"The sausage is disgusting," he said, frowning and cutting himself
off a little bit. "In the shop here they sell you rubbish and fleece
you horribly. . . . I would offer you a piece, but you would scarcely
care to consume it. Will you have some?"
In his language, too, there was something typical that had a very
great deal in common with what was characteristic in his face, but
what it was exactly I still could not decide. To inspire confidence
and to show that I was not ill-humoured, I took some of the proffered
sausage. It certainly was horrible; one needed the teeth of a good
house-dog to deal with it. As we worked our jaws we got into
conversation; we began complaining to each other of the lengthiness
of the service.
"The rule here approaches that of Mount Athos," I said; "but at
Athos the night services last ten hours, and on great feast-days
--fourteen! You should go there for prayers!"
"Yes," answered my companion, and he wagged his head, "I have been
here for three weeks. And you know, every day services, every day
services. On ordinary days at midnight they ring for matins, at
five o'clock for early mass, at nine o'clock for late mass. Sleep
is utterly out of the question. In the daytime there are hymns of
praise, special prayers, vespers. . . . And when I was preparing
for the sacrament I was simply dropping from exhaustion." He sighed
and went on: "And it's awkward not to go to church. . . . The monks
give one a room, feed one, and, you know, one is ashamed not to go.
One wouldn't mind standing it for a day or two, perhaps, but three
weeks is too much--much too much! Are you here for long?"
"I am going to-morrow evening."
"But I am staying another fortnight."
"But I thought it was not the rule to stay for so long here?" I
said.
"Yes, that's true: if anyone stays too long, sponging on the monks,
he is asked to go. Judge for yourself, if the proletariat were
allowed to stay on here as long as they liked there would never be
a room vacant, and they would eat up the whole monastery. That's
true. But the monks make an exception for me, and I hope they won't
turn me out for some time. You know I am a convert."
"You mean?"
"I am a Jew baptized. . . . Only lately I have embraced orthodoxy."
Now I understood what I had before been utterly unable to understand
from his face: his thick lips, and his way of twitching up the right
corner of his mouth and his right eyebrow, when he was talking, and
that peculiar oily brilliance of his eyes which is only found in
Jews. I understood, too, his phraseology. . . . From further
conversation I learned that his name was Alexandr Ivanitch, and had
in the past been Isaac, that he was a native of the Mogilev province,
and that he had come to the Holy Mountains from Novotcherkassk,
where he had adopted the orthodox faith.
Having finished his sausage, Alexandr Ivanitch got up, and, raising
his right eyebrow, said his prayer before the ikon. The eyebrow
remained up when he sat down again on the little sofa and began
giving me a brief account of his long biography.
"From early childhood I cherished a love for learning," he began
in a tone which suggested he was not speaking of himself, but of
some great man of the past. "My parents were poor Hebrews; they
exist by buying and selling in a small way; they live like beggars,
you know, in filth. In fact, all the people there are poor and
superstitious; they don't like education, because education, very
naturally, turns a man away from religion. . . . They are fearful
fanatics. . . . Nothing would induce my parents to let me be educated,
and they wanted me to take to trade, too, and to know nothing but
the Talmud. . . . But you will agree, it is not everyone who can
spend his whole life struggling for a crust of bread, wallowing in
filth, and mumbling the Talmud. At times officers and country
gentlemen would put up at papa's inn, and they used to talk a great
deal of things which in those days I had never dreamed of; and, of
course, it was alluring and moved me to envy. I used to cry and
entreat them to send me to school, but they taught me to read Hebrew
and nothing more. Once I found a Russian newspaper, and took it
home with me to make a kite of it. I was beaten for it, though I
couldn't read Russian. Of course, fanaticism is inevitable, for
every people instinctively strives to preserve its nationality, but
I did not know that then and was very indignant. . . ."
Having made such an intellectual observation, Isaac, as he had been,
raised his right eyebrow higher than ever in his satisfaction and
looked at me, as it were, sideways, like a cock at a grain of corn,
with an air as though he would say: "Now at last you see for certain
that I am an intellectual man, don't you?" After saying something
more about fanaticism and his irresistible yearning for enlightenment,
he went on:
"What could I do? I ran away to Smolensk. And there I had a cousin
who relined saucepans and made tins. Of course, I was glad to work
under him, as I had nothing to live upon; I was barefoot and in
rags. . . . I thought I could work by day and study at night and
on Saturdays. And so I did, but the police found out I had no
passport and sent me back by stages to my father. . . ."
Alexandr Ivanitch shrugged one shoulder and sighed.
"What was one to do?" he went on, and the more vividly the past
rose up before his mind, the more marked his Jewish accent became.
"My parents punished me and handed me over to my grandfather, a
fanatical old Jew, to be reformed. But I went off at night to Shklov.
And when my uncle tried to catch me in Shklov, I went off to Mogilev;
there I stayed two days and then I went off to Starodub with a
comrade."
Later on he mentioned in his story Gonel, Kiev, Byelaya, Tserkov,
Uman, Balt, Bendery and at last reached Odessa.
"In Odessa I wandered about for a whole week, out of work and hungry,
till I was taken in by some Jews who went about the town buying
second-hand clothes. I knew how to read and write by then, and had
done arithmetic up to fractions, and I wanted to go to study
somewhere, but I had not the means. What was I to do? For six months
I went about Odessa buying old clothes, but the Jews paid me no
wages, the rascals. I resented it and left them. Then I went by
steamer to Perekop."
"What for?"
"Oh, nothing. A Greek promised me a job there. In short, till I was
sixteen I wandered about like that with no definite work and no
roots till I got to Poltava. There a student, a Jew, found out that
I wanted to study, and gave me a letter to the Harkov students. Of
course, I went to Harkov. The students consulted together and began
to prepare me for the technical school. And, you know, I must say
the students that I met there were such that I shall never forget
them to the day of my death. To say nothing of their giving me food
and lodging, they set me on the right path, they made me think,
showed me the object of life. Among them were intellectual remarkable
people who by now are celebrated. For instance, you have heard of
Grumaher, haven't you?"
"No, I haven't."
"You haven't! He wrote very clever articles in the _Harkov Gazette_,
and was preparing to be a professor. Well, I read a great deal and
attended the student's societies, where you hear nothing that is
commonplace. I was working up for six months, but as one has to
have been through the whole high-school course of mathematics to
enter the technical school, Grumaher advised me to try for the
veterinary institute, where they admit high-school boys from the
sixth form. Of course, I began working for it. I did not want to
be a veterinary surgeon but they told me that after finishing the
course at the veterinary institute I should be admitted to the
faculty of medicine without examination. I learnt all Kühner; I
could read Cornelius Nepos, _à livre ouvert_; and in Greek I read
through almost all Curtius. But, you know, one thing and another,
. . . the students leaving and the uncertainty of my position, and
then I heard that my mamma had come and was looking for me all over
Harkov. Then I went away. What was I to do? But luckily I learned
that there was a school of mines here on the Donets line. Why should
I not enter that? You know the school of mines qualifies one as a
mining foreman--a splendid berth. I know of mines where the foremen
get a salary of fifteen hundred a year. Capital. . . . I entered
it. . . ."
With an expression of reverent awe on his face Alexandr Ivanitch
enumerated some two dozen abstruse sciences in which instruction
was given at the school of mines; he described the school itself,
the construction of the shafts, and the condition of the miners. . . .
Then he told me a terrible story which sounded like an invention,
though I could not help believing it, for his tone in telling it
was too genuine and the expression of horror on his Semitic face
was too evidently sincere.
"While I was doing the practical work, I had such an accident one
day!" he said, raising both eyebrows. "I was at a mine here in the
Donets district. You have seen, I dare say, how people are let down
into the mine. You remember when they start the horse and set the
gates moving one bucket on the pulley goes down into the mine, while
the other comes up; when the first begins to come up, then the
second goes down--exactly like a well with two pails. Well, one
day I got into the bucket, began going down, and can you fancy, all
at once I heard, Trrr! The chain had broken and I flew to the devil
together with the bucket and the broken bit of chain. . . . I fell
from a height of twenty feet, flat on my chest and stomach, while
the bucket, being heavier, reached the bottom before me, and I hit
this shoulder here against its edge. I lay, you know, stunned. I
thought I was killed, and all at once I saw a fresh calamity: the
other bucket, which was going up, having lost the counter-balancing
weight, was coming down with a crash straight upon me. . . . What
was I to do? Seeing the position, I squeezed closer to the wall,
crouching and waiting for the bucket to come full crush next minute
on my head. I thought of papa and mamma and Mogilev and Grumaher.
. . . I prayed. . . . But happily . . . it frightens me even to
think of it. . . ."
Alexandr Ivanitch gave a constrained smile and rubbed his forehead
with his hand.
"But happily it fell beside me and only caught this side a little.
. . . It tore off coat, shirt and skin, you know, from this side.
. . . The force of it was terrific. I was unconscious after it.
They got me out and sent me to the hospital. I was there four months,
and the doctors there said I should go into consumption. I always
have a cough now and a pain in my chest. And my psychic condition
is terrible. . . . When I am alone in a room I feel overcome with
terror. Of course, with my health in that state, to be a mining
foreman is out of the question. I had to give up the school of
mines. . . ."
"And what are you doing now?" I asked.
"I have passed my examination as a village schoolmaster. Now I
belong to the orthodox church, and I have a right to be a teacher.
In Novotcherkassk, where I was baptized, they took a great interest
in me and promised me a place in a church parish school. I am going
there in a fortnight, and shall ask again."
Alexandr Ivanitch took off his overcoat and remained in a shirt
with an embroidered Russian collar and a worsted belt.
"It is time for bed," he said, folding his overcoat for a pillow,
and yawning. "Till lately, you know, I had no knowledge of God at
all. I was an atheist. When I was lying in the hospital I thought
of religion, and began reflecting on that subject. In my opinion,
there is only one religion possible for a thinking man, and that
is the Christian religion. If you don't believe in Christ, then
there is nothing else to believe in, . . . is there? Judaism has
outlived its day, and is preserved only owing to the peculiarities
of the Jewish race. When civilization reaches the Jews there will
not be a trace of Judaism left. All young Jews are atheists now,
observe. The New Testament is the natural continuation of the Old,
isn't it?"
I began trying to find out the reasons which had led him to take
so grave and bold a step as the change of religion, but he kept
repeating the same, "The New Testament is the natural continuation
of the Old"--a formula obviously not his own, but acquired--
which did not explain the question in the least. In spite of my
efforts and artifices, the reasons remained obscure. If one could
believe that he had embraced Orthodoxy from conviction, as he said
he had done, what was the nature and foundation of this conviction
it was impossible to grasp from his words. It was equally impossible
to assume that he had changed his religion from interested motives:
his cheap shabby clothes, his going on living at the expense of the
convent, and the uncertainty of his future, did not look like
interested motives. There was nothing for it but to accept the idea
that my companion had been impelled to change his religion by the
same restless spirit which had flung him like a chip of wood from
town to town, and which he, using the generally accepted formula,
called the craving for enlightenment.
Before going to bed I went into the corridor to get a drink of
water. When I came back my companion was standing in the middle of
the room, and he looked at me with a scared expression. His face
looked a greyish white, and there were drops of perspiration on his
forehead.
"My nerves are in an awful state," he muttered with a sickly smile,"
awful! It's acute psychological disturbance. But that's of no
consequence."
And he began reasoning again that the New Testament was a natural
continuation of the Old, that Judaism has outlived its day. . . .
Picking out his phrases, he seemed to be trying to put together the
forces of his conviction and to smother with them the uneasiness
of his soul, and to prove to himself that in giving up the religion
of his fathers he had done nothing dreadful or peculiar, but had
acted as a thinking man free from prejudice, and that therefore he
could boldly remain in a room all alone with his conscience. He was
trying to convince himself, and with his eyes besought my assistance.
Meanwhile a big clumsy wick had burned up on our tallow candle. It
was by now getting light. At the gloomy little window, which was
turning blue, we could distinctly see both banks of the Donets River
and the oak copse beyond the river. It was time to sleep.
"It will be very interesting here to-morrow," said my companion
when I put out the candle and went to bed. "After early mass, the
procession will go in boats from the Monastery to the Hermitage."
Raising his right eyebrow and putting his head on one side, he
prayed before the ikons, and, without undressing, lay down on his
little sofa.
"Yes," he said, turning over on the other side.
"Why yes?" I asked.
"When I accepted orthodoxy in Novotcherkassk my mother was looking
for me in Rostov. She felt that I meant to change my religion," he
sighed, and went on: "It is six years since I was there in the
province of Mogilev. My sister must be married by now."
After a short silence, seeing that I was still awake, he began
talking quietly of how they soon, thank God, would give him a job,
and that at last he would have a home of his own, a settled position,
his daily bread secure. . . . And I was thinking that this man would
never have a home of his own, nor a settled position, nor his daily
bread secure. He dreamed aloud of a village school as of the Promised
Land; like the majority of people, he had a prejudice against a
wandering life, and regarded it as something exceptional, abnormal
and accidental, like an illness, and was looking for salvation in
ordinary workaday life. The tone of his voice betrayed that he was
conscious of his abnormal position and regretted it. He seemed as
it were apologizing and justifying himself.
Not more than a yard from me lay a homeless wanderer; in the rooms
of the hostels and by the carts in the courtyard among the pilgrims
some hundreds of such homeless wanderers were waiting for the
morning, and further away, if one could picture to oneself the whole
of Russia, a vast multitude of such uprooted creatures was pacing
at that moment along highroads and side-tracks, seeking something
better, or were waiting for the dawn, asleep in wayside inns and
little taverns, or on the grass under the open sky. . . . As I fell
asleep I imagined how amazed and perhaps even overjoyed all these
people would have been if reasoning and words could be found to
prove to them that their life was as little in need of justification
as any other. In my sleep I heard a bell ring outside as plaintively
as though shedding bitter tears, and the lay brother calling out
several times:
"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us! Come to mass!"
When I woke up my companion was not in the room. It was sunny and
there was a murmur of the crowds through the window. Going out, I
learned that mass was over and that the procession had set off for
the Hermitage some time before. The people were wandering in crowds
upon the river bank and, feeling at liberty, did not know what to
do with themselves: they could not eat or drink, as the late mass
was not yet over at the Hermitage; the Monastery shops where pilgrims
are so fond of crowding and asking prices were still shut. In spite
of their exhaustion, many of them from sheer boredom were trudging
to the Hermitage. The path from the Monastery to the Hermitage,
towards which I directed my steps, twined like a snake along the
high steep bank, going up and down and threading in and out among
the oaks and pines. Below, the Donets gleamed, reflecting the sun;
above, the rugged chalk cliff stood up white with bright green on
the top from the young foliage of oaks and pines, which, hanging
one above another, managed somehow to grow on the vertical cliff
without falling. The pilgrims trailed along the path in single file,
one behind another. The majority of them were Little Russians from
the neighbouring districts, but there were many from a distance,
too, who had come on foot from the provinces of Kursk and Orel; in
the long string of varied colours there were Greek settlers, too,
from Mariupol, strongly built, sedate and friendly people, utterly
unlike their weakly and degenerate compatriots who fill our southern
seaside towns. There were men from the Donets, too, with red stripes
on their breeches, and emigrants from the Tavritchesky province.
There were a good many pilgrims of a nondescript class, like my
Alexandr Ivanitch; what sort of people they were and where they
came from it was impossible to tell from their faces, from their
clothes, or from their speech. The path ended at the little
landing-stage, from which a narrow road went to the left to the
Hermitage, cutting its way through the mountain. At the landing-stage
stood two heavy big boats of a forbidding aspect, like the New
Zealand pirogues which one may see in the works of Jules Verne. One
boat with rugs on the seats was destined for the clergy and the
singers, the other without rugs for the public. When the procession
was returning I found myself among the elect who had succeeded in
squeezing themselves into the second. There were so many of the
elect that the boat scarcely moved, and one had to stand all the
way without stirring and to be careful that one's hat was not
crushed. The route was lovely. Both banks--one high, steep and
white, with overhanging pines and oaks, with the crowds hurrying
back along the path, and the other shelving, with green meadows and
an oak copse bathed in sunshine--looked as happy and rapturous
as though the May morning owed its charm only to them. The reflection
of the sun in the rapidly flowing Donets quivered and raced away
in all directions, and its long rays played on the chasubles, on
the banners and on the drops splashed up by the oars. The singing
of the Easter hymns, the ringing of the bells, the splash of the
oars in the water, the calls of the birds, all mingled in the air
into something tender and harmonious. The boat with the priests and
the banners led the way; at its helm the black figure of a lay
brother stood motionless as a statue.
When the procession was getting near the Monastery, I noticed
Alexandr Ivanitch among the elect. He was standing in front of them
all, and, his mouth wide open with pleasure and his right eyebrow
cocked up, was gazing at the procession. His face was beaming;
probably at such moments, when there were so many people round him
and it was so bright, he was satisfied with himself, his new religion,
and his conscience.
When a little later we were sitting in our room, drinking tea, he
still beamed with satisfaction; his face showed that he was satisfied
both with the tea and with me, that he fully appreciated my being
an intellectual, but that he would know how to play his part with
credit if any intellectual topic turned up. . . .
"Tell me, what psychology ought I to read?" he began an intellectual
conversation, wrinkling up his nose.
"Why, what do you want it for?"
"One cannot be a teacher without a knowledge of psychology. Before
teaching a boy I ought to understand his soul."
I told him that psychology alone would not be enough to make one
understand a boy's soul, and moreover psychology for a teacher who
had not yet mastered the technical methods of instruction in reading,
writing, and arithmetic would be a luxury as superfluous as the
higher mathematics. He readily agreed with me, and began describing
how hard and responsible was the task of a teacher, how hard it was
to eradicate in the boy the habitual tendency to evil and superstition,
to make him think honestly and independently, to instil into him
true religion, the ideas of personal dignity, of freedom, and so
on. In answer to this I said something to him. He agreed again. He
agreed very readily, in fact. Obviously his brain had not a very
firm grasp of all these "intellectual subjects."
Up to the time of my departure we strolled together about the
Monastery, whiling away the long hot day. He never left my side a
minute; whether he had taken a fancy to me or was afraid of solitude,
God only knows! I remember we sat together under a clump of yellow
acacia in one of the little gardens that are scattered on the
mountain side.
"I am leaving here in a fortnight," he said; "it is high time."
"Are you going on foot?"
"From here to Slavyansk I shall walk, then by railway to Nikitovka;
from Nikitovka the Donets line branches off, and along that branch
line I shall walk as far as Hatsepetovka, and there a railway guard,
I know, will help me on my way."
I thought of the bare, deserted steppe between Nikitovka and
Hatsepetovka, and pictured to myself Alexandr Ivanitch striding
along it, with his doubts, his homesickness, and his fear of solitude
. . . . He read boredom in my face, and sighed.
"And my sister must be married by now," he said, thinking aloud,
and at once, to shake off melancholy thoughts, pointed to the top
of the rock and said:
"From that mountain one can see Izyum."
As we were walking up the mountain he had a little misfortune. I
suppose he stumbled, for he slit his cotton trousers and tore the
sole of his shoe.
"Tss!" he said, frowning as he took off a shoe and exposed a bare
foot without a stocking. "How unpleasant! . . . That's a complication,
you know, which . . . Yes!"
Turning the shoe over and over before his eyes, as though unable
to believe that the sole was ruined for ever, he spent a long time
frowning, sighing, and clicking with his tongue.
I had in my trunk a pair of boots, old but fashionable, with pointed
toes and laces. I had brought them with me in case of need, and
only wore them in wet weather. When we got back to our room I made
up a phrase as diplomatic as I could and offered him these boots.
He accepted them and said with dignity:
"I should thank you, but I know that you consider thanks a convention."
He was pleased as a child with the pointed toes and the laces, and
even changed his plans.
"Now I shall go to Novotcherkassk in a week, and not in a fortnight,"
he said, thinking aloud. "In shoes like these I shall not be ashamed
to show myself to my godfather. I was not going away from here just
because I hadn't any decent clothes. . . ."
When the coachman was carrying out my trunk, a lay brother with a
good ironical face came in to sweep out the room. Alexandr Ivanitch
seemed flustered and embarrassed and asked him timidly:
"Am I to stay here or go somewhere else?"
He could not make up his mind to occupy a whole room to himself,
and evidently by now was feeling ashamed of living at the expense
of the Monastery. He was very reluctant to part from me; to put off
being lonely as long as possible, he asked leave to see me on my
way.
The road from the Monastery, which had been excavated at the cost
of no little labour in the chalk mountain, moved upwards, going
almost like a spiral round the mountain, over roots and under sullen
overhanging pines. . . .
The Donets was the first to vanish from our sight, after it the
Monastery yard with its thousands of people, and then the green
roofs. . . . Since I was mounting upwards everything seemed vanishing
into a pit. The cross on the church, burnished by the rays of the
setting sun, gleamed brightly in the abyss and vanished. Nothing
was left but the oaks, the pines, and the white road. But then our
carriage came out on a level country, and that was all left below
and behind us. Alexandr Ivanitch jumped out and, smiling mournfully,
glanced at me for the last time with his childish eyes, and vanished
from me for ever. . . .
The impressions of the Holy Mountains had already become memories,
and I saw something new: the level plain, the whitish-brown distance,
the way side copse, and beyond it a windmill which stood with out
moving, and seemed bored at not being allowed to wave its sails
because it was a holiday.