were refusing to believe it was so late. His arms and legs were stiff,
his head ached. He was hot and uncomfortable. After resting a little he
went into his bedroom, and there, too, he sat a little, still thinking
of his mother; he could hear the lay brother going away, and Father
Sisoy coughing the other side of the wall. The monastery clock struck a
quarter.
The bishop changed his clothes and began reading the prayers before
sleep. He read attentively those old, long familiar prayers, and at the
same time thought about his mother. She had nine children and about
forty grandchildren. At one time, she had lived with her husband, the
deacon, in a poor village; she had lived there a very long time from the
age of seventeen to sixty. The bishop remembered her from early
childhood, almost from the age of three, and--how he had loved her!
Sweet, precious childhood, always fondly remembered! Why did it, that
long-past time that could never return, why did it seem brighter,
fuller, and more festive than it had really been? When in his childhood
or youth he had been ill, how tender and sympathetic his mother had
been! And now his prayers mingled with the memories, which gleamed more
and more brightly like a flame, and the prayers did not hinder his
thinking of his mother.
When he had finished his prayers he undressed and lay down, and at once,
as soon as it was dark, there rose before his mind his dead father, his
mother, his native village Lesopolye . . . the creak of wheels, the
bleat of sheep, the church bells on bright summer mornings, the gypsies
under the window--oh, how sweet to think of it! He remembered the priest
of Lesopolye, Father Simeon--mild, gentle, kindly; he was a lean little
man, while his son, a divinity student, was a huge fellow and talked in
a roaring bass voice. The priest's son had flown into a rage with the
cook and abused her: "Ah, you Jehud's ass!" and Father Simeon
overhearing it, said not a word, and was only ashamed because he could
not remember where such an ass was mentioned in the Bible. After him the
priest at Lesopolye had been Father Demyan, who used to drink heavily,
and at times drank till he saw green snakes, and was even nicknamed
Demyan Snakeseer. The schoolmaster at Lesopolye was Matvey Nikolaitch,
who had been a divinity student, a kind and intelligent man, but he,
too, was a drunkard; he never beat the schoolchildren, but for some
reason he always had hanging on his wall a bunch of birch-twigs, and
below it an utterly meaningless inscription in Latin: "Betula
kinderbalsamica secuta." He had a shaggy black dog whom he called
Syntax.
And his holiness laughed. Six miles from Lesopolye was the village
Obnino with a wonder-working ikon. In the summer they used to carry the
ikon in procession about the neighbouring villages and ring the bells
the whole day long; first in one village and then in another, and it
used to seem to the bishop then that joy was quivering in the air, and
he (in those days his name was Pavlusha) used to follow the ikon,
bareheaded and barefoot, with naïve faith, with a naïve smile,
infinitely happy. In Obnino, he remembered now, there were always a lot
of people, and the priest there, Father Alexey, to save time during
mass, used to make his deaf nephew Ilarion read the names of those for
whose health or whose souls' peace prayers were asked. Ilarion used to
read them, now and then getting a five or ten kopeck piece for the
service, and only when he was grey and bald, when life was nearly over,
he suddenly saw written on one of the pieces of paper: "What a fool you
are, Ilarion." Up to fifteen at least Pavlusha was undeveloped and idle
at his lessons, so much so that they thought of taking him away from the
clerical school and putting him into a shop; one day, going to the post
at Obnino for letters, he had stared a long time at the post-office
clerks and asked: "Allow me to ask, how do you get your salary, every
month or every day?"
His holiness crossed himself and turned over on the other side, trying
to stop thinking and go to sleep.
"My mother has come," he remembered and laughed.
The moon peeped in at the window, the floor was lighted up, and there
were shadows on it. A cricket was chirping. Through the wall Father
Sisoy was snoring in the next room, and his aged snore had a sound that
suggested loneliness, forlornness, even vagrancy. Sisoy had once been
housekeeper to the bishop of the diocese, and was called now "the former
Father Housekeeper"; he was seventy years old, he lived in a monastery
twelve miles from the town and stayed sometimes in the town, too. He had
come to the Pankratievsky Monastery three days before, and the bishop
had kept him that he might talk to him at his leisure about matters of
business, about the arrangements here. . . .
At half-past one they began ringing for matins. Father Sisoy could be
heard coughing, muttering something in a discontented voice, then he got
up and walked barefoot about the rooms.
"Father Sisoy," the bishop called.
Sisoy went back to his room and a little later made his appearance in
his boots, with a candle; he had on his cassock over his underclothes
and on his head was an old faded skull-cap.
"I can't sleep," said the bishop, sitting up. "I must be unwell. And
what it is I don't know. Fever!"
"You must have caught cold, your holiness. You must be rubbed with
tallow." Sisoy stood a little and yawned. "O Lord, forgive me, a
sinner."
"They had the electric lights on at Erakin's today," he said; "I don't
like it!"
Father Sisoy was old, lean, bent, always dissatisfied with something,
and his eyes were angry-looking and prominent as a crab's.
"I don't like it," he said, going away. "I don't like it. Bother it!" II
Next day, Palm Sunday, the bishop took the service in the cathedral in
the town, then he visited the bishop of the diocese, then visited a very
sick old lady, the widow of a general, and at last drove home. Between
one and two o'clock he had welcome visitors dining with him--his mother
and his niece Katya, a child of eight years old. All dinner-time the
spring sunshine was streaming in at the windows, throwing bright light
on the white tablecloth and on Katya's red hair. Through the double
windows they could hear the noise of the rooks and the notes of the
starlings in the garden.
"It is nine years since we have met," said the old lady. "And when I
looked at you in the monastery yesterday, good Lord! you've not changed
a bit, except maybe you are thinner and your beard is a little longer.
Holy Mother, Queen of Heaven! Yesterday at the evening service no one
could help crying. I, too, as I looked at you, suddenly began crying,
though I couldn't say why. His Holy Will!"
And in spite of the affectionate tone in which she said this, he could
see she was constrained as though she were uncertain whether to address
him formally or familiarly, to laugh or not, and that she felt herself
more a deacon's widow than his mother. And Katya gazed without blinking
at her uncle, his holiness, as though trying to discover what sort of a
person he was. Her hair sprang up from under the comb and the velvet
ribbon and stood out like a halo; she had a turned-up nose and sly eyes.
The child had broken a glass before sitting down to dinner, and now her
grandmother, as she talked, moved away from Katya first a wineglass and
then a tumbler. The bishop listened to his mother and remembered how
many, many years ago she used to take him and his brothers and sisters
to relations whom she considered rich; in those days she was taken up
with the care of her children, now with her grandchildren, and she had
brought Katya. . . .
"Your sister, Varenka, has four children," she told him; "Katya, here,
is the eldest. And your brother-in-law Father Ivan fell sick, God knows
of what, and died three days before the Assumption; and my poor Varenka
is left a beggar."
"And how is Nikanor getting on?" the bishop asked about his eldest
brother.
"He is all right, thank God. Though he has nothing much, yet he can
live. Only there is one thing: his son, my grandson Nikolasha, did not
want to go into the Church; he has gone to the university to be a
doctor. He thinks it is better; but who knows! His Holy Will!"
"Nikolasha cuts up dead people," said Katya, spilling water over her
knees.
"Sit still, child," her grandmother observed calmly, and took the glass
out of her hand. "Say a prayer, and go on eating."
"How long it is since we have seen each other!" said the bishop, and he
tenderly stroked his mother's hand and shoulder; "and I missed you
abroad, mother, I missed you dreadfully."
"Thank you."
"I used to sit in the evenings at the open window, lonely and alone;
often there was music playing, and all at once I used to be overcome
with homesickness and felt as though I would give everything only to be
at home and see you."
His mother smiled, beamed, but at once she made a grave face and said:
"Thank you."
His mood suddenly changed. He looked at his mother and could not
understand how she had come by that respectfulness, that timid
expression of face: what was it for? And he did not recognize her. He
felt sad and vexed. And then his head ached just as it had the day
before; his legs felt fearfully tired, and the fish seemed to him stale
and tasteless; he felt thirsty all the time. . . .
After dinner two rich ladies, landowners, arrived and sat for an hour
and a half in silence with rigid countenances; the archimandrite, a
silent, rather deaf man, came to see him about business. Then they began
ringing for vespers; the sun was setting behind the wood and the day was
over. When he returned from church, he hurriedly said his prayers, got
into bed, and wrapped himself up as warm as possible.
It was disagreeable to remember the fish he had eaten at dinner. The
moonlight worried him, and then he heard talking. In an adjoining room,
probably in the parlour, Father Sisoy was talking politics:
"There's war among the Japanese now. They are fighting. The Japanese, my
good soul, are the same as the Montenegrins; they are the same race.
They were under the Turkish yoke together."
And then he heard the voice of Marya Timofyevna:
"So, having said our prayers and drunk tea, we went, you know, to Father
Yegor at Novokatnoye, so. . ."
And she kept on saying, "having had tea" or "having drunk tea," and it
seemed as though the only thing she had done in her life was to drink
tea.
The bishop slowly, languidly, recalled the seminary, the academy. For
three years he had been Greek teacher in the seminary: by that time he
could not read without spectacles. Then he had become a monk; he had
been made a school inspector. Then he had defended his thesis for his
degree. When he was thirty-two he had been made rector of the seminary,
and consecrated archimandrite: and then his life had been so easy, so
pleasant; it seemed so long, so long, no end was in sight. Then he had
begun to be ill, had grown very thin and almost blind, and by the advice
of the doctors had to give up everything and go abroad.
"And what then?" asked Sisoy in the next room.
"Then we drank tea . . ." answered Marya Timofyevna.
"Good gracious, you've got a green beard," said Katya suddenly in
surprise, and she laughed.
The bishop remembered that the grey-headed Father Sisoy's beard really
had a shade of green in it, and he laughed.
"God have mercy upon us, what we have to put up with with this girl!"
said Sisoy, aloud, getting angry. "Spoilt child! Sit quiet!"
The bishop remembered the perfectly new white church in which he had
conducted the services while living abroad, he remembered the sound of
the warm sea. In his flat he had five lofty light rooms; in his study he
had a new writing-table, lots of books. He had read a great deal and
often written. And he remembered how he had pined for his native land,
how a blind beggar woman had played the guitar under his window every
day and sung of love, and how, as he listened, he had always for some
reason thought of the past. But eight years had passed and he had been
called back to Russia, and now he was a suffragan bishop, and all the
past had retreated far away into the mist as though it were a dream. . .
.
Father Sisoy came into the bedroom with a candle.
"I say!" he said, wondering, "are you asleep already, your holiness?"
"What is it?"
"Why, it's still early, ten o'clock or less. I bought a candle to-day; I
wanted to rub you with tallow."
"I am in a fever . . ." said the bishop, and he sat up. "I really ought
to have something. My head is bad. . . ."
Sisoy took off the bishop's shirt and began rubbing his chest and back
with tallow.
"That's the way . . . that's the way . . ." he said. "Lord Jesus Christ
. . . that's the way. I walked to the town to-day; I was at what's-his-
name's--the chief priest Sidonsky's. . . . I had tea with him. I don't
like him. Lord Jesus Christ. . . . That's the way. I don't like him."
III
The bishop of the diocese, a very fat old man, was ill with rheumatism
or gout, and had been in bed for over a month. Bishop Pyotr went to see
him almost every day, and saw all who came to ask his help. And now that
he was unwell he was struck by the emptiness, the triviality of
everything which they asked and for which they wept; he was vexed at
their ignorance, their timidity; and all this useless, petty business
oppressed him by the mass of it, and it seemed to him that now he
understood the diocesan bishop, who had once in his young days written
on "The Doctrines of the Freedom of the Will," and now seemed to be all
lost in trivialities, to have forgotten everything, and to have no
thoughts of religion. The bishop must have lost touch with Russian life
while he was abroad; he did not find it easy; the peasants seemed to him
coarse, the women who sought his help dull and stupid, the seminarists
and their teachers uncultivated and at times savage. And the documents
coming in and going out were reckoned by tens of thousands; and what
documents they were! The higher clergy in the whole diocese gave the
priests, young and old, and even their wives and children, marks for
their behaviour--a five, a four, and sometimes even a three; and about
this he had to talk and to read and write serious reports. And there was
positively not one minute to spare; his soul was troubled all day long,
and the bishop was only at peace when he was in church.
He could not get used, either, to the awe which, through no wish of his
own, he inspired in people in spite of his quiet, modest disposition.
All the people in the province seemed to him little, scared, and guilty
when he looked at them. Everyone was timid in his presence, even the old
chief priests; everyone "flopped" at his feet, and not long previously
an old lady, a village priest's wife who had come to consult him, was so
overcome by awe that she could not utter a single word, and went empty
away. And he, who could never in his sermons bring himself to speak ill
of people, never reproached anyone because he was so sorry for them, was
moved to fury with the people who came to consult him, lost his temper
and flung their petitions on the floor. The whole time he had been here,
not one person had spoken to him genuinely, simply, as to a human being;
even his old mother seemed now not the same! And why, he wondered, did
she chatter away to Sisoy and laugh so much; while with him, her son,
she was grave and usually silent and constrained, which did not suit her
at all. The only person who behaved freely with him and said what he
meant was old Sisoy, who had spent his whole life in the presence of
bishops and had outlived eleven of them. And so the bishop was at ease
with him, although, of course, he was a tedious and nonsensical man.
After the service on Tuesday, his holiness Pyotr was in the diocesan
bishop's house receiving petitions there; he got excited and angry, and
then drove home. He was as unwell as before; he longed to be in bed, but
he had hardly reached home when he was informed that a young merchant
called Erakin, who subscribed liberally to charities, had come to see
him about a very important matter. The bishop had to see him. Erakin
stayed about an hour, talked very loud, almost shouted, and it was
difficult to understand what he said.
"God grant it may," he said as he went away. "Most essential! According
to circumstances, your holiness! I trust it may!"
After him came the Mother Superior from a distant convent. And when she
had gone they began ringing for vespers. He had to go to church.
In the evening the monks sang harmoniously, with inspiration. A young
priest with a black beard conducted the service; and the bishop, hearing
of the Bridegroom who comes at midnight and of the Heavenly Mansion
adorned for the festival, felt no repentance for his sins, no
tribulation, but peace at heart and tranquillity. And he was carried
back in thought to the distant past, to his childhood and youth, when,
too, they used to sing of the Bridegroom and of the Heavenly Mansion;
and now that past rose up before him--living, fair, and joyful as in all
likelihood it never had been. And perhaps in the other world, in the
life to come, we shall think of the distant past, of our life here, with
the same feeling. Who knows? The bishop was sitting near the altar. It
was dark; tears flowed down his face. He thought that here he had
attained everything a man in his position could attain; he had faith and
yet everything was not clear, something was lacking still. He did not
want to die; and he still felt that he had missed what was most
important, something of which he had dimly dreamed in the past; and he
was troubled by the same hopes for the future as he had felt in
childhood, at the academy and abroad.
"How well they sing to-day!" he thought, listening to the singing. "How
nice it is!" IV
On Thursday he celebrated mass in the cathedral; it was the Washing of
Feet. When the service was over and the people were going home, it was
sunny, warm; the water gurgled in the gutters, and the unceasing
trilling of the larks, tender, telling of peace, rose from the fields
outside the town. The trees were already awakening and smiling a
welcome, while above them the infinite, fathomless blue sky stretched
into the distance, God knows whither.
On reaching home his holiness drank some tea, then changed his clothes,
lay down on his bed, and told the lay brother to close the shutters on
the windows. The bedroom was darkened. But what weariness, what pain in
his legs and his back, a chill heavy pain, what a noise in his ears! He
had not slept for a long time--for a very long time, as it seemed to him
now, and some trifling detail which haunted his brain as soon as his
eyes were closed prevented him from sleeping. As on the day before,
sounds reached him from the adjoining rooms through the walls, voices,
the jingle of glasses and teaspoons. . . . Marya Timofyevna was gaily
telling Father Sisoy some story with quaint turns of speech, while the
latter answered in a grumpy, ill-humoured voice: "Bother them! Not
likely! What next!" And the bishop again felt vexed and then hurt that
with other people his old mother behaved in a simple, ordinary way,
while with him, her son, she was shy, spoke little, and did not say what
she meant, and even, as he fancied, had during all those three days kept
trying in his presence to find an excuse for standing up, because she
was embarrassed at sitting before him. And his father? He, too,
probably, if he had been living, would not have been able to utter a
word in the bishop's presence. . . .
Something fell down on the floor in the adjoining room and was broken;
Katya must have dropped a cup or a saucer, for Father Sisoy suddenly
spat and said angrily:
"What a regular nuisance the child is! Lord forgive my transgressions!
One can't provide enough for her."
Then all was quiet, the only sounds came from outside. And when the
bishop opened his eyes he saw Katya in his room, standing motionless,
staring at him. Her red hair, as usual, stood up from under the comb
like a halo.
"Is that you, Katya?" he asked. "Who is it downstairs who keeps opening
and shutting a door?"
"I don't hear it," answered Katya; and she listened.
"There, someone has just passed by."
"But that was a noise in your stomach, uncle."
He laughed and stroked her on the head.
"So you say Cousin Nikolasha cuts up dead people?" he asked after a
pause.
"Yes, he is studying."
"And is he kind?"
"Oh, yes, he's kind. But he drinks vodka awfully."
"And what was it your father died of?"
"Papa was weak and very, very thin, and all at once his throat was bad.
I was ill then, too, and brother Fedya; we all had bad throats. Papa
died, uncle, and we got well."
Her chin began quivering, and tears gleamed in her eyes and trickled
down her cheeks.
"Your holiness," she said in a shrill voice, by now weeping bitterly,
"uncle, mother and all of us are left very wretched. . . . Give us a
little money . . . do be kind . . . uncle darling. . . ."
He, too, was moved to tears, and for a long time was too much touched to
speak. Then he stroked her on the head, patted her on the shoulder and
said:
"Very good, very good, my child. When the holy Easter comes, we will
talk it over. . . . I will help you. . . . I will help you. . . ."
His mother came in quietly, timidly, and prayed before the ikon.
Noticing that he was not sleeping, she said:
"Won't you have a drop of soup?"
"No, thank you," he answered, "I am not hungry."
"You seem to be unwell, now I look at you. I should think so; you may
well be ill! The whole day on your legs, the whole day. . . . And, my
goodness, it makes one's heart ache even to look at you! Well, Easter is
not far off; you will rest then, please God. Then we will have a talk,
too, but now I'm not going to disturb you with my chatter. Come along,
Katya; let his holiness sleep a little."
And he remembered how once very long ago, when he was a boy, she had
spoken exactly like that, in the same jestingly respectful tone, with a
Church dignitary. . . . Only from her extraordinarily kind eyes and the
timid, anxious glance she stole at him as she went out of the room could
one have guessed that this was his mother. He shut his eyes and seemed
to sleep, but twice heard the clock strike and Father Sisoy coughing the
other side of the wall. And once more his mother came in and looked
timidly at him for a minute. Someone drove up to the steps, as he could
hear, in a coach or in a chaise. Suddenly a knock, the door slammed, the
lay brother came into the bedroom.
"Your holiness," he called.
"Well?"
"The horses are here; it's time for the evening service."
"What o'clock is it?"
"A quarter past seven."
He dressed and drove to the cathedral. During all the "Twelve Gospels"
he had to stand in the middle of the church without moving, and the
first gospel, the longest and the most beautiful, he read himself. A
mood of confidence and courage came over him. That first gospel, "Now is
the Son of Man glorified," he knew by heart; and as he read he raised
his eyes from time to time, and saw on both sides a perfect sea of
lights and heard the splutter of candles, but, as in past years, he
could not see the people, and it seemed as though these were all the
same people as had been round him in those days, in his childhood and
his youth; that they would always be the same every year and till such
time as God only knew.
His father had been a deacon, his grandfather a priest, his great-
grandfather a deacon, and his whole family, perhaps from the days when
Christianity had been accepted in Russia, had belonged to the
priesthood; and his love for the Church services, for the priesthood,
for the peal of the bells, was deep in him, ineradicable, innate. In
church, particularly when he took part in the service, he felt vigorous,
of good cheer, happy. So it was now. Only when the eighth gospel had
been read, he felt that his voice had grown weak, even his cough was
inaudible. His head had begun to ache intensely, and he was troubled by
a fear that he might fall down. And his legs were indeed quite numb, so
that by degrees he ceased to feel them and could not understand how or
on what he was standing, and why he did not fall. . . .