Like an old hypocrite, coughing, smiling ingratiatingly, bowing
profusely, Judas of Kerioth, the Traitor, appeared before the
Sanhedrim. It was on the day following the murder of Jesus, towards
noon. They were all there, His judges and murderers, the aged Annas
with his sons, those accurate and repulsive copies of their father, and
Kaiaphas, his son-in-law, wormeaten with ambition, and other members of
the Sanhedrim, who had stolen their names from the memory of the
people, wealthy and renowned Sadducees, proud of their power and their
knowledge of the law. They received the Traitor in silence and their
haughty faces remained unmoved as if nothing had entered the room. And
even the very least among them, a nonentity utterly ignored by the
others, raised to the ceiling his birdlike features and looked as if
nothing had entered. Judas bowed, bowed and bowed, but they maintained
their silence: as if not a human being had entered, but some unclean
and unnoticeable insect had crept into their midst. But Judas of
Kerioth was not a man to feel embarrassed: they were silent, but he
kept on bowing and thought that if he had to keep on bowing until night
he would do so.
At last the impatient Kaiaphas inquired:
“What dost thou want?”
Judas bowed once more and modestly replied:
“It is I, Judas of Kerioth, who betrayed unto you Jesus of Nazareth.”
“Well, what now? Thou hast received thy reward. Go,” commanded Annas,
but Judas kept on bowing as if he had not heard the command. And
glancing at him Kaiaphas inquired of Annas:
“How much was he given?”
“Thirty pieces of silver.”
Kaiaphas smiled and even the senile Annas smiled also. A merry smile
flitted over all the haughty faces: and he of the birdlike countenance
even laughed. Paling perceptibly Judas broke in:
“Quite so. Quite so. Of course, a very small sum, but is Judas
dissatisfied? Does Judas cry out that he was robbed? He is content. Did
he not aid a sacred cause? A sacred cause, to be sure. Do not the
wisest of men listen now to Judas of Kerioth and think: ‘He is one of
us, Judas of Kerioth, he is our brother, our friend, Judas of Kerioth,
the Traitor.’ Does not Annas long to kneel before Judas and kiss his
hand? Only Judas will not suffer it, for he is a coward, he fears that
Annas might bite.”
Kaiaphas commanded:
“Drive this dog away. Why is he barking here?”
“Go hence. We have no time to listen to thy babbling,” indifferently
remarked Annas.
Judas straightened up and shut his eyes. That hypocrisy which he had so
lightly borne all his life he felt now as an insupportable burden, and
with one movement of his eyelids he cast it off. And when he looked up
again at Annas his glance was frank and straight and dreadful in its
naked truthfulness. But they paid no attention even to this.
“Wouldst thou be driven out with rods?” shouted Kaiaphas.
Suffocating with the burden of terrible words which he sought to lift
higher and higher as if to cast them down upon the heads of the judges
Judas hoarsely inquired:
“And do ye know who He was, He whom ye yesterday condemned and
crucified?”
“We know. Go.”
With one word he will now tear that thin veil that clouds their eyes,
and the whole earth will shake with the impact of the merciless truth.
They had souls—and they will lose them. They had life—and they will be
deprived of it. Light had been before their eyes—and eternal gloom and
terror will engulf them.
And these are the words that rend the speaker’s throat:
“He was not a deceiver. He was innocent and pure. Hear ye? Judas
cheated you. Judas betrayed unto you an Innocent One.”
He waited and heard the indifferent senile quaver of Annas: “And is
that all thou wouldst tell us?”
“Perhaps ye have not comprehended me?” Judas replied with dignity, all
color fading from his cheeks. “Judas deceived you. You have killed an
Innocent One.”
One of the judges, a man with a birdlike face, smiled, but Annas was
unmoved. Annas was bored, Annas yawned. And Kaiaphas joined him in a
yawn and wearily remarked: “I was told of the great mind of Judas of
Kerioth. But he is a fool, and a great bore as well as a fool.”
“What?” cried Judas shaken through and through with a desperate rage.
“And are ye wise? Judas has deceived you, do you hear me? Not Him did
he betray, but you, ye wise ones, you, ye strong ones, he betrayed unto
shameful death which shall not end in eternity. Thirty pieces of
silver! Yes. Yes. That is the price of your own blood, blood that is
filthy as the swill which the women cast out from the gates of their
houses. Oh Annas, Annas, aged, grey-bearded, stupid Annas, choking with
law, why didst thou not give another piece of silver, another obolus?
For at that price thou wilt be rated forever!”
“Begone!” shouted Kaiaphas trembling with wrath. But Annas stopped him
with a gesture and as stolidly asked Judas:
“Is this all now?”
“If I shall go into the desert and cry out to the wild beasts: ‘Beasts
of the desert, have ye heard the price they have put on their Jesus?’
What will the wild beasts do? They will creep out of their lairs, they
will howl with wrath; they will forget the fear of man and they will
rush here to devour you. If I tell unto the sea: ‘O sea, knowest thou
the price they have put upon their Jesus?’ If I shall tell unto the
mountains: ‘Ye mountains, know ye the price they have placed upon their
Jesus?’ The sea and the mountains will leave their places appointed
unto them since eternity and rush towards you and fall upon your
heads.”
“Would not Judas like to become a prophet? He speaks so loudly,”
remarked he of the birdlike face mockingly and ingratiatingly peering
into the eyes of Kaiaphas.
“To-day I saw a pallid sun. It looked down in terror upon this earth
inquiring: ‘Where, O where is man?’ I saw to-day a scorpion. He sat
upon a rock and laughing inquired: ‘Where, O where is man?’ I drew
nearer and glanced into his eyes. And he laughed and repeated: ‘Where,
O where is man?’ Where, oh, where is man? Tell me, I do not see. Has
Judas become blind, poor Judas of Kerioth?”
And the Iscariot wept loudly. And in that moment he resembled a madman.
Kaiaphas turned away contemptuously, but Annas thought awhile and
remarked: “I see, Judas, that thou didst really receive but a small
reward, and this evidently agitates thee. Here is more money, take it
and give unto thy children.”
He threw something that jingled abruptly. And hardly had that sound
died when another oddly resembling it succeeded: it was Judas casting
handfuls of silver coins and oboli into the faces of the high priest
and the judges, returning his reward for Jesus. In a crazy shower the
coins flew about, striking the faces of the judges, the tables and
scattering on the floor. Some of the judges sought to shield themselves
with the palms of their hands, others leaping from their seats shouted
and cursed. Judas aiming at Annas threw the last coin for which he had
fished a long time with his trembling hand, and wrathfully spitting
upon the floor walked out.
“Well. Well,” he growled passing swiftly through lanes and scaring
little children. “Methinks thou didst weep, Judas, hey? Is Kaiaphas
really right in calling Judas of Kerioth a stupid fool? He who weepeth
in the day of the great vengeance is not worthy of it, knowest thou
this, Judas? Do not let thine eyes get the best of thee, do not let thy
heart play false. Do not put out the flames with thy tears, Judas of
Kerioth.”
The disciples of Jesus sat sadly and silently anxiously listening to
the sounds outside. There was still danger that the vengeance of the
foes of Jesus would not content itself with His death, and they all
expected the intrusion of soldiers and perhaps further executions. Near
John, who as the favorite disciple of Jesus felt the death of the
Teacher most, sat Mary Magdalene and Matthew, gently comforted him.
Mary, whose face was swollen with weeping softly stroked his luxuriant
wavy hair, while Matthew instructively quoted the words of Solomon:
“He that is longsuffering is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth
his heart than he that taketh a city.”
At that moment loudly banging the door Judas Iscariot entered the room.
They leaped to their feet in terror and for an instant failed to
recognize the newcomer, but when they observed his hateful countenance
and the redhaired illshaped head they raised an uproar. Peter lifted up
his hands and cried out:
“Begone, Traitor, begone lest I kill thee.”
But scanning the face and the eyes of the Traitor they lapsed into
silence, whispering with awe:
“Leave him. Leave him. Satan has entered his body.”
Taking advantage of the silence Judas exclaimed:
“Rejoice, rejoice, ye eyes of Judas the Iscariot. Ye have just seen the
coldblooded murderers, and now ye behold the cowardly traitors. Where
is Jesus? I ask of you, where is Jesus?”
There was something commanding in the hoarse voice of the Iscariot and
Thomas meekly replied:
“Thou knowest, Judas, that our Teacher was crucified yesterday.”
“How did you suffer it? Where was your love? Thou, beloved disciple,
thou, O Rock, where were ye when they crucified your friend upon the
tree?”
“But what could we do, judge thyself?” replied Thomas shrugging his
shoulders.
“Thou askest this, Thomas? Well, well,” replied Judas craning his head
and suddenly he broke out with vehemence: “He who loves asks not what
to do. He goes and does all. He weeps, he snaps, he strangles his foe,
he breaks his limbs. He who loves! When thy son is drowning, goest thou
into the marketplace and askest the passer-by: ‘What am I to do? My son
is drowning. Dost thou not leap into the water and drown with the son
together? He who loves!”
Peter sullenly replied to the frenzied harangue of Judas:
“I unsheathed the sword but He himself bade me put it up.”
“He bade thee? And thou didst obey?” laughed the Iscariot. “Peter,
Peter, was it meet to obey Him? Does He understand aught of men and of
fighting?”
“He who disobeys Him will go down to the Gehenna of fire.”
“Then why didst thou not go? Why didst thou not go, Peter? Gehenna of
fire, indeed, what is Gehenna? And why didst thou not go? Why hast thou
a soul if thou darest not throw it into the fire at will?”
“Silence, He himself desired this sacrifice,” exclaimed John rising to
his feet. “And His sacrifice was beautiful.”
“Is there a beautiful sacrifice? What sayest thou, beloved disciple?
Where there is a sacrifice, there is the slayer and the betrayer also.
Sacrifice is suffering for one and shame for the others. Traitors,
traitors, what have ye done with this earth? They are gazing upon this
earth from above and from below with derision, saying: ‘Look at this
earth, on it they crucified Jesus.’ And they spit upon it even as I
do.”
Judas spat wrathfully.
“He took upon Himself the sins of all mankind. His sacrifice is
beautiful,” insisted John.
“Nay, but ye upon yourselves have taken all sin. Beloved disciple! Will
there not spring up from thee a race of traitors, a brood of
little-souled liars? Ye blinded men, what have ye done with this earth?
Ye compassed about to destroy it. You will soon kiss the cross whereon
ye crucified Jesus. Yes, indeed, you will kiss the cross, Judas
promises you that.”
“Judas, do riot blaspheme,” roared Peter flushing. “How could we kill
all his foes? There were so many of them.”
“And thou, Peter,” angrily retorted John. “Dost thou not see that he is
possessed of Satan. Get thee hence, tempter. Thou art full of lies. The
Teacher commanded not to slay.”
“But did He forbid you to die? Why are ye living whereas He is dead?
Why do your legs walk, your tongues utter folly, your eyes wink,
whereas He is dead, immovable, voiceless? How dare thy cheeks be red,
John, whereas His are pale? How darest thou shout, Peter, whereas He is
silent? What ye should have done, ye ask of Judas? And Judas replies to
you, beautiful, daring Judas of Kerioth: ye should have died. Ye should
have fallen on the way, clutching the soldiers’ swords and hands. Ye
should have drowned them in a sea of your own blood; ye should have
died, died. His very Father should have called out with dread if ye all
had entered.”
Judas paused, raised his hand, and suddenly noticed on the table the
remains of a meal. And with a queer amazement, curiously, as if he were
looking at food for the first time, he closely scrutinized it and
slowly inquired: “What is this? Ye have eaten? Perhaps slept also?”
“I have slept,” curtly replied Peter, dropping his head, scenting
already in Judas’ manner a tone of command. “I have slept and eaten.”
Thomas resolutely and firmly interposed: “This is all wrong, Judas.
Think: if we had all died, who would have been left to tell about
Jesus? Who would carry the teachings of Jesus to the people, if all of
us had died, John and Peter and I?”
“And what is truth in the lips of traitors? Does it not turn to
falsehood? Thomas, Thomas, dost thou not understand that thou art now a
watchman at the grave of dead truth? The watchman falleth asleep, a
thief cometh and carrieth away the truth—tell me where is the truth? Be
thou accursed, Thomas! Fruitless and beggarly wilt thou be forever, and
ye are accursed with Him.”
“Be thou thyself accursed, Satan,” retorted John, and his words were
repeated by James and Matthew and all the other disciples. Peter alone
was silent.
“I go to Him!” said Judas raising aloft his masterful hand. “Who will
follow the Iscariot to Jesus?”
“I! I! I am with thee,” cried Peter rising. But John and the others
stopped him with terror, saying: “Madman, dost thou forget that he
betrayed our Teacher into the hands of His enemies?”
Peter smote his breast with his fist and wept bitterly.
“Whither shall I go, Lord? O Lord, whither?”
Long ago, during his solitary rambles, Judas had picked out the spot
whereon he intended to kill himself after the death of Jesus. It was on
the side of the mountain, high over Jerusalem, and only one tree was
growing there, twisted all out of shape, knocked about by the wind
which tore at it from all sides and half-withered. One of its gnarled
and leafbare branches it stretched cut over Jerusalem as though
blessing the city or perhaps threatening it, and this one Judas
selected whereon to fasten his noose. But the path to the tree was long
and difficult, and Judas of Kerioth was very tired. Still the same
sharp little stones rolled from under his feet as if dragging him back,
and the mountain was high, windswept and gloomy. And Judas sat down for
a rest several times, breathing heavily, while from the back through
the crevices there swept over him the chilling breath of the mountain.
“Thou too, accursed hill,” contemptuously muttered Judas and breathing
heavily he shook his benumbed head wherein all thoughts had turned to
stone. Then suddenly he raised it, opening wide his chilled eyes and
wrathfully growled:
“No, they are too bad altogether for Judas. Hearest thou, Jesus? Now
wilt thou believe me? I am coming. Meet me kindly, for I am weary. I am
very weary. Then together, with a brother’s embrace, we shall return to
this earth. Is it well?”
And again opening wide his eyes he murmured:
“But perhaps even there thou wilt be angry with Judas of Kerioth? And
perhaps thou wilt not believe? And peradventure, thou wilt send me to
hell? Well, what then? I shall go to hell. And in the flames of thy
hell I shall forge the iron to wreck thy heaven. Well? Wilt thou
believe me then? Wilt thou then go back with me to this earth, O
Jesus?”
Finally Judas reached the top of the mountain and the gnarled tree and
here the wind commenced to torture him. But when Judas had chided it it
began to whistle soft and low; the wind started off in another
direction and was bidding him farewell.
“Well, well. But those others are curs,” responded Judas making a
noose. And as the rope might play him false and break he hung it over
the abyss,—if it did break he would still find his death upon the
rocks. And before pushing himself away from the edge and hanging
himself over the precipice, Judas once more carefully admonished Jesus:
“But Thou meet me kindly, for I am very weary, Jesus.”
And he leaped. The rope stretched to its limit, but sustained the
weight. The neck of Judas grew thin, while his hands and legs folded
and hung down limply as if wet. He died. Thus within two days, one
after the other, departed from this earth Jesus of Nazareth and Judas
of Kerioth, the Traitor.
All night like some hideous fruit the body of Judas swung over
Jerusalem; and the wind turned his face now towards the city now to the
desert. But whichever way his death-marred face turned, its red and
bloodshot eyes, both of which were now alike, like brothers, resolutely
gazed upon the sky. Towards morning some observant one noticed Judas
suspended over the city and cried out in terror. Men came and took him
down, but learning his identity threw him into a deep ravine where they
cast the carcases of horses, dogs, cats and other carrion.
That same night all believers learned of the terrible death of the
Traitor, and the next day all Jerusalem knew it. Rocky Judea heard it,
and green-clad Galilee too; and from one sea even to another more
distant one the news of the death of the Traitor was carried. Not
swifter nor slower than the passing of time, but step by step with it,
the message spread; and as there is no end to time there will be no end
to the stories of Judas’ betrayal and his terrible death. And all—the
good and the bad alike—will curse his shameful memory, and among all
nations, as many as there are or will ever be, he will remain alone in
his cruel fate—Judas of Kerioth, the Traitor.
Lazarus.
CHAPTER I.
When Lazarus emerged from the grave wherein for the space of three days
and three nights he had dwelt under the mysterious dominion of death,
and returned living to his abode, the ominous peculiarities which later
made his very name a thing of dread remained for a long time unnoticed.
Rejoicing in his return to life, his friends and neighbors overwhelmed
him with caresses and they satisfied their eager interest by
ministering to him and caring for his food, his drink and his raiment.
They clothed him in rich attire, bright with the hues of hope and
merriment, and when he sat among them once more, arrayed like the
bridegroom in his wedding garments, and ate and drank once more, they
wept for joy and summoned the neighbors to view him, who had so
miraculously risen from the dead. The neighbors came and rejoiced;
strangers too came from distant cities and villages and in accents of
tumultuous praise voiced their homage to the miracle—the house of Mary
and Martha hummed like a beehive.
All that seemed novel in the features of Lazarus and in his demeanor
they explained as natural traces of his serious illness and the shock
through which he had passed. It was manifest that the destructive
effect of Death upon the corpse had been merely arrested by the
miraculuous power, but not altogether undone. And what the hand of
Death had already accomplished upon the face and the body of Lazarus
was like an artist’s unfinished sketch covered by a thin film. A deep
earthy bluish pallor rested on the temples of Lazarus, below his eyes
and on his hollow cheeks; his lanky fingers were of the same earthy
blue and his nails, which had grown long during his sojourn in the
grave had turned livid. Here and there, on the lips and elsewhere, his
skin, swollen in the grave, had cracked open and was covered by a fine
reddish film that glistened like transparent slime. And he had grown
very fat. His body, inflated in the grave, retained that ominous
obesity beneath which one scents the putrid sap of dissolution. But the
cadaverous and fetid odor which had permeated the burial robes of
Lazarus, and seemingly his very body, soon disappeared completely; in
the course of weeks even the bluish tint of his hands and of his
countenance faded, and time also smoothed out the reddish blisters
though they never vanished altogether. Such was the appearance of
Lazarus as he faced the world in this his second life. To those who had
seen him buried it seemed perfectly natural.
The manner of Lazarus also had undergone a change, but this
circumstance surprised no one and failed to attract due attention.
Until his death Lazarus had always been care free and merry. He had
loved laughter and harmless jests. It was this agreeable and merry
disposition, free from malice and gloom, that had made him so well
beloved by the Teacher. But now he was grave and silent. He neither
jested himself nor responded with an approving smile to the jests of
others: and the words which he uttered on rare occasions were the
simplest, most commonplace and indispensable words, as bare of a
profounder meaning as the sounds with which animals express pain or
pleasure, thirst and hunger. Such words a man may speak all his life
and none would ever learn what grieved or pleased him in the depths of
his soul.
Thus he sat with the face of a corpse over which for the space of three
days the hand of death had held sway in the gloom of the grave,—arrayed
in solemn wedding garments that glistened with ruddy gold and blood-red
crimson; dull and silent, ominously transformed and uncanny, but still
undiscovered in his new character, he sat at the festive board among
his banqueting friends and neighbors. Now tenderly, now tempestuously
the waves of rejoicing surged around him; fervently affectionate
glances feasted upon his face that was still numb, with the chill of
the grave; the warm hand of a friend caressed his blue tipped leaden
fingers. The music played. They had summoned musicians to play merry
tunes: the cymbal, the pipe, the lute and the timbrel. And it sounded
like the humming of bees, like the chirping of crickets, like the
singing of birds, this rejoicing in the house of Mary and Martha.
CHAPTER II.
A reckless one lifted the veil. A reckless one, with one breath of a
fleeting word, destroyed the sweet dreams and revealed the truth in its
hideous nakedness. The thought was not yet clear in the questioner’s
head when his lips, parting in a smile inquired:
“Why don’t you tell us, Lazarus, what was There?”
And they all paused, amazed at the query, as though they had just
realized that Lazarus had been dead three days, and they glanced up
curiously awaiting the answer. But Lazarus was silent.
“Will you not tell us?” questioned the curious one “Was is so dreadful
There?”
And again the thought failed to keep pace with the words: if it had
kept abreast with them the question would not have been put, for it
gripped in the next instant the questioner’s own heart with fear
unutterable. And they were all perturbed, they waited eagerly for the
reply of Lazarus; but he was dumb, looking cold and stern and downcast.
And then they noted anew, as though for the first time, the dreadful
bluish pallor of his countenance and his hideous obesity; his livid
hand still reposed on the table as though forgotten there. All eyes
were fixed on that hand in a strange fascination as though expecting
that it might give the craved reply. The musicians had still been
playing, but lo! now the silence reached them too, like a rivulet which
reaches and quenches the scattered coals, and smothered were the sounds
of merriment. The pipes were mute; the high-sounding cymbal and the
melodious timbrel were silent; with the sound of a breaking chord, as
though song itself were dying, tremulously, brokenly groaned the lute;
and all was still.
“Thou wilt not?” repeated the questioner unable to repress his prating
tongue. Silence reigned and the bluish hand reposed on the table and
did not stir. Then it moved a little, and all heaved a sigh of relief
and lifted their eyes: Lazarus, the risen, was gazing straight into
their faces with a glance that took in all,—stolid and gruesome.
This was on the third day after he had emerged from his grave. Since
then many had tested the pernicious power of his gaze, but neither
those whom it wrecked forever, nor those who in the primal sources of
life that are as mysterious as death itself found force to resist,
could ever explain the nature of that dreadful, that invisible
something which reposed in the depths of his black pupils. Lazarus
looked into the world calmly and frankly without seeking to hide
anything, without any thought of revealing anything; his gaze was as
cold as the glance of one infinitely indifferent to all things living.
Many thoughtless people jostled him in the street failing to recognize
him, and only later learned the identity of that quiet corpulent man
the edge of whose gaudy and festive apparel had brushed against them.
The sun shone as brightly as ever, the fountains murmured their song,
and the native sky remained as cloudless and azure as before, but those
who had fallen under the sway of that mysterious glance neither felt
the glow of the sun, nor heard the fountain nor recognized the sky.
Some of these wept bitterly, others tore their hair in despair and
madly called to their friends for help, but mostly it happened that
they began to die, languidly, without a struggle, drooping for many
weary years, pining away under the eyes of their friends, fading,
withering, listless like a tree drying up silently on rocky ground. And
the first, who cried and stormed, came sometimes back to life, but the
others—never.
“Then thou wilt not tell us, Lazarus, what thou hast seen There?” for
the third time repeated the insistent inquirer. But now his voice was
dull and weary, and deathly grey languor looked from his eyes. And the
same deathly dull languor hid the faces of the others like a veil of
dust: they exchanged glances of dreary wonderment as though at a loss
to grasp why they had met around the richly laden table. The
conversation lagged. The guests began to feel vaguely that it was time
to go home, but they were too weak to overcome the viscous and
paralyzing listlessness that had robbed their muscles of strength, and
they kept their seats, each for himself, isolated like dimly flickering
lights scattered about the field in the darkness of night.
But the musicians were paid to play, and once more they took up their
instruments and the air was filled with the sounds of music: but the
notes, both merry and mournful, sounded mechanical and forced. The same
familiar melody was unrolled before the ears of the guests, but the
latter listened in wonderment: they could not understand why people
found it necessary or amusing to have others pull at tightly drawn
strings or whistle with inflated cheeks through thin reeds to produce
the oddly discordant noises.
“How badly they play!” someone said.
The musicians felt hurt and departed. One after another the guests left
too, for the night had already fallen. And when the calm of night
surrounded them, and they had begun to breathe at ease there rose
before each one of them the image of Lazarus: the blue cadaverous face,
the wedding garments, gaudy and sumptuous, and the frigid stare in the
depths of which had congealed the Horrible. As though, turned to stone
they stood in different corners, and darkness enveloped them; and in
that darkness more and more vividly burned the dreadful vision of him
who for three days and for three nights had been under the mysterious
spell of Death. Three days he had been dead; three times the sun rose
and set, and he was dead; the children played, the brooks coursed
babbling over the stones, the biting dust swept over the highway,—but
he was dead. And now he was again among the living—touching them,
looking at them—LOOKING at them! and from the black orbs of his pupils,
as through a dark glass, there gazed upon the people the inscrutable
Beyond.
CHAPTER III
No one took care of Lazarus; he had retained no neighbors or friends,
and the great desert which enchained the Holy City had encroached to
the very threshold of his dwelling. And it entered his house, made
itself broad on his couch, like a spouse, and quenched the fire in his
hearth. One after the other his sisters, Mary and Martha, forsook him;
for a long time Martha had loathed to leave him, not knowing who would
feed him and comfort him; she wept and prayed.
But one night when the wind swept over the desert and whistled through
the tops of the cypress trees bending them over the roof of his hut,
she quietly dressed and quietly went out into the darkness. Lazarus
might have heard the slamming door, he might have heard it banging
against the doorposts as it failed to shut tightly. But he did not
rise, he did not step out, he did not investigate. And all through the
night until the morn the cypress trees rustled overhead, and the door
piteously knocked against the posts letting in the cold, the greedy,
the insistent desert.
He was shunned as a leper, and as a leper they almost forced him to
wear a bell around his neck in order to warn the people of his
approach, but someone, with blanching cheek, suggested how dreadful it
would be to hear the bell of Lazarus in the dead of night outside the
windows,—and with blanching cheeks the people agreed with him.
And as he did nothing for himself, he would probably have starved had
not his neighbors, impelled by a strange fear, saved some food for him.
Children carried it to him. They did not fear him, neither did they
mock him, as, with innocent cruelty, they often laugh at unfortunate
beings. They were indifferent to him, and Lazarus evinced the same
indifference toward them. Given over to the ravages of time and the
encroachments of the desert, his house was falling to wreck and ruin,
and his flock of goats, bleating and hungry, had a long time since
scattered among his neighbors. His wedding garments too had grown old.
Just as he had donned them on that happy day when the musicians played
he had worn them ever since, without change, as though unable to see
the difference between the new and the old, the torn and the whole. The
bright colors had faded and paled; the wicked dogs of the city and the
sharp thorns of the desert had rent the delicate fabric into shreds.
In the day time when the merciless sun consumed all that was living,
and the very scorpions sought refuge under the stones writhing with a
frenzied desire to sting he sat unmoved beneath the burning rays,
holding aloft his blue streaked face and shaggy wild beard.
While yet the people stopped to talk to him, someone once inquired:
“Poor Lazarus, it evidently pleases thee to sit and look upon the sun?”
and he replied:
“Yes. It pleases me.”
So severe must have been the cold of those three days in the grave, so
dense its gloom, that there was not any heat nor any light upon earth
strong enough to warm Lazarus, bright enough to illumine the darkness
of his eyes,—thus thought the curious as they departed sighing.
And when the sun’s luridly crimson disc descended to earth Lazarus
retired into the desert and walked straight towards the sun as though
striving to catch up with it. Always he walked straight towards the
sun, and those who tried to follow him in order to learn what he did at
night in the desert had indelibly impressed on their memory the black
silhouette of a tall and corpulent man against the crimson back-ground
of the mighty orb. The night with its terrors drove them back, and they
never learned what Lazarus was doing in the desert, but the image of
the black shadow on a crimson background burned itself on their brain
and refused to leave them. Like an animal frenziedly rubbing its eyes
to remove a cinder they stupidly rubbed their eyes, but the impression
left by Lazarus was not to be blotted out, and death alone granted
oblivion.
But there were people afar off who had never seen Lazarus, having
merely heard rumors of him. These with a daring curiosity that is
stronger than fear and feeds on fear, with a secret sneer in their
hearts, ventured to approach him as he basked in the sun, and engaged
in conversation with him. By this time the appearance of Lazarus had
somewhat changed for the better, and he no longer looked so terrifying.
And in the first moment they snapped their fingers and thought
disapprovingly of the folly of the inhabitants of the Holy City. And
when their short conversation was over, they wended their way home, but
their appearance was such that the inhabitants of the Holy City at once
recognized them saying:
“There goes another madman upon whom Lazarus has cast his glance,” and
they paused raising their hands with compassion.
Brave warriors came rattling their arms, men who knew no fear; with
laughter and songs came happy hearted youths; careworn traders,
jingling their coins, ran in for a moment; and the haughty temple
attendants left their staffs at the door of Lazarus,—but none returned
the same as he had come. The same horrible pall sank upon their souls
and imparted a novel appearance to the old familiar world.
Those who still felt like talking thus described their impressions.
“All objects visible to the eye and sensible to the touch became empty,
light and diaphanous like unto luminous shadows flitting through the
gloom.”
“A great darkness enveloped the universe; and was not dispelled by the
sun, the moon or the stars, but enshrouded the earth with a boundless
black pall, embracing it like a mother.”
“It penetrated all objects, even iron and stone, and the particles
thereof lost their union and became lonely; it penetrated even into the
hearts of the particles unto the severing of the very atoms.”
“For the great void that surrounds the universe was not filled by
things visible, by sun, moon or stars, but shoreless it stretched
penetrating all things, severing all things, body from body, particle
from particle.”
“In emptiness the trees spread out their roots and the very trees
seemed empty.”
“In emptiness tottering to a phantom ruin, and empty themselves, rose
ghostly temples, palaces and houses.”
“And in that waste Man moved restlessly, and he too was empty and light
like unto a shadow.”
“For there was no more time, and the beginning of all things and the
end thereof met face to face.”
“The sound of the builders’ hammers was still heard as they reared the
edifice, but its downfall could be seen already, and behold, emptiness
soon yawned over the ruins.”
“Hardly a man was born, before funeral tapers gleamed at his bier;
these barely flickered an instant, and emptiness reigned in the place
of the Man, the funeral tapers and the bier.”
“In the embrace of Gloom and Waste; Man trembled hopelessly with the
dread of the Infinite.”
Thus spoke those who had still a desire to speak. But those who would
not speak and died in silence could have probably told much more.
CHAPTER IV
At that time there lived in Rome a celebrated sculptor. Out of clay,
marble and bronze he fashioned the forms of gods and of men, and such
was the beauty of his work that men proclaimed it immortal. But the
sculptor himself was dissatisfied with it and claimed that there was
something else to strive for, a beauty that was truly supreme, such as
he had never yet been able to fix in marble or bronze. “I have not yet
garnered the splendor of the moon,” he was wont to say. “I have not yet
caught the radiance of the sun. My marble lacks soul, my beautiful
bronze lacks life.” At night, beneath the moonlit sky, he roamed about
the highways, crossing the black shadows of cypress trees, his white
tunic gleaming in the light of the moon, and friends who chanced to
meet him hailed him in jest:
“Art thou gathering moonlight, Aurelius? And where be thy baskets?”
And joining in their laughter he made reply, pointing to his eyes:
“Behold the baskets wherein I gathered the light of the moon and the
radiance of the sun.”
And he spoke the truth, for the light of the moon gleamed in his eyes,
the radiance of the sun glowed in them. But he could not convert them
into marble, and this was the radiant sorrow of his life.
He came from an ancient patrician family, had a loving wife and dutiful
children, and lacked nothing.
When a dim rumor concerning Lazarus reached his ear, he consulted his
wife and friends and undertook the long journey to Judea in order to
see him who had so miraculously risen from the dead. The monotony of
life weighed heavily upon him in those days and he hoped that the
journey would awaken his interest in the world. What he had heard
concerning the risen one did not deter him, for he had pondered much
upon death, though he had no longing for it. Neither had he patience
with those who would confuse death with life. “On this side life and
its beauty,” he reasoned, “and on the other, death with its mystery.
Nothing better could one imagine than to live and enjoy life and the
glory of living.” And he even entertained a somewhat vain and glorious
notion of convincing Lazarus that this was the true view and of
bringing him back to life, even as his body had been brought back to
life.
This seemed an easy task for him, for the rumors concerning the risen
one, fearsome and strange as they were, failed to convey the whole
truth and only vaguely hinted at something dreadful.
Lazarus was rising from his rock for his journey into the desert in the
path of the setting sun, when the rich Roman, accompanied by an armed
slave, approached him, and in a sonorous voice called to him:
“Lazarus!”
Lazarus beheld a haughty and handsome man, resplendent with fame, clad
in white apparel bearing precious gems that sparkled in the sunshine.
The radiance of the sun lent to the head and the features a semblance
of dull bronze. After his scrutiny Lazarus obediently resumed his seat,
and listlessly looked to the ground.
“Truly thou art not fair to look upon, poor Lazarus,” calmly observed
the Roman, toying with his golden chain. “Thou art even terrifying in
appearance, poor fellow; and Death was no sluggard the day thou so
carelessly didst fall into its clutches. But thou art as fat as a wine
barrel, and the great Caesar says that fat people are harmless. I
cannot see why people are so afraid of thee. Thou wilt permit me to
stay overnight? It is already late and I have no abode.”
Nobody had ever sought permission to pass a night with Lazarus.
“I have no couch to offer thee,” said he.
“I am somewhat of a soldier and can sleep sitting,” replied the Roman.
“We shall light a fire.”
“I have no fire.”
“In the darkness then like two comrades shall we hold our converse. I
suppose thou hast some wine here?”
“I have no wine.”
The Roman laughed. “Now I comprehend why thou art so morose and why
thou takest no delight in thy second life. Thou hast no wine. Very
well. We shall do without. Thou knowest there are words that turn one’s
head even as Falernian wine.”
With a motion of his hand he dismissed the slave and they were left
alone. And again the sculptor spoke, but it seemed that with the
sinking sun the glow of life had departed from his words, for they lost
color and substance. They reeled and slipped and stumbled, as though
unsteady of foot of drunken with the wine of anguish and dismay.
Yawning chasms appeared between them like distant hints of a vast void
and utter darkness.
“I am thy guest now and thou wilt not offend me, Lazarus”, he said.
“Hospitality is a duty even for those who have been dead three days.
For they say that thou didst pass three days in the grave. It must have
been very chilly there, and it is thence comes thy bad habit of doing
without wine and fire. But I love the fire. It grows dark here so
early. The line of thy brow and forehead is quite noteworthy, even as
the skyline of palaces ruined by an earthquake and buried beneath
ashes. But why is thy apparel so odd and unattractive? I have seen the
bridegrooms in thy country arrayed like this, such absurd attire, such
repulsive garments! But art thou then a bridegroom?”
The sun had already vanished and gigantic black shadows came hurrying
from the east, as though the bare feet of giants came rustling over the
sands, and the chill breath of swiftly fleeing wind blew up behind
them.
“In the darkness thou seemest even bigger oh Lazarus, as though thou
hast grown stouter in these last few minutes. Dost thou perchance feed
on darkness? But I should like some fire, just a little blaze the
tiniest flame would do.... And I am a trifle cold.... You have here
such barbarously chilly nights If it were not pitch dark I should say
that thou art looking at me, Lazarus. Yes, methinks thou ART looking at
me. I feel it. Now thou art smiling!”
The night had set in and a dense blackness filled the air.
“How good will it be when the sun rises again on the morrow.... Thou
knowest I am a great sculptor. My friends call me so. I create, yes I
create things, but daylight is needed for that. I impart life unto the
cold lifeless marble. In the fire I melt the ringing bronze, in a vivid
and glowing fire.... Why touchest thou me with thy hand?”
“Come”, said Lazarus, “thou art my guest.” And they entered the house.
And the shadows of a long night descended upon the earth.
The slave who had grown tired waiting for his master called for him
when the sun had already risen high overhead. And he saw under its rays
Lazarus and his master huddled closely together. They were gazing
upward in silence.
The slave wept aloud and called to his master: “Master, what troubleth
thee? Master!”
The same day Aurelius left for Rome. The whole way he was pensive and
silent, scrutinizing everything, the people, the ship and the sea, as
though struggling to commit something to memory. A fierce tempest
overtook them, and all the while Aurelius remained on the deck gazing
eagerly on the rising and sinking waves.
At home the change that had taken place in him caused consternation,
but he calmed the apprehensions of his household and observed
significantly: “I have found it.”
In the same raiment that he had worn during the journey without change
he went to work, and the marble obediently responded to the resounding
blows of his hammer. He worked long and eagerly, refusing to admit any
one; at last one morning he announced that his work was ready, and
summoned all his friends, the severe critics and experts in art. He
attired himself into sumptuous and festive garments that sparkled with
gold and shone with the purple of Bysson.
“Behold what I have created”, he said musingly.
His friends gazed on the work and the shadow of a deep sorrow clouded
their faces. The group was simply hideous to look upon: it possessed
none of the forms familiar to the eye, though it was not devoid of a
dim suggestion of some novel and fanciful image. Upon a twisted thin
little twig, or rather upon the misshapen likeness of one, crouched an
unsightly, distorted mass of crude fragments that seemed to be weakly
striving to flee in all directions. And casually, under a crude ridge
they observed a wondrously wrought butterfly, with diaphanous wings
that was all aquiver with the futile longing to soar skyward.
“Why this wondrously wrought butterfly, Aurelius?” someone dubiously
inquired.
“I don’t know”, replied the sculptor.
But the truth has to be told, and one of his friends (the one who loved
him best) interposed: “My poor friend, this is a monstrosity. It must
be destroyed. Give me the hammer.”
And with two blows of the hammer he destroyed the hideous heap, sparing
only the wondrous butterfly.
From that time on Aurelius created nothing. He gazed with profound
indifference upon marble and bronze and upon his former godlike
creations wherein beauty immortal dwelt. In the hope of inspiring him
once more with his old zeal for work and of reviving his moribund soul,
his friends led him to view the beautiful work of others, but he
maintained the same lack of interest, and no warming smile ever parted
again his tightly drawn lips. Only when they ventured to hold lengthy
speeches on love and beauty he wearily and listlessly replied:
“But all this is a lie.”
And in the daytime when the sun was shining he strolled into his
luxurious garden, and seeking out some spot undimmed by the shade he
yielded up his uncovered head and lacklustre eyes to radiance and
warmth. Red and white butterflies flitted about the garden, from the
contorted lips of a blissfully drunken Satyr the water splashed
coursing down into the marble cistern, but he sat unmoved like a faint
shadow of him who in a distant land sat as immobile at the very gates
of the desert beneath the arid rays of the midday sun.
CHAPTER V.
And now Augustus himself, the great, the divine, summoned Lazarus to
appear before him.
They attired him in sumptuous wedding garment, for time and usage
seemed to have prescribed these as befitting him as though he had
remained until his death the betrothed of some unknown bride. It was as
though an old, decaying and decrepit coffin were regilded and adorned
with fresh gaudy tinsel. And he was conducted by a sumptuously garbed
and gay cortege, as though in truth it were a bridal procession, and
the heralds loudly sounded their trumpets clearing the way for the
messengers of the emperor. But the path of Lazarus was deserted. His
native land had learned to execrate the odious name of the miraculously
risen one, and the mere news of his dread approach was sufficient to
scatter the people. The blasts of the brass horns fell on the solitude
and only the desert air responded with a melancholy echo.
Then they took him across the sea. And it was the most gorgeous and the
saddest ship that was ever mirrored against the azure waves of the
Mediterranean There were many people aboard, but the vessel was as mute
and silent as the grave and the very waves seemed to sob hopelessly as
they laved the beautifully curved and lofty prow. Lazarus sat alone,
holding his bared head to the sun, listening in silence to the murmur
of the waters, and afar off the sailors and the messengers lounged
around feebly and listlessly huddled together like a cluster of
despondent shadows. If a clap of thunder had rent the air, if a sudden
gale had torn the gaudy sails, the ship would have doubtlessly perished
for there was none on board with strength or zeal enough to struggle
for life. With a last weak effort some stepped to the rail and eagerly
gazed into the blue and transparent abyss waiting perhaps for a
mermaid’s pink shoulder to flash from the deep or for some drunken and
joy maddened centaur to gallop by splashing the foam of the sea with
his hoofs.
With stolid indifference Lazarus set foot on the streets of the Eternal
City, as though all its wealth, the majesty of its structures that
seemed to have been reared by giants, the splendor, the beauty, the
music of its elegance were simply the echo of the desert wind, the
reflex of Palestine’s arid sands. Chariots sped by, crowds of handsome,
sturdy, haughty men passed on, the builders of the Eternal City, the
proud participants of her bustling life; the air filled with the notes
of songs, the murmur of fountains, the pearly cadences of women’s
laughter! drunkards held pompous speeches and the sober listened
smilingly; and the horseshoes clattered and clatterer upon the
pavements. Caught all around by the whirlpool of noisy merriment there
moved through the city like a blot of icy silence one fat and clumsy
creature sowing in his path annoyance, wrath and a vaguely cankering
grief. Who dare be sad in Rome? The citizens were indignant and
frowned, and two days later the whole ready tongued Rome knew of the
miraculously resurrected one and timidly avoided him.
But there were in Rome many brave people eager to test their prowess,
and to their thoughtless challenge Lazarus readily responded. Busy with
the affairs of state the Emperor delayed receiving him and the
miraculously risen one for seven days in succession paid visits to
those who would see him.
A merry winebibber met Lazarus and hailed him with carefree laughter on
his ruddy lips.
“Drink, Lazarus, drink!” he shouted. “How Augustus would laugh to see
thee drunk!”
And drunken women laughed at the sally, while they showered rose leaves
on the blue-streaked hands of Lazarus. But the winebibber looked into
his eyes—and his joy was forever ended. He remained drunken for life:
he drank no more, yet he remained drunken but in the place of joyous
reveries which the wine yields, horrible dreams haunted his ill-fated
soul. Horrible dreams became the sole nourishment of his stricken
spirit. Horrible dreams held him day and night in the spell of their
hideous fancies, and death itself was less terrible than appeared his
ferocious precursors.
Lazarus called on a youth and a maiden, lovers and fair to look on in
their love. Proudly and firmly grasping the woman he loved the youth
remarked with gentle compassion:
“Look on us, Lazarus, and rejoice with us. Is there aught stronger than
love?”
And Lazarus looked. And they ceased not from loving all their life
long, but their love became gloomy and somber, like the cypress trees
that grow above tombs, feeding their roots on the dissolution within
the grave and seeking vainly in the evening hour to reach heaven with
their dusky and pointed tops. Thrown by the unfathomable force of life
into each other’s arms they mingled their kisses with tears, their joy
with pain, and realized their twofold bondage: the humble slaves of
inexorable life and the helpless bondsmen of ominous and mute
Nothingness. Ever united, ever parted, they flashed upwards like sparks
and like sparks faded in shoreless gloom.
Then came Lazarus to a haughty sage and the sage told him:
“I know all the terrors that thou canst relate to me, Lazarus.
Wherewith wilt thou terrify me?”
But it was not long before the sage realized that the knowledge of the
horrible is not the horrible, and that the vision of death is not death
itself. And he realized that wisdom and folly are the equals in the
sight of the Infinite, for the Infinite knows them not. And the
boundaries between knowledge and ignorance, between truth and
falsehood, between height and depth vanished, and his formless thoughts
were suspended in emptiness. Then he seized his grey head in his hands
and cried out in agony:
“I cannot think! I cannot think!”
Thus succumbed to the stolid gaze of the miraculously risen one all
things that served to affirm life, its meaning and its joys. And it was
said that it would be dangerous to allow him to face the Emperor, that
it would be safer to put him to death and burying him secretly to
spread the rumor that he had disappeared without leaving a trace.
Swords were already sharpened and some youths devoted to the welfare of
the nation volunteered to be his slayers, when suddenly Augustus
demanded to have Lazarus brought before him on the morrow and upset
their cruel plans.
Though it was impossible to remove Lazarus, it was thought best to
soften somewhat the dreary impression produced by his appearance. For
this reason skilled artists were summoned, also hair arrangers and
masters of make-up and they labored all night over the head of Lazarus.
They trimmed his beard, curled it and made it appear neat and
attractive. The livid coloring of his face and hands was removed by
means of paint: his hands were bleached and his cheeks touched up with
red. The repulsive wrinkles of suffering that furrowed his senile
features were patched up, painted and smoothed over, and lines of
goodnatured laughter and pleasant cheerful good humor were skillfully
drawn in their place.
Lazarus submitted stolidly to all they did with him and soon was
transformed into a naturally corpulent handsome old man, who looked
like a harmless grandfather with numerous descendants. One could almost
see the trace of a smile on his lips with which he might have related
to them laughable stories, one almost detected in the corner of his
eyes the calm tenderness of old age,—such was his quiet and reassuring
appearance. But they had not dared to take off his wedding attire, nor
could they change his eyes,—dark and dreadful glasses through which
there peered upon the world the unfathomable Beyond.
CHAPTER VI.
The magnificence of the Imperial palace failed to impress Lazarus.
There might have been no difference between his ramshackle but at the
threshold of the desert and the splendid and massive palace of stone,
so stolidly indifferent was his unobserving glance. Under his feet the
solid marble slabs seemed to turn to the sinking sand of the desert,
and the throngs of gaily attired and haughty Romans might have been
thin air. They avoided looking into his face as he passed, fearing to
succumb to the baneful spell of his eyes; but when they judged from the
sound of his footsteps that he had passed on, they paused and raising
their heads with a little fearsome curiosity watched the departing
figure of the tall, corpulent, slightly stooping old man who was slowly
wending his way into the heart of the Imperial palace. If Death itself
had passed by they would not have glanced after it with greater awe.
For until then Death had been known unto the dead only and life unto
the living and there had been no bridge between the twain. But this
strange being knew Death, and awful, ominous, accursed was his
knowledge. “He will be the death of our great and divine Augustus”,
mused some of them anxiously and muttered curses in his wake as he
slowly and stolidly made his way more and more deeply into the palace.
Caesar had already learned the story of Lazarus and nerved himself to
meet him. He was a man of daring and courage and thoroughly conscious
of his own invincible power. In this fateful encounter with the risen
one he chose not to lean upon the feeble aid of men. Face to face, man
to man he met Lazarus.
“Do not lift up thine eyes to me, Lazarus,” he commanded him as the
stranger entered. “I have heard that thy head is like Medusa’s turning
to stone him who ventures to look upon thee. But I desire to talk with
thee and to examine thee before I am turned to stone”, he added with an
Imperial attempt at a jest that was not unmixed with a little awe.
Approaching him he examined attentively the face and the queer apparel
of Lazarus, and though he prided himself on his sharp and observant eye
he was deceived by the skill of the artists.
“Well, thou art not so terrible, worthy patriarch. But it is all the
worse for people if the terrible assumes such a dignified and agreeable
guise. Now let us converse.”
Augustus sat down and with a glance that was as searching as his words
he commenced to question him.
“Why didst thou not salute me as thou earnest in?”
Lazarus replied:
“I did not know that it was necessary.”
“Art thou a Christian?”
“No.”
Augustus nodded approvingly.
“Good. I dislike these Christians. They shake the tree of life before
it yields its full fruitage and scatter to the wind its blossoming
fragrance. But what art thou?”
With an effort Lazarus replied:
“Once I was dead.”
“So I have heard. But what art thou now?”
Lazarus hesitated and again replied listlessly, stolidly:
“Once I was dead.”
“Listen to me, thou enigma”, resumed the Emperor, in measured and
severe words voicing the thoughts which had been in his mind before.
“My empire is the empire of the living, my people is a living people
and not dead. Thou art out of place here. I do not know thee, I do not
know what thou hast seen There. But whether thou liest—I abhor thy
lying, and if thou be telling the truth I abhor thy truth. In my bosom
I feel the throbbing of life. I feel vigor in my hands, and my proud
thoughts soar like eagles through space. And there, behind me, under
the protection of my dominion, in the shadow of laws created by me,
people live and labor and rejoice. Hearest thou this wondrous harmony
of life? Hearest thou this warlike challenge which men fling into the
face of the future summoning it to a combat?”
Augustus reverently raised his hands and solemnly exclaimed:
“Blessed be Thou Great and Divine Life!”
But Lazarus was silent and with added severity the Emperor continued:
“Thou art out of place here. Thou art a pitiful remnant, a half-eaten
scrap from the table of Death, thou breathest into people melancholy
and hatred of life. Thou art like the locust that eateth the full ear
of grain knitting the slime of despair and despondency. Thy truth is
like unto the rusty sword in the hands of a murderous night prowler,
and I shall put thee to death like an assassin. But ere I do this I
will gaze into thine eyes. Perhaps only the cowards fear them, perhaps
they will wake the thirst of conflict and longing for victory in the
brave. If that be so thou meritest a reward, not death. Look then upon
me, Lazarus.”
And at first Augustus fancied as though a friend were looking upon him,
so gentle, so caressing, so tenderly soothing was the gaze of Lazarus.
It boded no terrors but calm and repose, it was the gaze of a tender
lover, of a compassionate sister: through his eyes Infinity gazed even
as a mother. But the embrace grew stronger and stronger until his
breath was stopped by lips that seemed to crave for kisses. And in the
next instant he felt the iron fingers plowing through the tender
tissues of his flesh, and cruel claws sank slowly into his heart.
“I am in pain”, moaned Divus Augustus with blanching cheek. “Yet, look
on me still, Lazarus, look on.”
As though through slowly opening gates that had been shut for aeons the
horror of the Infinite poured coldly and calmly out of the growing
breach. Fathomless waste and fathomless darkness entered like twin
shadows quenching the light of the sun, removing the ground underfoot,
obliterating all overhead. And pain left the benumbed heart of
Augustus.
“Look, look still, Lazarus”, commanded he reeling.
Time ceased and the beginning of things faced the end thereof in an
ominous meeting. The throne of Augustus, so recently reared, was
overthrown; a barren waste reigned in the place of Augustus and of his
throne. Rome herself had gone to a silent doom, and a new city rose in
her place, only in her turn to be swallowed up by nothingness. Like
phantom giants cities and states and empires swiftly fell and vanished
into emptiness, swallowed up in the insatiable maw of the Infinite.
“Stop”, commanded Caesar, and already a note of indifference sounded in
his voice. His arms hung limply from his shoulders, and his eagle eyes
now flashed, now grew dim in a futile struggle against the darkness
that threatened to overwhelm him.
“Thou hast slain me, Lazarus”, he stammered listlessly.
And these words of hopelessness saved him. He remembered his people
whose shield he was called to be, and his moribund heart was pierced
with a sharp and redeeming pang. He thought of them bitterly as he
pictured them doomed to ruin. He thought of his people with anguish in
his soul as he saw them like luminous shadows flitting through the
gloom of the Infinite. Tenderly he thought of them as of brittle
vessels throbbing with life blood and endowed with hearts that know
both sorrow and joy.
Thus reasoning and feeling, with the balance now favoring life, now
inclined towards death, he slowly fought his way back to life, to find
in its sufferings and joys a shield against the emptiness and the
terror of the Infinite.
“No, thou hast not slain me, Lazarus”, he exclaimed, with firmness,
“but I shall slay thee, Go!”
That night Divus Augustus partook of food and drink with a keen
delight. But there were moments when the uplifted arm paused in mid-air
and a shadow dimmed the lustre of his shining aquiline eyes,—it was
like a wave of icy horror beating against his feet. Downed, but not
utterly destroyed, coldly awaiting the appointed hour, the spirit of
Fear cast its shadow into the Emperor’s life, standing guard at the
head of his bed as he slumbered at night and meekly yielding the sunny
days to the joys and the sorrows of life.
Next day, by the Emperor’s command, they burned out the eyes of Lazarus
with hot irons and sent him back to his native land. Divus Augustus
dared not put him to death.
Lazarus returned to the desert, and the desert received him with the
breath of the hissing wind and the arid welcome of the consuming sun.
Once again he sat on the rock, raising aloft his shaggy neglected
beard. In the place of the two burned-out eyes twin black sockets
peered dull and gruesome at the sky. In the distance surged the
restless roar of the Holy City, but near him all was deserted and dumb.
No one came near the place where the miraculously risen one was passing
the end of his days, and his neighbors had long since forsaken their
abodes. His accursed knowledge, banished by the searing irons into the
depths of his head, lay there concealed as though in ambush; as though
from ambush it assailed the beholder with a myriad invisible eyes, and
no one dared now look at Lazarus.
And in the evening, when the sun, ruddy and swollen, was sinking in the
west, sightless Lazarus slowly groped after it. He stumbled over stones
and fell, fat and weak as he was, then he rose heavily and walked on.
And against the crimson canvas of the sunset his dark form and
outstretched arms gave him a monstrous resemblance to the cross.
And it happened one day that he went and never returned. Thus
apparently ended the second life of Lazarus, who had been three days
under the dominion of Death and miraculously rose from the dead.
Life of Father Vassily.
I.
A strange and mysterious fate pursued Vassily Feeveysky all through his
life. As though damned by some unfathomable curse, from his youth on he
staggered under a heavy burden of sadness, sickness and sorrow, and the
bleeding wounds of his heart refused to heal. Among men he stood aloof,
like a planet among planets, and a peculiar atmosphere, baneful and
blighting, seemed to enshroud him like an invisible, diaphanous cloud.
The son of a meek and patient parish priest, he was meek and patient
himself, and for a long time failed to observe the ominous and
mysterious deliberation with which misfortunes persistently broke over
his unattractive shaggy head.
Swiftly he fell, and slowly rose to his feet; fell again, and slowly
rose once more, and laboriously, speck by speck, grain by grain, set to
work restoring his frail anthill by the side of the great highway of
life.
But when he was ordained priest and married a good woman, begetting by
her a son and a daughter, he commenced to feel that all was now well
and safe with him, just as with other people, and would so remain for
ever. And he blessed God, for he believed in Him solemnly and simply,
as a priest and as a man in whose soul there was no guile.
And it happened in the seventh year of his happiness, in the noon hour
of a sultry day in July, that the village children went to the river to
swim, and with them went Father Vassily’s son, like his father Vassily
by name, and like him swarthy of face and meek in manner. And little
Vassily was drowned. His young mother, the Popadya,[1] came running to
the river bank with the crowd, and the plain and appalling picture of
human death engraved itself indelibly on her memory: the dull and
ponderous thumping of her own heart, as though each heart beat
threatened to be her last; and the odd transparence of the atmosphere
in which moved hither and thither the humdrum familiar figures of
people, though now they seemed so strangely aloof, as if severed from
the earth; and the disconnected, confused hubbub of voices, with each
word rounding in the air and slowly melting away as new sounds come
into being.
And she conceived a lifelong fear of bright and sunny days. For at such
times she saw again the barricade of muscular backs gleaming white in
the light of the sun, and the bare feet planted firmly among the
trampled cabbage heads, and the rhythmic swing of something bright and
white in the trough of which freely rolled a light little body, so
gruesomely near, so gruesomely far, and for ever estranged. And long
after little Vassya[2] had been buried, and the grass had grown over
his grave, the Popadya kept repeating that prayer of all bereaved
mothers: “Lord, take my life, but give me back my child.”
Soon Father Vassily’s whole household learned to dread the bright days
of summer time, when the sun shines too glaringly and sets ablaze the
treacherous river until the eyes cannot bear the sight of it. On such
days, when the people, the beasts and the fields all around were
radiant with gladness, the members of Father Vassily’s household were
wont to watch his wife with awestricken eyes, engaging purposely in
loud conversation and laughter, while she, sluggish and indolent, rose
to her feet, eyeing the others so fixedly and queerly that they were
forced to avert their gaze, and languidly lolled through the house, as
though hunting for some needless article, a key, or a spoon or a glass.
Whatever she needed was carefully placed in her path, but she continued
to seek, and her search increased in intentness and agitation in the
measure that the bright and merry orb of the sun rose higher in the
firmament. And she approached her husband, placing her lifeless hand on
his shoulder and kept repeating in a pleading voice.
“Vassya! Vassya! I say!”
“What is it, dear?” meekly and hopelessly responded Father Vassily,
trying to smooth her disheveled hair with trembling fingers that were
sunburnt and black with the soil and were badly in want of trimming.
She was still young and pretty, and her arm rested upon the shabby
cassock of her husband as though carved of marble, white and heavy.
“What is it, dear? Will you have some tea now? You have not had any
yet.”
“Vassya! Vassya, I say!” she repeated pleadingly, removing her arm from
his shoulder like some needless, superfluous object, and returned to
her searching, only still more restlessly and excitedly. Walking all
through the house, not a room of which had been tidied, she passed into
the garden, from the garden into the court yard, and again into the
house, while the sun rose higher and higher, and through the trees
could be seen a flash of the warm sluggish river. And step after step,
clinging tightly to her mother’s skirt, Nastya[3], the Popadya’s
daughter, shambled after her, morose and sullen, as though the black
shadow of impending doom had lodged itself even over her little
six-year-old heart. She anxiously hurried her little steps to keep pace
with the distracted big stride of her mother, casting furtively
yearning glances upon the familiar, but ever mysterious and enticing
garden, and she longingly stretched out her disengaged hand towards a
bush of sour gooseberries, and stealthily plucked a few, though the
sharp thorns cruelly scratched her. And the prick of these thorns that
were sharp as needles, and the acid taste of the berries, intensified
the scowl on her face, and she longed to whimper like an abandoned pup.
When the sun reached the zenith, the Popadya closed tightly the
shutters in the windows of her room, and in the darkness gave herself
up to liquor until she was drunken, drawing from each drained glassful
fresh pangs of agony and searching memories of her perished child. She
shed bitter tears, and in the awkward drone of an ignorant person
trying to read aloud out of a book, she kept telling over and over
again the story of a meek and swarthy little boy who had lived, laughed
and died; and with this bookish singsong she resurrected his eyes and
his smile and his oldfashioned manner of speech.
“‘Vassya’, I say to him, ‘why do you tease kitty? Don’t tease her,
dear. God told us to be merciful to all—to the little horsies, and to
the kittens and to the little chicks’. And he lifts up his sweet eyes
to me, the darling, and says: ‘And why isn’t kittie merciful to little
birdies? See the pigeons have raised their little ones, and kittie eats
up the pigeons, and the little birdies are calling, calling for their
mamma.’”
And Father Vassily listened meekly and hopelessly, while outside, under
the closed shutters, amid burdocks, nettles and thistles, little Nastya
sat sprawling on the ground, and played sulkily with her doll. And
always her play was this: dollie refused to mind and was punished and
she twisted dollie’s arms till she thought they hurt and whipped her
with a twig of nettles.
When Father Vassily had first found his wife in a state of inebriety,
and from her rebelliously agitated, bitterly exulting face had realized
that this thing had come to stay, he shriveled up and the next moment
burst cut in a fit of subdued, senseless laughter, rubbing his hot dry
hands. And a long time he laughed, a long time he kept rubbing his
hands; he strove to restrain this desire to laugh, which was so
obviously out of place, and turning aside from his sobbing wife, he
snickered softly into his fist like a naughty school boy. Then just as
abruptly he turned serious, his jaws snapped like metal; but not a word
of comfort could he utter to the hysterical woman, not a caressing word
could he find for her. But when she had fallen asleep, the priest bent
down, making three times the sign of the cross over her. Then he went
cut and found little Nastya in the garden, coldly patted her on the
head and stalked out into the fields.
For a long time he followed a little path through the rye which was
standing fairly high in the field and looked down into the soft white
dust which here and there retained the impress of heels and the outline
of someone’s bare feet. The sheaves nearest to the path were crushed to
the ground, some lying across the path, and the grain was crushed,
blackened and flattened.
Where the path turned, Father Vassily stopped. Ahead of him and all
around him swayed the full grain on slender stalks, overhead was the
shoreless blazing sky of July grown white with the heat, and nothing
more: not a tree, not a hut, not a man. Alone he stood, lost in the
dense field of grain, alone before the face of Heaven—set high above
him and blazing.
Father Vassily lifted up his eyes—they were little eyes, sunken and
black as coal; they were aglow with the bright reflection of the
heavenly flame, and he pressed his hands to his breast and tried to say
something. The iron jaws quivered, but did not yield. Gnashing his
teeth the priest forced them apart, and with this movement of his lips
that resembled a convulsive yawn, loud and distinct came the words:
“I—believe!”
Unechoed in the wilderness of sky and of fields was lost this wailing
orison that so madly resembled a challenge. And as though contradicting
some one, as though passionately pleading with some one and warning
him, he repeated once more:
“I—believe.”
And returning home, once more, speck by speck, grain by grain, he fell
to the work of restoring his wrecked anthill: he watched the milking of
cows, with his own hands he combed Nastya’s long and coarse hair, and
despite the late hour he drove ten versts into the country for the
district physician in order to seek his advice with regard to his
wife’s ailment. And the doctor prescribed her some drops.
II.
No one liked Father Vassily, neither his parishioners, nor the vestry
of the church. He intoned the service awkwardly, without decorum: his
voice was dry and indistinct, and he either hurried so that the deacon
had a hard time to keep up with him, or he fell behind without rime or
reason. He was not covetous, but he accepted money and donations so
clumsily that all believed him to be greedy and scoffed at him behind
his back. And everybody knew that he was unlucky in his private life
and avoided him, considering it a poor omen to meet him or to talk with
him. His Saint’s Day[4] was celebrated on November the twenty-eighth.
He had invited many to dinner, and in compliance with his ceremonious
invitation every one promised to come, but only the vestrymen made
their appearance, and of the better parishioners not a soul attended.
And he was humiliated before the vestrymen, but the Popadya felt the
insult most keenly, for the delicacies and wines which she had ordered
from the city had to go to waste.
“No one even cares to come and see us,” she said, sober and downcast,
when the last of their few guests had departed, noisy and drunken,
after a senseless gorging, having paid no regard to the rare vintage of
wines or to the quality of the food.
But it was the head of the vestry, Ivan Porfyritch Koprov, who treated
the priest worse than the rest of the parishioners. He openly exhibited
his contempt for the luckless man, and when the Popadya’s periodical
lapses into appalling inebriety had become a public scandal, he refused
to kiss the priest’s hand. And the good-natured deacon tried vainly to
reason with him.
“Shame on thee. It is not the man, but his holy office that must be
respected.”
But Ivan Porfyritch stubbornly refused to dissociate the office from
the man, and replied:
“He is a worthless man. He can neither keep himself in order, nor his
wife. Is it right for a spiritual adviser’s wife to persist in
drunkenness, without shame or conscience? Let my wife try and go on a
spree, I’d stop her quickly.”
The deacon shook his head reproachfully and mentioned the
long-suffering of Job, how God had loved him, but turned him over to
Satan to be tried, but later rewarded him an hundredfold for all his
sufferings. But Ivan Porfyritch smiled scornfully into his beard and
without the slightest compunction cut short the disagreeable
admonition.
“Don’t tell me, I know. Job, so to speak, was a righteous man, a holy
man, but what is this one? Where is his righteousness? Rather remember,
deacon, the old proverb: God marks a rogue. There is sound sense in
that proverb.”
“Wait, the priest will get even with thee, for refusing to kiss his
hand. He’ll drive thee out of the church.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“All right, we’ll see.”
And they bet a gallon of cherry brandy whether the priest would expel
him or not. The vestry man won; next Sunday he turned his back on the
priest with an insolent air, and the hand which the priest had extended
to be kissed, burnt brown it was from the sun—remained desolately
suspended in midair, and Father Vassily flushed a deep purple, but did
not say a word.
And after this incident which was much talked about in the village,
Ivan Porfyritch became still more firmly convinced that the priest was
a bad and an unworthy man and began to incite the villagers to complain
to the bishop and to ask for another parish priest.
Ivan Porfyritch himself was a man of wealth, very fortunate in all
things, and enjoyed general esteem. He had an impressive face, with
firm round cheeks and an immense black beard, and his whole body was
covered with a growth of dense black hair, particularly his legs and
his chest, and he believed that hairiness was a sign of great good
luck. He believed in his luck as firmly as he believed in God, and
considered himself an elect among the people; he was proud,
self-reliant and invariably in good spirits. In a terrible railroad
wreck in which a multitude of people had perished, he merely lost a cap
which had been trampled into the mire.
“And it was an old one at that!” he was wont to add with much
self-satisfaction, evidently considering this incident an eloquent
proof of his merits.
He regarded all men as rogues and fools, and knew no mercy towards
either variety. It was his habit with his own hands to strangle the
pups, of whom his black setter Gipsy presented him yearly a generous
litter; only the strongest one among them he suffered to live for
breeding purposes, though he willingly distributed some of the others
to those who wanted a dog, for he considered dogs to be useful animals.
In forming opinions Ivan Porfyritch was rash and unreasonable, but he
easily departed from them, without noticing his inconsistencies; yet
his actions were uniformly firm and resolute and only rarely erroneous.
And all this made the head of the vestry a terrible and an
extraordinary personage in the eyes of the hunted priest. When they
met, he was the first to raise his broad-rimmed hat, which he did with
indecorous haste, and as he walked away, he felt that his gait grew
faster and more shuffling, revealing itself as the gait of a man who
was scared and ashamed, and his scrawny legs were tangled in the folds
of his cassock. It seemed as though his very fate, cruel and enigmatic,
was personified in that immense black beard, in those hairy hands, and
in that resolute, straight stride, and if he did not crumple up and
slink away and hide behind his four walls, this menacing monster would
crush him like an ant.
And whatever pertained to Ivan Porfyritch or belonged to him, aroused
the eager interest of the priest, so that some times for days at a
stretch he could think of nothing else but of the churchwarden, his
wife, his children, his wealth. Working with the peasants in the
fields, (in his coarse, tarred boots and in his cheap working blouse he
greatly resembled an humble peasant) Father Vassily would often turn
his face to the village, and the first sight that greeted his eyes
alongside of the church, was the red iron roof of the churchwarden’s
two-story house. Then behind the greying green of wind-wrecked willows
he traced with difficulty the outline of the weather-beaten shingle
roof of his own little home; and the sight of these two so contrasting
roofs filled the heart of the priest with the anguish of hopelessness.
One feast day the Popadya returned from the church in tears and told
her husband that Ivan Porfyritch had grossly insulted her. As she was
making her way to her place, he remarked from behind the lectern,
loudly enough for the whole congregation to hear:
“This drunken wench ought not to be allowed in the church at all. She’s
a disgrace!”
As the Popadya sobbingly related this incident to her husband, Father
Vassily observed with horrible and merciless clearness how she had aged
and come down in the four years which had passed since Vassya’s death.
She was still young, but silver threads were running through her hair,
the teeth once so white had turned black, and her eyes were baggy.
She was now a confirmed smoker, and it was painful to watch her puffing
a cigarette which she held in a clumsy, feminine fashion between two
rigidly extended fingers. She smoked and wept and the cigarette
trembled between her lips that were swollen with sobbing.
“Why, oh why, oh Lord?” she kept repeating in anguish, and with the
intentness of stupor she gazed through the window against which
pattered the chill drops of a September rainstorm. The panes were dim
with water, and the birch outside, heavy with rain drops, seemed to
sway back and forth with the shadowy deliquescence of a specter. In
their efforts to save fuel, they had not yet started heating the house,
and the air in the room was damp and chilly and almost as uncomfortable
as outdoors.
“What can you do with him, Nastenka?”[5] retorted the priest rubbing
his dry warm hands. “We must bear it.”
“Lord, Lord, is there not a soul to take my part?” wailed the Popadya,
and in the corner gazed dry and immobile the wolfish eyes of skulking
little Nastya through a hedge of coarse and unkempt hair.
The Popadya was drunk before bedtime, and then ensued that appalling,
abominable, piteous scene which Father Vassily could never thereafter
recall without a sense of chaste horror and of consuming, unbearable
shame. In the morbid gloom of tightly closed shutters, amid the
monstrous visions born of alcohol, in the wake of obstinate wails for
her lost first-born, his wife had conceived the insane notion of
bringing a new son into the world. To resurrect his sweet smile, to
resurrect those eyes that once had sparkled with benign radiance, to
bring back his calm and sensible speech: to resurrect the lad himself,
as he had lived in the glory of his sinless childhood, as he had
appeared on that horrible day in July when the sun blazed so brightly
and the treacherous river glistened so blindingly. And consumed with a
frenzy of hope, all beauteous and hideous with the flames that had
enwrapped her, the Popadya stormily demanded her husband’s caresses,
pleaded for them with piteous humility. She coyly primped herself, she
coquetted with him, but the expression of horror never passed from his
face. She strove with the energy of passionate anguish to become again
as tender and desirable as she had been ten years back, and she tried
to assume a shy, maidenly look, whispering coy, girlish words, but her
liquor-lamed tongue refused to obey her, and through her shyly lowered
eyelashes ever more luridly and obviously flashed the flame of
passionate desire, while the swarthy face of her husband remained
transfixed with horror. He had covered his burning head with his hands,
weakly whispering:
“Don’t! Don’t!”
And she sank to her knees and hoarsely pleaded:
“Have pity on me! Give me back my Vassya! Give him back to me, priest!
I say, give him back to me, curse you!”
And the autumnal rain gusts beat fiercely against the tightly closed
shutters, and the stormy night heaved deep and painful sighs.
Cut off from world and life by the walls and the curtain of night, they
seemed to be whirling in the throes of a frenzied labyrinthic
nightmare, and around them swirled wails and curses that would not die.
Madness stood guard at the door; the searing air was its breath; and
its eyes the lurid glare of the oil lamp stifling in the maw of a
soot-grimed globe.
“You will not? You will not?” cried the Popadya, and with maniacal
yearning for motherhood she tore off her raiment, shamelessly baring
her body, ardent and terrible like a Bacchante, piteous and pathetic
like a mother mourning for her child. “You will not? Then before God I
tell you I’ll go out into the street. I will throw myself on the neck
of the first man I meet. Give me back my Vassya, curse you!”
And her passion vanquished the chaste-hearted priest. To the weird
moaning of the autumnal storm, to the sound of her frenzied babble,
life itself, the eternal liar, seemed to bare her dark and mysterious
loins, and through his darkening consciousness flashed like a gleam of
distant lightning a monstrous conception: of a miraculous resurrection,
of some far-off miraculously hazardous chance. And to the demoniac
passion of the Popadya, heart-chaste and shamefaced, he responded with
a passion as frenzied, wherein all things blended: the glory of hope,
and the fervor of prayer, and the boundless despair of a great
malefactor.
In the dead of night, when the Popadya had fallen into a heavy sleep,
Father Vassily took his hat and his stick, and without stopping to
dress, in a shabby nainsook cassock went out into the fields. The storm
had subsided. The vapory drizzle had spread a moist and chilly film
over the rainsoaked earth. The sky was as black as the earth, and the
night of autumn breathed utter desolation. Within its gloomy maw the
man had vanished, leaving no trace. Once his stick knocked against a
boulder that chanced to lie in its path, then all was still, and a
lasting silence ensued. A lifeless vapory mist stifled each timid sound
in its icy embrace. The moribund foliage did not stir, not a voice, not
a cry, not a groan was heard. Long lasted the silence—and it was the
silence of death.
And far beyond the village, away from any human habitation, an
invisible voice pierced the gloom. It was a voice that was broken,
choking and hoarse, like the moaning of infinite loneliness. But the
words it spoke were as clear as celestial fire:
“I—believe!” said the invisible voice. And in it were mingled menace
and prayer, warning and hope.
III.
In the spring the Popadya knew that she would be a mother; all through
the summer she abstained from liquor, and a peace, serene and joyous,
was enthroned in Father Vassily’s household. But the invisible foe
still dealt his blows: now the twelve-pood[6] hog which they had
fattened for the market took sick and died; now little Nastya broke out
all over her body in a malignant rash and refused to respond to
treatment. But all these blows were borne lightly, and in the innermost
recesses of her heart the Popadya even secretly rejoiced thereat: she
was still doubtful of her great good fortune, and all these calamities
seemed to be a premium which she was glad to pay for its assurance. She
felt that if the prize hog fattened at such expense had died on her
hands, if Nastya ailed so persistently, if anything else went wrong and
caused repining, then no one would dare to lay a finger on her coming
son or to harm him. But as for him, why, she would give up not only the
whole household and her little daughter Nastya, but even her own body
and soul would she gladly yield to that relentless unseen one who
clamored for continual sacrifices.
She had improved in looks and ceased even to fear Ivan Porfyritch
himself, and as she walked to her accustomed place in church she
proudly paraded her rounded form and looked about with daring and
self-reliant glances. And lest she should harm the babe in her womb,
she had stopped all housework and was passing daily long hours in the
neighboring fiscal forest, amusing herself by picking mushrooms. She
was in mortal terror of the ordeal of birth, and resorted to fortune
telling with mushrooms, trying to forecast whether the birth would pass
off favorably or not; and mostly the answer was favorable. Sometimes
under the impenetrable green dome of lofty branches, in some dark and
fragrant bed of last season’s leaves, she gathered a small family of
little white mushrooms, all huddled together, darkheaded and naive, and
resembling a brood of little children, and their appearance evoked in
her keen pangs of tenderness and affection. With that saintly smile
peculiar to people who in solitude yield themselves up to truly pure
and noble meditation, she cautiously dug the fibrous ashen-gray soil
around the roots, and seating herself on the ground beside her
mushrooms, gazed at them for a long time caressingly, a little pale
from the greenish shadows of the forest, but fair to look upon, gentle
and serene. And then she rose and walked on with the cautious waddling
gait of a woman on the eve of childbirth, and the ancient forest, the
hiding place of numberless little mushrooms, seemed to her a thing of
life, wisdom and goodness. Once she took Nastya along for company, but
the child capered, frolicked and raced through the bushes like a
boisterous wolf-pup and interfered with her mother’s thoughts; and she
never took her again.
And the winter was passing quietly and happily. She spent her evenings
busily sewing a multitude of tiny shirts and swaddling cloths, or
pensively stroking the linen with her white fingers upon which the oil
lamp threw its bright glow.
She smoothed the soft fabric and stroked it with her hand, as though
caressing it, thinking the while intimate thoughts of her own, the
wonderful thoughts of motherhood, and in the blue reflection of the
lampshade her beautiful face seemed to the priest as though illumined
by some sweet and gentle radiance that came from within. Fearing by
some incautious movement to disturb her beautiful and happy dreams,
Father Vassily softly paced about the room, and his feet, clad in felt
slippers, touched the floor gently and noiselessly. He let his gaze
dwell now on the living room, cozy and agreeable like the face of a
cherished friend, now on the figure of his wife, and all seemed well,
just like in other people’s homes, and everything about him breathed
peace, profound and serene. And his soul was peaceful and smiling, for
he neither saw, nor felt that from somewhere there had fallen the
diaphanous shadow of great grief and was now silently resting on his
forehead, somewhere between his eyebrows. For even in these days of
rest and peace a stern and mysterious fate was hovering over his life.
On the eve of Epiphany, the Popadya gave birth to a boy and he was
named Vassily. His head was large and his legs were thin and little,
and there was something strangely vacant and insensate in the immobile
stare of his globe-shaped eyes. For the space of three years after the
child’s birth the priest and his wife lived ’twixt fears, doubts and
hopes, but when three years had passed it became evident that little
Vassya had been born an idiot.
Conceived in madness, he had come into the world a madman.
IV.
Another year passed in the benumbed stupefaction of grief, but when
they emerged from this comatose state and began to look about, they
discovered that above their thoughts and their lives sat enthroned the
monstrous image of the idiot. The household routine went on as in olden
days; they built their fires, they discussed their daily affairs, but
something new and dreadful had come into their lives: no one had any
real interest in life, and all things were going to pieces. The farm
hands loafed, refused to obey orders, and frequently gave notice
without any apparent cause, and those who were hired in their place
soon fell into the same queer state of indifference and restlessness
and commenced to be insolent. Dinner was served either too late or too
early, and someone was always missing from the table: either the
Popadya, or little Nastya, or Father Vassily himself. From some
unfathomable sources there appeared an abundance of tattered garments:
the Popadya kept saying that she must darn her husband’s socks, and she
even fussed with them, but the socks remained unmended and Father
Vassily was footsore. And at night everyone in the house tossed about
restlessly, tormented by vermin which came crawling from all crevices,
and shamelessly paraded upon the walls, and try as they might, nothing
seemed able to stop their loathsome invasion.
And wherever they went, whatever they undertook, they could not for a
moment forget, that there in the darkened room sat one, unexpected and
monstrous, the child of madness. When they left the house to go
outdoors, they tried hard to keep from turning around or from glancing
back, but something compelled them to glance back, and then it seemed
to them that the framehouse itself in which they dwelt was conscious of
some terrible change within: it stood there squat and huddled, as
though in an attitude of listening, listening to that misshapen and
dreadful thing that was contained within its depths, and all its
bulging windows, its tightly shut doors seemed barely able to suppress
an outcry of mortal anguish.
The Popadya went frequently visiting and spent hours at a stretch in
the house of the deacon’s wife, but even there she failed to find rest,
as though from the idiot’s side came forth threads of cobweb
thinness—and stretched out towards her, binding her to him indissolubly
and for all eternity. And though she were to flee to the ends of the
earth, though she were to hide behind the high walls of a nunnery, even
though she were to seek escape in death, then into the very gloom of
her grave those weblike threads would pursue her and enmesh her with
fears and anguish.
And even their nights lacked peace: the faces of the sleepers seemed
stolid, but within their skulls, in their dreams and waking nightmares
the monstrous world of madness returned to life, and its lord was this
same mysterious and dreadful image, half-child and half-brute.
He was four years old but had not yet learned to walk and could utter
but one word: “give”; he was spiteful and obstinate, and if anything
was denied him he screamed with piercing, ferocious animal cries and
stretched out his hands with fingers that were rapaciously curved. And
in his habits he was as filthy as an animal, performing his bodily
functions wherever he chanced to be, and it was agonizing to attend to
him: with the cunning of malice he awaited the moment when his mother’s
or sister’s hair came within his reach, and then he tenaciously
clutched at it, tearing it out by the roots in handfuls. Once he bit
Nastya, but she flung him back on the bed and beat him long and
mercilessly, as though he were not human, not a child, but a mere piece
of spiteful flesh, and after this beating he developed a fondness for
biting and snapped menacingly, showing his teeth like a dog.
It was also a difficult task to feed him: greedy and impatient, he
could not gauge his movements, and would upset the dish, choking as he
tried to swallow and wrathfully stretching his curving fingers towards
the feeder’s hair. And his appearance was repulsive and horrible: on a
pair of narrow, almost baby-like shoulders rested a small skull with an
immense, immobile, broad face, the size of an adult’s. There was
something disquieting and terrifying in this monstrous incongruity
between face and body, and it seemed as though a child had for some
reason put on an immense and repulsive mask.
And the tortured Popadya commenced to drink as in the days of old. She
drank heavily, to unconsciousness and delirium, but even mighty alcohol
could not release her from the iron circle in the centre of which
reigned the horrible and monstrous image of the semichild, semi-beast.
And as of yore she sought to find in liquor burning sorrowful memories
of the perished firstborn, but the memories refused to come, and the
lifeless insensate void yielded neither image nor sound. With every
fibre of her inflamed brain she strove to resurrect the sweet face of
the little gentle lad; she sang his favorite ditties; she imitated his
smile; she pictured to herself his agony as he was choking and
strangling in the turbid waters; and she felt his nearness, felt the
flames of the great and passionately desired grief blaze up within her
heart, but with abrupt swiftness—unperceived by eye or ear—the conjured
vision, the longed for grief, vanished into nothingness, and out of the
chilling lifeless void the monstrous, motionless mask of the idiot was
staring into her eyes. And she felt as though she had just buried her
little Vassya, buried him anew, interring him deeply in the bowels of
the earth, and she longed to shatter her faithless head in the inmost
depths of which so insolently reigned an alien and abominable image.
Terror-stricken she tossed about the room, calling her husband:
“Vassily! Vassily! Come—quick!”
Father Vassily came and without opening his mouth sat down in a far
corner of the room; and he was unconcerned and still, as though there
had been no outcry, no madness, no terror. And his eyes were invisible;
but under the heavy arch of his eyebrows yawned the immobile black of
two sunken spots, and his haggard face resembled a skeleton’s skull.
Leaning his chin on his scrawny arm, he seemed congealed in torpid
silence and immobility, and remained in this attitude until the Popadya
quieted down by degrees. Then with the intense care of a maniac she
painstakingly barricaded the door which led into the idiot’s room. She
dragged in front of it every table and chair she could find, piling
cushions and clothing upon them, and still the barricade seemed too
frail to suit her. And with the strength of drunkenness she wrenched a
ponderous antique chest of drawers from its accustomed place, and
scratching the floor in so doing she dragged it towards the door.
“Move the chair aside,” she called to her husband all out of breath,
and he rose in silence, cleared the place for her and once more resumed
his seat in the corner.
For a moment the Popadya appeared to regain her composure and sank into
a chair, breathing heavily and holding her hand to her breast, but in
the next instant she sprang to her feet again, and flinging back her
disheveled hair to release her ears she listened in terror to the
sounds which her morbid imagination seemed to conjure up beyond the
wall:
“Hear it, Vassily? Hear it?”
The two black spots gazed upon her unmoved and a stolid distant voice
answered:
“There’s nothing there. He is sleeping. Calm yourself, Nastya.”
The Popadya smiled the glad and radiant smile of a comforted child, and
irresolutely sat down on the edge of the chair.
“Do you mean it? Is he sleeping? Did you see it yourself? Don’t lie,
it’s a sin to tell lies.”
“I saw him. He is asleep.”
“But who is talking back there?”
“There is no one there. You only imagine it.”
And the Popadya was so pleased that she laughed out loud, shaking her
head in amusement and warding off something with an uncertain movement
of her hand: as though some ill-disposed joker out of deviltry had
tried to frighten her and she had seen through the joke and was now
laughing at him. But like a stone that falls into a fathomless abyss
her laughter fell into space without evoking an echo and died right
there in loneliness, and her lips were still curved in a smile while
the chill of new terror appeared in her eyes. And such stillness
reigned in the room that it seemed as though no one had ever uttered a
laugh there; from the scattered pillows, from the overturned chairs, so
queer to look upon in their upset state, from the ponderous chest of
drawers so clumsily skulking in its unwonted position, from all sides
there stared upon her the greedy expectancy of some dire misfortune, of
some unknown horrors which no human had ever gone through before. She
turned to her husband—in the dark corner she saw a dimly grey figure,
lanky, erect and shadowy like a spectre; she leaned over: and a face
peered at her, but it was not with its eyes that it peered; these were
hidden by the dark shadow of the eyebrows; it seemed to peer at her
with the white spots of its haggard cheekbones and of the forehead. She
was breathing fast—with loud, terrified gasps, and softly she moaned:
“Vassya, I am afraid of you! You’re so strange ... Come here, come to
the light!”