"How old are you?"
"Nearly nine."
When I get home I go to bed quickly, that I may not see them eating
supper; and, shutting my eyes, dream of how fine it would be to
endure martyrdom at the hands of some Herod or Dioskorus, to live
in the desert, and, like St. Serafim, feed the bears, live in a
cell, and eat nothing but holy bread, give my property to the poor,
go on a pilgrimage to Kiev. I hear them laying the table in the
dining-room--they are going to have supper, they will eat salad,
cabbage pies, fried and baked fish. How hungry I am! I would consent
to endure any martyrdom, to live in the desert without my mother,
to feed bears out of my own hands, if only I might first eat just
one cabbage pie!
"Lord, purify me a sinner," I pray, covering my head over. "Guardian
angel, save me from the unclean spirit."
The next day, Thursday, I wake up with my heart as pure and clean
as a fine spring day. I go gaily and boldly into the church, feeling
that I am a communicant, that I have a splendid and expensive shirt
on, made out of a silk dress left by my grandmother. In the church
everything has an air of joy, happiness, and spring. The faces of
the Mother of God and St. John the Divine are not so sorrowful as
yesterday. The faces of the communicants are radiant with hope, and
it seems as though all the past is forgotten, all is forgiven.
Mitka, too, has combed his hair, and is dressed in his best. I look
gaily at his protruding ears, and to show that I have nothing against
him, I say:
"You look nice to-day, and if your hair did not stand up so, and
you weren't so poorly dressed, everybody would think that your
mother was not a washerwoman but a lady. Come to me at Easter, we
will play knuckle-bones."
Mitka looks at me mistrustfully, and shakes his fist at me on the
sly.
And the lady I saw yesterday looks lovely. She is wearing a light
blue dress, and a big sparkling brooch in the shape of a horse-shoe.
I admire her, and think that, when I am grown-up, I will certainly
marry a woman like that, but remembering that getting married is
shameful, I leave off thinking about it, and go into the choir where
the deacon is already reading the "hours."