As soon as spring came to the city I started out to tramp to Siberia,
for I had heard that country highly praised, but on my way I was
stopped by a man who strengthened my soul for the rest of my life and
showed me the true path to God.
I met him on the road between Perm and Verk-hotur.
I was lying on the edge of a wood and had built a fire to boil water.
It was noon, very hot, and the air was filled with a rosinlike woody
smell, oily and sappy. It was difficult to breathe. Even the birds felt
hot, and they hid themselves in the depth of the wood and sang there
happily while they arranged their lives.
It was quiet on the edge of the wood. It seemed to me that everything
would soon melt underneath the sun and that the trees and the rocks and
my own stultified body would flow in a many-colored, thick stream upon
the earth.
A man was approaching, coming from the Perm side, singing in a loud,
trembling voice. I raised my head and listened. I saw a little pilgrim,
in a white cassock, with a tea-kettle at his belt and a calf-skin
knapsack and a sauce-pan on his back. He walked briskly and nodded and
smiled to me from afar.
He was the usual pilgrim. There are many such, and all of them are
harmful. Making pilgrimages is a paying business for them. They are
boorish and ignorant and are inveterate liars and drunkards, and are
not beyond stealing. I disliked them from the bottom of my heart.
He came up to me, took off his cap, shook his head, and his hair danced
drolly, while he chattered like a magpie.
"Peace to you, young man. What heat! It is twenty-two degrees hotter
than hell."
"Are you long from there?" I asked.
"About six hundred years."
His voice was vibrant and gay, his head small, his forehead high, and
his face was covered with fine wrinkles, like a spider-web. His gray
beard looked clean and his brown eyes shone with gold, like a young
man's.
"He is a merry dog," I thought to myself.
But he continued chattering. "The Urals; there is where you find
beauty! The Lord is a great master in decorating the earth. He knows
how to arrange the woods and the trees and the mountains well."
He took his tramping gear off, moving quickly and briskly. He saw that
my kettle was boiling over and he lifted it off the fire, and asked
like an old comrade:
"Shall I pour out my tea, or will we drink yours?" Before I had time
to answer, he added: "Well, let's drink mine. I've got good tea. A
merchant gave it to me. It's expensive."
I smiled. "You're spry," I said to him.
"That's nothing," he answered. "I am nearly dead from the heat. But
wait till I'm rested. Then I will crease out your wrinkles for you."
There was something about him which reminded me of Savelko, and I
wanted to joke with him. But in about five minutes I listened to his
words open-mouthed. They were strangely familiar; yet unheard-of, and
it seemed to me that my own heart, not he, was singing the joy of the
sunny days:
"Look! Is this not a holiday? Is it not paradise? The mountains rise
toward the sun, rejoicing, and the woods climb to the summits of the
hills, and the little blades of grass under your feet strive winged up
toward the light of life. All sing psalms of joy, but you, man, you,
master of the earth, why do you sit here, morose?"
"What strange bird is that?" I asked myself. But I said to him, trying
to draw him out:
"But what if I am filled with unhappy thoughts?" He pointed to the
earth. "What is that?"
"The earth."
"No. Look higher."
"You mean the grass?"
"Higher still."
"The shadow?"
"It is the shadow of your body," he said, "and your thoughts are the
shadow of our soul. What are you afraid of?"
"I am afraid of nothing."
"You are lying. If you are not afraid, your thoughts would be bold.
Unhappiness gives birth to fear, and fear comes from lack of faith.
That is the way it is. Drink some tea."
He poured tea into the cups and spoke without interruption:
"It seems to me that I have seen you before. Were you ever in Valaan?"
"I was."
"When? No, it was not there. It seems to me that you were red-headed
when I saw you there. You have a striking face. It must have been in
Solofki that I saw you."
"I was never in Solofki."
"You were never there? That is too bad. It is an ancient monastery and
very beautiful. You ought to go there."
"Then you never saw me before?" I said, and it hurt me to find it so.
"What is the difference?" he cried out. "If I didn't see you before, I
see you now; and at that time the other one must have resembled you.
Isn't that just the same?"
I laughed. "What do you mean, 'just the same'?"
"Why not?"
"Because I am I, and the other one is the other one."
"Are you better than he?"
"I don't know."
"I don't know either."
I looked at him and was overcome with impatience. I wanted him to speak
and speak without end. He poured out his tea and continued talking
hastily:
"Yes, the other one was a one-eyed fellow, and it made him wretched.
All the lame and the crippled, whether in body or in mind, are the
essence of egoism. 'I am crippled,' they say, or 'I am lame; but you
people, don't you dare notice it.' He was that kind of a fellow.
He said to me,' All people are rascals. When they see that I have
one eye they say to me, "you are one-eyed." That is why they are
scoundrels.' 'My dear boy,' I said to him, 'you are a scoundrel and a
rascal yourself, and perhaps a fool also. You can take your choice.
Understand this: The important thing is not how people look at you but
how you look at people. That is why, my friend, we become one-eyed or
blind--because we look at other people, hunting for their dark spots
and put out our own light in their darkness. If you would light up the
other's darkness with your light, the world would be pleasant for you.
Man sees no good in any one else but himself, that is why the whole
world is a wretched wilderness for him.'"
He laughed and looked at me, and I listened to him as one who is lost
in the wood at night and hears a far-off bell and is afraid that he
made a mistake; that perhaps it is only the cry of an owl.
I understood that he had seen much; that he had overcome much in
himself. But it seemed to me that he did not think much of me, that he
was joking with me, and that his young eyes made fun of me. Since my
experience with Anthony I seldom trust a man's smile any longer.
I asked him who he was.
"I am called Jehudiel. I am a cheerful idiot for others and a good
friend to myself."
"Are you from the clergy?"
"I was a priest for some time, but was unfro'cked and was put in a
monastery at Suzdal for six years. You want to know why? Because I
preached sermons in church which the people, in the simplicity of
their souls, interpreted too literally. They were whipped for it and I
was convicted. And thus the affair ended. What did I preach? I don't
remember now. It was a long time ago, eighteen years, and one can
forget in that time. I have had various thoughts but none of them ever
came to anything."
He laughed and in each wrinkle of his face the laughter played. He
looked about him as if the mountains and the woods were created for him.
When it became cooler we went on farther together, and on the way he
asked me about myself.
"Who are you?"
Again, like that time before Anthony, I wished to place my former days
before my eyes and to look upon their checkered face. I spoke about
my childhood, about Larion and Savelko, and the old man laughed and
shouted.
"Eh, what good people! The Lord's fools, what! Those were dear, true
flowers of the Russian soil, real God-loving ones."
I did not understand this praise and his joy looked strange to me, but
he could hardly walk from laughter. He stopped, threw his head back and
shouted and called straight up to heaven, as if he had a friend there
with whom he wished to share his joy. I said to him kindly:
"You resemble Savelko somewhat."
"Resemble!" he cried. "It is always good," he said, "to resemble some
one. Eh, dear boy, if only the orthodox church had not ruined us ages
ago, how different it would be for the living ones on the Russian soil
now."
His speech was dark to me.
I told him about Titoff. He seemed to see my father-in-law before his
eyes and he expressed himself freely about him.
"Such a rascal! I have seen many such. They are rapacious bugs, but
foolish and cowardly."
When he heard my story about Anthony, he became thoughtful and then
said:
"So, that was a doubting Thomas. Well, not every Thomas is a genius.
Some of them are stupidity itself."
He drove a bumble-bee from him and lectured it. "Go away, go away from
here. Such impoliteness, to fly straight into the eyes. The devil take
you!"
I listened to his words attentively, missing nothing. It seemed to me
that they were children of deep thought. I spoke to him as before a
confessor, except that I hesitated in mentioning God. I was afraid, and
I regretted something. God's image had become tarnished in my soul at
this time, and I wanted to polish it from the dust of the days, and I
saw that I cleaned up to the hollow places and my heart shuddered with
pain.
The old man nodded his head and encouraged me.
"Never mind; don't be afraid. If you keep silent you only lie to
yourself, not to me. Speak. Regret nothing. For if you destroy, you
will create something new."
He responded to my words like an echo and I became more and more at
ease with him.