Several times that night I woke in terror at the thought that I might
be oversleeping myself, and by six o’clock was out of bed, although the
dawn was hardly peeping in at the window. I put on my clothes and boots
(all of which were lying tumbled and unbrushed beside the bed, since
Nicola, of course had not been in yet to tidy them up), and, without a
prayer said or my face washed, emerged, for the first time in my life,
into the street ALONE.
Over the way, behind the green roof of a large building, the dim, cold
dawn was beginning to blush red. The keen frost of the spring morning
which had stiffened the pools and mud and made them crackle under my
feet now nipped my face and hands also. Not a cab was to be seen, though
I had counted upon one to make the journey out and home the quicker.
Only a file of waggons was rumbling along the Arbat Prospect, and a
couple of bricklayers talking noisily together as they strode along the
pavement. However, after walking a verst or so I began to meet men and
women taking baskets to market or going with empty barrels to fetch the
day’s water supply; until at length, at the cross streets near the Arbat
Gate, where a pieman had set up his stall and a baker was just opening
his shop, I espied an old cabman shaking himself after indulging in a
nap on the box of his be-scratched old blue-painted, hobble-de-hoy wreck
of a drozhki. He seemed barely awake as he asked twenty copecks as the
fare to the monastery and back, but came to himself a moment afterwards,
just as I was about to get in, and, touching up his horse with the spare
end of the reins, started to drive off and leave me. “My horse wants
feeding,” he growled, “I can’t take you, barin.[Sir]”
With some difficulty and a promise of FORTY copecks I persuaded him to
stop. He eyed me narrowly as he pulled up, but nevertheless said: “Very
well. Get in, barin.” I must confess that I had some qualms lest he
should drive me to a quiet corner somewhere, and then rob me, but I
caught hold of the collar of his ragged driving-coat, close to where his
wrinkled neck showed sadly lean above his hunched-up back, and climbed
on to the blue-painted, curved, rickety scat. As we set off along
Vozdvizhenka Street, I noticed that the back of the drozhki was covered
with a strip of the same greenish material as that of which his coat was
made. For some reason or another this reassured me, and I no longer felt
nervous of being taken to a quiet spot and robbed.
The sun had risen to a good height, and was gilding the cupolas of the
churches, when we arrived at the monastery. In the shade the frost had
not yet given, but in the open roadway muddy rivulets of water were
coursing along, and it was through fast-thawing mire that the horse went
clip-clopping his way. Alighting, and entering the monastery grounds, I
inquired of the first monk whom I met where I could find the priest whom
I was seeking.
“His cell is over there,” replied the monk as he stopped a moment and
pointed towards a little building up to which a flight of steps led.
“I respectfully thank you,” I said, and then fell to wondering what all
the monks (who at that moment began to come filing out of the church)
must be thinking of me as they glanced in my direction. I was neither a
grown-up nor a child, while my face was unwashed, my hair unbrushed,
my clothes tumbled, and my boots unblacked and muddy. To what class
of persons were the brethren assigning me--for they stared at me hard
enough? Nevertheless I proceeded in the direction which the young priest
had pointed out to me.
An old man with bushy grey eyebrows and a black cassock met me on the
narrow path to the cells, and asked me what I wanted. For a brief moment
I felt inclined to say “Nothing,” and then run back to the drozhki and
drive away home; but, for all its beetling brows, the face of the old
man inspired confidence, and I merely said that I wished to see the
priest (whom I named).
“Very well, young sir; I will take you to him,” said the old man as he
turned round. Clearly he had guessed my errand at a stroke. “The father
is at matins at this moment, but he will soon be back,” and, opening
a door, the old man led me through a neat hall and corridor, all lined
with clean matting, to a cell.
“Please to wait here,” he added, and then, with a kind, reassuring
glance, departed.
The little room in which I found myself was of the smallest possible
dimensions, but extremely neat and clean. Its furniture only consisted
of a small table (covered with a cloth, and placed between two equally
small casement-windows, in which stood two pots of geraniums), a stand
of ikons, with a lamp suspended in front of them, a bench, and two
chairs. In one corner hung a wall clock, with little flowers painted on
its dial, and brass weights to its chains, while upon two nails driven
into a screen (which, fastened to the ceiling with whitewashed pegs,
probably concealed the bed) hung a couple of cassocks. The windows
looked out upon a whitewashed wall, about two arshins distant, and in
the space between them there grew a small lilac-bush.
Not a sound penetrated from without, and in the stillness the measured,
friendly stroke of the clock’s pendulum seemed to beat quite loudly.
The instant that I found myself alone in this calm retreat all other
thoughts and recollections left my head as completely as though they had
never been there, and I subsided into an inexpressibly pleasing kind of
torpor. The rusty alpaca cassocks with their frayed linings, the
worn black leather bindings of the books with their metal clasps, the
dull-green plants with their carefully watered leaves and soil, and,
above all, the abrupt, regular beat of the pendulum, all spoke to me
intimately of some new life hitherto unknown to me--a life of unity and
prayer, of calm, restful happiness.
“The months, the years, may pass,” I thought to myself, “but he remains
alone--always at peace, always knowing that his conscience is pure
before God, that his prayer will be heard by Him.” For fully half
an hour I sat on that chair, trying not to move, not even to breathe
loudly, for fear I should mar the harmony of the sounds which were
telling me so much, and ever the pendulum continued to beat the
same--now a little louder to the right, now a little softer to the left.