The next day, after an early and solitary dinner, Father Ignaty went to
the cemetery—for the first time since the death of his daughter. It was
close, deserted, and still, as though the hot day were but an illumined
night; but Father Ignaty as his habit was, with an effort straightened
his back, looked sternly from side to side, and thought that he was the
same as heretofore. He did not regard the new, but terrible, weakness
of his legs, nor that his long beard had grown completely white, as
though bitten by a hard frost. The way to the cemetery led through the
long, straight street, which sloped gently upwards, and at the end of
which gleamed white the roof of the lych-gate, which was like a black,
ever-open mouth edged with gleaming teeth.
Vera’s grave lay in the very depth of the cemetery, where the gravelled
pathways ended; and Father Ignaty had to wander for long on the narrow
tracks, along a broken line of little mounds which protruded from the
grass, forgotten of all, deserted of all. Here and there he came upon
monuments sloping and green with age, broken-down railings, and great
heavy stones cast upon the ground, and pressing it with a sort of grim
senile malignity.
Vera’s grave was next to one of these stones. It was covered with new
sods, already turning yellow, while all around it was green. A rowan
tree was intertwined with a maple, and a widely spreading clump of
hazel stretched its pliant branches with rough furred leaves over the
grave. Sitting down on the neighbouring tomb, and sighing repeatedly,
Father Ignaty looked round, cast a glance at the cloudless desert sky,
in which the red-hot disc of the sun hung suspended in perfect
immobility—and then only did he become conscious of that profound
stillness, like nothing else in the world, which holds sway over a
cemetery, when there is not a breath of wind to rustle the dead leaves.
And once more the thought came to Father Ignaty, that this was not
stillness, but silence. It overflowed to the very brick walls of the
cemetery, climbed heavily over them, and submerged the city. And its
end was only there—in those grey, stubbornly, obstinately silent eyes.
Father Ignaty shrugged his shoulders, which were becoming cold, and let
his eyes fall on Vera’s grave. He gazed long at the short little seared
stalks of grass, which had been torn from the ground somewhere in the
wide wind-swept fields, and had failed to take root in the new soil;
and he could not realize that there, under that grass, at a few feet
from him, lay Vera. And this nearness seemed incomprehensible, and
imbued his soul with a confusion and strange alarm. She, of whom he was
accustomed to think as having for ever disappeared in the dark depth of
infinity, was here, close—and it was difficult to understand that
nevertheless she was not, and never would be again. And it seemed to
Father Ignaty that if he spoke some word, which he almost felt upon his
lips, or if he made some movement, Vera would come forth from the tomb,
and stand up as tall and beautiful as ever. And that not only would she
arise; but that all the dead, who could be felt, so awesome in their
solemn cold silence, would rise too.
Father Ignaty took off his black wide-brimmed hat, smoothed his wavy
locks, and said in a whisper:
“Vera!”
He became uneasy lest he should be heard by some stranger, and stood
upon the tomb and looked over the crosses. But there was no one near,
and he repeated aloud:
“Vera!”
It was Father Ignaty’s old voice, dry and exacting, and it was strange
that a demand made with such force remained without answer.
“Vera!”
Loud and persistently the voice called, and when it was silent for a
moment it seemed as though somewhere below a vague answer resounded.
And Father Ignaty looked once more around, removed his hair from his
ears, and laid them on the rough prickly sod.
“Vera! Speak!”
And Father Ignaty felt with horror that something cold as the tomb
penetrated his ear, and froze the brain, and that Vera spoke—but what
she said was ever the same long silence. It became ever more and more
alarming and terrible, and when Father Ignaty dragged his head with an
effort from the ground, pale as that of a corpse, it seemed to him that
the whole air trembled and vibrated with a resonant silence, as though
a wild storm had arisen on that terrible sea. The silence choked him:
it kept rolling backwards and forwards through his head in icy waves,
and stirred his hair; it broke against his bosom, which groaned beneath
the shocks. Trembling all over, casting from side to side quick,
nervous glances, he slowly raised himself, and strove with torturing
efforts to straighten his back and to restore the proud carriage to his
trembling body. And in this he succeeded. With slow deliberation he
shook the dust from his knees, put on his hat, made the sign of the
cross three times over the grave, and went with even, firm gait, and
yet did not recognize the well-known cemetery, and lost his way.
“Lost my way!” he laughed, and stood still at the branching paths.
He stood still for a moment, and then without thinking turned to the
left, because it was impossible to stand still and wait. The silence
pursued him. It rose from the green graves; the grim grey crosses
breathed it; it came forth in thin suffocating streams from every pore
of the ground, which was sated with corpses. Father Ignaty’s steps
became quicker and quicker. Dazed, he went round the same paths again
and again, he leapt the graves, stumbled against the railings, grasped
the prickly tin wreaths, and the soft stuff tore to pieces in his
hands. Only one thought, that of getting out, was left in his head. He
rushed from side to side, and at last ran noiselessly, a tall figure,
almost unrecognizable in his streaming cassock, with his hair floating
on the air. More frightened than at the sight of a corpse risen from
the grave, would have been any one who had met this wild figure of a
man running, leaping, waving his arms—if he had recognized his mad,
distorted face, and heard the dull rattle that escaped from his open
mouth.
At full run Father Ignaty jumped out upon the little square at the end
of which stood the low white mortuary chapel. In the porch on a little
bench there dozed an old man who looked like a pilgrim from afar, and
near him two old beggar-women were flying at one another, quarrelling
and scolding.
When Father Ignaty reached home, it was already getting dark, and the
lamp was lit in Olga Stepanovna’s room. Without change of clothes or
removing his hat, torn and dusty, he came hurriedly to his wife and
fell on his knees.
“Mother—Olga—pity me!” he sobbed; “I am going out of my mind.”
He beat his head against the edge of the table, and sobbed
tumultuously, painfully, as a man does who never weeps. He lifted his
head, confident that in a moment a miracle would be performed, and that
his wife would speak, and pity him.
“Dear!”
With his whole big body he stretched out towards his wife, and met the
look of the grey eyes. In them there was neither compassion nor anger.
Maybe his wife forgave and pitied him, but in those eyes there was
neither pity nor forgiveness. They were dumb and silent.
And the whole desolate house was silent.