfather had an immense fortune," he said,

addressing Matvey. "Immense it was; all left to your father and

your uncle. Your father died as a young man and your uncle got hold

of it all, and afterwards, of course, Yakov Ivanitch. While you

were going pilgrimages with your mama and singing tenor in the

factory, they didn't let the grass grow under their feet."

"Fifteen thousand comes to your share," said the policeman swaying

from side to side. "The tavern belongs to you in common, so the

capital is in common. Yes. If I were in your place I should have

taken it into court long ago. I would have taken it into court for

one thing, and while the case was going on I'd have knocked his

face to a jelly."

Yakov Ivanitch was disliked because, when anyone believes differently

from others, it upsets even people who are indifferent to religion.

The policeman disliked him also because he, too, sold horses and

carriages.

"You don't care about going to law with your cousin because you

have plenty of money of your own," said the waiter to Matvey, looking

at him with envy. "It is all very well for anyone who has means,

but here I shall die in this position, I suppose. . . ."

Matvey began declaring that he hadn't any money at all, but Sergey

Nikanoritch was not listening. Memories of the past and of the

insults which he endured every day came showering upon him. His

bald head began to perspire; he flushed and blinked.

"A cursed life!" he said with vexation, and he banged the sausage

on the floor.