The parish church was nearly five miles away at Kosogorovo, and the
peasants only attended it when they had to do so for baptisms, weddings,
or funerals; they went to the services at the church across the river.
On holidays in fine weather the girls dressed up in their best and went
in a crowd together to church, and it was a cheering sight to see them
in their red, yellow, and green dresses cross the meadow; in bad weather
they all stayed at home. They went for the sacrament to the parish
church. From each of those who did not manage in Lent to go to
confession in readiness for the sacrament the parish priest, going the
round of the huts with the cross at Easter, took fifteen kopecks.
The old father did not believe in God, for he hardly ever thought about
Him; he recognized the supernatural, but considered it was entirely the
women’s concern, and when religion or miracles were discussed before
him, or a question were put to him, he would say reluctantly, scratching
himself:
“Who can tell!”
Granny believed, but her faith was somewhat hazy; everything was mixed
up in her memory, and she could scarcely begin to think of sins, of
death, of the salvation of the soul, before poverty and her daily cares
took possession of her mind, and she instantly forgot what she was
thinking about. She did not remember the prayers, and usually in the
evenings, before lying down to sleep, she would stand before the ikons
and whisper:
“Holy Mother of Kazan, Holy Mother of Smolensk, Holy Mother of
Troerutchitsy...”
Marya and Fyokla crossed themselves, fasted, and took the sacrament
every year, but understood nothing. The children were not taught their
prayers, nothing was told them about God, and no moral principles were
instilled into them; they were only forbidden to eat meat or milk in
Lent. In the other families it was much the same: there were few who
believed, few who understood. At the same time everyone loved the Holy
Scripture, loved it with a tender, reverent love; but they had no Bible,
there was no one to read it and explain it, and because Olga sometimes
read them the gospel, they respected her, and they all addressed her and
Sasha as though they were superior to themselves.
For church holidays and services Olga often went to neighbouring
villages, and to the district town, in which there were two monasteries
and twenty-seven churches. She was dreamy, and when she was on these
pilgrimages she quite forgot her family, and only when she got home
again suddenly made the joyful discovery that she had a husband and
daughter, and then would say, smiling and radiant:
“God has sent me blessings!”
What went on in the village worried her and seemed to her revolting. On
Elijah’s Day they drank, at the Assumption they drank, at the Ascension
they drank. The Feast of the Intercession was the parish holiday for
Zhukovo, and the peasants used to drink then for three days; they
squandered on drink fifty roubles of money belonging to the Mir, and
then collected more for vodka from all the households. On the first
day of the feast the Tchikildyeevs killed a sheep and ate of it in the
morning, at dinner-time, and in the evening; they ate it ravenously, and
the children got up at night to eat more. Kiryak was fearfully drunk for
three whole days; he drank up everything, even his boots and cap, and
beat Marya so terribly that they had to pour water over her. And then
they were all ashamed and sick.
However, even in Zhukovo, in this “Slaveytown,” there was once an
outburst of genuine religious enthusiasm. It was in August, when
throughout the district they carried from village to village the Holy
Mother, the giver of life. It was still and overcast on the day when
they expected _Her_ at Zhukovo. The girls set off in the morning to meet
the ikon, in their bright holiday dresses, and brought Her towards the
evening, in procession with the cross and with singing, while the bells
pealed in the church across the river. An immense crowd of villagers and
strangers flooded the street; there was noise, dust, a great crush....
And the old father and Granny and Kiryak--all stretched out their hands
to the ikon, looked eagerly at it and said, weeping:
“Defender! Mother! Defender!”
All seemed suddenly to realize that there was not an empty void
between earth and heaven, that the rich and the powerful had not taken
possession of everything, that there was still a refuge from injury,
from slavish bondage, from crushing, unendurable poverty, from the
terrible vodka.
“Defender! Mother!” sobbed Marya. “Mother!”
But the thanksgiving service ended and the ikon was carried away, and
everything went on as before; and again there was a sound of coarse
drunken oaths from the tavern.
Only the well-to-do peasants were afraid of death; the richer they were
the less they believed in God, and in the salvation of souls, and only
through fear of the end of the world put up candles and had services
said for them, to be on the safe side. The peasants who were rather
poorer were not afraid of death. The old father and Granny were told
to their faces that they had lived too long, that it was time they were
dead, and they did not mind. They did not hinder Fyokla from saying in
Nikolay’s presence that when Nikolay died her husband Denis would get
exemption--to return home from the army. And Marya, far from fearing
death, regretted that it was so slow in coming, and was glad when her
children died.
Death they did not fear, but of every disease they had an exaggerated
terror. The merest trifle was enough--a stomach upset, a slight chill,
and Granny would be wrapped up on the stove, and would begin moaning
loudly and incessantly:
“I am dy-ing!”
The old father hurried off for the priest, and Granny received the
sacrament and extreme unction. They often talked of colds, of worms,
of tumours which move in the stomach and coil round to the heart. Above
all, they were afraid of catching cold, and so put on thick clothes even
in the summer and warmed themselves at the stove. Granny was fond of
being doctored, and often went to the hospital, where she used to say
she was not seventy, but fifty-eight; she supposed that if the doctor
knew her real age he would not treat her, but would say it was time she
died instead of taking medicine. She usually went to the hospital early
in the morning, taking with her two or three of the little girls,
and came back in the evening, hungry and ill-tempered--with drops for
herself and ointments for the little girls. Once she took Nikolay, who
swallowed drops for a fortnight afterwards, and said he felt better.
Granny knew all the doctors and their assistants and the wise men for
twenty miles round, and not one of them she liked. At the Intercession,
when the priest made the round of the huts with the cross, the deacon
told her that in the town near the prison lived an old man who had been
a medical orderly in the army, and who made wonderful cures, and advised
her to try him. Granny took his advice. When the first snow fell she
drove to the town and fetched an old man with a big beard, a converted
Jew, in a long gown, whose face was covered with blue veins. There were
outsiders at work in the hut at the time: an old tailor, in terrible
spectacles, was cutting a waistcoat out of some rags, and two young men
were making felt boots out of wool; Kiryak, who had been dismissed from
his place for drunkenness, and now lived at home, was sitting beside the
tailor mending a bridle. And it was crowded, stifling, and noisome
in the hut. The converted Jew examined Nikolay and said that it was
necessary to try cupping.
He put on the cups, and the old tailor, Kiryak, and the little girls
stood round and looked on, and it seemed to them that they saw the
disease being drawn out of Nikolay; and Nikolay, too, watched how the
cups suckling at his breast gradually filled with dark blood, and felt
as though there really were something coming out of him, and smiled with
pleasure.
“It’s a good thing,” said the tailor. “Please God, it will do you good.”
The Jew put on twelve cups and then another twelve, drank some tea, and
went away. Nikolay began shivering; his face looked drawn, and, as the
women expressed it, shrank up like a fist; his fingers turned blue. He
wrapped himself up in a quilt and in a sheepskin, but got colder and
colder. Towards the evening he began to be in great distress; asked to
be laid on the ground, asked the tailor not to smoke; then he subsided
under the sheepskin and towards morning he died.