In the little town of Gagri on the Caucasian shore of the Black Sea
there is a beautiful and wonderful church surviving from the sixth
century, a work of pristine Christianity. It is but the size of a
cottage, and just the shape of a child's Noah's Ark, but made of
great rough-hewn blocks of grey stone. One comes upon the building
unexpectedly. After looking at Gagri's ancient ruins, her fortresses,
her wall built by Mithridates, one sees suddenly in a shadowy close
six sorrowful little cypresses standing absolutely still--like heavily
dressed guardsmen--and behind the cypresses and their dark green
brooms, the grey wall of the church, solid, eternal. One's eyes rest
upon it as upon a perfect resting-place. If Gagri has an organic life,
this church must be its beating heart.
I came to Gagri one Saturday afternoon after the first two hundred and
fifty miles tramping of my pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and at this little
church I witnessed a strange sight. I had hardly admired the grey
interior, the bare walls growing into the roof in unbroken curves, the
massive stone rood-screen, the sorrowful faces in the holy pictures,
when a little procession filed into the church; four girls carrying a
flower-bedecked coffin, half a dozen elders, and a pack of children
carrying candles--a sight at once terrible and diurnal, a child's
funeral.
Russian churches, having no chairs, have the appearance of being
almost empty. In the centre of this emptiness at Gagri church two
trestles were put up, and the open coffin placed upon them; in the
coffin, lying in a bed of fresh flowers and dressed in delicate white
garments, was a little dead child. The coffin was perfectly and even
marvellously arranged; it would be difficult to imagine anything more
beautiful, and at the same time more terrible.
A girl of about four years, she lay in the coffin as in bed, with her
head somewhat raised, and the face looking directly at the altar and
at the sorrowful pictures; on her head was a cream silk embroidered
bonnet, on her forehead, from ear to ear, a paper _riza_ with delicate
line drawings of the story of the girl's angel, St. Olga. A high
lighted candle stood at her head, two little ones at each side, and
two at her feet. The bonnet and the dress were tied with little bits
of pink ribbon; the child's hands, small, white, all lovely, lay one
upon another, and in one of them was a little white cross. The face
and arms were the colour of fine grey wax, the lips thin, dark red and
set--the little dead girl looked steadfastly at the Ikons.
I stood and wondered. Round about the coffin were a score of people,
mostly little children, who every now and then nicked away flies that
were about to settle on the dead body. The grey church and its beauty
melted away. There was only a little grey wax figure lying poised
before the face of Christ, and little children flicking away flies.
Among the flowers in the coffin I noticed a heavy metal cross--it
would be buried with her. Hanging over the trestles at each of the
four corners were gorgeous hand-embroidered towels. "This is some rich
person's child," I thought as I waited--it was twenty minutes before
the father, the mother, and the priest arrived. I was mistaken; this
was the child of ordinary peasants.
* * * * *
I wonder the mother was allowed to come to church; she was frantic
with grief. When she came into the church she fell down on her knees
and hugged the dead body and kissed it and sobbed--sobbed so horribly
that except for the children there was no one present who kept dry
eyes. The husband stood with his hands dangling at his side, his lips
all puckered, his hair awry, and the tears streaming down his red
cheeks.
But when the priest came in he took the good woman aside and quieted
her, and in his words surely was comfort. "Those who die as children
are assured of that glorious life above, for of them Christ said,
'Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, _for
of such is the kingdom of heaven._' Least of all should we grieve when
a child dies."
I held a candle with the others and joined in the little service, and
when the service was over ate of the boiled rice and grapes that were
handed round to save us from evil spirits.
The candles were put out, the priest retired, and then the sobbing
broke forth once more, the people crowded round the coffin and one by
one kissed the little dead one, kissed her again and again. Most of
all the little children kissed her, and the father in distraction
stood by, calling out in broken treble, "Say good-bye to her,
children, say good-bye!"
Last of all, the wild mother said good-bye, and was only taken away
by sheer force. Then the lid was put on the coffin, and the four
girls--they were each about twelve years old--lifted it on the
embroidered towels and carried it out of the church.
The mother fainted and was taken into the open air, where one woman
helped to revive her by pouring water on her head out of an old
kettle, and another by drinking water and spurting it out again in
her face. Meanwhile the father took eight nails--he had them in his
pocket--and with all the crowd looking on, he nailed down the lid of
the coffin. The girls once more lifted their burden upon the beautiful
towels, and they bore it away to the grave. The crowd followed them
with hymns--
All we like dust go down into the grave,
the sound of their singing almost drowned by the beating of their
uneven steps. The music modulated and died away to the silence of the
evening. The little church remained grey and ancient, and the six
cypresses stood unmoved, unmoving, like guards before some sacred
portal....
And the pilgrim goes on his way.